With a significant increase in cap-and-trade funding for 2016, the Strategic Growth Council announced the expansion of the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation program (SALC). SALC provides funds that compensate farmers and ranchers for creating conservation easements. >>read more

Boundless as cyberspace may be, the companies that rule the internet still have to take up real estate. And their employees still have to put their heads down somewhere at night. For whatever reason, the mysterious forces of the "innovation economy" have lured an outside share of those companies, and their employees, to Silicon Valley. 

With all those likes, stock options, and organic cafeteria items comes, of course, a housing crisis. As absolutely no one is unaware, rents in Silicon Valley have gone up like Pets.com stock over the past few years. 

Last week Facebook announced that it was going to make an investment in the crisis. Not an investment in housing, mind you. Just an investment in the crisis. >>read more

The San Diego City Council unanimously approved a new Climate Action Plan, one of the nation's most ambitious plans to cut carbon emissions by creating legally binding mandates for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. >>read more

The California Environmental Quality Act does not apply in reverse, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Overturning the First District Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court ruled that, with a few exceptions, CEQA analysis must be limited to the project's impacts on the environment (and, by extension, the project's environmental impacts on its own population) but not the environment's impact on the project.

Among other things, the ruling would seem to suggest that a CEQA analysis cannot analyze and mitigate the effect of future sea level rise or other climate change effects on a proposed project. >>read more

For the past three years, California's cities have been like beachcombers, waving metal detectors over miles of beach in the hopes of discovering $5 billion. They haven't had much luck -- until recently. In the past year, though, Sacramento has bestowed upon the state's cities two new funding tools that, while they don't replace redevelopment, have given cities, developers, and other institutions reasons to salivate. >>read more

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, the American Planning Association's Burnham Award will go to Dr. Elizabeth Vaughan. She will be recognized for, among other accomplishments, forcing improvements to a mega-development on Manhattan's West Side, elegantly creating more affordable housing, and making peace with anti-gentrification activists. >>read more

The staff of the Strategic Growth Council has early Christmas presents in store for some projects that had applied for Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities grants earlier this year. Staff have recommended that eight formerly rejected projects receive a total of $32.5 million in grants. 

The fall funding round was open to eligible projects that had scored at least 60 in the initial round but were shut out in part because of jurisdictional caps when the program announced its grants in June. That round included $120 million in total funding, awarded to 28 projects. 

Projects were evaluated according to their original applications. Some criteria were re-scored according to revised guidelines, focusing on projected greenhouse gas reductions and leverage of other funds. The re-scoring make some projects more attractive than they originally may have been.