The Los Angeles Planning Commission advised the City Council to adopt the city's proposed Mobility Plan 2035 (pdf), update the land use element of 35 community plans, and adopt an ordinance to implement new street standards and complete street principles. >>read more

Until the mid-2000s, the South Park neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles had exactly one high-rise tower: the looming, vaguely Stalinist Transamerica Building (now the AT&T Center). It most famously supplied the rooftop where Guns 'n Roses shot the video for "Don't Cry." The area—which occupies the southern portion of downtown Los Angeles, between the Financial District and Interstate 10—otherwise consisted of dilapidated retail, low-rent residential buildings and acres of surface parking lots. 

The area was avoided by businesses, developers, and rock stars alike. 

Today, the AT&T Center is but the tallest tree in a rapidly growing forest. No fewer than 20 high-rise and medium-rise projects are under construction or in development in the roughly 40 square-block area. At least that many projects are in earlier stages of development. 

It is, say planners, the next phase in the resurgence of downtown Los Angeles. 

Where is Robert Bruegemann when you need him?

A few years back, Bruegmann wrote Sprawl: A Compact History, an exaltation of low-density growth. It called for cities to double-down on all the conventions and mistakes of the previous 50 years. It was a disturbingly anachronistic, but it was provocative, and it was passionate.

It seems that these days there's still plenty of in urbanist literature, but, for better or worse, provocation is getting harder to come by.

Watch out, Copenhagen.

Like so many a rider at the back of the peleton, California cities have long lagged behind their European counterparts in their embrace of bicycling. But they are now clipping in and gearing with the dramatic arrival of bike sharing. With zero major bike-sharing systems currently in the state, no fewer than five California cities will be adopting pilot projects by mid-2013.  

The next time a Padre hits one out of Petco Park or a tourist orders another round of Pacificos at a bar in the Gaslamp District, many San Diegans will thank the Centre City Development Corporation. If a new plan succeeds, future kudos will go to Civic San Diego. 

San Diego politicians and land-use officials have become polarized over an unusual controversy pitting one of the city's largest private employers against an apartment developer in the city's downtown area. At issue is whether the proposed Fat City development in the Little Italy neighborhood threatens the operations of nearby Solar Turbines. 

As much as some planners might not like to admit it, sometimes it seems that the only thing worse than a choked with cars is a street devoid of cars.

According to some Fresno locals, it was 30 years ago -- perhaps because of Proposition 13, perhaps because of the falling price of grapes -- that the city at the heart of the San Joaquin Valley went into decline. Since then, accusations of corruption, dismal economics, and nearly unmitigated low-density development have made the city both the butt of jokes and one of the nation's most forlorn urban areas. It has not suffered the spectacular fall of, say, Detroit -- but only because it never rose to Detroit's industrial prominence in the first place. 

A ballot initiative to remove parking meters from downtown Ventura has been knocked off the November ballot by a Ventura County Superior Court judge. 

… 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….