Blogs

It appears the federal government is on the verge of reducing funding for public transit and other means of "alternative" transportation. Such cutbacks could be bad news for California, where alternative transportation is mainstream and the state government is barely solvent.

The management of the Planning Grants and Incentives Team at the Department of Conservation announced today its recommendations for the next round of Prop. 84 Sustainable Communities Planning Grants (see CP&DR Insight Vol. 25, Nos. 5-6, March 2010) which is administered by the Strategic Growth Council to support the climate change goals of AB 32 and SB 375. The council received 189 applications and has recommended 44 awards totaling roughly $23 million in funding. 

What the government builds and where it builds things can have a major impact on a community and on the way generations of people live their lives. The siting of college campuses in California provides a poignant, and depressing, case study. 

If I ever write a book about the crisis of the world's largest cities, this photograph from the Oct. 24 edition of the LA Times should be on the cover: A 27-story, 400,000-square-foot private home (!) built by a Mumbai billionaire Mukesh Ambani, reportedly the world's fourth-richest individual. 

So, yet again Wendell Cox � a leader of the anti-anti-sprawl crowd -- has trotted out an impressive-looking quantitative report that purports to prove that certain metropolitan regions have high home prices because of "more restrictive land use regulation". In his New Geography piece  last week, which linked to a report on his web site, Cox seemed to attribute virtually all the variation in home price around the country to land use regulations � just as he has done in the past.

The passage of Proposition 26 – which requires two-thirds voter approval for certain local fees – won't stop the gears of land use planning and development approvals from churning. However, it does turn traditional thinking on its head – a fee is a tax unless proven otherwise – and it's certain to lead to some litigation that might affect planning and development on the margins in California. At least that was the conclusion Wednesday of League of California Cities lobbyist Bill Higgins, who spoke at the California Chapter, American Planning Association, conference at La Costa Resort in Carlsbad.

Here's the factoid of the week at the California Chapter, American Planning Association, conference:

Out of all the local sales tax declines since 2005, 40 percent are due to declining auto sales.

That's right: Local sales tax revenue in California has dropped $600 million in the last five years. And of that amount, about $245 million came from declining auto sales. This according to economic analyst Stan Hoffman, who also reported that about 10% of all dealerships have gone out of business and somewhere between 500 and 1,000 acres of prime urban real estate have opened up as a result.

The City of Chico's draft general plan opens with the darndest thing: a sustainability element.

Urban Land Institute, it's time you and me had a serious chat about your awards criteria.

As the foremost trade group of real estate developers, I find value in many of your publications and programs. And I find it understandable that you would laud large-scale development projects. Making projects is your businesses.

But when you give a national award to a very questionable project like LA Live, the entertainment-and hotel complex that covers nearly 20 acres of downtown Los Angeles, it shows that your regard for urban quality comes second place to your round-eyed puppy love for big developers and big plans.

Property taxes collected by redevelopment agencies provide the largest ongoing source of funding for low- and moderate-income housing development in California – about $1 billion annually. How agencies account for and spend that money may be about to change in light of a state Senate investigation and front-page newspaper stories.

It's no secret that car sales are down these days, and that this downturn is causing a problem for cities in California. But based on a panel I participated in on Friday at the Westside Urban Forum in Los Angeles, I'd say the problem facing cities is a little more nuanced than I thought.

And it suggests that, with a rapidly changing retail market, cities have to move into a whole new generation of thinking not just about car dealers but about retailers generally.

The state Capitol is one weird place. Sometimes, I'm not sure if it's even of this earth. 

At the moment when you think major redevelopment "reform" is on the horizon, state lawmakers instead rewrite inconvenient laws that were getting in the way of San Diego's desire to use redevelopment financing to build a football stadium, including a law requiring increased funding for affordable housing.

Much has been written about the economic potential of alternative energy. So the proposal to build a 7,000-acre solar farm in Riverside County near Blythe struck me as notably promising. The new plant would be capable of generating 1,000 Mw, or more than all the photovoltaics that have been so far installed in California, according to a recent New York Times article.     

After months of stakeholder meetings, speculation, and preliminary reports, the California Air Resources Board has finally adopted official targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as mandated by SB 375. The targets were announced this past Thursday, Sept. 23, in compliance with the law's Sept. 30 deadline.