To some, infill development still occupies a quaint niche in the world of city-building. But over the past few years, greenfield development on the urban fringes has gone fallow and a host of economic, social, and regulatory forces have made infill more viable. Attempting to lead that charge is the newly formed California Infill Builders Association, a professional group made up of established and aspiring infill developers who seek mutual support in their effort to bring new development to urban areas.

Reports indicate that Gov. Jerry Brown will name Ken Alex director of the Governor's Office of Planning and Research. If confirmed, Alex will succeed Cynthia Bryant, who served under former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor's office has yet to make a public announcement and would neither confirm nor deny Alex's appointment. 

A lawsuit challenging Sonoma County's ordinance regulating the location and operation of medical marijuana dispensaries has been dismissed because it was not brought within the 90-day statute of limitations.

The California Supreme Court will review a case in which Alameda County and a housing developer argue that a California Environmental Quality Act lawsuit filed by project opponents should have been dismissed because the opponents did not raise their objection during the administrative process.

I have published so many corrections in my journalism career that I now write the correction along with the story. To wit: The following story is all made up. There is no draft EIR for the downtown football stadium yet. Yet few readers are aware that I possess the flawless crystal sphere of Nostradamus, which gives me super powers to see accurately into the future. (Note to editor: Do I have to run corrections for inaccurate statements about myself? I mean, who would know?)

Gosh, it's really, really hard to guess what the negative impacts might occur, when building a football stadium with seating for 70,000 or so people rises in downtown Los Angeles. Let's see now.

Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed state budget will do more than merely plug a $24 billion deficit. According to some, it will also lead to shuttered factories, recidivism among ex-convicts, and the flight of companies and jobs to rival states such as Arizona, Nevada, and Texas. Faltering clothing manufacturer American Apparel could be pushed closer to the brink of bankruptcy. 

At least if Brown's proposal to do away with Enterprise Zones is adopted along with the proposed elimination of the redevelopment program.

This is how far out of whack things have gotten in Sacramento: Jerry Brown is now the one who sounds sane.

Earlier this week, Brown canceled the planned sale of 11 state-owned office complexes to a group of private investors calling themselves, ironically enough, California First. The deal would have netted the state about $1.2 billion, equal to roughly 5% of the state budget deficit.

Quick: what economic sector most reminds you of Los Angeles? Hollywood? Aerospace? Yoga? According to sports and entertainment giant AEG and a certain pastoral insurance company, it's none of the above. 

Last week AEG announced that Los Angeles' nonexistant downtown football stadium, to be developed door to Staples Center and LA Live, will be funded in part by a sponsorship by Farmers Insurance. Thus, the world will know Los Angeles as the home of -- I'm not kidding -- Farmers Field. 

In advance of the Feb. 9 Senate Governance and Fi­nance Committee hearing on the fate of redevelopment, the Legislative Analyst's Office has produced an extensive briefing paper encouraging senators to ask some hard questions about Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to eliminate redevelopment and redistribute its tax increment. 

A few weeks ago, I had a good time taking apart anti-anti-sprawl critic Wendell Cox's self-referential analysis supposedly showing that highly regulated metropolises have higher housing costs because they are highly regulated. ("Wendell Cox's Voodoo Economics.") In sum, Cox concluded that because any variation in housing cost must be due to regulation, all variation in housing cost must therefore be due to regulation.

Governor Jerry Brown's "State of the State" speech last night was probably so familiar that you might have thought you'd written it yourself. He outlined, in remarkably plain terms, the crisis that the state faces and, unlike his predecessor, took an adult approach to bipartisan cooperation. In his eyes, there were no girlie-men in the chamber. Instead, his rhetoric suggests that he was speaking to a group of public servants with different ideologies and a common challenge. 

The constitution mandates that we build highways, but not bike lanes. So says Duncan Hunter, a freshman Republican congressman from suburban San Diego.

I'm not making this up. A short interview with Hunter, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, posted by DC Streetsblog is the talk of the alternative transportation crowd.

"SB: But you're OK with mandating highways?"

The core of California redevelopment law tells redevelopment agencies what they can fight against – blight – and it enables them to identify project areas in which to do so. Generally, the law does not, however, indicate what blight should be replaced with. As a result, critics have charged that redevelopment often funds vanity projects such as stadiums at the expense of what they consider more socially beneficial developments.