Blogs

Professional and trade conventions actually are new urbanist events. People arrive from out of town, often sans car, and spend several days walking around the convention site and the host city while taking care of business and enjoying themselves.

So when we at CP&DR started talking about the best convention cities in California, we ended up talking about some of California's best urban areas. It turns out that a good convention city has all the same attributes as a good urban place.

People who design roads don't ride bicycles. That is evident to any cyclist.

It looks like the 2009 Los Angeles mayoral race has begun. And it looks a lot like the 1989 race. In the role of an incumbent determined to bring L.A. to the next level as a "world city" – the Tom Bradley role -- is Antonio Villaraigosa. And in the role of a crusading neighborhood activist seeking to protect the city from overdevelopment – the Zev Yaroslavsky role – is, well, Zev Yaroslavsky.

Add Tucson to the list of cities in the Intermountain West that fear California-style growth � and is thinking about California-style solutions to forestall California-style problems.

A hot potato — or should I say a hot sugar beet — is headed back to the Delta Protection Commission, which is scheduled on March 27 to reconsider a proposal for the first housing development within the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta's "primary zone" in 15 years.

The hearing comes at a time when concern about Central Valley flood safety and the overall health of the Delta is at an all-time high, a setting that must have project proponents feeling like a smelt swimming too close to a State Water Project pump.

Will transportation and land-use planning get its share of dough from federal climate change programs? Not if the coal industry has its way.

That was the message from a Capitol Hill staffer at a plenary session of the American Public Transit Association's annual legislative conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday. To combat the coal industry, smart growth and public transit lobbyists will have to prove they have an important national asset that can help meet the climate change challenge.

Just about everyone has assumed that a "cap and trade" mechanism would be part of the implementation of California's AB 32, the greenhouse gas emissions reduction law. But cap and trade may not come about without a big, and potentially very political, fight from environmental justice advocates.

This is going to sound like sour grapes, I know. But it's not. Honest. It's a real policy beef – and one that I've had for a long time.

I own a Prius. But I don't own an access sticker that gets me into the carpool lanes. That's because I bought my Prius in December of 2006 – the exact time when the State of California doled out the last of 85,000 "Clean Air Vehicle Stickers."