This week, Gov. Jerry Brown announced an executive order to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2030. It's being hailed as the most aggressive climate change policy pursued by any government in North America – but will it put the squeeze on California's metropolitan planning organizations and their sustainable communities strategies?

Brown's order has drawn attention for its combination of ambition and immediacy. But it does not come out of thin air. Brown's 2030 targets fit, substantively and chronologically, between those of Fran Pavley's 2006 law Assembly Bill 32, which mandates lowering GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2010, and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's goals of 80 percent reduction by 2050, also established by executive order. Meeting them means that, in relatively short order, California will look, drive, and power itself far differently than it does today — especially as its population continues to rise. 

The order requires all state agencies with jurisdiction over sources of greenhouse gas emissions to participate. Agencies must prepare implementation plans by September 2015, with guidance from a technical advisory group that will be set up by the Governor's Office of Planning and Research. 

BEVERLY HILLS -This week's Milken Institute Global Conference brought together more CEO's, heads of state, hedge fund managers, and industrialists than, I reckon, any other annual gathering in the United States. It's a strange event at which to be an urbanist - and not just because it takes place in one of our most unusual cities, Beverly Hills. 

Planners, developers, and sundry folk love and believe in our cities. Many of us love our cities, and we are inspired daily by their dynamism and, in some case, their enormity. Los Angeles has 4 million people. And it functions (sort of). Amazing, right?! I think so. >>read more

After 20 years, Los Angeles is on the verge of obtaining a new National Football League team. And as it turns out, the winning play for the NFL in Los Angeles may have been drawn up in a courtroom in Sacramento. In the cities of Carson and Inglewood, competing sponsors of stadium proposals are employing, simultaneously, a newly legitimized tactic to exempt their projects from review under the California Environmental Quality Act. Carson used the tactic to approve its stadium last week in record time. 

Last year, the California Supreme Court decided Tuolomne Jobs & Small Business Alliance v. Superior Court of Tuolomne County  in favor of Walmart, which had proposed a ballot initiative to approve a superstore in the City of Sonora. Before the initiative went to voters, the city council adopted the language of the initiative, effectively approving the project and claiming the CEQA exception that would have been granted had voters actually approved the project.

In the continuous scrum of Los Angeles County planning, some kind of milestone was reached this spring when the Board of Supervisors formally approved the county's 2035 General Plan update.

The new document is the first comprehensive rewrite of county planning rules since 1980. Among other things, it represents a new focus on the county's urbanized unincorporated areas, as well as more traditional undeveloped areas on the fringe. It is the first L.A. County general plan to take advantage of digital mapping approaches in promoting more consistent groupings of land use policies across multiple properties and types of ownership. It's an approach that meshes well with current state and federal planning processes for alternative energy -- which matters especially because of pressures for solar and wind energy development in the Antelope Valley.

Water agencies cannot charge water users incrementally more per gallon of use following a ruling by the Fourth District Court of Appeals that cited a 1996 law prohibiting government agencies from overcharging for services. The suit came about after San Juan Capistrano charged nearly four times as much per unit of water for users in the highest tier to provide an incentive to conserve, but failed to show that the water was that expensive to deliver. Governor Jerry Brown wanted to use the rates to save water and create strong disincentives for wealthier residents. Other water districts must now review the ruling to make sure that their rates are in step with the court, while still encouraging conservation during the drought. Two-thirds of water districts use some form of tiered water pricing, but now agencies will have to show that hikes are directly tied to the cost of water, according to the court. >>read more

By most accounts, planners don't need to pay much mind to the policies of stage actors unions. It's the rare city in which theaters have much of an impact on the built environment. And yet, planners have every reason to care about the culture of the cities that they build and administer, and cities can profit mightily from their theater scenes — especially when the the city in question is Los Angeles. 

That's why everyone in Los Angeles, actor and non-actor alike, should care about the recent vote by the leadership of Actors Equity. Actors Equity is the guild to which most professional and aspiring stage actors belong. After a bitter dispute over questions of professionalism and exploitation, the 100 members of the guild's National Council voted to require union actors to accept no less than $9 per hour to work on professional stage productions. Formerly, actors could essentially volunteer to perform in "equity waiver" productions, which were limited to theaters of fewer than 100 seats. This opportunity goes away June 1, 2016.

Marin County officials and state Coastal Commissioners agreed to take more time to hash out the nuances of new regulatory proposals that county officials think could impose too many constraints on local farmers even as the Commission seeks to limit the impacts of agricultural activities in the coastal zone. Locals were worried that new regulations - detailed in hundreds of pages of complicated state analysis - would require farmers to get permits to switch agricultural uses, from ranching to grape-growing, for instance, and would tighten rules on building under the Coastal Act. At issue as well are requirements such as setbacks and the allowed ratio of buildings to acres of farmland that a farmer owns. Farmers expressed concerns that overly tight regulations could put them out of business. "Too many rules and regulations leads to outlaw behavior, so getting it right" is essential, Steve Kinsey, chairman of the Commission, told the Marin Independent Journal. The delay in implementing regulations comes as the county withdrew its coastal development plan, giving the sides more time to reach an agreement. The county is expected to resubmit the plan in the fall. >>read more