Q&A

Jim Kennedy may have taken the most thankless job in all of California planning. The former planning director of Contra Costa County and longtime board member of the California Redevelopment Association, Kennedy succeeds former executive director John Shirey, who recently became city manager for the City of Sacramento.

The preliminary results of the 2010 U.S. Census are in, and so far they depict a California quite different from the one that the state's localities have been planning for the past few decades. It is no longer a young, family-oriented state that lives in detached homes but rather an aging, childless state that is turning back towards the center cities. And, though California's population - estimated at 37.2 million - is bigger than ever, its growth rate is a shadow of its former self.

The American Planning Association has named the Los Angeles Conservancy as the 2006 winner of the Daniel Burnham Award for the conservancy's work in preserving cultural monuments, protecting historic districts and promoting historic preservation principles. The conservancy is the largest historic preservation organization in the United States. >>read more

Javier Mariscal is director of urban regeneration for John Laing Homes, where he helps one of California's largest developers implement urban infill and reuse projects.

Tom Mullen was a Riverside County supervisor from 1995 until January 2003. He was the initial proponent on the Board of Supervisors of taking a comprehensive approach to development, habitat and transportation planning. That effort eventually became known as the Riverside County Integrated Project (RCIP). Mullen spoke with CP&DR about the RCIP.

Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg is a Democrat from Sacramento and chairman of the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Since arriving in the Legislature in 1999, Steinberg has carried multiple bills that attempt to boost affordable housing production in the Sacramento region.