Blogs

The Los Angeles City Council voted today to limit the number of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city (described by one councilmember as the "the capital of medical marijuana") to a total of 70 storefront locations. With an estimated 900 dispensaries currently operating within city limits, there are currently more medical marijuana outlets in L.A. than Starbucks. That is a sobering figure. How on earth did we end up with this many Starbucks?

Like nearly everybody, I awoke last Wednesday morning to ghastly images and video of the Haitian earthquake. Anybody who lives along the California coast – and that's about 80% of the state population – is likely to have respond to this event with a combination of pity, fear, sadness and possibly a bit of what psychologists call "the guilt of the survivor."

What if the judges are getting it wrong? What if they don't understand the law?

People don't usually pose such questions in public. But I'm willing to risk it and to ask out loud: Does the Sacramento-based Third District Court of Appeal issue the wackiest California Environmental Quality Act decisions?

The weather report for commercial real estate is bad, according to The New York Times, which reports rapid falls in value in local office buildings. In California, the weatherman is predicting flurries of half-empty office buildings and shopping malls to fall on Golden State cities during the next two years.

24th Annual Land Use Law & Planning Conference

Friday, January 29, 2010
8:30am - 5:00pm
Millenium Biltmore Hotel
Downtown Los Angeles
506 South Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90071-2607
(310) 825-7885

Ask the people in Cincinnati about the wisdom of building publicly funded stadiums for major league sports teams.

The close of one year always induces predictions for the coming year. Putting one's forecast in print – even virtual print – is a dangerous business. But I can't help myself.

The Town of Apple Valley wants to build a minor league baseball stadium. That’s not unusual in California, where stadium building seems only a slice less popular than tailgate parties with free-flowing beer. What is unusual, however, is the way that the town plans to pay– or rather, not pay – for this $20 million to $25 million project. >>read more

Which comes first, the car culture, or the infrastructure for cars?

The Urban Land Institute has a reputation of being an organization in which enlightened developers get together with the occasional savvy planner and designer. So with a real estate downturn in full swing, it's not surprising that the main topic at ULI's Fall Meeting in San Francisco last week was ... planning, not development.

Maybe California's public process for making land use decisions really is "old and sick," as new urbanism champion Andrés Duany said during a recent presentation in Sacramento.

Duany's criticism of the system and his praise of a jury-style process used in Perth, Australia, seems to have struck a chord. The piece I wrote about Duany's presentation drew quite a bit of readership on Planetizen, and I've been receiving emails ever since.