Blogs

Do cities have tourniquets that can be used to stop the subprime mortgage bleeding?

They like to think so, but the answer appears to be no. Instead, cities are increasingly focused on two things: First, increased code enforcement to make sure that abandoned houses and neighborhoods aren't rundown. And second, finding a silver lining in the dark cloud by helping first-time homebuyers purchase repossessed houses.

When gasoline costs $5 a gallon, and diesel $6, who is going to buy a house in the exurbs?

With those fuel prices appearing inevitable within a year or two, I have been posing that question in casual conversations with people. Their answers is, well … no one.

My laptop battery started dying just as I noticed the huge bats somewhere around Barstow.

Six. That's how many housing starts there were in the Marysville-Yuba City area in March.

This is an area with a population of more than 150,000 people, an area that has needed four digits to count annual housing production during recent years.

But in March 2008? Six housing starts. That's the definition of a real estate slump.

Today, as planners, we are constantly inundated with new ideas and theories, and nowhere can this become more of a reality than a planning conference in Las Vegas. This year's national APA Conference is being held between the Paris and Bally's casinos, quintessential locations for gambling, shopping, dining, nightlife, and, well, apparently planning conferences. Where else can conference sessions be held in banquet halls decorated like extravagant French parlors?

All the urban planners in the country are in Las Vegas this week, and it's clear they have a love/hate relationship with the place.

Vegas is kitschy and over the top, and at first glance it always looks like the least sustainable place on the planet. Vegas is acres of neon plastered across the front of 30-story casinos in the 100-degree desert – each casino more outlandishly upscale than the other – along with the occasional lake and 200-foot water fountain.

OK, so everybody's bought into the idea that Sacramento's Blueprint process is a national model of regional smart growth planning. But what happens next in this cooler-than-we-ever-imagined metropolis? Depending on who you talk to the answer is:

The passage of AB 32 – California's climate change law – has focused the attention of Left Coast policy wonks like a laser beam on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And as we have reported over and over again on this website, land use patterns are at the center of this debate. But adapting to a warmer world may actually be a bigger land use policy question.