Monterey County has settled a lawsuit over its General Plan filed by the LandWatch advocacy group. The settlement includes a commitment to addressing water supply problems and paying more than $400,000 in LandWatch's legal bills. >>read more

Developers are awaiting a federal decision that may allow them to start building again in the Natomas region of Sutter and Sacramento Counties. The region, which sits between the Sacramento and American Rivers, was one of the most active areas of development in the Sacramento metro region in the early and mid-2000s. Based on concerns over levees whose solidity has been likened to that of toothpaste, the Federal Emergency Management Agency imposed a moratorium on the area in December 2008. >>read more

The Coastal Commission approved two possible future industrial land use designations for San Diego after the Commission and city staff reassured industrial waterfront business representatives that the designations were unlikely to affect the shipyard areas around Barrio Logan.

A late-added change in proposed final guidelines for California's new cap-and-trade grant program might broaden transit-oriented development sites.

I went to brunch a few Sunday mornings ago at Louie's, a place that I will unironically describe as a gastropub. My Sunday rituals usually consist of visits to the farmers market and worrying about deadlines.

There is, perhaps, no place on Earth so supremely well suited for high-speed rail as the leeward side of the island of Formosa. Sheltered from the Pacific winds, all of Taiwan's major cities hug the island's western coastal plain, unbroken by the mountains that characterize the interior. Running in nearly a straight line, the train covers the 214 miles from the Taipei to Zouying in two hours. It now carries 44 million passengers per year.

As anticipated, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has approved the application by the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians to have its 1400-acre Camp 4 property taken into federal trust. The Tribe has stated intentions to build housing, a community center and related buildings on the property. Local critics have expressed fears about what could happen after trust status takes the property out of state and county jurisdiction and exempts it from local taxation. >>read more

Look up the El Camino Real BRT project online, and the first impression is one of cheerful support. But that's from transportation advocates such as the TransForm organization, which has given it extensive promotion, and materials posted by the lead sponsoring agency, the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority (VTA), which would build the route from Palo Alto to South San Jose along an old arterial south of I-280.

Defending a federal agency's discretionary authority, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on December 22 upheld a 2009 restriction on water pumping meant to protect chinook salmon and other fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. >>read more

The city of Bakersfield reached a settlement December 19 with the California High-Speed Rail Authority in which the rail agency agreed to consider a different route than originally proposed. The L.A. >>read more

The Strategic Growth Council (SGC) released a semiformal response on Friday to critiques received in October on its proposed design of the new Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program.

Although the question of Executive Order S-3-05 was the main event in the Cleveland National Forest v. SANDAG appellate ruling, Presiding Justice Judith McConnell's split-decision majority ruling covered a number of other important areas interpreting how the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) should be used in the context of a regional transportation plan.