Many years ago, overwhelmed by the sheer size of the numbers involved in modern society, humor columnist Russell Baker suggested that we should replace all numbers greater than 10,000 with the word "lotsa." As in, McDonald's has sold lotsa hamburgers. Social Security entitlements involve lotsa money. A war requires lotsa missiles. These days, a house in California costs lotsa money. Inevitably, the planning system gets blamed for the mess. >>read more

An environmental impact report for a water pipeline project near Jackson has been rejected because the water agency in charge did not explain the reason why it concluded that a potential impact was not significant.

A state appellate court has refused to block the City of San Francisco's plan to lease former state highway property to a nonprofit agency for development of an affordable housing project. A First District Court of Appeals, Division Four, panel voted 2-1 to uphold a lower court's ruling against project opponents, who contended the city plan violated state law that limited the use of the property.

Owners of the San Remo Hotel in San Francisco have lost the latest round in their 11-year litigation over the city's ordinance restricting the conversion of residential hotels to tourist use. In the latest decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rule on the hotel owners' takings claims because the state Supreme Court had already decided the claims.

A San Diego County resident has lost a lawsuit that sought to force a developer to improve a private road that serves a new subdivision. The resident argued that under the Subdivision Map Act, San Diego County had to enforce its own laws that carry out the Map Act, including a code section addressing off-site road standards. But the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled that the county had the authority to approve an exemption from those standards and had expressly exempted the subdivision.

Mitigation measures taken after the issuance of a mitigated negative declaration do not satisfy the California Environmental Quality Act, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. In a case involving a water district's proposal to cover a small reservoir in the unincorporated Santa Barbara County community of Summerland, the court also ruled that the district should have considered the project's potentially substantial impact to aesthetics.

With fewer than five months remaining in the 2003-04 session of the state Legislature, it appears that state lawmakers will approve few, if any, major land use bills. Still, there are scores of land use bills alive that nibble or even take big bites on the edges.

A state appellate court ruling that the loss of farmland resulting from development of a prison could not be mitigated has been depublished by the sate Supreme Court.

The search for sustainable building cannot be anything other than noble. A pair of master planned communities - one Tucson and one in Orange County - illustrate distinctions in the way developers have responded to the desire to build green.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Forest Service officially deemed the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment unworkable and unveiled a new version. Critics say the amended management plan is a barely disguised gift to the timber industry.

California voters approved $20 billion worth of bonds for school construction and rehabilitation in March. In addition to the $12.3 billion for schools contained in Proposition 55, voters in 52 school districts approved $7.9 billion worth of local school bonds. Since 1998, state voters have approved three school bonds worth a combined $34 billion for everything from kindergarten classrooms to university research facilities.

The philosopher Heraclitus once remarked that a wise man and a fool may look at the same tree and see different things. The observation also pertains to a reasonable person and a developer. A reasonable person, for example, would look at the Union-Pacific rail yard in downtown Sacramento and see 240 acres of dirt laced with a century of poisonous industrial byproducts. A developer looks at the same thing and sees a pedestrian-oriented urban district.

The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) released three reports of interest to planners in March. The reports address housing supply, the link between water and planning, and planned developments. The housing supply study surprised many people because it reported a statewide shortage as of 2000 of only 138,000 units, when interest groups and other analysts have pegged the shortage at 500,000 to 1 million units.

There's no denying it anymore: California has entered the infill age. Suburban development still continues apace, especially in the Central Valley and the Inland Empire. But most of the state is engaged in the process of adding more residents to existing neighborhoods and existing urban areas - and trying to find good ways to add more houses and shops to those neighborhoods as well. What all this means is that design and context are important.