ULI TOD Summit June 7

ULI Los Angeles, in partnership with VerdeXchange, announces FutureBuild 2016. This assembly of the land-use thinkers and innovators in business and government, local and worldwide, will be Tuesday, January 26, 2016, 7:30 am to 1:30 pm, at L.A. Downtown Hotel, 333 S. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90071. >>read more

HOLLYWOOD, June 4 -- What's that spell?!? If you're a policy wonk, public official, or real estate developer and you were within earshot of Hollywood Boulevard yesterday, then you'd darn well better know.

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors changed a staff recommendation on new vineyards in the Santa Monica Mountains from heavy regulation to an outright ban. An appellate court concluded that the change was so small in the overall context of the area plan update that no further CEQA action was needed.

Population growth has fallen off a cliff, while housing production is steady. But housing prices are still through the roof. >>read more

After two decades of negotiation, the new master-planned town of Centennial has been cleared for 12,323 acres of the 270,000-acre Tejon Ranch >> read more

A Venice tenant who was renting her attic or loft out through AirBNB does not have a "triable issue of fact" on an eviction case brought against her by her landlord, the appellate division of the Los Angeles County Superior Court has ruled.

The case highlights one of a myriad of legal issues created by the such online services as AirBNB, which facilitates occupants of regular housing to rent out their bedrooms as if they were hotels, often in violation of zoning ordinances and homeowner association rules.

The case involved Joella Kraft, who lived in a rent-controlled unit in the Venice neighborhood in Los Angeles pursuant to a written agreement with the property's then-landlord dating back to 1997, which also permitted her two then-young sons to live there on a part-time basis. >>read more

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Monday that he has selected Vince Bertoni as the city's new planning director, replacing Michael Lo Grande. Bertoni is currently planning director of Pasadena and a former deputy director in Los Angeles. Bertoni must be confirmed by the L.A. City Council. >>read more

Another Newhall Ranch case goes to the Supreme Court. The winning environmentalists seek a rehearing in the big Newhall lvictorh -- mostly to clarify the nature of their win. And, on another front, an appellate court reheard a groundwater extraction fee case and didn't budget. >>read more

If NIMBYs are, proverbially, planners' worst enemies, then planners are sometimes their own second-worst enemies.  

Monday morning I attended one of a dozen or so workshops and listening sessions, this one in Los Angeles, put on by the Governor's Office of Planning and Research to publicize and solicit input into the new draft General Plan Guidelines. It's a momentous occasion for planners in California. Legislative, demographic, and cultural forces have forged a different world in the 12 years since OPR last updated the guidelines. 

Cities that update their general plans, usually to the tune of hundreds of pages, need all the help they can get. That's why it's so important for OPR to clearly explain what it has in mind and to hear what planners and citizens need to make the magic happen.  

Some citizens, though, see nothing magical about, well, anything that planners do. >>read more

California's Supreme Court broke the Newhall Land & Farming Company's long winning streak November 30 in a victory for environmental and community groups over the Newhall Ranch megadevelopment. >>read more

The Second District Court of Appeal has upheld the environmental impact report for the extension of Los Angeles's Purple Line, removing another hurdle for construction of the "Subway to the Sea" through Beverly Hills. Now we'll see whether the Beverly Hills city and school district will appeal to the California Supreme Court. >>read more

In 2013, 34 pedestrians died on the streets of Denmark. The city of Copenhagen, roundly hailed as the world's pleasantest city for walking and biking, has about 10 percent of Denmark's population of 5.6 million. We can extrapolate that exactly three pedestrians died in Copenhagen in 2013, for a rate of about 0.5 per 100,000.

To be sure, those three deaths deserve due lamentation, scrutiny, and sympathy. On the other hand, they deserve celebration. Copenhagen's pedestrian fatality rate is about as low as it gets. The lowest pedestrian fatality rate of any major American city is 0.76. Copenhagen's rate is a full five times lower than that of the City of Los Angeles, which, at 2.57 (pdf) is towards the high end.

If you divide Copenhagen's fatality rate by Los Angeles', you get 19 percent. The question that some in Los Angeles are now asking is, what happens when you divide by zero?