Orange County has approved a plan to develop what many people see as the last important piece of the county's urban development puzzle. The Rancho Mission Viejo Ranch Plan, approved by the Board of Supervisors in November, proposes 14,000 housing units on 23,000 acres on the largest privately owned tract of land remaining in the county.

This month's selection of In Brief items includes: a Santa Barbara County jury awards landowner $5.6 million in damages; a Bush administration settlement infuriates enviornmentalists; Riverside County approves revised plan for large subdivision; and more...

Are the stars aligning on growth policy in Sacramento, for better or worse? It feels a little funny to be writing this story yet again. I have been writing it for 16 years, yet the state growth policy universe has changed little. This time, though, there might be something to it. >>read more

An appellate court has overturned separate environmental impact reports and project approvals for two Bakersfield shopping centers with Wal-Mart supercenters as anchors.

The long-running legal fight between a hotel and San Francisco has finally reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court agreed in December to review the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' most recent decision in San Remo Hotel v. San Francisco.

A state law that mandates affordable housing development for projects within the coastal zone does not apply if a housing project that straddles the coastal zone boundary places no houses or other private facilities within the coastal zone, the California Supreme Court has ruled.

A state appellate court has upheld the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board's comprehensive regulations regarding municipal storm drainage discharges.

A state appellate court has reinstated a lawsuit challenging the environmental impact report for a 6,500-unit project in Madera County. The Fifth District Court of Appeal found that a lower court's dismissal of the lawsuit because of procedural problems was inappropriate.

A federal injunction that halted the City of Stockton's code enforcement crackdown on dilapidated residential hotels has been upheld by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A quarry in unincorporated Alameda County may go forward despite a potential conflict with a growth-control initiative that voters approved in 2000, an appellate court has ruled.

Is this any place to build a resort? The Chemehuevi Indian Tribe Reservation in San Bernardino County is a vast field of parched, brown earth where temperatures can reach 120 degrees in the summer. To the southwest is the impressive desert landscape of the Whipple Mountains, a fine place to observe raptorial birds and wind-carved canyons, perhaps, but not a major tourist draw.

For the first time ever, San Joaquin County became the focus of ballot-box planning in California during the November election. Voters in Stockton sent mixed messages about growth, but the electorate in the south-county city of Tracy delivered two solid blows against development.

Imperial County is experiencing an unprecedented housing boom, with at least 1,000 new units a year going up. Depending on who is counting, somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 additional units are in the pipeline - in a farming county with a population of only 155,000.

A plan by Santa Clara County to build a concert theater on a portion of the county-owned fairgrounds in south San Jose has drawn the ire of the City of San Jose and the downtown merchant community. Opponents of the county's project say a new performing arts venue belongs downtown, not in the mostly residential area where the fairgrounds is located.