The state Supreme Court has been extraordinarily active in the field of land use during recent weeks. The court has accepted for review an important case involving the environmental impact report for the Cal-Fed Bay-Delta Project. The court also took a case involving redevelopment in the City of Stockton. >>read more

Cities may not use aesthetic considerations to regulate the placement of telecommunications antennas, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. >>read more

In an unprecedented effort at regionalism in California, a task force appointed by Gov. Schwarzenegger is attempting to address the many problems troubling the San Joaquin Valley. The governor has assigned no fewer than eight cabinet members to the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley, of which Business, Transportation and Housing Secretary Sunne Wright McPeak is the chair. >>read more

Civic leaders in the Orange County town of Stanton hope that the reuse of a failed commercial strip for medium-density housing and small shops will start a local trend. Developers of the Renaissance Plaza propose 175 townhouses, 25 live-work units and about 18,000 square feet of commercial space on approximately 12 acres. >>read more

Fontana has broken ground on a large new library that, city officials and library boosters say, could become a building block of downtown revitalization. At 93,000 square feet, the Fontana Library and Resource/Technology Center will be more than four times the size of any existing facility in the San Bernardino County-run library system. >>read more

One of the more startling bits of advice I have heard recently came from a financial planner on television who said: "Don't marry anyone you wouldn't want to divorce." The advice, of course, is to marry only someone who is rational and has the ability to cut a deal, if and when the time comes to part. In urban planning, this advice could be translated as: "Don't build anything you do not want to tear down." >>read more

Redevlopment Law Reform Gains Momentum At Capitol; Loma Linda and Monterey County Voters Decide On Development Projects; Sierra Club Settles Lawsuit With The City Of Stockton; Death Row EIR Upheld; Revised EIR Water Analysis Likley To Face Appeal in Santa Clarita >>read more

The American Planning Association has named the Los Angeles Conservancy as the 2006 winner of the Daniel Burnham Award for the conservancy's work in preserving cultural monuments, protecting historic districts and promoting historic preservation principles. The conservancy is the largest historic preservation organization in the United States. >>read more

All California governors try to turn into Pat Brown sooner or later, so it's not surprising that Arnold Schwarzenegger has now done the same. What's surprising is not that Schwarzenegger is using Pat Brown's legacy, but that he's using nearly the same suburban model as Pat Brown did almost a half-century ago. >>read more

A San Diego historical society's lawsuit over a housing development on a site the society considered historical has been dismissed by the Fourth District Court of Appeal. The appellate panel upheld a lower court, which dismissed the case because the historical society had neither submitted the administrative record nor filed an opening brief. >>read more

A proposed hotel that is consistent with a redevelopment plan, which itself has been the subject of a program environmental impact report, does not require a new environmental study, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. >>read more

The Pleasant Hill Redevelopment Agency's subsidies for a housing project did not make the project a "public work" that required the payment of prevailing wages to workers, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled. >>read more

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has dealt another blow to housing developers who sued the City of Fresno, an individual city councilman and twelve citizens because the city refused to approve tax-exempt bonds for an apartment project. >>read more