Blogs

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 clamp on local governments in California grows only tighter and tighter.

The number and detail of state mandates continues to increase. The ability to raise revenue continues to decrease. The amount of litigation never decreases. Redevelopment is in doubt. Keeping a city or county out of financial or legal trouble seems to get more difficult every year.

Those were the implicit – and sometimes explicit – messages during the UCLA Extension Land Use Law and Planning Conference in Los Angeles last Friday. As always at the conference, expert practitioners and analysts reviewed last year's lawmaking, rulemaking and courtroom activity, and speculated about the year ahead. It was difficult to detect many rays of light for cities or counties.

While redevelopment might once have been considered a key weapon in the War on Poverty, redevelopment officials now find themselves gearing up for a different kind of battle. They rallied the troops today, laying out a strategy for opposing the elimination of redevelopment in order to help close a $24 billion budget gap. 

When organizers of the UCLA Extension Land Use Law and Planning Conference sponsored sessions on ethics in previous years, yawns and frequent checking of cell phones was the overwhelming response.

They expect a far more engaged audience this year for the session titled "Unringing the Bell: When Land Use Decision Making and Ethics Collide."

The dissolution of redevelopment agencies may be the biggest bombshell that Gov. Jerry Brown dropped on the land use community. But it is not the only one. He is also targeting the Williamson Act, Enterprise Zones, and fire safety in order to help close the state's $28 billion deficit. 

Enterprise Zones

Like redevelopment project areas, Enterprise Zones are intended to stoke economic development in disadvantaged areas. However, rather than using tax increment financing and being orchestrated by a public agency, Enterprise Zones simply confer tax credits and other financial incentives on businesses that set up shop within the zones. 

As expected, the budget proposed today by Gov. Jerry Brown calls for the wholesale elimination of redevelopment agencies.  This dramatic move would free up roughly $5 billion in annual tax increments that redevelopment agencies control and would redirect those increments to fund a range of local services. 

The proposal has set off what will likely be an ongoing debate over the value of redevelopment as it has been implemented in the 59 years since California voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing the use of tax increment financing to combat blight. 

A National Football League team could be playing in downtown Los Angeles in less than five years.

So says Tim Leiweke, president of AEG, the development company owned by Phil Anschutz that wants to build a downtown football stadium.

This week Governor-elect Jerry Brown's office announced that the incoming governor would take part-time residence in the Eliot Building in Downtown Sacramento upon taking office in January.  

Public transit was one deciding factor when free agent pitching ace Cliff Lee chose to sign a contract with the Philadelphia Phillies last week. I am not making this up.

The left hander had previously pitched for the Phillies, and his wife, Kristen, enjoyed urban living in Philadelphia, including its abundant transit options. She didn't care for the Dallas area, where her husband played last season for the Texas Rangers.

"We liked the easy travel on a train for our kids to other cities and the good cultural experience for them here," Kristen Lee told the Philadelphia Daily News.

As its location suggests, Beverly Hills High School enjoys its share of amenities: a gym that converts to an indoor pool; a planetarium; a professional-quality theater. But, like most high schools, it does not have a class in urban planning or transportation. Now that the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority has proposed extending the Purple Line subway under school grounds, Beverly High is getting a few lessons.

Twenty years from now, while we scoot up and down the state on 200 mph trains, we could look back on the current "train to nowhere" episode and laugh at the furor over the project's starting point.

Or, twenty years from now, as we crawl up and down Interstate 5 and Highway 99 in bumper-to-bumper traffic, we could look back on the "train to nowhere" episode and cry over a decision that killed high-speed rail's chance of ever succeeding.

Or, twenty years from now, we may simply look back at the "train to nowhere" episode and smile, comfortable that we never sent tens of billions of dollars down that rat hole.

There have not been a great many surprises in the world of California land use planning and real estate development during 2010. At least that's what I can see now, with the year nearly complete. But in late 2009, I made three predictions for the coming year that turned out to be about half right.

My three predictions were:

• Housing production will increase. This was too easy, and I was right. But not by a lot.

• The SB 375 backlash will start to hit. A number of builders and local government officials jumped off the SB 375 bandwagon this year, but I expected the fallout to reach the general public. It didn't. I got this one half right.