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Long a land of big dreams and failed schemes, California City has lured a major automobile company to town with a redevelopment deal and environmental planning assistance. In March, Hyundai Motor America started building a test track and related facilities in California City that will employ about 100 people, which would make Hyundai the second largest employer in town. The project does have detractors, though.

Architects often talk about the need to design with an awareness of context, but few architects have taken the issue as literally as Richard Matteson. The Los Angeles-based architect has designed a building that, from certain angles, not only fits in with the surrounding landscape-in this case, a lush forest in a Los Angeles canyon-but from certain angles is well-nigh invisible.

Red flags went up in the environmental community during May 2002 when the Bush administration announced it was forming a task force to "modernize and improve" the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Two years later, release of the task force's final report suggests that many of the fears voiced by defenders of this landmark federal statute have yet to materialize.

For the first time, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) has included new land use policies in its regional transportation plan. Essentially, the plan calls for infill and redevelopment in urban areas, and compact growth in outlying areas. That type of development pattern would, at least in theory, let more people work close to their job sites, and increase the convenience of public transportation and carpooling.

The bankruptcy of Pacific Gas & Electric Company has resulted in a stunning windfall for the state. As part of a bankruptcy settlement approved in April, PG&E agreed to offer conservation easements or title to 140,000 acres of land, most of which lies around the utility company's hydroelectric system.

With fewer than five months remaining in the 2003-04 session of the state Legislature, it appears that state lawmakers will approve few, if any, major land use bills. Still, there are scores of land use bills alive that nibble or even take big bites on the edges.

The search for sustainable building cannot be anything other than noble. A pair of master planned communities - one Tucson and one in Orange County - illustrate distinctions in the way developers have responded to the desire to build green.

California voters approved $20 billion worth of bonds for school construction and rehabilitation in March. In addition to the $12.3 billion for schools contained in Proposition 55, voters in 52 school districts approved $7.9 billion worth of local school bonds. Since 1998, state voters have approved three school bonds worth a combined $34 billion for everything from kindergarten classrooms to university research facilities.

The philosopher Heraclitus once remarked that a wise man and a fool may look at the same tree and see different things. The observation also pertains to a reasonable person and a developer. A reasonable person, for example, would look at the Union-Pacific rail yard in downtown Sacramento and see 240 acres of dirt laced with a century of poisonous industrial byproducts. A developer looks at the same thing and sees a pedestrian-oriented urban district.

Three sweeping growth measures in three very different parts of the state - two measures seeking to tightly control development and one growth-friendly plan - all lost during the March 2 primary election. Voters in San Diego and San Benito counties overwhelmingly rejected growth-control general plan amendments. In El Dorado County, voters said no to approving an entire general plan via initiative. Elsewhere, Contra Costa County voters rejected a big-box law. San Marcos voters said no to Wal-Mart.