Blogs

Yesterday's California Supreme Court ruling on medical marijuana dispensaries put a longstanding legal dispute to rest and gave cities the green light to zone out such establishments.

It's official: Apartments are the new California dream. At least for now.

The Department of Finance's Demographic Research Unit reports that multi-family construction outstripped single-family construction over the past two years – not by much, but it did happen.

I love a Parisian stroll as much as the next guy does, but I have friends in the planning community who make me look like Robert Moses. They ride fixies. They build parklets. They live in lofts. They go on urban hikes. Some don't own cars�in Los Angeles. And I have never heard one of them say, "man, I really wish L.A. was more like Bangladesh."

As expected, President Obama has picked a mayor to succeed Ray LaHood as Secretary of Transportation. But it's not Los Angeles's Antonio Villaraigosa. It's Anthony Foxx, the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Jerry Brown may have given up on CEQA reform this year, but Darrell Steinberg has not.

The Senate leader released details of his proposed reform of the California Environmental Quality Act yesterday. It's not sweeping reform. Rather, it contains a series of incremental changes designed to speed projects along. These include statewide significance treshholds on some topics including traffic; some reforms to CEQA litigation procedures; and $30 million in annual funding to the Strategic Growth Council to continue providing statewide planning grants.

Among some conservative circles, it's become fashionable to say that liberals "hate America" any time Democrats try to do, well, anything.

After a bruising campaign that saw energy company AES spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, Redondo Beach voters have rejected a local ballot initiative that would have rezoned AES's beachfront power plant to parks and commercial uses.

AES still must receive California Energy Commission approval to rebuild the plant, which must stop using ocean water to cool its steam turbines no later than 2020. Defeat of Measure A, however, makes CEC approval of continuing power plant operations more likely.

A Sacramento Superior Court judge has – for the second time – ruled against three Peninsula cities who filed suit against the High-Speed Rail Authority under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Not long ago, the Census Bureau released some new analyses of commuting, focused especially on "mega-commuting" – that is, commuters who drive more than 50 miles and 90 minutes one way. The numbers are predictably frightening – these folks travel extremely long distances, using up a lot of time, gas, and road capacity on the process.

But mega-commuters only make up about 2% of all commuters. The bigger message from the Census data is a much more prosaic – and discouraging – message about ordinary, day-to-day commuting.

Is the California Environmental Quality Act finally on the verge of major reform?

Or will CEQA's defenders succeed in limiting the reform to just nibbling around the edges, without attacking the law's basic structure?

Like the plot of the Bill Murray movie, Groundhog Day, Sacramento politicians are back to the same story on redevelopment this year. It's a re-run of last year, with proponents of redevelopment re-introducing many of the same bills as last year. 

Attempts to resurrect redevelopment were a flop in 2012 when Governor Jerry Brown vetoed most redevelopment-related bills. This year, there is hope for a different ending, where Brown and his Democratic allies can find themselves in agreement on future steps to aid economic development at the local level. 

Southern California may have a reputation as the car capital of the world, but walking and biking is apparently becoming more important.

This week, the National Complete Streets Coalition ranked three SoCal cities among the Top 10 best Complete Streets policies nationwide. The beachfront town of Hermosa Beach was #2. The poor Latino city of Huntington Park was #3. And the affluent inland city of Rancho Cucamonga was #10.

Not long ago, the Census Bureau released some new analyses of commuting, focused especially on "mega-commuting" – that is, commuters who drive more than 50 miles and 90 minutes one way. The numbers are predictably frightening – these folks travel extremely long distances, using up a lot of time, gas, and road capacity on the process.

But mega-commuters only make up about 2% of all commuters. The bigger message from the Census data is a much more prosaic – and discouraging – message about ordinary, day-to-day commuting.

The CEQA reform landscape – which looked pretty robust all winter – was turned upside down on Friday.