Among the many counterintuitive theories that Jane Jacobs dispensed was that of the evils of parks: if designed and situated poorly, they could turn into vast dead spaces where unsavory characters could congregate and mischief could ensure. She preferred, instead, smaller, more intimate spaces with close connections to their communities. 

If Jacobs loved Washington Square Park, then she most likely would have swooned over "parklets." 

For the most part, public transportation in American cities has all the sex appeal of a hearse. 

As one of the most prominent organizations lobbying on environmental and land use issues in Sacramento, the Planning and Conservation League has led campaigns on everything from global warming to public health to local dam removal. Its history includes the promotion of such landmark measures as the California Environmental Quality Act, the California Coastal Act, and Prop 12, the 2000 Parks Bond measure. 

Update: Late this morning, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the budget package that the Legislature sent him yesterday. Brown said that the budget was imbalanced and that the legislation "contains legally questionable maneuvers, costly borrowing and unrealistic savings." Brown reportedly wants to hold out and force a popular vote on tax extensions that he considers critical to overcoming the state's remaining multi-billion dollar deficit. He did not mention redevelopment in his veto statement.  

Last week the Nevada Legislature—usually not an entity with much to say on California land use—issued a decision that would make King Solomon blush. 

After 31 years as a supposedly equal party in the Bi-State Compact governing the Lake Tahoe basin, Nevada has taken its first steps towards pulling out of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and thereby negating the agreement under which the two states have governed and managed Lake Tahoe and the surrounding basin. 

With a surface level at 227 feet below sea level and shoreline temperatures often rising past 120 degrees, the Salton Sea could be mistaken for the headwaters of the River Styx. Sometimes, concentrations of salt in the brackish lake, formed by a not-quite-natural overflow of the nearby Colorado River a century ago, asphyxiate resident tilapia fish by the thousands. Currently California's largest lake--larger, even, than Tahoe--the Salton Sea itself may soon dry up, leaving a dust-filled crater.

Even if it takes a village to raise a child, apparently it does not take a planning department to raise a village. Or even a city of villages. 

The City of San Diego's Planning Department won national acclaim for its 2008 "City of Villages" general plan update, which was guided by outgoing Planning Director Bill Anderson and his predecessor, Gail Goldberg. But budget constraints have compelled Mayor Jerry Sanders to order that the department be shut down and merged with the Development Services Department. 

If, as the adage goes, it's impossible to tell the dancer from the dance, then it might be even harder to tell the SCS from the RTP. 

Even with the preoccupation over the state budget--and especially the fate of redevelopment--Sacramento lawmakers have managed to advance a typically broad array of bills related to land use. 

Several of those bills focus on redevelopment reform, most notably Sen. Alan Lowenthal's SB 450, which seeks to preserve funds for affordable housing, and Sen. Rod Wright's SB 286, aimed at comprehensive reform -- but not elimination -- of the state's redevelopment system. Both bills have the support of the League of California Cities and the California Redevelopment Association. 

If you think things are bad in California, then you probably don't live in Silicon Valley. And if you think things are swell, you probably don't live in Kerman (or in the Schwarzenegger household). That's the conclusion of a new report released this month about the state of human well-being in California.