Downtown Ocean Beach seems like a coddled momma's boy afraid to grow up. The small San Diego community just south of Mission Bay is a curious little enclave where the outdated downtown clashes with the cost of housing. The residents seem in denial about the hustle-bustle of capitalism and stubbornly resist the modern amenities like Starbucks. Shoes are optional and suntans are mandatory.
Southern California is in flames again – it's gotten to the point where I can't even remember which fire the soot on my car is coming from – and makes me wonder once again why we've given up on land use planning as a way to reduce fire risk in such a fire-prone region.
As I write this, the current conflagration has cost more than 1,000 homes and forced the evacuation of more than a half-million people. Will Californians come out of this catastrophic event thinking that we need to use land use planning to avoid fire-prone areas?
California is an urban state, but it also has about a million small cities. All right, maybe not a million. Actually, there are 377 incorporated cities in California with fewer than 75,000 people.
Get ready for the Great Eminent Domain War of 2008.
Jim Madaffer, the San Diego city councilmember who's the incoming president of the League of California Cities, traveled all the way to Ventura Friday – by train – to encourage local elected officials from the Central Coast to help collect signatures for the League's eminent domain initiative.
The housing market slowdown appears to be running straight into the state's new flood control laws. It makes one wonder which way Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is close to homebuilders, will turn when the collision occurs.
There were lots of highlights, and some lowlights, at my first state planning conference. Here I list the best and the worst of my experience at the California Chapter, American Planning Association conference last week in San Jose. I'll let you decide which is a highlight and which is a lowlight.
1. Flew up Monday morning (October 1) after playing musical chairs to get a seat in Southwest Airline's "open seating." I was surprised the cab driver from the airport knew San Jose was the 10th largest city in the country.
Norman Mineta, possibly the most important transportation policymaker of the last 20 years, closed the 2007 CCAPA Conference on Wednesday with a speech that was less than inspiring.
Not that Mineta wasn't entertaining. He told a number of humorous and self-depreciating stories from his 40-year career in public service. But he was speaking to a group dedicated enough to stick around for the fourth and final day of a very full conference. I think they were counting on more from a guy who understands both politics and policy.
The tension between planners and engineers is well-known. Planners have little patience with their counterparts down the hall, and vice-versa. Both sides think the other side doesn't "get it."
You can't turn around at this year's CCAPA conference in San Jose without hearing the terms LEED, sustainability, carbon footprint, greehouse gas emissions and zero waste.
Forget about floor-area ratios, design review standards and conditional use permits. These people think land use planning can save the world.
Downtown San Jose sure has changed since the last time CCAPA was at the Fairmont. That was in 1989, when the Fairmont had just opened up. The idea of a fancy hotel in downtown San Jose – or a fancy anything, for that matter -- was kind of a new idea. Today, the Fairmont's practically a venerable institution compared to the newer cool things, like light-rail and high-density housing and the Adobe "vertical" campus and the excellent "urban interface" between downtown and San Jose State …
Fittingly enough, the memorial service for Warren Jones – the founder of Solano Press Books, who died back in May – took place yesterday, on the eve of the annual conference of the California Chapter, American Planning Association, in San Jose. Like most conferences, CCAPA is all about exchanging information – practice tips, job leads, business cards. And Warren devoted most of his career to making sure that planners in California had access to the information they needed.
