Is the era of smart growth over?

Not exactly, but a group of panelists at the American Planning Association conference in Los Angeles suggested Sunday that we may be moving past the 2000-era concept of what smart growth is – and into a new era that combines managing growth, placemaking, climate change, demographic change, and the need for economic growth.

Probably too much has been written about the Tea Party movement already--which may be emerging as a distinctive voice in land use politics (see CP&DR Vol. 26, No. 15 August 2011)--but sometimes the urge to comment is irresistible. 

This week Governor-elect Jerry Brown's office announced that the incoming governor would take part-time residence in the Eliot Building in Downtown Sacramento upon taking office in January.  

So, yet again Wendell Cox � a leader of the anti-anti-sprawl crowd -- has trotted out an impressive-looking quantitative report that purports to prove that certain metropolitan regions have high home prices because of "more restrictive land use regulation". In his New Geography piece  last week, which linked to a report on his web site, Cox seemed to attribute virtually all the variation in home price around the country to land use regulations � just as he has done in the past.

Last Wednesday afternoon, I arrived in Seattle and checked into a room on the 16th floor of the Hyatt At Olive 8 hotel and began preparing to moderate a panel the next day on transferrable development rights programs. The hotel was brand-new and less than a block from the convention center. It was comfortable and cool, the first LEED certified hotel in Seattle. Little did I realize that the very room I was staying in existed because of the King County transfer of development rights program I was there to discuss.

There's an old joke that what the locals fear more than a federal government in disarray is a federal government that has its act together. Well, now the joke's being put to the test.