Articles

In Year Three of the Great Recession, it's comforting to think that California has heard all the bad news it's going to hear. Or at least we're so accustomed to bad news, that we've stopped getting depressed by it. As a result, many of this year's top stories come with silver linings.

The no-growth vs. slow-growth vs. build-everything debate has become a faint murmur, since not much of anything is getting built anyway. What is getting built, though, is generally pleasing to the smart growth crowd.

Fans of infrastructure development have surely cheered the progress on projects like High Speed Rail and Los Angeles Metro's 30/10 Initiative. Then again, skeptics may be assuring themselves that these projects will never get built.

A Santa Monica apartment complex owned by a religious group did not fall within a statutory exemption from local historic preservation regulations because the property has always been a commercial enterprise, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled.

An environmental impact report for a 560-housing unit specific plan in the Riverside County city of Beaumont has been upheld by the Fourth District Court of Appeal. The court approved the city's use of a baseline for examining water usage that was favorable to the developer, accepted the city's determination that loss of farmland could not be mitigated, and upheld the city's statement of overriding consideration for approving a project with significant environmental impacts.

The future of land use in the City of Ontario is up in the air.  Literally. 

With the advent of AB 32 and SB 375, California has adopted some of the world's leading anti-greenhouse gas laws. And yet, even according to conservative projections, certain very low-lying coastal areas may not survive.

Some of the state's most vulnerable land rings the San Francisco Bay, which is becoming a battleground in the latest round of climate change policy debates. 

A program intended to preserve farmland, adopted pursuant to the county's general plan, has been upheld as reasonably related to adverse impacts of residential development on agricultural land by the Fifth District Court of Appeal. In addition, the unanimous three-judge appellate panel ruled the program is not in conflict with a state law prohibiting a local agency from conditioning the issuance of land use approvals on the granting of conservation easements.

When voters emerge from the ballot box in California, you never know what the consequences are going to be.

… And that's the end of the fairy tale: Prince Nokia came to Princess Downtown Sunnyvale, providing the city with new jobs, plus helping complete the long-unfinished office building that had annoyed Sunnyvale for years. And the prince and princess lived happily ever after ….

Oh, Gramps, I love that story! Tell it to me again.

It's past your bedtime, swee' pea, and it's even getting late for me….

Mike Winn, president of Sacramento-based land development and planning firm Michael Winn Associates, assumes the chairmanship of the California Building Industry Association at a challenging time, to put it mildly. The ravages of the recession and their relationship with the housing market are of course well known, and they have struck at the heart of thousands of developers, contractors, and architects who were deluged with work only a few years ago. As CIBA contemplates a year of dwindling membership and new priorities, CP&DR spoke with Winn about the organization's outlook on a changing California.

A world away from the Gaslamp Quarter and the Hotel del Coronado, eastern San Diego County is often described as California's own outback. Its roughly 3,600 square miles of unincorporated county territory encompasses mountains, farmland, and deserts � and includes only 16% of the county's 3 million residents. For the past 12 years, county officials and stakeholders have been trying to decide how to marry an ardently rural area with 21^st century planning principles.

Deep in the heart of John Steinbeck country, city folks, rural folks, farmers, businesses and everyone in between are still waging dubious battle over control of Monterey County land. After an 11-year process, a general plan update was unanimously approved by the county's Board of Supervisors on October 26.

If a new generation of transportation advocates and federal officials has their way, California will soon have miles of brand-new rail lines, strategically sited to enliven cities, increase real estate values, and whisk passengers several whole blocks at speeds of� nearly 20 miles per hour.

High-speed rail, it's not. But $40 billion, it's not either.

Local voters in the Nov. 2 California election were not necessarily "pro-growth" or "anti-growth" but rather seem to have embraced smart growth like never before. They expressed subtle but clear preferences for preserving open space while accepting compact development. Urban growth boundaries were a big hit, and several infill plans and projects were approved while anything that would have led to encroachment on greenfields or urban fringes was shot down.

Local election highlights include the following:

A city ordinance effectively banning tattoo parlors oversteps constitutional limits protecting freedom of expression, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.

A unanimous three-judge panel struck down a City of Hermosa Beach zoning code prohibiting tattoo parlors because it violated the First Amendment. 

Although it may seem that tattoos are the provenance of modern day subcultures such as rock stars and motorcyclists, tattoos have been part of evolving culture around the globe for thousands of years, the court explained. City of Hermosa Beach, however, perceived tattoos' outlaw air and had adopted a zoning ordinance that precluded the operation of tattoo parlors.