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In a case pitting a real estate brokerage against a homeowners association, the trial court sustained demurrers to the HOA's complaint against real estate brokers who acted as dual agents in the developers' sale of properties in the development to HOA members.  The Glen Oaks Estates Homeowners Association, representing a five-parcel development in Pasadena, alleged in the complaint that the realtors had obtained inaccurate soil reports and had misled the members, resulting in defects of a common roadway and common area slopes. The Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District reversed the trial court's determination that the association did not have standing to assert claims on behalf of its members against the brokers under Civil Code section 1368.3.  Part of the Davis-Sterling Common Interest Development Act ("Act"), section 1368.3 states that that a homeowners association established to manage a common interest development "has standing to institute, defend, settle, or intervene in litigation … in its own name as the real party in interest and without joining with it the individual owners of the common interest development … ." However, such associations have standing only in particular matters, specifically matters pertaining to (1) " amage to the common area," and (2) " amage to a separate interest that arises out of, or is integrally related to, damage to the common area … ."   The act defines a " eparate interest" as "a separately owned lot, parcel, area, or space."  A " ommon area" is defined as "the entire common interest development except the separate interests therein."  In this case, the HOA argued that while the right violated was "personal to the members" in that the realtors owed the HOA members a fiduciary duty, their damages consist of a $3 million repair obligation for the common area driveway and slopes.  The Court of Appeal first held that the complaint failed to allege damage to the HOA members' separately owned lots or parcels, and therefore there was no standing under the provision in section 1368.3 for damage to a "separate interest" that is integrally related to damage to the common area.  However, the Court of Appeal held that the complaint sufficiently alleged facts that show that the matter pertains to damage to the common areas. The theory alleged in the complaint was that the HOA members would not have purchased their homes in the development had the realtors: 1) acted as proper fiduciaries; 2) not concealed information relating to the budget for the HOA monthly dues; 3) warned the members about the alleged invalid soil reports; and/or 4) complied with the laws requiring them to provide a final report and other transactional documents. The complaint further alleged that, because the members did purchase their homes, the HOA is now embroiled in third party actions arising from the failure of the common area slopes and roadway, and it is responsible for certain expenses to repair the common areas. According to the Court of Appeals, those allegations were sufficient for section 1368.3 to confer standing to the HOA. The Court of Appeal went on to reject the realtor's argument that section 1368.3 confers standing only to sue a developer for damages to the common area, and not a realtor. The court explained that the statute does not, by its plain terms, contain a limitation on whom the HOA may sue. Quoting Windham at Carmel Mountain Ranch Assn. v. Superior Court (2003) 109 Cal.App.4th 1162, 1175, the Court of Appeal held that the statute gave associations "the standing to sue as real parties in interest in all types of actions for damage to common areas." That included the claims against realtors alleged in this case. The Case:  Glen Oaks Estates Homeowners Assn. v. Re/Max Premier Properties, Inc. (2012) 203 Cal.App.4th 913 The Attorneys:  For the Plaintiff: Castro & Associates, Jose B. Castro, David H. Pierce, Toneata Martocchio, J. Alan Warfield; Law Office of Morton Minikes and Morton Minikes For the Defendant: Carlson Law Group, Inc., Mark C. Carlson, Jonathan A. Feldheim; Sedgwick LLP and Douglas J. Collodel

When the upscale cafeteria-style restaurant Forage opened in Los Angeles's Silver Lake neighborhood in early 2010, it did so with a new take on the "farm to table'" movement that's slowly been gaining ground in California, as well as the rest of the country in recent years. Forage features produce grown not only by local famers, but, most unprecedentedly, by urban farmers, inviting the latter to bring their backyard harvest to the restaurant for use in its kitchen (in exchange, growers receive market price or store credit). With a stack of positive reviews and a feature article in the Atlantic Monthly, Forage's chef Jason Kim has gained national recognition for this concept. Despite its popularity, Forage's "foraging program" was shut down by the Los Angeles County Health Department soon after its inception but has now been reinstated, as long as all participants get grower certified by the county at a fee of $63 dollars annually. And the restaurant is thriving.  That Kim's fairly simple idea should have drawn so much attention and in many ways come off as radical, hints at an assumed division between the food found in cities and where that food comes from. California has been the most productive agricultural state in the country for over 50 years, but most of the production takes place in decidedly agricultural areas—in the Central Valley or Imperial County—not within a city's limits.  Even with a grow-local movement that ultimately dates back to the environmentalism of the 1960s, big-city zoning codes have reinforced this rift.  According to Daniela Aceves of the food sustainability advocacy group Roots of Change, in San Francisco: "Zoning policies exist in the first place because of the belief in incompatible land uses." Activists like Aceves contend that, in cities throughout California, these codes are now proving outdated, keeping out desirable uses, as more and more people turn to agriculture in urban areas for both personal and financial sustenance, to reduce carbon footprint or simply for lack of better options for access to fresh produce and animal products. Many proponents also contend that city-grown foods can help cut down on traffic and greenhouse gas emissions, because of reduced distances from field to table.  A spate of legislation throughout the state in the last two years reflects this trend.  In June of 2010, the Los Angeles city council passed an amendment to its 1946 general plan, which indirectly outlawed the cultivation of anything other than vegetables for sale off-site. Written at the behest of an embattled flower farmer in Silver Lake and informally dubbed the "Fruit and Flowers Freedom Act," the bill, introduced by Council President Eric Garcetti in 2009, sought to define truck gardening to include berries, flowers, fruits, herbs, mushrooms, ornamental plants, nuts and seedlings, essentially ensuring the legality of small-scale agriculture throughout the city by clearly addressing the previously murky term.  "In Los Angeles, there's definitely been a growth of interest in locally-grown food, and I was proud to author an ordinance that clarified city policy on urban farming.  L.A. has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to sustainable living," said Garcetti, himself an avowed gardener.  Other recent changes throughout California, include a 2011 ordinance passed by the City of Santa Monica that allows backyard beekeeping on single-family residential properties, allotting a maximum of two hives per residence to be registered with Santa Monica's Animal Control Office.  San Diego passed an ordinance in February making it easier for city dwellers to keep chickens by easing up on property line restrictions that had called for them (up to 25 only) to be kept at least 50 feet from residential structures. Under the new law, as long as coops are well ventilated and provide six square feet of space per chick, depending on space, residents are able to keep a varying number of chickens on their property, from five to 50. San Diego also passed a law in January allowing residents to keep two—for companionship's sake—miniature goats per property (though products such as milk and cheese are still for personal consumption only) as well as two beehives.  In Northern California, at the urging of local urban farmers whose livelihoods were directly being affected, in May Berkeley's Planning Commission passed an amendment (known as the Berkeley Edible Gardens Initiative) on the zoning code's permitting process for Moderate Impact Home Occupations (the permit has been waived previously for home teachers). If the ordinance wins approval of city council, home growers will be able to avoid a permit for selling their produce that can cost upwards of $3,000 and take as long as six months to obtain.  Finally, in April of 2011, the City of Oakland passed a law updating its zoning to allow for the growing of vegetables on empty lots without a conditional use permit. Planners are  currently working on a further overhaul of their city's zoning regulations in relation to urban agriculture.  The most dramatic actions, however, have been taken by San Francisco, which passed two major ordinances in the last year and a half.  The Urban Agricultural Ordinance, passed in 2011, permits farms in virtually all areas of the city and, even more progressively, allows farmers to sell their produce on-site as well. The zoning for the ordinance is based on size (operations must be under an acre) as opposed to category— such as commercial, community, demonstrational—the way it is in other cities.  Eli Zagas, a Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program Manager for the San Francisco based nonprofit SPUR thinks that's a wise decision.  "If what you're concerned about from a zoning perspective is intensity of activity or possible nuisance or just general noise or smells, you could have a community garden that's not commercial at all, that's attracted lots of people, and has ended up being a very big operation, and smelly," said Zagas. "And you could have a market garden that was just one or two people working and was quiet and run very well, so the real risk for impact for a neighborhood or area of the city, I think, comes more from size than what they're doing with the food itself." In April SPUR published Public Harvest: Expanding Land Use for Urban Agriculture in San Francisco, a report that outlines a number ways that the city can further promote urban agriculture. Though seven separate agencies spent nearly $1 million on urban agriculture in San Francisco in 2010-11, SPUR deemed the efforts uncoordinated and lacking focus.  Supervisor David Chui recently introduced urban agriculture legislation that reflects many of SPUR's recommendations. The draft ordinance proposed that the city set goals with outlines and timelines, create a single urban agriculture program that could bring together disparate government agencies, and commission an evaluation that would take stock of the current state of existent programs and decide how best to move forward, whether with a city agency or a nonprofit partially funded by the city at the helm of things, by the end of 2012. Last month the Board of Supervisors approved the ordinance unanimously  This legislation is intended to provide more comprehensive support for urban agriculture in San Francisco, giving farmers a kind of "one-stop shop" for application processes on public land. It will also provide information and technical assistance. However, hurdles still remain for farmers in urban spaces.  "The obstacles are land resources and institutional support," said Zagas. "People finding a place to start growing food has been a big obstacle at least here; I think in Detroit, for example, it's not a big obstacle but it certainly is here." The cost of materials, water, permits and farmers' ability to support themselves through full-time farming remain in question.  Some farmers across the state are, nonetheless, making a go of it.  Jennifer Little, who runs Little Farm Fresh from her home in San Gabriel, started farming just a couple of year ago and is now working at her business full time. She sells an eclectic mix of fruit, vegetables, herbs and seedlings, many of them lesser known or heirloom variety. She claims that her and her partner, James Imhoff, are about two-thirds of the way to being sustainable.  "Being so small, we are limited in how much we can produce," said Little.  "We want to get a larger plot, perhaps city owned land, but we would need a loan or a grant to be able to do it. It's really hard to find available resources that apply to us since we are so small. Of course all of the normal problems that farmers face with pests and plant diseases affect us too. We grow everything organically, so we spend a fair amount of time squishing bugs."  Little's business model is so rare in Los Angeles that the coordinator for a study she's participating in on urban agriculture through the UC Extension Program often tells her that there's hardly anyone else in the city doing what she does. She wonders if that might mean she's "crazy, or revolutionary." "There are lots of great things about being an urban farmer," she said. "For one, it's really nice to be home together all the time. Also it feels really good to work hard all day in the dirt with the sun beating down on you, and even though we don't make much money, we know we earn every penny."  Though Los Angeles ranks low opposed to other cities in California and the rest of the US for urban agriculture, if policy continues to shift, Little might not be alone too much longer.   "The city benefits from the people growing food, said Zagas. "Individuals benefit, but the city as a whole does as well so we think it's important for the city to meet that demand and continue to help support people who are trying to grow food." And what shape that support will take in the future seems to be continuing to grow as well.  Contacts:  Eli Zigas, Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program Manager, SPUR :: San Francisco Planning + Urban Research, 415.644.4881 Daniela Aceves, Communications Manager, Roots of Change, 415.391.0545  Eric Garcetti L.A. City Council President, 213-473-7013 Jennifer Little, Owner Little Fresh Farms,  Kate Wolf is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.

When redevelopment was first introduced in California, it included no provisions for affordable housing and instead focused solely on fighting blight. Introduced in 1976, the affordable housing set-aside � amounting to 20% of an agency's annual tax increment � was intended to mollify critics who contended that redevelopment amounting to nothing more than a boondoggle for developers. With the governor's successful dissolution of redevelopment, affordable housing now counts among the most lamented collateral damage.  For decades, cities in California had relied on redevelopment agency funding to contribute to their respective Low and Moderate Income Housing Funds; statewide, redevelopment generated roughly $2 billion annually for these funds. Redevelopment agencies across the state had gotten mixed reviews for their production of affordable housing, with some accused to stockpiling funds rather than actually promoting development. But many cities did produced promised housing, and they are now being forced to adapt to the new reality.  Long-planned projects will appear for the next several years. The dissolution legislation allows redevelopment successor agencies to continue to fund "enforceable obligations," as long as contracts were signed before June 1, 2011. But the outlook for affordable housing after that looks more uncertain.  Some lawmakers in Sacramento are trying to replace TIF funds with another statewide funding source, rather than force localities to fend entirely for themselves.  An initial attempt to stanch the loss of housing funds through redevelopment was Senate Bill 1220, which attempted to raise $700 million a year for affordable housing through a real estate document recording fee. That measure failed to get two-thirds necessary for passage in the state senate, losing by two votes.  Dianne Spaulding, executive director of the president of the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California, remains optimistic, in light of the close vote. "1220 was the beginning," she said. "It raised a lot of awareness."  On a number of controversial issues, she noted, "you have to start, and it takes years before you get there."  Some cities are waiting to see what the state government does to make up for the loss of millions of dollars in redevelopment funding for affordable housing. But others, such as San Francisco, are moving ahead. Two measures are on the city's November ballot to increase funding for affordable housing there. Other cities are looking at local real estate transfer fees, Spaulding said.    Affordable housing, of course, is not financed solely by redevelopment money.  Federal money and inclusionary zoning also helped to add more affordable housing.  But cities were required to spend 20% of all redevelopment money on it. And redevelopment money helped non-profit developers acquire land and keep construction costs down.  Some cities adjusted early to the new reality. The City of San Jose, said Housing Director Leslye Corsiglia, struggled with state takeaways of redevelopment money in the two years before redevelopment ended, and laid off 25%of its housing staff. In its heyday, the city was producing 500 to 1,000 units of affordable housing per year, she said.   But as a large city with almost 1 million residents, San Jose still has few programs robust enough to continue its output of affordable housing units.  The city gets $3 million a year in federal home investment partnership funding, and also gets money from inclusionary programs and developer programs that help, Corsiglia said. San Jose also has a large loan portfolio of $800 million that allows it to loan money to developers and first time homebuyers. As those funds are repaid, new loans can be made.  Similar loan programs exist in smaller cities such as Emeryville in Alameda County, which has 10,000 residents. Emeryville's program has 317 outstanding loans worth $13.4 million, and its work continues, according to Helen Bean, Director of Economic Development and Housing.   Bean said the city is also looking at a linkage fee on new commercial and residential construction that would fund affordable housing. That kind of fee will provide some of the money lost after the end of redevelopment, but not all of it.  Non-profit affordable housing developers are among those wondering what's next.  The lost funding will not come from private sources, according to Linda Mandolini, president of Eden Housing, a non-profit housing developer in Hayward.  Mandolini said that her organization used to receive between $2 million and $10 million per project from local redevelopment agencies, and wonders where that money will come from.  "You can't replace millions of dollars a year in $5 increments," Mandolini said. Eden Housing, which serves the entire Bay Area, has 7,000 people on its waiting list for affordable units, she said. Two affordable developments that Eden recently opened in Fremont and Dublin in Alameda County had ten applicants for every available unit.  Housing proponents are still trying to make sense of the demise of redevelopment after 60 years. "Part of the challenge right now is the demise of redevelopment agencies is incredibly complicated," Mandolini said. "It's just too soon to be innovative." Terry Henderson, a city councilwoman in La Quinta in Riverside County, said cities don't know where they stand. Henderson said a recent letter from the state Department of Finance stating that it has the discretion to change its mind on locally approved projects has local officials confused.  It's now "more complex (and) more confusing for cities to work on low-income housing," she said. "We remain in a state of limbo."  Her own city is in the midst of rehabilitating an 85-unit housing complex, but the end of redevelopment has complicated how parts of that project will proceed, she said.  San Francisco's ballot measures provide one glimpse of what the future may hold in other California cities. The measures would set up a housing trust fund, financing it with a variety of taxes and fees. The measures would provide between $20 million and $50 million a year for housing programs for 30 years. Part of the funding comes from property tax revenue that would have gone to the city's redevelopment agency in the past.  San Francisco voters last approved a bond measure for affordable housing in 1996, and state voters last approved bonds for affordable housing through Proposition 1C in 2006, Spaulding said.  Spaulding said San Francisco's ballot measures have no formal opposition, and are supported by the business community. She said  Corsiglia of San Jose said her staff will discuss options for funding San Jose's affordable housing in the fall when the city council reviews its housing investment fund, a process it undertakes every five years. She said "provocative" ideas will be presented to the council.  Like many public officials, Corsiglia said her city should be okay for the next two years.  What happens after that is the unknown. "It's a real concern," Corsiglia said.  Mandolini pointed to one affordable housing project in her area that had ended due to the collapse of redevelopment. Another in Livermore is on hold.  Others have been reduced in scope, like an 800-unit mixed income complex at the South Hayward BART station planned by Eden. That project is now slated to have 375 units, she said.   Government officials acknowledged that redevelopment had its excesses, but point to affordable housing development as one its successes.  "It's a dark time for the state of California," said Bean, of Emeryville. Redevelopment, she said, "was the only affordable housing and economic development program the state had. There's nothing to replace it." Contacts: Linda Mandolini, President, Eden Housing (510)582-1460 Dianne Spaulding, Non Profit Housing Association of Northern California (415)989-8160 Leslye Corsiglia, Director of Housing, City of San Jose (408)535-3851 Terry Henderson, city councilwoman, La Quinta (760)777-7030 Helen Bean, Director, Economic Development and Housing Department, Emeryville, (510)596-4350

Robert Venturi has, as of last week, retired from architecture. If that seems like unremarkable news , because you didn’t know Robert Venturi was still practicing, you’re probably not alone. But when you consider that no art form moves so slowly as architecture does—planning being slower, but not exactly art—then it’s quite something that the man who, with his collaborators, instantly changed architecture has also been quietly practicing ever since. Venturi’s revolution was both instantaneous and glacial, as his writings immediately changed how we view the landscape and his designs, like those of any architect, changed the real thing much more slowly.  Though he wrote about architecture, he leaves no small influence on planning. When I was an undergraduate,  Learning from Las Vegas  (1969) and  Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture  (1966) – by Venturi, his wife Denise Scott Brown and co-author Steve Izenour – inspired me to consider the built environment in ways that I had never considered before. Indeed, before I read Venturi, et al, I had never considered the built environment  at all . I suspect that many other Americans had not, and still do not. Their books held the distinctions of being familiar, provocative, and fun to read. They are still the source of the glee I feel every time I pass by an Arby’s fronted by a big neon hat.  Tracing the history of urban planning, it’s hard to situate Venturi, now in his late 80s. On the one hand, he allies with the forces of smart growth and New Urbanism, boring into the fortress of High Modernism. It was Venturi, after all, who reintroduced humor into architecture, metaphorically pantsing stern bores like Meis and Corbu. On the other hand, this is the same architect who gleefully designed his own big boxes. His designs for Best stores (no corporate relation to Best Buy) included flower patterns and facades that seemed to be crumbling and other playful flourishes. Lamentably, these designs helped legitimized the typology, literally paving the way for the flimsy monstrosities that followed. Of course  Learning from Las Vegas  celebrates roadside America in every possible way. And why shouldn't it? In the 1960s, the road was the place to be. In that respect, Venturi took after Corbu, but without the pretense. Indeed, it’s been so long since Venturi debunked high-minded architectural theory – the type that lamely attempts to attach tortured, indecipherable rhetoric to things that are, well, just things – it’s a wonder that anyone attempts it anymore. Seeing that Modernist sterility was about as uplifting as a hand full of jokers, Venturi made the world safe for ornament again. His own designs make reasonable, if sometimes unremarkable, attempts to put his own ideas into practice. He and his firm are responsible for countless handsome structures with just enough surface flourish – masonry patterns; unusual arrangement of windows – to keep them interesting. That might have been Venturi’s genius: he embraced the garish, profane elements of kitsch and commercialism, but he knew that the world already had plenty of it. He promotes refinement, but not dogma. I’m not sure if New Urbanism takes Venturi a step further or whether it does an about-face. In any event, whether you embrace ornament as it used to be as ornament that comments on ornamentation, you still arrive roughly at aspects of New Urbanism. That’s because, whether you prefer the cutesy, retro New Urbanist aesthetic or the practical, compact neighborhood, Venturi enabled architects and planners to stop with the ridiculous effort to “push the envelope,” with ugliness and abstruseness, and start thinking about humanity again. He didn’t bother with perfection but instead sought designs that were “almost all right.” So, on the one hand, Venturi gave us the eclectic highway strip and the garish billboard: both necessary to snap the world out of the Modernist hypnosis. On the other hand, he revered Main Street, and he gave us ornament and freedom: both necessary for the planning movements to come.  I’m not sure if Venturi learned about the world quite the way his revolutionary counterpart Jane Jacobs did – she putting about the front stoop and he roaring by the vernacular in a ragtop Corvette – but, as far as Modernism was concerned, I think they played for the same team. And I'd like to think that both were necessary to make the world safe to question the orthodoxy of Modernism (itself scarcely less authoritarian than the regimes that Mies and Groupius had escaped).  Of course, Venturi is still an architect, not a planner. The arrangement of buildings and the life that takes place between them has never seemed to concern him. (Though, unlike many neo-modernists and starchitects, at least he acknowledges that streets exist and that they are things to which buildings are usually attached.)  I once interviewed Andres Duany (about convention centers, of all things), and he gave me the most self-defeating assessment of architecture that you’d ever expect to hear. He basically said that aesthetics do not matter. “I love it. You hate it. Who cares?” he said. That sort of insouciance is one of the many gifts Venturi gave us. Venturi’s own take on that theme, recounted by  (pdf) Paul Goldberger in 1971: “you don’t have to like something to learn form it.” Even if his buildings, which are now part of a complete body of work, don’t always look like much, Venturi is, after all these years, still more than all right.

Citizens for Open Government v. City of Lodi  involves the consolidation of three separate actions revolving around the City of Lodi's approval of a conditional use permit (CUP) for a shopping center to be anchored by a Wal-Mart Supercenter. The first action stemmed from the city's petition to discharge the writ issued in an earlier lawsuit wherein the 2004 EIR for the Supercenter was challenged and the city's lodging of a supplemental administrative record. The second and third actions arose out of appellants Citizens for Open Government's (Citizens) and Lodi First's challenge to the city's certification of the 2008 revised EIR, and subsequent approval of the CUP and shopping center project. The trial court consolidated all three actions and issued one ruling. Adequacy of the Administrative Record Appellants sent letters to the real parties in the cases – Wal-Mart and the Browman Company –contending that certain internal agency communications were missing from the supplemental administrative record. (Why the petitioners would send such a letter to real parties – as opposed to the city – is not clear from the facts in the opinion. However, such a practice is questionable given the city is the entity which certifies and lodges the administrative record, not the real parties.) The city responded to petitioners by preparing a privilege log outlining the privileged documents, and augmenting the supplemental record with additional documents. Still discontented with the supplemental record, Citizens filed a motion to augment the record. The trial court conducted an  in camera  review of the documents claimed to be subject to the deliberative process privilege and ordered five of the twenty-seven documents to be produced. Notably, the trial court did  not  conduct an  in camera  review of the attorney-client or attorney work product privileged documents. A hearing on the merits was held in February 2010 and the trial court granted the city's request to discharge the writ in the first case, and denied the petitions for writ of mandate regarding the revised EIR certified by the city in 2009. On appeal, appellants first argued that the trial court erred in excluding 22 emails exchanged between city staff and the EIR consultants pursuant to the deliberative process privilege, and thus, the record was so incomplete as to require reversal. Initially, we note the appellate court  never  addressed appellants' first three arguments as to why the deliberative process privilege should not apply (For instance, Public Resources Code section 21167.6(e) abrogates the privilege, the privilege does not apply to quasi-judicial decisions, and the privilege does not apply to emails that post-date the release of the final revised EIR). Instead, the appellate court agreed with petitioner Lodi First that the city failed to make the detailed and specific showing required to establish a claim of privilege and never demonstrated that the public's interest in nondisclosure outweighed the public's interest in disclosure of the 22 emails. Accordingly, the appellate court found that the trial court erred in excluding the 22 emails from the administrative record based on the deliberative process privilege. In reaching this conclusion the court did not have to address appellants other contentions, leaving these issues for another day. The appellate court then questioned what prejudice was incurred by Lodi First, and held that "reversal is not required because Lodi First has failed to meet its burden to show prejudicial error in the trial court's exclusion of emails from the administrative record." In noting the missing emails did not deprive the appellate court of its ability to review the judgment, the appellate court acknowledged that the exclusion of the emails simply "deprived Lodi First of the opportunity to review 22 e-mails between the city staff and EIR consultants to determine whether those documents could have bolstered the analysis of the arguments it was going to make on appeal." The appellate court then rejected petitioners' argument that any time one document is erroneously excluded from an administrative record, reversal is required. The appellate court then advised that the proper procedural avenue to remedy petitioners' concerns regarding the trial court's ruling on the motion to augment the record was to seek an extraordinary writ, which petitioners had not done. The appellate court declined to exercise its discretion to treat petitioners' appeal as a petition for extraordinary writ since the normal 60-day time frame for filing such an appeal had long since run. Reasonable Range of Alternatives The Third Appellate District rebuffed Lodi First's contention that an EIR must include alternatives that both satisfy most of the project objectives  and  reduce significant effects of the project. Focusing on subdivision (a) of Section 15126.6 and citing to  Citizens of Goleta Valley v. Board of Supervisors  (1990) 52 Cal.3d 553, the court of appeal reiterated the "rule of reason" as a guide to selecting what alternatives should be analyzed in an EIR, and held that despite the fact the revised EIR did not discuss an alternative that would feasibly attain the most basic project objectives  and  avoid or significantly reduce project impacts to less than significant, the record contained substantial evidence to support the conclusion that a reasonable range of alternatives had been analyzed. Urban Decay – Baseline for Review One of the main purposes of the city's revised EIR was to address the 2004 EIR's inadequate discussion of cumulative urban decay impacts, which the trial court had previously determined was defective due to a lack of discussion of the two existing Wal-Mart Supercenter projects in Stockton, a neighboring city. The appellate court held that the revised EIR did not need to address urban "blight" conditions contained in Redevelopment Agency documents because "blight" and "urban decay" are two separate issues. It also held that the city did not abuse its discretion in using an economic baseline of late 2006/early 2007 (as opposed one of late 2008 as suggested by petitioners) in the revised 2007 draft EIR based on the evidence in the record. That evidence suggested changing the baseline would be problematic given the fluctuating economic conditions and because the economic conditions did not affect the urban decay findings.  Finally, the appellate court found there was substantial evidence to support the city's code enforcement as a mitigation measure for urban decay. That discussion was not certified for publication. Agricultural Impacts Appellant Citizens challenged the city's analysis of project impacts on agriculture arguing that the city failed to disclose the cumulative impacts to agriculture, and failed to support its rejection of a heightened mitigation ratio (i.e., 2:1) with substantial evidence. The Court of Appeal soundly rejected both contentions. First, the court said that because the revised EIR contained both a table of approved developments, and acknowledged that an annexation application had been filed with the city to annex 320 acres of prime land adjacent to the Wal-Mart project, the city had satisfied its duties under CEQA to disclose potential cumulative impacts to agricultural resources.  In addressing petitioner's second contention, the court reframed the issue as not whether there was substantial evidence to support the rejection of a heightened mitigation ratio, but rather, whether the city's finding that there were no feasible mitigation measures was supported by substantial evidence. Ultimately, the court of appeal found the city's requirement that Wal-Mart purchase a permanent agricultural conservation easement over 40 acres (1:1 ratio) to mitigate for the loss of the 40 acres of prime land due to the project's development, was adequate and well within the city's discretion to establish given there were no feasible mitigation measures to avoid the loss of prime agricultural farmland. Application of the Doctrine of  Res Judicata The legal doctrine of  res judicata  precludes the litigation of a cause of action or issue that was previously adjudicated in another proceeding between the same parties where the decision in the prior proceeding is final and on the merits.  Res judicata  also bars the litigation of issues that  could have been  previously litigated. In this case, Lodi First attempted to claim the project would have significant and undisclosed impacts on water supply. Both the trial court and court of appeal rejected Lodi First's claim as barred by the doctrine of  res judicata  on the grounds that the original 2004 draft EIR contained a water supply discussion. Thus, Lodi First should have raised the issue in its first petition for writ of mandate filed against the city because the water supply claims were based on the same conditions and facts in existence when the original writ petition was filed, which it did not do. Comment While none of the appellate court's rulings comes as a surprise, there are two key aspects of the opinion to note. First, with respect to the administrative record issues, this opinion illustrates that courts are unwilling to deem interagency communications (e.g., emails) between staff and consultants (treated as an extension of staff) privileged pursuant to the deliberative process privilege unless the agency can show that the benefits of nondisclosure outweigh the public's interest in disclosure. In other words, the mere assertion that the communication in issue reveals deliberative discussions and that disclosure of it would hamper candid discussions does not constitute a valid showing that the public's interest in nondisclosure outweighs its interest in disclosure. Thus, agency staff should exercise caution when communicating via email since those communications could very well become part of the administrative record in a CEQA case. Second, the appellate court makes clear that disputes regarding undesired rulings on the administrative record by the trial court should be taken up on an extraordinary writ so as to reduce continued delay in a CEQA proceeding. The Case: Citizens for Open Government v. City of  Lodi (March 28, 2012, C065463, C065719) 205 Cal.App.4th 296 The Attorneys Law Offices of Donald B. Mooney,  Donald B. Mooney  and  John L. Marshall  for Plaintiff and Appellant Citizens for Open Government. Herum Crabtree ,  Brett S. Jolley  and  Natalie M. Weber  for Plaintiff and Appellant Lodi First. Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard,  Jonathan P. Hobbs ,  Mona G. Ebrahimi , Christopher Onstott ;  D. Stephen Schwabauer , City Attorney, and  Janice D. Magdich , Deputy City Attorney, for Defendant and Respondent City of Lodi.

It is not uncommon in CEQA cases for the opponents and the lead agency to extend the statute of limitations through a tolling agreement. The use of such agreements puts the litigation on hold, and can help facilitate settlement by taking the pressure of litigation off the front burner.  In Salmon Protection and Watershed Network v. County of Marin , involving the use of a tolling agreement to extend the time lines for a CEQA challenge to a general plan update, a demurrer was sustained to a complaint in intervention later brought by property owners potentially affected by the CEQA lawsuit. As the settlement discussions were undertaken (ultimately unsuccessful), the property owners were left in an indeterminate state as to what to do with their property.  The property owners' complaint in intervention, following the filing of the underlying CEQA action, alleged that the underlying CEQA lawsuit was barred due to the passage of the statute of limitations, and that any extension between the petitioner and the county was contrary to public policy. Relying in part on the policy favoring settlement of litigation, the First Appellate District court upheld the dismissal of the complaint in intervention.   The appellate court held that the fact pattern was one in which no private party was involved, as there would be in the instance of a lawsuit challenging approval of a private project. Given that the interests of property owners potentially affected by the litigation were only "incidental," their concurrence was not required as a condition to the validity of the tolling agreement. The Case:  Salmon Protection and Watershed Network v. County of Marin (April 20, 2012, A133109) 205 Cal.App.4th 195. The Attorneys:  For Plaintiffs: Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School, Deborah A. Sivas,  Alicia E. Thesing, Leah J. Russin, Tori Ballif For Defendants: Patrick K. Faulkner, Nancy S. Grisham; Remy, Thomas, Moose and Manley, LLP, James G. Moose, Jennifer S. Holman,  Jeannie Lee

How much is a hipster worth to a city? Is she worth more when she's building an app, or when she's writing a blog? Is a hipster with a walrus mustache and a mean whiffle ball pitch worth more than one who wears a sarong and practices aerial yoga? How many of them can dance on the pull tab of a PBR?  These questions (or at least less absurd versions thereof) underlie Will Doig's lastest "Dream City"  column  in Salon last week. Doig picks up on a discussion begun elsewhere on the interwebs about whether hipsters--typically described as scruffy 20-somethings, with or without trust funds, each engaged in their own personal counter-culture movements--in particular, and the "creative class" more generally, deserve much of the credit they've gotten for "saving" the cities where they live. A decade after Richard Florida anointed the "creative class" as the drivers of 21st century urban economies, we can now start figuring out whether he was right. And, if he was right, we can figure out whether he was catalytic or merely prescient. (Though hipsters and creative-industry workers are not one in the same, it's safe to assume that the dude who's growing arugula on the roof next to his Indica probably isn't suiting up for work at Skadden every day.) As easy as it may be for some to ridicule hipsters (e.g. the NSFW website  "Look at This F&%ing Hipster" ), Doig doesn't exactly take sides. He prefers to acknowledge that genuine "vibrancy" --  a fraught word  that, he says, may be be making the transition from au courant to trite -- lies not in the suburbs, the projects, or Brooklyn, but probably somewhere in between. He's ready to banish "placemaking" entirely.  We're always going to have semantic debates, mainly because it's easier to change the language than it is to change cities.  Doig is frustrated because the creative class hasn't exactly saved dying cities. They've added color to neighborhoods in New York, San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, and many other cities. I'm too old and square to be a hipster -- In fact, by some accounts, I'm supposed to be pretty unamused -- but I've eaten enough brunch in Williamsburg to know what the fuss is about. Doig thinks that cities can do better that to simply attract creatives and let them do their thing.  The real problems--of the inner city and of desperate backwaters--are not solved through games of ironic croquet. In fact, they're hardly being solved at all. One of Doig's passing observations, which he presents more as a rumination than a conclusion, well captures well the fixation on the creative class in cities: "No one wants to feel like they're participating in a movement that's just a distraction from more pressing problems." Of course, being distracted is what residents of the hipster city have been doing. And why shouldn't they?  In the decade or so since they first arose, in Brooklyn and then elsewhere, hipsters have indeed left their marks on cities--but those marks have been largely cosmetic. Hipsters have moved into unwanted buildings, devised new menus, set up curious new shops, written blogs, organized dodgeball tournaments, painted murals, and, yes,  bathed in dumpsters . They have indulged in deliberate ugliness, gender nonchalance, recreational blacksmithing, freeloading, apathy, steampunk, gearless bicycles, political correctness, veganism, and nihilistic escapades like setting up a  living room on a railroad track  or having a Native American-themed binge in McCarren Park. (The examples are nearly endless.) Hipsters indulge in all of these idiocies of attenuated youth because they can: because the city -- whichever city it may be -- offers them the opportunity to do something.  Once you get past the thin beer, Goodwill clothes, vague income sources, hipsterism depends in large part on self-reliance. It's not a heroic, Emersonian self-reliance. It is, rather, a self-reliance of resignation. The DIY ethos governs everything from hipster cooking to the hipster economy. Computer programs and artisanal whatnots spring likewise from the individual mind and hand. So do those whisky shots and the all-night jam sessions. If some of this creativity leaks out into the greater economy, creating jobs where venture capital firms and Fortune 500 companies cannot, so be it.  I grew up a half-generation removed from hipsters, so I can't claim to be inside the mind of everyone in Williamsburg. But it's not hard to imagine that hipsters are resigned to living with a government and a mainstream economy that refuses to solve those "pressing problems" that Doig invokes. Pick your issue: climate change, health care, the drug war, education, real wars, campaign finance, civil liberties, the justice system, corporatism, the financial crisis, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, the 1%, the 99%.... whatever. Cataclysms loom so large that only a massive entity, on the scale of a government, can address them. Hipsters can't help but distract themselves from these problems, because what else can they possibly do?  I don't find this attitude admirable, but I certainly find it understandable.  Peel back the irony, and many 20-somethings may simply be trying to cope with profoundly confusing times. They've absorbed astounding technological advances, and they've witnessed injustice on a global scale. They've lived amid unspeakable wealth and pitiable destitution all at the same time. As the last great suburban generation, they grew up in places designed without them in mind--maybe in McMansions, even--and they will inherent a degraded landscape. They woke up one morning ready to go to homeroom and instead watched their nation's indomitability crumble into a twisted wreck. They have since come of age beneath the twin pillars of melancholy and melodrama.  Whether they were terrified by the event itself or appalled by the response -- or both -- we knew that this generation would invent its own hangups and own coping mechanisms. And it only stands to reason that they would flock to cities, seeking shelter among each other, and seeking human contact in a world so heavily mediated by technology.  When left to their own devices, hipsters have found that they can change their immediate world, even as the larger world drifts ever more into peril. Yes, some hipsters have done really stupid things. But while art projects and skinny jeans may be aesthetically questionable and functionally pointless, rarely are they morally questionable.  I agree with Doig. Hipsters may not be worth much to cities. But cities are worth the world to hipsters. And maybe that's enough. This piece also appears on Planetizen's Interchange blog .

In November 2006, the Imperial Irrigation District, based upon a negative declaration, adopted an Equitable Distribution Plan (EDP). The plan was designed to provide for the equitable apportionment of water to users in the event of a supply/demand imbalance. The governing board approved the plan, which provided for a straight-line method of allocation among agricultural users during shortfall periods. Agricultural users were the largest users in the district, with industrial users making up a small percentage of the remainder.  In 2007, IID adopted regulations implementing the EDP which provided more detail on allocations to non-residential users, including industrial. In adopting these regulations, the district relied upon the 2006 negative declaration. In 2008, the district adopted amended regulations, further refining the regulations. Language was added pertaining to new industrial water contracts. The district again relied upon the prior negative declaration, and relying in part on CEQA Guidelines 15162, concluded that no new environmental review was required.  The petitioners then filed a CEQA challenge. The trial court denied the petition, determining that Benton v. Board of Supervisors (1991) 226 Cal.App.3d 1467 was controlling, and under the traditional substantial evidence test (as compared to the fair argument test), ample evidence supported the district's decision to rely upon the prior CEQA document. Petitioners dismissed their other claims without prejudice, then appealed. At the outset, the appellate court wrestled with the effect of the dismissal without prejudice of the remaining claims, asking whether or not there was a final judgment subject to appeal. Concluding that there were no remaining claims, the appellate court would treat the judgment as final and proceeded to consider the merits of the appeal.  On the merits, the plaintiffs/ appellants first argued that Guideline Section 15162 was invalid as it facially applied to both EIRs and negative declarations, whereas the enabling statute, Public Resources Code section 21166 only pertains to EIRs. Relying on Benton, the appellate court rejected this challenge. Shifting next to the substantive CEQA claims, the appellate court applied the substantial evidence in assessing the IID's determination that there had not been a substantial change in the project requiring additional CEQA review. This is a factually intensive inquiry, and the appellate court compared the 2008 revisions to the regulations adopted in 2007.  The primary area of legal debate centered on whether the 2008 amendments changed the priority of industrial users to the detriment of agricultural users. As a matter of regulatory interpretation, the appellate court concluded that the 2008 changes did not materially affect the priorities established in 2007. Pointing to the allocation of water to an industrial (geothermal) project in 2008, the opponents also argued that there had been a change in circumstances surrounding the project, necessitating an EIR. As framed by the opponents, the granting of the contract for a user of 6,000 or more annual acre-feet, in conjunction with the alteration in priorities, constituted the type of changed circumstances under CEQA necessitating an EIR. Having determined that there was no material change in allocation priority between 2007 and 2008, the court rejected this argument as well. Comment:  Picking the right second (or third) generation CEQA document requires a thorough understanding of the initial action along with the relationship of the second action to the first, and probably a little bit of luck. Abatti involved the evolution of a policy to an implementing regulation followed by a later regulation. The passage of the statute of limitations on the intermediate regulation positioned the district to take full advantage of Guidelines Section 15162. In contrast, consider the very recent scenario in Center for Sierra Nevada Conservation v. County of El Dorado (2012) 202 Cal.App.4th 1156 where the lead agency was challenged in its transition from a general plan policy to an implementing regulation, and the appellate court rejected the use of a negative declaration following the earlier EIR. The Case:  James Abatti v. Imperial Irrigation District (April 26, 2012, D058329) ___ 205 Cal. App. 4th 650 ; 2012 Cal.App. LEXIS 496 The Attorneys:  Downey Brand: Gregory Thomas Broderick, Stephen J. Meyer, Kevin M. O'Brien and Courtney S. Covington for Plaintiffs and Appellants.  Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis,:Davis Leon Osias, David Duval Cooke, Jeffrey R. Patterson, Mark J. Hattam; and Jeffrey M. Garber for Defendant and Respondent

Anecdotally, the answer is clearly yes. But it's a little hard to say based on the data that's available.  The Great Inversion  is the title a new book by Alan Ehrenhalt, the longtime editor of Governing magazine and author of several insightful books about cities. (Disclosure: Ehrenhalt was my editor at Governing for 20 years.) Ehrehalt's thesis is that American cities are becoming more like European cities, with the rich folks living at the center and the poor and working-class folks living on the edge. The book includes case studies of more than a dozen American cities – but none from California. Adding to The Great Inversion publicity was a recent, highly publicized study by William Frey, the noted demographer at the Brookings Institution, who concluded that cities grew faster in population than suburbs between 2010 and 2011. Frey's study included 51 metropolitan areas with a population above 1 million people, including California's "Big Four" metros – Los Angeles, San Diego, the Bay Area, and Sacramento. Frey's implication – repeated ad nauseam by urban boosters in the Northeast and Midwest – is that, after 60 years of population decline, older central cities are finally adding people. And, by extension, wealth and vitality as well. This phenomenon is clearly true in the older cities. Washington, D.C., for example has added close to 10% in population since 2000. So has Philadelphia. These population increases were unimaginable a decade ago, and the resulting vitality in city neighborhoods is palpable. But California, as usual, is an anomaly, for several reasons:  First, our central cities have not been losing population over the past several decades. To the contrary – they've been gaining population, primarily because of immigration from other countries. Second, unlike in the Northeastern and Midwestern cities, an increase in population does not necessarily mean an increase in wealth. New city residents in California have generally been poor immigrants living in old, high-density neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are now vital – but they are not rich. And third, California defies conventional city-suburban categorization. Yes, you can try. But it is necessarily a coarse measurement. For example, the City of Los Angeles includes some very suburban areas in the San Fernando Valley – while unincorporated L.A. County includes some very urban areas in East and South L.A. Still, some trends are obvious. Population is dramatically on the rise in places like downtown San Diego and downtown Los Angeles – traditional business districts that have recently added a large number of housing units. In San Diego, the addition has come about mostly through new construction; in L.A., by converting old office buildings into lofts and apartments. The results are significant. The population of Downtown L.A. has grown from about 10,000 to about 50,000 in the last 10 years.  It's fashionable to pooh-pooh the downtown numbers as statistically insignificant. At least in L.A.'s case, they're not. The population of the entire City of L.A. – approaching 4 million residents at this point – has grown by a little over 100,000 in the last decade. And somewhere between a third and half of that growth has occurred downtown. In a metro area of more than 15 million people, an increase of 40,000 might seem like a drop in the bucket. But when concentrated a small, job-rich and transit-rich area, it can make a huge difference in the way the region functions. Larger population trends suggest that most of California's big cities are at least holding their own in terms of population. And one thing that you can say about California's big cities is that they are far older and more urban than their suburban counterparts. For example, in the 2010 census, California counted 18 cities with a population of 200,000 or more – a pretty good definition of a big city. With the exception of Irvine, virtually all of them are older, gritty cities – including both recent cities to declare bankruptcy, Stockton (population 292,000 in 2010) and San Bernardino (population 210,000). Not all of these cities showed significant population gains between 2000 and 2010 – Santa Ana lost population (suggesting a leveling off of Latin American immigration) as did Oakland. Long Beach held even. Anaheim and Los Angeles showed modest gains. Only Irvine, Chula Vista, and inland cities saw significant increases. For a lot of these cities, the decennial numbers hide a big run-up in population in the first half of the decade because of the housing boom, followed by a significant decline in the second half of the decade after the bust. But for the period 2010-2011 – when Frey identified the overall trend nationwide – virtually all of these cities mirrored the national trend. Of the 18 cities in California with a population of more than 200,000, 15 grew faster than the state average – a remarkable feat in a state where population growth has been predominantly suburban for 70 years. The only three that grew slower than the state average were San Francisco (which still added 7,500 people), Los Angeles (which added 23,000), and Long Beach (which added 3,000).  In fact, even though overall state population growth in 2010-2011 was less than historic levels, all large – and, for that matter, medium-sized – cities gained population. The largest city in the state with a stagnant population for the year was Eureka in Mendocino County, which lost exactly one of its 27,318 residents. The largest city with a noticeable population loss was Susanville, in Lassen County, which lost close to 300 residents out of a population of about 17,700. Indeed, if there is a larger trend here, it is that the small cities are the ones losing ground in the California population competition these days. California cities below 50,000 – and especially those below 25,000 – are adding population at less than one-tenth the rate of larger cities.  Of course, none of these statistics can quantify the quality of urban life and whether it's getting better for California city residents, whether affluent or poor. But one thing is clear: in keeping with the national trend, Californians are increasingly choosing to live in cities and especially in large cities. The bucolic suburb no longer appears to be the destination of choice.

LOS ANGELES -- Many of the young urban planners in Los Angeles live exactly where you'd expect them to live: the dense, colorful, decidedly urban neighborhoods in and around downtown Los Angeles. They ride bikes and take trains and, in many ways, live the life that they are trying to design.  Then there's me. I live on the Westside. So the Expo Line light rail (see july 2012 feature story "New Light Rail Opens Up World of TOD Possibilities" ), currently running from downtown to Culver City and, eventually, to Santa Monica -- is as close to a godsend as I'll see in my lifetime. (I'm not holding my breath for the subway.) While you just need to look at a map to see that the line, in whole, serves us Westsiders nicely, I can't help but lament that Metro overlooked some important details. It's important to remember that the speed of a transit line doesn't depend only on how fast the rolling stock moves but rather on the speed, ease, and comfort of the entire trip, door to door. Put together, Expo suffers some annoyances that could turn off discretionary riders and slow down everyone:  Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne has already excoriated the "aggressively banal" aesthetics of Expo's stations; I can scarcely improve on his assessment . The platforms and their canopies are flimsy, spare, and forgettable. The "weaving" metaphor is both untrue (South LA and the Westside are not quite a big, happy, multicultural families), and it's incomprehensible in the design. You should watch out anytime architecture is based on a metaphor—and an untrue one, at that.  Though Metro's otherwise convenient parking structure at the La Cienega/Jefferson station sits on a major corner, it has only one driveway. And it allows drivers to exit in only one direction: eastward. The problem is, anyone who's going to be parking there will naturally be heading anywhere but east, meaning that everyone has to do a confusing, and perilous, three-point turn on to side streets.  The La Cienega platform hovers tantalizingly at eye-level with the parking structure's third floor. Yet, the absence of a bridge (albeit an expensive one) means that commuters have to go down a set of stairs, cross a driveway, and climb up more stairs before they can catch the train (and their breath).  Inexplicably, some of Expo's ticket machines are not located on the platforms--or even in the same zip codes. Metro placed them at street-level for elevated stations and some of the machines for at-grade stations are across the street. Since Metro's light rail trains run on an honor system, latecomers have every incentive to jump the turnstile, as it were, if they're in even the slightest hurry. The ideal rail platform is no platform at all. In many European cities, you just step off the train where it stops. Maybe you have a bit of a curb to designate the stop and make egress easier. On the Expo Line, even the at-grade stations present a gauntlet for riders. For instance, the Pico Bl. platform funnels riders off the train in the wrong direction, backwards into wall of an adjacent building -- without any wayfinding to help riders to likely destination: the heavily trafficked Staples Center/Convention Center complex two blocks away. In fact, it's set up so that if you want to get to Figueroa Bl., you basically have to cross and re-cross the tracks and then jaywalk across Flower St. Finally, Metro has populated the Expo Line with what seems to be its most decrepit pieces of rolling stock. I don't think that Westsiders necessarily need rail cars straight out of the wrapper. But dingy, banged up, graffitti'd cars don't exactly complement an otherwise pristine line.  So if you park on the top floor of the La Cienega garage, fumble with your cash, and get turned around at Pico, you're going to be out of luck if you expect to arrive in time to see Andrew Bynum dominate some fool at the opening tipoff.  These complaints may be trifles for any given passenger, but, collectively, they are nontrivial in a business that operates on thin margins and in volumes on the order of 16,000 riders per day (and counting). Compared to driving, a 10-minute savings might attract a slew of discretionary riders, whereas a 5-minute savings might not. On a potentially transformative project that cost almost $1 billion, these are all solvable problems that would have made a promising piece of infrastructure that much more useful.  I'll gladly ride Expo when I can. But my Eastside friends know that they can still expect me to be late to the next downtown urban planning happy hour. I may need a few minutes to find parking.

It's not quite the Golden Spike, but the completion of Phase I of the Los Angeles Expo Line light rail marks a momentous occasion in the history of westward rail expansion. Built on a former trolley right-of-way, the Expo Line connects downtown Los Angeles with the Westside via rail for the first time in decades. Whereas Los Angeles' old Pacific Electric Railway had been built in virgin territory in order to spur new development, the Expo Line is but a filament, woven into built-up neighborhoods. Expo-adjacent neighborhoods are no streetcar suburbs, however. Now that the Westside once again has the "T," efforts to figure out the "OD" have only just begun. The opportunity to explore a whole new typology on the Westside has planners and developers excited�and anxious. "There are opportunities that exist along Expo that don't exist along other proposed or recently constructed alignments in California," said Abigail Thorne-Lyman, Director of the Center for Transit-Oriented Development at the transit advocacy group Reconnecting America, which published a major report on TOD in Los Angeles County in 2010. "But there's these issues of equity that need to be somehow addressed and mitigated." On its eastern end, the Expo Line serves ideal destinations: downtown and the University of Southern California, with over 50,000 students and staff. The Expo Line cuts transit travel time between downtown and USC to seven minutes from almost a half-hour. On the north side of campus, a massive planned residential and retail complex, The Village, is being touted by USC officials as a 10-minute walk from the two stations (See sidebar "Design Glitches Add Precious Minutes to Expo Trip" .) Heading west, the Expo Line presents seemingly ideal opportunities for transit-oriented development. Residents who live along the line might never have to endure the 10 Freeway ever again. A second phase is expected to connect to Santa Monica in 2015. "The Expo Line Phase I has significant opportunities for the whole area and significant opportunities in terms of increasing the housing stock for the area and opportunities to make the Expo stations regional hubs for housing development," said Faisal Roble, senior city planner for the city's Southeast Region. Los Angeles City Council Member Bernard Parks, whose district includes much of the Expo Line's route, envisions mixed-use development at higher densities than the area currently has. He said he supports zoning changes to allow more mixed use development and higher elevations. Currently, land use in the area is segregated, with commercial strip malls clustering at major intersections and residential neighborhoods off the major boulevards. Roble estimated that Phase I, which cost $930 million to construct, could prompt the development of up to 6,000 new housing units in the area by 2030. However, South Los Angeles offers few easy places to put any new development, much less 6,000 units. Simply put, vaunted TOD's like Oakland's Fruitvale Station or Walnut Creek's Contra Costa Centre have are difficult to insert into the urban fabric of South Los Angeles. Thorne-Lyman equated Expo with San Francisco's 3rd Street line, a streetcar-style line that runs through the low-income area of Bayview-Hunters Point. Unlike many of the great east-west boulevards in Los Angeles, the line's namesake, Exposition Boulevard, is a secondary thoroughfare fronted largely by relatively low-density residential uses and even some light industrial uses, such as auto yards and recycling centers. The line's six stations between USC and its current terminus at the intersection of Venice and Robertson boulevards do not have ready-made urban villages. "In terms of the retail and office development, the opportunities are limited precisely because the stations along the Expo Line probably cannot compete with the adjacent downtown districts that we have," said Roble. Roble added that commercial development will likely include "neighborhood-oriented retail uses and small offices, such as doctors offices, dentist offices and others that the community relies on a daily basis." Inserting new development will, therefore, be incremental and subtle. "I think the community fully endorses development as long as development is not overdone�as long as it's bringing amenities to the general public," said Council Member Parks. "I don't think we'll have a drastic change in the types of communities in the district." The main challenge is that of finding parcels large enough to make transit-oriented development�either mixed use or wholly residential�worthwhile. Developers could attempt to assemble parcels, but in order to get the acreage they would need, they might have to negotiate with dozens of small landowners. "There's a lot of small, teeny parcels and there's all this weird industrial property, and it certainly seems like it could be refurbished, but that's going to be a challenge," said Hornstock. This process will, of course, have to take place without the assistance of a redevelopment agency. "With the fall of redevelopment, we've lost a significant tool in the process to assemble large enough properties together to make it meaningful and worthwhile to do a larger-scale project," said Tom Wulf, a senior vice president at Lowe Enterprises. Wulf's firm has a development agreement in place for a large mixed use development, including a hotel, 150 residential units, and nearly 200,000 square feet of office space, at the Culver City terminus. (Several other major TODs are planned for the Culver City end of the line, where larger parcels have been available and the city has been aggressively promoting development.) Moreover, Roble said that many of the lots directly adjacent to the line are relatively shallow. So, he said, much of the new development associated with the line could take place several blocks from the line itself. The Los Angeles Department of City Planning has been developing what it calls a Community Plan Implementation Overlay (CPIO) District, which superimposes certain rules on TOD-friendly areas�generally a quarter�mile radius around a station�without changing the areas' respective community plans. These overlay zones are going in around dozens of transit stations in the South LA planning area, including existing Blue Line and Green Line stations. Mindful of community opposition to rampant development, planners have devised incentives to promote what they consider beneficial, neighborhood-serving uses�and to gently nudge-out nuisance uses. Roble said, for instance, that a development that includes a health clinic or that installs extra greenery will get certain perks, such as allowances for increased density. "We will look at elements that have inhibited place-making, such as recycling, tire shops, all the nuisance uses that plague our corridors will now be regulated through the CPIO," said Roble. "The beauty of this overlay zone is that it's a focused element within that community, as opposed to a specific plan that would be very comprehensive." Roble said that the CPIO will not prohibit unwanted uses but rather will control them by imposing maximum numbers of "placemaking-inhibiting" uses in a given area and making sure that they are spread out. Though it controls some small parcels along the line, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority has taken only a tangential role in promoting TOD around Expo. (By contrast, Metro has been a major developer along the Red Line, where the agency has considerable landholdings.) Metro has developed a grant program to help local planners develop and implement TOD plans around its stations, and Los Angeles has received $3.1 from that program to draft a specific plan for Expo. "Funding is to promote any kind of regulatory change that supports transit oriented development," said Jenna Hornstock, Deputy Executive Officer and Countywide Planning at Metro. "It could be an amendment to an existing plan, a specific plan�..anything like that." Metro officials hope that increased development will equate with higher ridership. However, they acknowledge that, no matter how much TOD is built, not everyone will be riding the train. "While we're super-excited about the Expo Line and, I think, over time it's going to alleviate traffic, any time you bring in density to the really congested Westside people are going to say you're bringing in more traffic," said Hornstock. Perhaps the most delicate issue facing planners is that of addressing affordable housing. The Expo Line runs through relatively poor neighborhoods filled with older housing stock. In a city with a chronic shortage of affordable housing, city officials are wary of anything that would displace existing residents. Some affordable housing advocates claim that TOD tends to push out less affluent residents�who are often the most transit dependent�and lead to gentrification. "Do we keep the housing stock that's there to preserve the low-income residents or are there opportunities to develop something that's a higher-quality building stock or adding more units near transit in really location-efficient areas?" said Thorne-Lyman. Parks said that he favors new commercial/residential mixed-use development, which can add amenities while maintaining the number of residential units. He does not, however, want to be dogmatic about pursuing affordable housing. "I think affordable housing is important," said Parks. "But I don't believe that you can build a community only with affordable housing. You don't have a community unless you have a balance." Acknowledging that developers find it "excruciating" to seek entitlements and lobby for rezoning when they want to build high-density projects, Parks hopes that the CPIO and new community plans will make the area more welcoming to developers. "I think developers are often looking for places that they can be certain about the development requirements and what can be built by-right," said Parks. Contacts:  Jenna Hornstock, Deputy Executive Officer and Countywide Planning, Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, 213.922.6000 Bernard Parks, Los Angeles City Council Member, 8th District, 213.473.7008 Faisal Roble, Senior City Planner for L.A. Southeast Region, 213.978.1168 Abigail Thorne-Lyman, Director, Center for Transit-Oriented Development, Reconnecting America, 510.268.8602 Tom Wulf, Senior Vice President, Lowe Enterprises, 310.820.6661 Photo Credit: Steve Hymon/Metro

As if on cue, several cities have already filed suit to block the penalty provisions in Assembly Bill 1484, the budget trailer bill passed two weeks ago. AB 1484 was intended in large part to help successor agencies with matters such as disposal of assets and expenditure of bond funds. It also includes a demand that successor agencies immediately pay "claw-back" payments to local taxing entities; if they fail to do so, then the Department of Finance can garnish cities' property and sales tax monies. DOF recently announced that it would not levy fines until August, at the earliest. A coalition of five San Diego County cities -- Chula Vista, National City, Oceanside, San Marcos and Vista -- have filed a joint suit against the state and county.  Other cities that have reportedly filed suit include El Cerrito in Contra Costa County, Galt in Sacramento County, Selma in Fresno County and Apple Valley in San Bernadino County.  Some of these cities have paid under protest, while others have failed to pay entirely. Statewide, AB 1484 assessments range from less than $1 million to over $10 million in some cases.   Update:  The board of the League of California cities voted unanimously Friday to authorize the filing of a lawsuit against AB 1484 on behalf of the League's member cities. The League staff contend that AB 1484's sales and property tax "claw-back" provisions violate multiple provisions of the state constitution that were adopted by the voters of California in 2004 (Proposition 1A) and 2010 (Prop. 22). League Executive Director Chris McKenzie said in a statement: "AB 1484 represents a clear and present threat to the ability of cities to meet the public safety and other vital public service needs of the city resident of California. We also strongly believe the sales tax and property tax "claw-back" provisions violate the constitution and are inconsistent with other parts of AB 1484 that declare that redevelopment successor agencies are separate and apart from city governments." The League has not announced if or when it would file suit.