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While the Tea Party movement has been trying to "take back America" on the national stage since the election of Barack Obama, Tea Party activists have also turned their attention to taking back California – and, specifically,  Senate Bill 375, the 2008 law that seeks to combat climate change by promoting density in the state's metro regions. 

Sociologist Frederik Polak once said that "the future may well be decided by the images of the future with the greatest power to capture our imaginations and draw us to them, becoming self-fulfilling prophecies."  The organizers the Rethink/LA, an eponymous group consisting of some of the city's creative intelligentsia, seem to agree. The exhibit, on display through Sept. 4 at the Architecture+Design Museum,present bold visions of a future Los Angeles that should challenge the thinking and capture the imaginations of most Angelenos.

Assessments for services traditionally funded by property tax have faced an uphill battle after the passage of Proposition 218, the 1996 voter initiative that requires the local governments and special districts to seek voter approval for any proposed new or increased assessment before it could be levied. That hill has gotten steeper in the wake of a recent decision. 

The process of planning for affordable housing in California just got, inadvertently, more affordable. 

Among the many cuts that Gov. Jerry Brown enacted in his effort to balance the budget  is a $1 million hit to the Department of Housing and Community Development Building Equity and Growth in Neighborhoods Fund. That fund supports the department's housing element review activities; with roughly 20 staff members, the housing element review staff will be effectively cut in half. 

A thorough analysis of building codes and local ordinances applicable to seismic hazards provides the substantial evidence necessary to uphold a city's revised environmental impact report, the First District Court of Appeal ruled in Oakland Heritage Alliance v. City of Oakland.

Here we go again. 

In 2009 the redevelopment agencies of California, represented by the California Redevelopment Association, filed suit to block the state's requisitioning of over $1 billion of tax increment financing. That suit failed. 

How much can one park do? That is the implicit question that environmental advocacy group Santa Monica Baykeeper posed regarding a combination passive recreation area and storm water retention facility planned in the City of Malibu. Sited near the iconic Surfrider Beach, the 15-acre Legacy Park would include a detention basin designed to capture three days' worth of storm water before diverting it to a treatment plant.

The Governor's Office of Planning and Research occupies an unusual place in California planning. Even though planning is an intensely local function, part of OPR's mission is to convey Sacramento's planning agenda to the local level. At times when that agenda has been ill-defined, OPR has nearly withered. But now that Gov. Jerry Brown has articulated support for Senate Bill 375 and for a host of smart growth principals, OPR may regain prominence. 

United by common complaints against a particularly loud, disruptive neighbor, the residents who live under the flight path of Los Angeles International Airport are a relatively cohesive bunch. The Second District Court of Appeals has ruled, however, that neighborhood cohesion goes only so far. 

According to the court's decision in City of Los Angeles v. Superior Court (2011), the city's voluntary program by which certain residents who live near the airport can sell their property to the city does not amount to a taking of adjacent properties. 

A notable feature of California land use law, when compared to the overall body of civil law, is the relatively short filing period for bringing legal challenges. This constraint came into full view in Haro v. City of Solano Beach, in which the would-be builder of a mixed use development claimed that the city violated the terms of its own housing element.  

The new rules of redevelopment – if the courts agree – are now clear: You're dead, but you can buy your way back to life. That's probably enough to keep most redevelopment agencies in business. But is it enough for cities to continue to do redevelopment deals?

That's not clear, though redevelopment agencies have gotten accustomed to doing deals with less and less money over the years. Also not clear is whether this is the end-game on redevelopment or the first step in an effort to truly reform redevelopment – a possibility that seemed far more likely in January than it does now.

After an agonizing six-month prelude, the curtain has finally risen on the drama that is redevelopment in California. Agencies are now forced contemplate the costs of staving off their own demise.

At the rate things are going, cities in California might not just be broke -- they might become an endangered species. This month, a grand jury recommended that governance of the tiny city of Maricopa be turned over to the Kern County Board of Supervisors. 

Among the many counterintuitive theories that Jane Jacobs dispensed was that of the evils of parks: if designed and situated poorly, they could turn into vast dead spaces where unsavory characters could congregate and mischief could ensure. She preferred, instead, smaller, more intimate spaces with close connections to their communities. 

If Jacobs loved Washington Square Park, then she most likely would have swooned over "parklets."