In draft program guidelines issued last week, the Strategic Growth Council staff will recommend eliminating the jurisdictional cap on funding, increasing the cap for individual developers from $15 million to $40 million, and setting aside 10% of the funding for rural projects. However, the SGC staff recommendations stop short – so far – of a setaside for each region, as some metropolitan planning organizations requested. 

Instead, the SGC staff has recommended that MPO staff should review full AHSC applications based on consistency with each MPO's sustainable communities strategy and provide formal recommendations to the SGC as to which applications should be funded. However, more options may be presented to the SGC at its October meeting. 

The staff recommendations include a wide variety of other changes, including increasing the points awarded for deep housing subsidies on affordable housing projects. Overall, the SGC staff is recommending a 50-50 split in the scoring criteria between GHG emissions reductions and other policy criteria, such as affordable housing and collaboration between transportation and housing projects. Last year, the GHG reduction accounted for 55% of possible points, while policy objectives accounted for 30% and 15% went to "project readiness and feasibility". 

The California Transportation Commission has released staff recommendations (pdf) for the awarding of up to $215 million in grants in Cycle 2 of its Active Transportation Program.

The California Coastal Commission and the Navy reached a settlement in the commission's lawsuit against a proposed redevelopment of the Navy's downtown waterfront property in San Diego, leaving just one more legal hurdle for the Navy to clear to build the $1.2 billion, 3.25 million square foot plan. The settlement came as project developer Doug Manchester made concessions including opting to build a 40,000 square foot museum across from the USS Midway Museum, pledging to make more than 3,100 parking spaces available to the public on holidays and weekends, and posting signs directing people to the waterfront. All in all, the project will be built entirely on land granted to the Navy by voters in 1920 and would include 2.9 million square feet of office space, including a 351,000-square-foot regional headquarters for the Navy, 1,375 hotel rooms, 213,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, and a 1.9-acre public park, along with the museum and parking spaces. However, Cory Briggs, the attorney representing the coalition provigin the last legal challenge under the National Environmental Policy Act, called the settlement "lipstick on the pig," saying that the project should instead consist of a bigger waterfront park.

Applications Submitted for Delta Water Tunnels

Officials have submitted the first permit applications to construct two 30-mile tunnels to transport water from the San Joaquin Delta to Central and Southern California. In an effort to upgrade current systems that Governor Jerry Brown has called inefficient, outdated, and vulnerable to earthquakes, the Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation are seeking approval to build three giant water intakes to draw water from the Sacramento River to feed into the $17 billion tunnels. The State Water Resources Control Board, which must approve or reject the request, expects to complete its review within two years, agency spokesman Timothy Moran told the Associated Press.

There comes a moment in the course of every nascent trend when we must ask, "is that a thing?" For tactical urbanism, that moment has been coming at least since 2008, when the (re)Bar collective deposited its first temporary minipark to inaugurate National Park(ing) Day. It's been coming since Mayor Bloomberg closed Times Square. And it's been coming since people in Los Angeles started referring to gourmet food trucks unironically. >>read more

Sen. Diane Feinstein sent a letter to President Obama asking him to bypass Congress and designate over one million acres of land between Palm Springs and the Nevada border as national monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act. Two bills previously sponsored by Feinstein to protect the area over the past six years have languished. >>read more

About 80 years too late, the federal government has put real regulatory authority behind the duty of publicly funded agencies to "affirmatively further fair housing". It's being discussed as a genuine chance to desegregate the suburbs. 

On July 8 the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued its final rule on "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" (AFFH). Under the rule, state and local agencies receiving HUD funds must now do more than passively study barriers to fair housing: they must also make and follow genuine plans to reduce the barriers they describe.

The new HUD rule was backed -- arguably, was made possible -- by the U.S. Supreme Court's unexpectedly liberal ruling of June 25 in Texas Dept. of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. The high court upheld a claim of disparate-impact discrimination against the Texas agency that allocates low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC). In the court's words, the group bringing the claim "alleged the Department has caused continued segregated housing patterns by its disproportionate allocation of the tax credits, granting too many credits for housing in predominantly black inner-city areas and too few in predominantly white suburban neighborhoods." 

An environmental group has purchased $10.1 million worth of Lake Tahoe land including scenic meadows, forests, and trout streams in order to preserve wildlife there and increase California's water supply. The purchase amounts to over 10,000 acres. >>read more