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Cities and redevelopment agencies are pushing for legislation that give them a stay of execution past the February 1 deadline contained in last week's Supreme Court ruling.

In last week's ruling, the court pushed the date for dissolution of redevelopment agencies back from October 1, 2011 – the date originally set by the legislature – to February 1, 2012. The redevelopment establishment is planning to push for compromise legislation to allow agencies to stay in existence – but first they have to push the February 1 date back.

The Supreme Court's redevelopment ruling yesterday didn't just kill redevelopment agencies. By upholding AB 1x 26 – the kill-redevelopment bill – the court ruling also triggered an entire funeral procession that will shut the agencies down and transition their debt and their assets to other agencies.

The California Supreme Court killed redevelopment this morning, but that doesn't mean it's dead.

At first glance it would seem as though redevelopment agencies have no bargaining power at all. After all, it's hard to imagine a weaker position than a state Supreme Court ruling saying you don't exist.

This morning the California Supreme Court issued a ruling upholding a law that disbands the state's nearly 400 redevelopment agencies.

The ruling upholds the constitutionality of AB 1X 26, the budget bill that eliminates redevelopment agencies while striking down AB 1X 27, the bill that would have allowed redevelopment agencies to continue operating as long as their host jurisdictions paid remittance fees to the state. The bills were designed to reap an estimated $1.6 billion in funds that lawmakers said were necessary to help offset the state's budget deficit.  

CP&DR usually publishes a top-10 list of the biggest planning stories of the year, but the process enumerating the stories this year took a strange turn this year. Until they repeal Proposition 13 or Nevada launches an invasion, the convoluted quest to kill the state's nearly 400 redevelopment agencies and/or send their tax increment back to Sacramento is a mega-story for the ages.

Everyone loves parks, right? They're a crucial amenity for young and old alike. Well, apparently not everybody. 

Downtown Los Angeles' residential population nearly tripled between 2000 and 2008.  There are now about 45,000 people who call Downtown home, including my wife and I, who recently celebrated the anniversary of our move to Downtown (or DTLA as it's become known among locals).  We are, in many ways, exactly what planners had in mind when they began to promote downtowns as residential neighborhoods. In Los Angeles, the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, enabling developers to convert older commercial buildings into apartments and lofts, is credited with sparking this movement. 

LOS ANGELES—For as long as I can remember, civic leaders in Southern California have been touting "regionalism." They insist that an area as interconnected as Los Angeles and its satellites really ought to coordinate how it grows and what it invests in. This sort of rhetoric usually goes no further than sparsely attended final panel discussions at a conferences about leadership or land use or some such. It's hard to "be regional" when everything from county boundaries to uncooperative public officials keep everything in its respective silos. 

The outreach process that developers and planners often undergo has always struck me as less a negotiation and more like a perverse game of Marco Polo. Planners and stakeholders chase each other blindly, never quite knowing where each other are and rarely knowing what to do if one actually catches up with the other. It goes something like this: 

"Setbacks?"  "10 feet!"

"FAR?" "2.5!"

"Height limit?"  "40 feet!"

"Parking...?" Don't get me started. 

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. 

Oral arguments in California Redevelopment Association v.