Several weeks after I wrote what could be described as emotion-driven defenses of California's approach to smart growth (in response to separate commentaries by Wendell Cox and Joel Kotkin), I was heartened to read a different, but complementary, perspective from Christopher B. Leinberger in this weekend's New York Times. It would appear that, when you run the numbers, smart growth might make sense after all. 

Here's some flattering news about the state of urbanism in California: the freeway capital of the world is also, apparently, one of the public transit capitals of the country. A recently released study by the Brookings Institution entitled "Missed Opportunity: Jobs and Transit in America" ranks four California metro areas in the top ten out of 100 metro areas studied, according to at least one metric.