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In a new opinion, the Sixth District Court of Appeal has unraveled a confusing set of events surrounding the certification of the environmental impact report for San Jose's new general plan, concluding that an environmental group exhausted all administrative remedies and can sue over the EIR. The California Clean Energy Committee sued over the certification of the EIR, saying that it should not be penalized because of the confusing way San Jose certified the EIR. The Sixth District agreed. Under the San Jose municipal code, the city planning commission is empowered to certify EIRs. However, the CEQA Guidelines, § 15025, subd. (b)(1), say that the decisionmaking body for a project cannot delegate the authority to certify the EIR to an "inferior" body. There's no conflict on most entitlements, where San Jose's planning commission is the final decisionmaking body and applicants have the right to appeal to the city council. But in the case of the general plan, the planning commission's role is advisory. The decisionmaking body in that case was the San Jose City Council. Nevertheless, in approving Envision San Jose, the city at first followed the procedure called for in the municipal code. The draft EIR was released and comments by groups such as the California Clean Energy Committee were presented to the planning commission. The committee's letter  covered a wide variety of topics, including traffic, energy conservation, and the city's ability to finance all the proposed actions. Following the municipal code, the planning commission certified the EIR. But of course the planning commission didn't have power to approve the plan. Rather, the commissioners made recommendations to the city council. Subsequently the city council approved the general plan. However, the council also certified the EIR. The Clean Energy Committee subsequently sued, claiming the EIR was inadequate and should have been recirculated. The city argued that the Clean Energy Committee  had not exhausted its administrative remedies because neither the committee – nor anyone else – appealed the planning commission's certification of the EIR. The committee argued, essentially, that it was not possible to appeal the EIR certification because, under the municipal code that certification was final. The committee also argued that the planning commission certification was not legal and that the city council's certification was done with knowledge of the committee's comments. The Sixth District ruled for the committee. "We conclude that the EIR was not properly certified by the planning commission, as the planning commission could not be delegated the duty to certify a final EIR given that it is not a decisionmaking body with respect to the Envision San Jose project," the court wrote, adding: "We conclude that CCEC exhausted its administrative remedies with respect to the challengest o the sufficiency of the EIR and CCEC?s argument that the draft EIR should have been recirculated, as these points were adequately raised with the city council via CCEC?s comment letter." The San Jose case was a good example of a case in which one side – the city in this situation -- had to make a tortured argument in order to defend its actions.  Under Section 15090 of the CEQA guidelines. certification of a final EIR requires the lead agency to certify that: 1. The final EIR has been completed in compliance with CEQA;  2. The final EIR was presented to the decision-making body of the lead agency, and that the decision-making body reviewed and considered the information contained in the final EIR prior to approving the project; and  3. The final EIR reflects the lead agency's independent judgment and analysis.  The municipal code states that once the planning commission has certified the EIR, it may then either act on the matter at hand or make recommendations to the city council. In court, San Jose made the argument that certification in the case of the Envision San Jose plan was bifurcated. The planning commission, the city argued, provided certification of #1 above, while the city council provided certification of #2 and #3. The court saw through this tactic and basically concluded that the municipal code did not comply with the CEQA guidelines. "For all intents and purposes," the court wrote, "the certification of the final EIR by the planning commission is meant to be final for the purposes of CEQA, as the San Jose Municipal Code provides that after the planning commission ‘certifies the final EIR, it may then immediately act or make recommendations on the project associated with the EIR.'" The court added: "An alternate reading of the municipal code would produce a strange result where the planning commission has made only one out of the three required findings under CEQA Guidelines section 15090, subdivision (a), for all projects requiring CEQA approval, with no provisions for further CEQA certification by the planning commission or the lead agency. Logically, the planning commission would not be able to ‘immediately act' if it did not make all three of the requisite findings under CEQA Guidelines section 15090, subdivision (a)." The case (unpublished): California Clean Energy Committee v. City of San Jose, Sixth District Court of Appeal Docket # H038740

Fresno, the largest city in the Central Valley, is going to keep growing. The question is, in which direction?  City leaders who are dealing with issues of leapfrog development, declining neighborhoods and strained city services, would like to keep growth inside city limits as infill projects – as the city's recently adopted general plan suggests.   But local counties, including Fresno and Madera, are happy to encourage some of that overflow growth as it moves beyond the affluent north side of Fresno. Both counties have many developments planned for the region near the San Joaquin River, which is the border between the two counties. This has led to years of environmental litigation between the large city and the counties.    Fresno recently settled a lawsuit against Madera County over the large Tesero Viejo planned community. But the city is still involved in other litigation, and is appealing a recent decision against Fresno County's plans to allow 2,500 homes at Friant Ranch.   Amidst the litigation, the city and its two county adversaries recently met with a  mediator from the state's Strategic Growth Council to discuss some of the longstanding issues. The meeting was required in the settlement of Fresno's lawsuit against over Tesero Viejo, and Fresno County was also invited.  "We started talking about ways to talk about planning from a regional perspective," said Jennifer Clark, Fresno' new planning director.  The next step, she said, is "the state will participate at whatever level we're interested in." "We are at a fairly early stage of discussions and anticipate some additional meetings," said state Office of Planning and Research director Ken Alex via email. "We are helping the parties explore the issues, the possibilities of more regional planning and development, and various connected issues of sprawl, agricultural land preservation, transit-oriented development, and restoration of downtown Fresno." Norman Allinder, planning director for Madera County, said the planning directors plan to meet again.  Clark said regional cooperation has been hindered in the past by the size of the region. She contrasted the Fresno area with Houston and Galveston, Texas, where the regional council of government covers 11 counties in an 8,500-square-mile region. Fresno County alone, in contrast, is 9,000 square miles, and has its own council of government.   "I think regional collaboration is a much better model than litigation," she said.  That sentiment is not far from Allinder's view. "My outcome, lofty or not, is that they not sue us," he said.  Allinder said Madera County, with 164,000 residents, wants some of the amenities that exist in Fresno, including more shopping. "They've always acted as if they're the only ones who should have urban development," he said. "And  all the surrounding communities stand by while they develop their economy while we don't develop our own." It's a view shared by Alan Weaver, Fresno County's planning director.  "There are 14 other cities (in the county) that all have the need to grow and be self-sustaining as well," he said.   Allinder says that Madera County wants the same kind of smart growth in its county that is being championed in Fresno. He points to plans for the Rio Mesa area, which encompass many of the proposed developments in the south county. "The Rio Mesa plan of 1995 embodied the principles of smart growth prior to that term being common," he said.   Rio Mesa could be home to 250,000 people, according to the Fresno Bee.  Among the projects are Tesero Viejo, a proposed 5,200 home development and Gunner Ranch West, a proposed 2,800 unit development. There are supposed to be jobs and retail at both locations so residents won't have to drive far.  But critics of the project, such as Fresno land use attorney Sara Hedgpeth-Harris, contend that until those developments are built out, many of the residents will commute into Fresno, adding to traffic and air pollution difficulties in a region that already has the worst air quality in the nation. Fresno sued over Tesero Viejo, and settled the matter in May after an agreement was reached for the city to receive a $1,600 per home impact fee. But Hedgpeth-Harris is continuing with litigation over that project on behalf of environmental groups such as the Coalition for Clean Air.  She said in total, 80,000 new housing units are proposed for Madera County.  Approval of Gunner Ranch West, meanwhile, has been held up by the Madera County Board of Supervisors because the developers have failed to identify a water source. Critics of the project include the Madera County Farm Bureau, which has sued the county over development and water issues in the past.  This time, though, the county seems to be paying more attention to water, said Anja Radabaugh, executive director of the Madera County Farm Bureau. "We're hopeful,"she said. "One of the more encouraging things we're noting is the county supervisors are much more cognizant of the water situation that they were ten years ago."  Attorney Hedgpeth-Harris agrees, saying Madera County is updating their water management plans.  "The county of Madera has done a lot more in terms of gathering information,"she said.   Still unresolved in the latest talks is a separate suit  between Fresno and Madera County over El Paseo, a project  along Highway 99 in Fresno.  Madera officials sued in June to stop the 75-acre commercial project, according to the Fresno Bee.  In Fresno County, officials are looking at more development near Millerton Lake and other northern sections. Plans for Millerton New Town date from 1984, Weaver said.  The Fresno County Planning Director said that new development is compliant with SB 375, which seeks to reduce global warming.  "We go through the CEQA process, " he said. "If we fall short, we mitigate. It's no different than development that would occur in the city of Fresno."  Attorney Hedgpeth-Harris described Fresno itself as "the epitome of sprawl," but said a new general plan being written there is attempting to change that direction. "The whole idea is to end sprawl," she said.  Hedgpeth-Harris said the cities and the counties are both looking for new tax revenue from development, money that has been taken away by the state and by Proposition 13.   She summed up the problem the city faces:"it's difficult to do the infill development ..if the tax base is leaving to go into the county." Contacts: Anja Radabaugh, Executive Director, Madera County Farm Bureau, (559) 674-8871 Norm Allinder, Madera County Planning Director, (559)675-7821 Sara Hedgpeth-Harris, attorney, (559) 233-0907 Jennifer Clark,  Director of Fresno Development and Resource Management, (559)621-8003 Alan Weaver, Director of Fresno County department of Public Works and Planning, (559)600-4078 Ken Alex, Director, Governor's Office of Planning and Research (916)322-2318

Where is Robert Bruegemann when you need him? A few years back, Bruegmann wrote Sprawl: A Compact History, an exaltation of low-density growth. It called for cities to double-down on all the conventions and mistakes of the previous 50 years. It was a disturbingly anachronistic, but it was provocative, and it was passionate. It seems that these days there's still plenty of in urbanist literature, but, for better or worse, provocation is getting harder to come by. Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design , by Charles Montgomery, pulls up the rear in the urbanist canon. Happy City argues for the right things: everybody would be happier if they lived in denser, more attractive, less auto-dependent, more human-centric cities. Montgomery defines happiness as the Aristotle's concept of eudemonia: self-acceptance, navigation of your own environment, positive relations with others, personal growth, sense of purpose, feelings of autonomy. A city, contends Montgomery, can make or break all of these virtues: "we all translate our own ideas of happiness into form....it is impossible to separate the life and design of a city from the attempt to understand happiness, to experience it." Montgomery couches Happy City in psychological terms, matching new science with Classical philosophy. Presumably inspired by trends such as positive psychology movement, "gross national happiness," and ratings of happiest and saddest countries, Montgomery explains why the human brain is wired to enjoy itself more in certain types of environments and certain modes of getting around (e.g. pedal, foot) and why driving, subdivisions, and all the other accouterments of sprawl are not stressful because of the behaviors they induce or the people that they attract but in fact because of the actual, formal structure of the environments. Cities must strike a balance between "privacy, conviviality, and biophilia"�the latter being love of nature.   Unfortunately, too many places embody the opposite. While expediency, and economics, may require us to convince ourselves that the office, the freeway, or the grocery store are OK (perhaps because there are no other options in some places), the human brain, which was raised in the forest and trained to distrust open places, knows otherwise. "Places that seem too sterile or too confusing can trigger the release of adrenaline and cortisol, the hormones associated with fear and anxiety," writes Montgomery. "Places that seems familiar, navigable, and that trigger good memories, are more likely to activate his of feel-good serotonin, as well as the hormone that rewards and promotes feelings of interpersonal trust: oxytocin." The most feel-bad environments? Big boxes with long blank walls, and "sharp architectural angles light up the brain's fear centers much like the sight of a knife or a thorn, releasing stress hormones," writes Montgomery. In other words, anything designed by architect Daniel Libeskind. Montgomery is great at explaining pop science. But he is not a psychologist himself, and he loses the scientific thread as the book goes on. He makes occasional nods to endorphins and such, but he does not analyze the built and moving environment with the authority or focus of a true scientist. (Even so, a lot of the recent attempts to apply neuroscience to the "real world" to be redundant at best. Surely there are fascinating physiological processes going on in our brains, but we don't need a doctor to tell us how much freeway congestion sucks.) Traditionally, the great urban books have been written by scholars, practitioners, or activists. Montgomery is none of these. A travel journalist best known for a first-person ethnography of South Pacific tribes , Montgomery does not use his outsider status nearly as powerfully as he could. Maybe  Happy City 's publisher, the venerable Farrar Strauss & Giroux, finally decided to go looking for something on cities, and they figured Montgomery would suffice. It's tantalizing to think what Montgomery would have produced had admitted that he came late to the game and had instead pursued an expose of, say, the homebuilding industry or political conservatives, both of which seem to have doubled down on the suburban myth. Even sticking with his theme, he could have done the world a tremendous service by comparing the supposed "preferences" that lead people to live in suburbia with those urban forms that science says is actually healthy. Montgomery tosses a few barbs at the Tea Party's fierce anti-urbanism and notes that "a nation that that celebrates freedom and weaves liberty into its national myth rarely gives regular people the chance to shape their own communities." With this claim, Montgomery is not criticizing planners per se but rather lamenting the power structure in which they have to operate. He implies that Tea Partiers' roiling frustration with government, and distrust of smart growth schemes, stems in part from the fact that "It's hard to find an agora in the dispersed city. You can't hold a demonstration in a Walmart parking lot or inside a Starbucks." His best dig at sprawl comes at the expense of the nearly godlike power that many fire departments wield, noting that "sprawl's wide streets and big lots take up so much space that cities can't accord to build fire stations close by, so it takes fire trucks longer to reach each blaze." But, for the most part, Montgomery approaches the faults and promises of the contemporary urban condition with a combination of earnestness and "gee-whizz" curiosity. Happy City relies mostly largely on observations and anecdotes, which are exhausting and globe-trotting. Montgomery describes a host of delightful innovations that are supposed to increase happiness. They range from Enrique Penalosa's Ciclavia to Jamie Lerner's buses to Janet Tsadik-Kahn's pedestrian plazas to Lee Myung-bak's daylighting of the Cheonggynecheon River to Paris and its Velib bike-sharing prorgram -- to, of course, Portland's, Vancouver's, and Copenhagen's overall swellness. To illustrate how the 20th century got into its mess, he also takes a familiar tour from the Greek agora to the to Broadacre City, to Futurama, to the Plan Voison, and then to the cul-du-sac. The High Line is in there somewhere, and Disneyland too. Happy City is, by all accounts, amiable, insightful and informative. Unfortunately for Montgomery, he writes at the end of decade or two that have produced Walkable City, Triumph of the City, Straphanger, Human Transit, Green Metropolis, Traffic, This Land, Rise of the Creative Class, the Geography of Nowhere, and Suburban Nation , among many others. Just look at Planetizen's annual list of Top 10 books to see the incredible body of work that has arisen around smart growth, environmental responsibility, center-city revitalization, and pedestrianism. Encouragingly, no matter the perspective -- Edward Glaeser: economics; Jeff Speck: aesthetics and personal health; David Owen: environmentalism, Jarrett Walker: transportation; Florida: subcultures; David Byrne: cycling; James Kunster: sheer incredulity -- many of these authors arrive at nearly identical, or at least complementary, conclusions. Agreement may be satisfying, but it's a little dull. As nice as it might be to read the occasional Molotov cocktail thrown by Kotkin, Bruegemann, or Wendell Cox, it seems that progressive planning has finally won. It almost seems that Montgomery hasn't been paying attention, and that he's writing for readers who have been similarly oblivious. Then again, who could blame them? All the famous innovations that planners are familiar with are, on the ground, few and far between. Most people have not experienced them firsthand, and most people, including himself, have not spent their lives dreaming about nicer, happier cities.  At its best,  Happy City signals the maturation of the discussion about how to improve cities. Not that cities don't need improvement, or that there's not room for more books or for new ideas (if there are 16,000 books on Abraham Lincoln, then surely the world's cities can lend themselves to a few more). If his book inspires some readers to crawl out from their SUV's and read about smart growth with fresh, eager eyes, then more power to him.   The real challenge that Montgomery, and everyone else who writes about cities (myself included), faces is that of time. Unless you are at the controls of a wrecking ball, an atomic bomb, or a city hall in China, it takes a lot longer to create a city than it does a book. So, while we wait, we write. Now these ideas are making their way into plans, projects, and the public consciousness, planners have to make sure that the reality matches up with the rhetoric. And they have to make sure that the triumph of the city -- to borrow Edward Glaeser's phrase -- on paper does not make them complacent, arrogant, or, indeed, too happy. There's a lot of work to be done.  Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design Charles Montgomery Farrar, Strauss & Giroux $28.00 400 pages

This week the Huffington Post ran a concerning piece about the recent shooting at Los Angeles International Airport. In it, an attorney representing the Transportation Security Administration described his fear TSA personnel are "all sitting ducks." He, like many others, seems to be wondering whether they should be equipped to fire back. You have to sympathize with anyone who works at an airport, in light of what happened last week. I do not wish to minimize the horror of last Friday's attacks. I am particularly horrified, and self-interested, because I fly out of LAX several times per month. But I don't think anyone should exaggerate the significance of Paul Ciancia's rampage for either public safety or the task of airport screening.   If merely being in an airport makes one a sitting duck, then so is every other American, in every other public place. TSA screeners are not police. They are supposed to identify suspicious behavior and activities so that the real police can take action. In this effort, they protect the planes and their passengers. They are not trained or charged with protecting anyone or anything beyond that security wall. And what is beyond that security wall? The entire world -- at least the entire world up to the Mexican and Canadian borders. Airports are special, not because they are targets, but rather because they are gateways. Every Angeleno should cherish the economic contributions of LAX, and we should be proud that LAX cements our status as one of the world's truly great cities. At the same time, you have to wonder what an American city really is if we cannot get comfortable with, and in, public space. The hysteria surrounding the LAX shooting has included calls to arm TSA agents and otherwise militarize airports; the shooting itself resulted in the closure of half the airport and the disruption of hundreds of flights long after it became apparent that Ciancia was not a terrorist as such. This response says as much about many Americans' attitudes towards public space as it does about their attitudes towards air travel. Too often, we fail to acknowledge that public life is messy, sometimes tragically so, but that the freedom and comity can, and should, more than compensate for messiness. The roadways, curbs, and ticketing areas of the world's eighth-busiest airport are no less public than are a mall, a sports stadium, a college campus, or the sidewalk in front of your house. Those are all places where people of good faith can congregate and enjoy each other's company -- so long as they trust each other. And yet, so many Americans go about their business silently, walking with heads down, driving with their windows up. We do not gain by encouraging "more,"tighter," or "heavier" security. As recent history has proven time after tragic time, the savage combination of mental instability and readily available firearms can unleash itself anywhere. It can happen in offices, malls, and movie theaters, not to mention military bases, university campuses, and elementary schools. The fact that one of these incidents -- perpetrated not by a terrorist or hijacker but by one of America's garden-variety assassins -- can also happen at airports is almost beside the point. It's no exaggeration to say that the average TSA agent faces more danger on the drive to work each day than he faces in his entire career at the airport. Naturally, some of that danger, however faint it may be, comes from enemies. They are real and they are nefarious. To them, we have responded with both sensible measures and stentorian bombast. Meanwhile, we greet with relative silence some of the true tragedies of our age: the drug war, the education crisis, suburban discontent, and the 39,000 traffic fatalities annually, all of which dwarf anything that happened last week at LAX. In American street, we cannot shake our fists any anyone in a turban or a throbe, whether they deserve it or not (most likely not). Instead, all too often, in almost every corner of America, the enemy is us. We sell each other junk food, we crash our cars into each other, and, on occasion, we shoot our own neighbors. Even under normal circumstances, we rush past each other, unblinking, en route from the Walmart door to our car across the tarmac. What saddens me is that the LAX shooting has led to calls for "security." But what about comity, and what about trust? What about recognizing that all Americans should be equally safe -- and equally confident -- in all public spaces. We should not have to insist that the airport be safe while, otherwise, we hole up in suburban houses trembling, out of fear or bloodthirst, at the prospect that a bad guy might one day come knocking.   Of course, some parts of America are doing well. Certain parts of certain cities are becoming more walkable, pleasant, and, hopefully, more safe. They are becoming more like the types of places that inspire Americans to get on a plane in the first place (for a dream vacation to Europe, for example). In considering the nature of American public spaces, it's impossible to avoid Jane Jacobs, who said it best, long before the advent of X-ray machines, porno scanners, and Al Quaeda. Security does not lie in the police, the military, or the TSA. And it certainly does not lie in guns. While we need law enforcement and the military -- when they are well trained and when they execute their jobs -- true safety, of the sort that prevails in the best of our cities and neighborhoods, lies in something else. It lies in trust, good faith, and "eyes on the street." Or, in some cases, eyes in the terminal.

After a 30-odd-year delay, the Governor's Office of Planning & Research has released a working draft of the Environmental Goals & Policies Report – a document that OPR is supposed to produce every four years. Titled, " California's Climate Future ," the draft is a high-level document laying out overall policy goals, focusing especially on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. It's the first time an EGPR draft has been released in 35 years – since the last time Jerry Brown was governor, when OPR released the "Urban Strategy for California". The new document focuses on the prospect of California with a population of 50 million as well as the stresses of climate change. But the draft shows how difficult it is to set hard metrics in the world of land use and transportation compared to the world of energy conservation. The EGPR also sets an ambitious goal for greenhouse gas emissions reduction: 80% by 2050, the same figure that was included in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2005 Executive Order. There is no state statute containing that goal – the only statutory goal is a reduction to 1990 levels by 2020, contained in AB 32 – although litigation against the sustainable communities strategy in San Diego has successfully used the Executive Order's target as a de-facto state goal. The EGPR contains specific sub-goals for energy conservation, but only general descriptions of desirable goals and metrics regarding land use. The proposed EGPR is organized around six high-level goals: A strong economy Thriving urban areas  Prosperous rural regions  A clean environment  Clean and efficient energy system  Efficient and sound infrastructure  This is fine rhetoric – and not surprising – but the EGPR also seeks to set up a series of metrics that would measure the state's progress toward the goal. The metrics call into five categories: 1. Decarbonize the State's Energy and Transportation Systems  2. Preserve and Steward the State's Lands and Natural Resources  3. Build Sustainable Regions that Support Healthy, Livable Communities  4. Build Climate Resilience into All Policies  5. Improve Coordination Between Agencies and Improve Data Availability Each of these five areas of measurement contain a set of more specific targets. For example, the "decarbonize" goal calls for a 33% renewable energy generation by 2020 (already a state law) and 1.5 zero-emission vehicles by 2025. Targets #2 and #3 above – natural land and sustainable communities – have a direct impact on the planning and development world in California. But the metrics in these areas contained in the EGPR are not as quantitative as those for the energy sector.  In the case of natural and agricultural lands, the proposed metrics are: 1. Land conversion  2. Land protection status  3. Water consumption  4. Use of recycled and reclaimed water  5. Bioenergy development and use  Though the draft EGPR includes some information about the state's measurement of conversation of agricultural and natural land for development, it does not include or propose specific metrics. Similarly, Target #3 -- Build Sustainable Regions that Support Healthy and Livable Communities – includes some broad discussion of possible metrics but not a whole lot of specifics in the way of metrics. This target contains four specific goals, including environmentally sensitive infrastructure investment; a transportation investment strategy that focuses on walking, biking, and safe routes to school; and better education and workforce training. Perhaps the most interesting specific goal under Target 3 is "Build a redevelopment program that allocates funds in alignment with environmental goals as evidenced through some of the following activities". At first glance, one might think that this is pretty earth-shattering: The Brown Administration is endorsing a new "redevelopment program". But because it's a high-level document, it's short on specifics. As possible strategies it lays out the following  1. Alignment of local General Plan with regional sustainable communities strategy (where ?applicable). 2. Coordination with school districts on long-term planning issues.  3. Natural resource protection plans that reflect long-term environmental goals.  4. Adoption of climate change or sustainability plans that address emission reduction as well as steps to build climate resilience.  5. Develop plans to help communities manage planned retreat from rising sea levels. And it contains no specific proposals for metrics that would suggest how to measure progress toward these goals or targets.  The EGPR was required as a result of a law carried by then-Assemblyman Pete Wilson in the early 1970s. Since Brown's 1978 "Urban Strategy," no governor has released an EGPR, though both the administrations of Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger worked on drafts that floated around Sacramento.  The 1978 Urban Strategy  was similarly lofty to the current draft in its goals and aspirations, but – unlike the current draft – it did contain a detailed "action plan" of specific steps the state should take. Among the proposed actions: A CEQA exemption for housing in infill locations.

A couple of weeks ago, the Cupertino City Council approved the long-awaited, 3.2-million-square-foot Apple Campus 2. Approval means that the building, notable for its purely circular footprint, is to arise on an open field north of Interstate 280, with completion expected in about two years. Designed by architectural luminary Sir Norman Foster, the main office building is notable for a purely circular footprint. Both Apple and the architect suggest that the horizontally oriented, four-story building will be gentler on Gaia than a tall building. The campus, which is roughly four times larger than Disneyland, will include additional buildings for a gymnasium and a 1,000-seat auditorium; the latter is the only public venue on the 275-acre site. Even if the landscape scheme does not coordinate with the building designs in any obvious way, the site plan is positively fuzzy with greenery, so that is another plus. On one level, the circular building – which was personally unveiled by its principal proponent, the late Apple Chairman and Co-founder, Steve Jobs, about 18 months ago – is a continuation of the elegant, minimalist design esthetic that has made Apple a consistent standout in industrial design. It's hard not see the building as a kind of overscaled funerary monument to Jobs. Immense, solemn and symbolic with a capital "S," the new Apples headquarters is reminiscent of the "The Cenotaph of Newton," a monumental scheme by the French architect Etienne Boullee (1728-1799). Never built and probably impossible to construct, the Centotaph consists of an immense empty globe, topped by a dome larger than that of the ancient Pantheon in Rome.  So the new Apple office building is the Cenotaph of Steve, with some of the arrogance and visionary power of the Apple co-founder finding expression in this impressive, if ultimately irrational design. Architects love circular floor plans, in part because of the "infinite" or endless nature of the circle. The Romans built circular "tempietti" as well as the super-sized Pantheon. Much later, in the Italian Renaissance, architects became obsessed with the idea of designing circular churches, even though the circular floor plans did not accommodate themselves easily to the ceremonies of the Catholic Church, and were rarely built. Even more recently, circles beguiled that great genius -- and even greater crank -- Frank Lloyd Wright, who relied on circles in several of his latest, most eccentric buildings, such as the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. One major difference between the circles in Renaissance design and the Apple campus is the Renaissance conceived circular spaces that were active, important places. (Many of the schemes place the church alter at the center of the circular plans.) One possible advantage of the circular plan is a continuous interface with the outdoors. Yet there is something empty about the garden scheme, at least as it stands: Rather than being a destination in itself, the center of the doughnut hole is negative space; it is an awkward condition to be mitigated. While Apple office workers will likely take advantage of the building's design to frequently spend plentiful time outdoors (and this is a big win), few will stray to the center of the doughnut hole. There's no reason to go there. It's an empty precinct filled with trees, or a type of "greenwash." Curved spaces may not be better than straight corridors for most people.  If long straight corridors are tiresome to walk, are curving corridors less frustrating? Curved hallways lack a visual endpoint, which is part of the way that we orient ourselves in space. Plus, most of us prefer to walk in a straight line, which is, after all, the shortest path between two points. Perhaps the doughnut is so large in scale that entire departments can all work together, all within the same view shed, without the desks of coworkers curving off into the unseen distance. If the building is meant to encourage communication among people working in different disciplines inside the same building, however, the circular design seems to works against that goal.  Some renderings of the office building interior depict an internal monorail system to deliver workers from one point to another within the circular periphery, which speaks to the difficulty of getting from A to B in this very large building. By the by, we noticed that the approval of the new Apple HQ was somewhat overshadowed by the Congressional vote the same day to re-open the federal government. Apparently, there was a train wreck with a really bad website that was trying to redistribute wealth to minorities by providing health care to sick people, or something like that. I wasn't paying attention. Anyway, some of our readers would like to know more about the new Apple headquarters, so we are providing the following Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Question: In what way is the U.S. Congressional delegation similar to the new Apple headquarters? Answer: They are both big zeroes. Q:  In what way do Congress and the Apple HQ differ? A: Congress is a waste of time, while the Apple HQ is a waste of both time and space. Q: What is the role of landscape in the form of this immense building? A: Uh… none. Why do you ask? Is that important? Q: How can such an immense building fit harmoniously with the rest of the surrounding city? A: What city? Do you see a city? (peals of laughter, followed by a sharp elbow to the ribs.) Q:  What does this immense monolith say to the people who work in it? A:  "You miserable little ants! Watch out I don't step on you!" Q: What does this circular oddity say about the late Steve Jobs? A: Overcompensation for his inability to throw a Frisbee? Q: How shall this building be known in the popular imagination? A: Maybe as Steve Jobs' Circle Works?

The California Supreme Court has ruled that an inclusionary housing requirement is an exaction rather than a land use regulation – a distinction that means inclusionary housing could be judged by the same nexus and proportionality requirements as other exactions. In a unanimous ruling last Friday, the Supreme Court reversed an appellate court ruling and sided with developer Sterling Park in an ongoing dispute against the City of Palo Alto. Sterling Park had sought to fulfill its inclusionary housing commitment under protest, as permitted by the Mitigation Fee Act (Govt Code Section 66020). Palo Alto claimed that the inclusionary housing requirement was not an exaction under the Mitigation Fee Act but rather a land use regulation under the Subdivision Map Act (Govt Code Section 66499.37). Palo Alto's inclusionary housing program "is different from a land use regulation … (a limit on the number of units that can be built); instead, it is similar to a fee, dedication, or reservation under section 66020," wrote Justice Ming Chin for the unanimous court. The Supreme Court did not decide the merits of the case, in which Sterling Park challenged the inclusionary housing ordinance as an impermissible use of the city's power to impose exactions in exchange for land-use permits. Instead, it remanded the case to the Sixth District Court of Appeal for that decision. However, the Supreme Court's ruling certainly sets the stage for a possible ruling that would outlaw or significantly rein in  inclusionary housing ordinances. Under exaction law, a jurisdiction seeing to impose an inclusionary housing requirement on a developer would have to prove a strong nexus between the construction of the project and the need for affordable housing. In the 2009 case Palmer v. City of Los Angeles , 175 Cal.App.4th 1396 (2009), the Second District Court of Appeal called into question the legal validity of inclusionary housing requirements on rental housing projects. The court ruled uled that an inclusionary housing requirement on a rental development project near Downtown Los Angeles was effectively setting the rent on the housing units, thus violating the state's Coast-Hawkins Rental Housing Act. Just last week, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed AB 1229, a bill designed to overturn the Palmer ruling, by saying he wanted to wait to see what the Supreme Court did in the Sterling Park case. The case began in 2006, when Sterling Park LLC sought approval of a proposal to demolish an existing commercial development on 6.5 acres of property on West Bayshore Drive and replace it with 96 residential condominiums. As a condition of approval, Sterling Park agreed, under the city's inclusionary housing ordinance, to set aside 10 units for affordable tenants and also pay the city a fee totaling approximately 5% of the actual sales value of the market-rate units. Three years later, however, Sterling Park filed a letter of protest as permitted under Government Code Section 66020, a part of the Mitigation Fee Act, claiming that the developer had agreed to the conditions under duress and claiming that the inclusionary housing requirements were invalid. The city did not respond and Sterling Park sued, seeking invalidation of the inclusionary housing requirement. In response, the city argued that the inclusionary housing requirements were not exactions imposed under the Mitigation Fee Act but, rather, conditions of approval imposed under the Subdivision Map Act . The Mitigation Fee Act contains the protest procedure that Sterling Park followed; the Subdivision Map Act has not such equivalent procedure. Both the Superior Court and the Sixth District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the city, but the Supreme Court reversed. The appellate court had relied heavily on Trinity Park, L.P. v. City of Sunnyvale (2011) 193 Cal.App.4th 1014, which held that the Mitigation Fee Act covered only impact fees designed to defray the cost of infrastructure needed to serve the project. By contrast, the Supreme Court relied heavily on Fogarty v. City of Chico (2007) 148 Cal.App.4th 537, which held that the phrase "or other exactions" contained in the Mitigation Fee Act should be interpreted broadly. The Fogarty case, in turn, depended in large part on an appellate court ruling in Williams Communications v. City of Riverside (2003) 114 Cal.App.4th 642. Using the reasoning of Fogarty and Williams , rather than the ruling in Trinity, the Supreme Court so long as the number of units being constructed is not being challenged – in issue that would be covered by the Subdivision Map Act -- the conditions attached to how those units may be rented or sold can be litigated under the Mitigation Fee Act during or after construction of the project.  "The procedure established in section 66020, which permits a developer to pay or otherwise ensure performance of the exactions, and then challenge the exactions while proceeding with the project, makes sense regarding monetary exactions.," wrote Justice Chin or the court. "By the nature of things, some conditions a local entity might impose on a developer, like a limit on the number of units … cannot be challenged while the project is being built. Obviously, one cannot build a project now and litigate later how many units the project can contain — or how large each unit can be, or the validity of other use restrictions a local entity might impose. But the validity of monetary exactions, or requirements that the developer later set aside a certain number of units to be sold below market value, can be litigated while the project is being built." In the case of the Sterling Park development, Chin wrote, Palo Alto's inclusionary housing ordinance "offers developers two options, either of which, by itself, would constitute an exaction. The imposition of the in-lieu fees is certainly similar to a fee. Moreover, the requirement that the developer sell units below market rate, including the City's reservation of an option to purchase the below market rate units, is similar to a fee, dedication, or reservation."

California's Office of Planning & Research appears likely to make a major impact this year by revising the General Plan Guidelines and pushing the envelope on the California Environmental Quality Act in a way that hasn't been seem for a decade or more. OPR is currently preparing an update of both the General Plan Guidelines and the CEQA Guidelines. Such updates are not usually front-page news, but this time around both cases could be the leading edge of significant change in the pra ctice of planning in California. The General Plan Guidelines now in the works will focus on integrating the process of updating plans with environmental review, which is often tacked on to the end. "All of the feedback I've been getting is that CEQA eats the life out of your general plan – the tail wags the dog," said OPR's CEQA expert Chris Calfee at last week's state planning conference in Visalia. Meanwhile, OPR also must undertake implementation of the many revisions to the California Environmental Quality Act that Gov. Jerry Brown has pushed through the Legislature since he took office – most importantly, rethinking the "Level Of Service" standard for traffic.  "We are looking very seriously at vehicle miles traveled as a more appropriate measure of a particular development on traffic and traffic services and what are the impact on complete streets and transportation alternatives," OPR Director Ken Alex said in a keynote speech in Visalia.  The timelines for each of these updates are tight. Under the terms of SB 743 – recently signed by Gov. Jerry Brown – OPR must come back with a report and a proposed game plan by July. Meanwhile, OPR hopes to complete the General Plan Guidelines update by December. As one tweeter from Visalia suggested, OPR is not preparing "your father's General Plan Guidelines update". Key to the state's approach is the availability of thousands of layers of geographical data on the state's "geoportal" .  But it may be the connection to CEQA that is most important part of the General Plan Guidelines update.  Regarding the way CEQA "eats" General Plans, Calfee said in Visalia: "We can address some of that if we look at how we do timing of General Plans and EIRs. We want to revamp section on CEQA and General Plans to better address what are the key intersections between development of General Plan  and development of CEQA review. We may put out a time line in order to get people to think about environmental issues at the very front end of the process." He added: "Also, we want to set forth other key linkages between General Plans and environmental review. Project objectives in the General Plan -- those should be linking up to project objectives in EIR. Alternatives prepared for General Plan should be the alternatives in your EIR. And so forth."

Will CEQA ever give infill development a break? SB 731 – now pending in the Assembly – is intended to do just that. But in the latest twist in an increasingly long-running tale, the bill has now been amended in a way that could push CEQA significantly in the direction of assessing the socioeconomic impact of infill development. On Monday, Senate leader Darrell Steinberg took some amendments to SB 731 and Assembly Speaker John Perez referred it back to the Assembly Natural Resources Committee.  The major change calls on the Governor's Office of Planning & Research to do a study on economic displacement of residents in infill neighborhoods and revise the CEQA Guidelines based on the results. The economic displacement idea was first raised two weeks ago in a letter from ClimatePlan, Greenbelt Alliance, and the Planning & Conservation League.   "While infill development, done right, can greatly improve the quality and livability of a neighborhood and the health of its residents," the letter wrote, "new development can also result in both physical (direct) displacement and economic(indirect) displacement. Unchecked, the displacement of residents and neighborhood-serving businesses thatc an no longer stay in a neighborhood because of escalating rents/property values brought on by new development, can have significant harmful environmental, social, and health equity consequences. We believe these impacts should be fully incorporated into the CEQA framework. " In the past, the state has explicitly rejected moves toward assessing the socioeconomic impact of development via CEQA – in contrast to New York, whose CEQA equivalent moved in that direction a long time ago (but is not as frequently used on private development). These amendments reveal the tension among liberal Democrats in reforming CEQA. On the one hand, they want more infill development. But on the other hand, they can't let go of the idea that infill development will be bad for people who currently live in urban neighborhoods. In an interesting blog posted on Monday, High Speed Rail blogger Robert Cruickshank argued that the opposite is true – that a lack of infill development can sometimes lead to gentrification too. "As San Francisco proves, the opposite is the case. Rules that limit or block infill development cause rents to skyrocket, since potential renters are all fighting over a small, finite set of available units," he wrote.  If OPR's study led to actual changes in the CEQA guidelines requiring consideration of socioeconomic issues, it would broaden CEQA's scope considerably in infill locations – perhaps requiring different analysis, rather than less, which was the original goal of Steinberg's bill. Meanwhile, on Monday, the Assembly passed SB 1, which would partially revive redevelopment. It seems headed for Gov. Jerry Brown's desk, though Brown vetoed an identical bill last year.

As the California legislative session winds down, both CEQA reform and the revival of redevelopment appear headed to Gov. Jerry Brown's desk. Both bills are being carried by Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. They both passed the Assembly Appropriations Committee last Friday. The redevelopment bill – SB 1, virtually unchanged since last spring -- passed 12-5, presumably on a party-line vote. The CEQA bill – SB 731, the subject of endless wrangling in August – passed 17-0. The redevelopment bill would permit cities to use tax-increment financing in limited circumstances. Counties and other local taxing entities would have to agree; school tax-increment would not be included; and the money could be spent only in transit priority areas, walkable locations, and clean-tech districts. Brown vetoed a virtually identical bill last year. Steinberg thought he had consensus on the CEQA bill last spring, but that appeared to fall apart at the end of July when both CEQA reformers and CEQA defenders found fault with the compromise. Later in August, the CEQA Works – the CEQA defenders – got bent out of shape a second time in response to a set of amendments proposed by  Brown's Office of Planning & Research, some of which were incorporated into the bill by Steinberg. OPR's proposals included a proposal that clarifying that parking and exceedance of level of service standards do not, in and of themselves, represent a significant impact under CEQA. The OPR proposal also includes a suggestion, which Steinberg accepted, that CEQA settlements be approved by trial judges and then only when certain findings can be made. The CEQA Works letter of Aug. 19 zeroed in on the judicial approval of settlements in particular. Acknowledging that the provision may be intended to discourage settlement illegitimate CEQA lawsuits, the CEQA Works letter claimed the provision represented "a solution where there is, in fact, no evidence of a problem." However, the CEQA Works letter to did not discourage Steinberg from accepting many of the proposed amendments; not did it prevent the 17 members of the Appropriations Committee – including 12 Democrats – from approving it.

Recently, economist and entrepreneurship expert Carl Schramm announced a discovery in the pages of Forbes.com: "the practice of city planning has escaped reality." Planners don't see the big picture. They don't understand economic growth. They've unleashed upon us scourges like live-work lofts, fire stations, and bloated pensions. Planning thus joins a small, list of obscure fields that could benefit from self-analysis and reform. To my reckoning, that list includes finance, medicine, government, journalism, technology, religion, and everything else short of Pet Sounds .  You need only take a few glances at major American cities and suburbs to know that there have been lousy plans and, by extension, lousy planners for a very long time. Most every cul-de-sac and downtown surface parking lot indicates as much. Schramm's criticism, as that of an entrepreneurial evangelist looking create business-friendly, is undeniably valuable.   How critical is Schramm? Quite. In "It's Time for Business to Adapt a New Model," he accuses planners of being self-serving and of writing many general plans good only to line the wallets of planning firms and architects. In reading a handful of cities' plans – which cities? we'll get to that in a minute – he and his graduate business students at Syracuse University concluded that planners are blind to the forces of demographics and macroeconomics.  Schramm writes: measures of city health that are clearly more faddish than practical. None set a goal of full employment or even mentioned unemployment.  Poverty was a missing word.  What discussion existed regarding economics was confined to making a specific kind of neighborhood, often called an arts district, to provide propinquity for the city's "creative" population.  If a link to the economy is mentioned it usually is a passing reference to new and small businesses that would grow up if, again, the physical environment was engineered in a specific way.  In short, writes Schramm, planners who believe that their job is merely to create a functioning built environment are shirking their duties as captains of economic development and reduction of poverty. They "have no idea of how the complexities of dynamic economies actually are sparked to life." He also accuses planners of ignoring demographic projections; he writes, "none of the plans ever spoke of what the city's population might be at the end of the planning period!" Schramm would replace all of those arts districts with facilities for "scale production…(which) is the only path to growth and urban futures that hold the potential to restore communities" – as if American cities will be saved by Chrysler and U.S. Steel. Planners' Hidden Agenda As debatable as Schramm's conception of the 21 st  century economy may be, many of his concerns are so obvious as to be implicit in the work of many contemporary planners. When, for instance, New Urbanists speak of vibrancy and street life, they're not assuming that everyone is strolling around because they're unemployed. When developers build dense mixed-use developments, they do so in the hope that thriving businesses will fill those ground floors (and that the residents above will have more disposable income because they're spending less on cars). When progressive planners talk of making cities "better," they do so with the conviction that improvements in quality of life lead to economic prosperity -- and vice-versa. Plenty of contemporary plans address exactly the concerns that Schramm raises. Take Santa Monica's relatively new, much-admired general plan , for instance: it's chock-full of rhetoric about stoking the local economy and supporting local businesses. Same for San Jose's new Envision 2040 plan. But those are just two examples from two cities. Planners certainly aren't enlightened enough to pursue that line of thinking on a really large scale, are they? As it turns out, they are.  California's Senate Bill 375 , for instance, requires cities to do exactly what Schramm and his students advise. A huge component of SB 375 is based on demographic projections, with the goal of reducing per-capita greenhouse gas emissions according to targets for the years 2030 and 2050. It addresses the relationship between the location of jobs and that of housing – a key factor in cultivating a healthy workforce. The models that the Air Resources Board and the state's "Big Four" metropolitan planning organizations are using to meet these targets incorporate piles of data to this effect. Under SB 375, every metropolitan planning organization (MPO) must publish and abide by a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) and every city in those planning areas has to address the SCSs in their plans. Granted, SB 375 isn't expressly intended to promote business -- it has far more important goals -- but it most certainly takes the state's economic climate into account.  Anyone worried about demography might also check out California's Regional Housing Needs Assessment program, designed to ensure that every city in the state absorbs its fair share of new low- and moderate-income housing. (Whether cities follow these rules usually depends on politics, with conservatives often opposing growth.) Most sensible cities not only plan housing accordingly; they also plan for amenities and services. So if a city expects a population increase in a certain neighborhood, it might also add a fire station or a park. Schramm, however, sees fire stations as symbols of cronyism and waste: "every plan discusses the importance of new buildings for fire station," he writes, disapprovingly. Maybe the problem on the local level is that planners are fixated on the arts, to the detriment of other economic activities.   In many places, these industries probably play a smaller role in today's urban economies than boosters like Richard Florida and Elizabeth Currid-Halkett would like to admit. Then again, the arts is often shorthand for a much larger, and vibrant, creative industries, ranging from entertainment, to video games, to interior design -- but not, alas, to "scale production." But the reason that the arts have become an avatar for a new wave of urban planning is that urban forms that are good for the arts and artists may also be good for all sorts of other industries and residents. What's good for Banksey may be good for America.  Schramm also lambasts these plans for not calculating the costs of cities' pensions, claiming "not one of the plans discussed…the unfunded costs of pensions for retired and current public servants." Why not tell planners to cure cancer too?  While pension obligations gravely threaten some cities, I'm not sure why they are planners' problems or how planners would solve them. Conflicting obligations within a city -- between, say, building a nicer city and paying long-term debts -- need to be worked out at the level of city government. Then again, Schramm isn't a big fan of any sort of government. If planners have their way, "government…(will have) control over all aspects of the built environment." He doesn't mean that in a good way.  Shining Exemplars How did Schramm and his students reach these conclusions? Is the state of planning as bleak as they imply? Of course it is – if you base your conclusions on Syracuse, Stockton, and…wait for it…Detroit. (Schramm does not name these cities in his Forbes piece, but he was candid enough to reveal them to me via email.) Anyone who knows anything about contemporary American urbanism already know what I'm going to say. Judging the planning profession according to some of America's most famously destitute (and bankrupt) cities is like judging lending by Countrywide, finance by Lehman Brothers, international banking by the Libor scandal, and entrepreneurship by the shuttered frozen yoghurt shop down the block. Schramm's students might as well have thrown in Atlantis too.  If Schramm had presented his Forbes piece explicitly as a study of cities that have run aground, and his Forbes editors had titled it as something like "Bad Planning and Urban Downfall," then he might have ended up with a compelling, nuanced commentary about the common traits that poorly planned cities share. The graduate course at Syracuse that gave rise to his article is called "Fast Cities / Failed Cities," so Schramm can clearly distinguish between good and bad. His students, though, seem to have taken a cursory, one-week look at a complex, generational issue and then rendered a sweeping decision that vilifies an entire field. Regarding Detroit in particular, Schramm presents a curious argument. He writes that Detroit's general plan is a failure because "Detroit remains hopeful that someday 2.3 million people will live there once again." First of all, a lousy land use plan is the least of Detroit's worries. Secondly, even if Detroit's general plan  does  refer to a target population of 2 million, that just means that the document disagrees with literally every single member of the greater planning field. That's probably to be expected from a city that elected a criminal as its mayor. Fortunately for Schramm, if he thinks that planners should figure out how to plan for a smaller Detroit, then he should delighted.  That's exactly what planners are doing. (Whether they can pull off such a monumental task, and generate the political will and financial resources to implement it, is another story.) Job Creators I have no doubt that Schramm would give great advice to an entrepreneur, such as the mom and pop who are setting up a small business, whether on a Main Street, in a mini-mall, or in a co-working space in a converted flour mill. He would likely fight like crazy to help that business succeed. He seems like that type of guy. I'm also willing to wager that the first thing he would tell clients is to be true to their vision no matter what impediments lie in the way.  Schramm surely knows that no entrepreneur, anywhere, creates his or her own competitive landscapes -- nor their literal landscape. To imply that any plan or planning decision could undermine ingenuity, hard work, and guts is an insult to the spirit of entrepreneurship. The best entrepreneurs know how to read existing conditions, adapt to changing circumstances, and anticipate what lies ahead. The availability of one kind of office space or another should not dissuade them. Of course, Schramm is right that to say that planning and business are interconnected. But it's a two-way street. Schramm overlooks the very real role that business plays in creating plans (and, often, in circumventing them). I can't imagine a city in which the business community does not have its fingerprints all over the general plan. Many chambers of commerce have lobbyists dedicated to planning and development. So, if a plan isn't business-friendly, whose fault is it? These days, it takes a real lack of imagination to disregard the ways that a pleasant urban environment can stoke economic development. But if business groups are as skeptical as Schramm is, then there's a raft of literature  -- dating back at least to Jane Jacobs' The Economy of Cities – that suggests that cities built on the principles of smart growth will be friendlier to business.  Density creates more interactions, makes labor and customers more accessible, and can make people infinitely happier and more energized. It's not a coincidence that some of the densest cities in the world are also some of the most prosperous cities in the world. Even so. Whether you're in Hong Kong, Tokyo, or San Francisco -- or not to mention San Bernardino, Riverside or Stockton -- no one ever said that business was easy. And neither is planning.

The First District Court of Appeal has batted down an attempt by the California Building Industry Association to turn CEQA on its head, saying that the passage of significance thresholds is not a project under the environmental law. In so doing, the court concluded that an environmental analysis is not required to examine the environmental impact of the standards used to conduct environmental analysis and assess environmental impact.  In other words, the appellate court ruled that CEQA does not apply to CEQA – at least not in this case. In CBIA v. BAAQMD , CBIA filed a lawsuit under the California Environmental Quality Act after the Bay Area Air Quality Management District adopted new significance thresholds for several pollutants, including a significance threshold for greenhouse gas emissions. The GHG threshold for development projects is 1,100 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent or 4.6 metric tons per service population per year. CBIA sued, arguing most importantly that the adoption of significance thresholds is a project under CEQA and therefore should have triggered a CEQA analysis. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled in favor of CBIA, concluding that significance thresholds are "a discretionary activity directly undertaken by a public agency which may cause a reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment." He agreed with CBIA's claim that the evidence in the record supports the argument that the Thresholds "might discourage infill development, encourage suburban development or change land use patterns. . ." The First Appellate District, Division Five, reversed Roesch's ruling, on two grounds. First, the court concluded that the CEQA Guidelines already lay out a process for public review of significance thresholds and a CEQA review – with an initial study and possibly an environmental impact report – would be duplicative. And second, the court said that there was not enough evidence in the record to support CBIA's contention that the thresholds would not discourage infill development. On the first point, Justice Henry Needham, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, cited Guidelines Section Section 15064.7(b), which lays out the process by which thresholds should be adopted. "The District drafted proposed revised thresholds of significance in 2009, utilizing the scientific and administrative expertise of its staff," Needham wrote. "It then conducted public hearings, outreach, and workshops for more than a year. The administrative record, which contains staff reports, scientific reports and protocols, analyses of the effect the proposed thresholds would have on various projects, letters from interested parties, responses by the District, transcripts of hearings, and records from various workshops, is in excess of 7000 pages. CBIA and other groups with similar concerns about the proposed thresholds and their effects participated in that process. The District took the comments of such groups into consideration before adopting the?2010 Thresholds." Requiring the air district to also conduct a CEQA analysis "would result in a duplication of effort, at taxpayer expense and to little if any purpose." Needham also concluded that the record did not prove that adoption of the significance thresholds would discourage infill development or encourage sprawl. "Teasing out the extent to which undefined future projects might be built or abandoned as a result of the Thresholds, and the extent to which land development projects might be relocated to a more suburban location, would require a prescience we cannot reasonably demand of the District. No public agency other than the District is committed to using the Thresholds, and the District does not act as the lead agency for the type of residential and commercial projects CBIA alleges will be displaced," Needham wrote.