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In land use and planning this week:

CP&DR was livetweeting extensively from panels at the APA California conference, as you can see by scrolling back to our September 14 and 15 posts at http://www.twitter.com/Cal_plan. Following are some notes filling out those highlights in context, and adding some further notes on issues raised at the conference.

How to relate VMT estimates to each other?

The Strategic Growth Council has proposed that 40% of its estimated $130 million in cap-and-trade funds be devoted to transit-oriented development (TOD) projects and that another 30% be devoted to a variety of infrastructure-related programs that may include housing.

The SGC issued draft program guidelines yesterday afternoon. The week before, the Air Resources Board (ARB) adopted guidelines on benefits to disadvantaged communities.

While CP&DR and lots of our readers were at the APA California conference, land use news continued to appear in the outside world. A few highlights are summarized here. (Coastal Commission coverage to follow in a few days.)

Keep watching our Web site as we unpack and follow up more news from the conference, and if you haven't seen our livetweeting stream from some of the September 14 and 15 panels, it's still available at https://twitter.com/Cal_plan.

You think this is going to be another piece about the shortcomings and backfires of the California Environmental Quality Act. It's not.

Advocates for affordable housing and advocates for environmental justice have a lot in common, but their goals and assumptions don't always mesh fully. Now the new cap-and-trade law is forcing them to have a more serious conversation. They're especially having to work out grantmaking guidelines under the new Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program. It isn't easy. (For prior coverage of the AHSC guidelines debate see http://www.cp-dr.com/node/3556.)

Some of the difficulty was on display at a September 3 workshop in Oakland, held to discuss CalEPA's proposals on how to define "disadvantaged communities" under all of the cap-and-trade programs regulated by SB 535, and related proposals from the Air Resources Board (ARB) on how to define when such communities receive benefits. With comment on these proposals due September 15, the conversations in small-group discussions at the workshop had a note of urgency.

For some affordable-housing activists and local governments, SB 628, the end-of-session bill expressing Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal for Enhanced Infrastructure Finance Districts, isn't similar enough to the way redevelopment programs worked when they were shut down as of 2011. (See last week's detailed coverage at http://www.cp-dr.com/node/3563.) But columnist Steven Greenhut in the San Diego Union-Tribune greeted SB 628 by asking, "Redevelopment: Back with a vengeance?"

The partnership that owns a mobile home park in Fillmore, California received a Ninth Circuit determination September 2 that it has standing to sue the city over "interference" with its application to subdivide the park.

A developer proposing to replace two century-old houses in Fresno with 28 new two-story townhouses lost its appeal of a CEQA writ of mandate but won significant points from the Fifth District Court of Appeal in Citizens for the Restoration of L Street v. City of Fresno.

Pismo Beach: Price Canyon planning

Residents of Pismo Beach will vote in November on a measure that will give them more say in development decisions involving a large swath of land that few visitors to the city ever see. It's located inland in Price Canyon, behind the coastal Santa Lucia Mountains that flank the city.

The California legislative session ended this Labor Day weekend. Now it's all about the Governor's signing decisions. We'll have more on end-of-session legislative outcomes as the news shakes out but here are some preliminary items:

SB 270 plastic bag law goes to Governor

The AB 270 ban on single-use plastic bags had a tough time during the Legislature's final week but made it through after all.

It looks like Governor Jerry Brown's vision for Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts will become law. Meanwhile, a minor revival of redevelopment has also reached the Governor's desk but Brown appears likely to veto it.

It can sound like a simple step, to end Level of Service (LOS) metrics in CEQA transportation analysis. The more conceptually elegant Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) metric is easy to welcome in the abstract, with its incentives for shared and active transportation, its arguably simpler calculation methods, its potential to realign CEQA analysis with state climate protection law – and most of all, its escape from the addictive spiral of induced demand for broad, free-flowing highways that, under the logic of LOS analysis, always need widening again.

But in early August the Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) published a detailed discussion draft setting out an alternative transportation impacts metric in compliance with last year's SB 743 mandate. And alongside the big-picture discussions of environmentally conscious innovation, the technical arguments began.

On August 26 the LA County Supervisors gave final approval to the Santa Monica Mountains Local Coastal Program (LCP) on its return from the Coastal Commission with amendments approved there July 10.

Since the Commission had already approved the whole program with county participation, a quick pro forma approval and a round of congratulations might have been expected.

Instead, a group of indignant winemakers and winelovers made a last attempt to beat the plan before it went through.