Death Knell for Suburbs? Or a Cracked Bell Tolling from Academia?

You may not yet have heard, but tanks are massing on the border of Santa Clarita. 

I don't want to appear out of step with rational people – it's so hard to regain people's trust once they suspect you've gone off the rails – but that doesn't mean that I don't endorse Riverside County Supervisor Jeff  Stone's suggestion last week to partition California into two states. 

As a journalist, I regularly say some strong things about buildings and urban planning, although not without the anxious feeling deep inside that my big mouth will someday get me into trouble. And, as it turns out, not entirely without reason: sometimes, I can lose work because of my opinions. Wherein hangs the tale.

Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed state budget will do more than merely plug a $24 billion deficit. According to some, it will also lead to shuttered factories, recidivism among ex-convicts, and the flight of companies and jobs to rival states such as Arizona, Nevada, and Texas. Faltering clothing manufacturer American Apparel could be pushed closer to the brink of bankruptcy. 

At least if Brown's proposal to do away with Enterprise Zones is adopted along with the proposed elimination of the redevelopment program.

Much has been written about the economic potential of alternative energy. So the proposal to build a 7,000-acre solar farm in Riverside County near Blythe struck me as notably promising. The new plant would be capable of generating 1,000 Mw, or more than all the photovoltaics that have been so far installed in California, according to a recent New York Times article.     

(Editor's Note, in regard to the following blog post: The California Planning & Development Report disclaims any belief, credence or even any wish-it-were-true feelings in regard to spiritualims, ghosts, spooks, spectres, poltergeists and similar phenomena—even if one of our correspondents of longest standing, Morris Newman, seems to be crediting his most recent work products to the honored dead. If he's just in a temporary funk, we can try to overlook it. If this line of supernatural thinking continues however, an exchange of memos may be in order, if you know what we mean.)

The Associated Press reports that a Russian billionaire is coming to the rescue of a state park in Sonoma County affected by budget cuts. Viktor Vekselberg, head of Russian-based Renova Group, signed an agreement last Tuesday with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to provide "substantial financial support" to keep Fort Ross open.

 By Morris Newman

Dammit, it's not fair! Residents of affordable housing get all the lucky breaks. Just look at all the money they're getting from all directions: local government, the local power company, the feds, the green-building lobby. Case in point: the Casa Dominguez development in East Dominguez Hills, an unincorporated area of south Los Angeles County, even has a child care center and a medical clinic, on site.

(Please note that the word "draconian" does not occur once in the following post concerning the ongoing budget debacle. Readers susceptible to cliché-induced seizures (CIS) can read this article without ill effect.)

By his own characterization, the governor's latest proposal attempts to close the $19 billion shortfall in the coming year's budget almost entirely through cuts. For CP&DR readers, it's probably unnecessary to explain that many of these cuts affect – or have effectively eliminated – services for low-income people, not limited to affordable housing, health care and early childhood education. Hell, we can't even afford our prisons—an irony well deserved by the Lock-'em-Up State. 

The difference between California and, sadly, many other states is that our decline is taking place by choice.

In his new book, Josh Stephens plumbs the depths of California's good and bad -- and tries to find the reason why urban life there is so oddly compelling.