Plenty of people who live and work in West Los Angeles have zero firsthand knowledge of redevelopment. So a hotel in Brentwood probably doesn't provide the most appropriate venue for a discussion thereof. Nevertheless, the Westside Urban Forum gave it a good shot this morning and the results were telling. 

Needless to say, realigning the relationship between state and local government in California isn't going to be as easy, say, as realigning the tires on your car. Then again, at the rate things are going, there won't be any decent roads left on which to drive. So your car might not matter anymore. 

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. 

The unique geography of the San Francisco Bay ensures that there is only one Bay Area. Uniqueness and unity are not, however, the same thing, and planners are now working to convince the Bay Area's own residents and public officials that there is indeed One Bay Area.

Cambridge, Mass. -- Imagine you're a former Treasury secretary, or, a former Interior secretary, or a former governor with national influence and you've been tasked to discuss land use on a springtime Friday in 2011. What in the world do you talk about? You can't talk about development per se, because there isn't much of any. And you can't talk about particular cities because you're a former federal official who takes a broad view of the state of affairs. And you probably want to say something positive. 

The Malibu policeman's immortal warning "keep out of my beach community!" in the 1998 leisure-sport epic The Big Lebowski could just as easily have been uttered last autumn by certain residents of Orange County's unincorporated community of Sunset Beach. In this case, though, they would not be shouting at The Dude but rather at the entire City of Huntington Beach.

Instead, a group of Sunset Beach residents are suing the City of Huntington Beach for, they say, unfairly imposing a 5% Users Utility Tax on them. 

In 2007, then-Attorney General Jerry Brown established a new paradigm for planning in California. With his settlement in a lawsuit against San Bernardino County, he clearly signaled that cities, counties, and county subregions would have to account for, and attempt to mitigate, greenhouse gas emissions in their general plans under the California Environmental Quality Act and AB 32. In fact, Brown went so far as to vow to sue any city that failed to account for its greenhouse gas emissions.  

Lately, any murmurs of eliminating public agencies make people understandably jumpy. Wouldn't it be nice if not all land use institutions come crashing down at all once? So it's no wonder that the possible axing of the City of Rancho Cordova's Planning Commission has raised concerns. 

Lots going on in Sacramento these days.

Basketball fans around the country know that the NBA's Kings desperately want to flee to Anaheim. The capital's aging arena and small market won't cut it for the financially strapped owners, the Maloof brothers. The City of Sacramento has been trying to build a new arena for years -- most likely as the centerpiece of a massive redevelopment of downtown rail yards. That project appears to be falling through, so for the past few months the city, led by former NBA star-turned-mayor Kevin Johnson, has been trying to convince the team to stay. 

The wait continues.  

Reports indicated that the leadership in both houses would push for a vote on the elimination of redevelopment in today's 9 a.m. floor sessions. The vote on the mirror bills SB 77 and AB 101 has been anticipated for two weeks as Gov. Jerry Brown has attempted to shore up support for his budget package, including some $12 billion in taxes.

Those sessions have come and gone.