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Seemingly since the invention of the elevator, critics of growth in California have warned of “Manhattanization,” as if the adoption of liberal zoning policies could instantly result in a thicket of high-density towers. Thus far, that fate has not befallen any cities. But due to a recent confluence of new laws and economic conditions, high-rises are being proposed, approved, and built in some unusual places.

Director of Development Services - Redlands, CA

City of Gilroy Is Hiring - Senior Planner

Southern California's most ambitious freeway "cap" proposal is still going forward – though there are literally mountains to move before the cap is constructed. At a discussion Thursday of the so-called " Park 101 " project, a half-dozen panelists debated methods for moving the cap forward. But all were enthusiastic – and it's clear that if the Park 101 cap by Union Street is constructed, several more in Southern California will quickly follow. "Let's get this thing into environmental," said Doug Failing of L.A. Metro, who formerly served as Caltrans District 7 director in Los Angeles. His comment summed up the day. Park 101 is a proposal to cap several blocks of Highway 101 in the vicinity of Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles. But the cap isn't the only aspect of the project. The project's proponents have also suggested that several under-used onramps and offramps be reconfigured or eliminated, opening up lots of land either for development or for parks.  In 2008, CP&DR's Morris Newman praised the concept of Park 101, calling it " naïve but necessary ". Four freeway caps are under active consideration in Southern California right now, including three along Highway 101 -- Park 101, a cap to accommodate a park along Highway 101 in Hollywood, and a cap on Highway 101 in Ventura that would reconnect the downtown to the beach. Santa Monica is considering a cap on Interstate 10 that would reconnect the Civic Center with the rest of the its downtown. All are the subject of planning efforts funded either by their respective cities or by the Southern California Association of Governments. Of the four, Park 101 is by far the most ambitious – seeking to reclaim several blocks of land surrendered to the freeway 60 years ago. The Highway 101 corridor was on the edge of downtown when the freeway was built in 1950, but development has gravitated toward it, as it now separates the Civic Center area from Union Station, Olvera Street, and Chinatown. One advantage that the Park 101 project has is that virtually all surrounding development is controlled by public agencies, meaning a joint agreement among all the agencies could facilitate both the public construction project and private development opportunities.  Panelists had several ideas to speed the process along, including: 1. Break it into small pieces. Vaughn Davies of AECOM, the lead designer on Park 101, has suggested covering one block to begin with – the block between Main and Los Angeles streets, which would re-connect Olvera Street with the City Hall area. Daies estimated that such a cap would cost a relatively modest $20-25 million. 2. Don't build anything on the cap itself. One of the biggest potential obstacles is to construction is Caltrans, which owns the air rights over the freeway. Caltrans typically wants to lease, not sell, the air rights; and insists on retaining the right to reclaim the air rights at any time. All the panelists agreed that keeping development off the freeway cap itself – and concentrating it on adjacent property, which will increase in value – will make the path to construction much easier. Indeed, by capping only one block, making it a park, and pushing development to the side, the Park 101 project – in the short run, at least – begins to look a lot like the freeway cap constructed over I-15 in the 1990s in the Mid-City neighborhood of San Diego. 3. Use the Transfer for Floor Area Ratio system to help fund the cap and related improvements. A number of Park 101 proponents have suggested that the City of Los Angeles confer development rights on the freeway cap, which can then be sold to nearby developers as a way of raising money – a system previously used in Downtown Los Angeles on the convention center property. "The freeway is zoned PF, public facilities," said Park 101's Emily Gabel Luddy, formerly chief urban designer with the City of Los Angeles. "If we can write the cap into the community plan, the City could bestow development credits that could be used somewhere else." Others cautioned that the market for such TFARs isn't currently strong. "There's already extra density available from the convention center," said developer John Whitaker of DLA piper. "Some people who can get 13:1 don't want to build it? They're looking at smaller projects. 4. Combine the Park 101 project with the Union Station master plan. L.A. Metro is about to undertake a master plan for the Union Station property – and, in fact, is about to interview several design teams. A number of panelists suggested that Metro fold Park 101 into this project. Metro's Failing didn't take the bait – "The teams themselves will be initially focused on the confines of Union Station," he said – but held out the possibility that in the long run Metro is "open to all ideas". The 101 Freeway through downtown LA, before and after proposed capping. Courtesy www.park101.org .

If you want to know where Jerry Brown is going on redevelopment, just take a look at AB 664 – a bill he signed in late September designed to help San Francisco finance facilities for the 2014 America's Cup race. The bill does exactly what Brown was trying to undo in eliminating redevelopment: It diverts new property tax increment for a local purpose. But Brown included several other features in the bill that might suggest his thinking on redevelopment. First, he relied on the structure created by the existing Infrastructure Finance District law – a cumbersome law which nevertheless permits tax-increment diversion without a blight finding. Second, he capped diversion of funds from the so-called ERAF fund – the property tax fund used to finance schools – at $1 million per year. And third, he subjected the entire thing to state oversight – in this case, the California Development and Infrastructure Bank, or I-Bank. The America's Cup situation is an unusual one with a one-of-a-kind backstory. But it's striking that the bill contains so many of the likely components of redevelopment reform. When Brown proposed eliminating redevelopment last January, he promised "a replacement tool". It's never been clear to anybody what he meant by that statement – it may not have been clear to him – but the America's Cup model show the way. To understand the bill and the complicated backstory, read Peter Detwiler's bill analysis for the Senate Governance and Finance Committee. Actually, you should read it just to enjoy it. Like all of Detwiler's bill analyses, it is notable for its clarity, depth of understanding, and humor. There's nobody else in the Capitol who writes like Detwiler, and he  retired at the end of the session. Those of us who strive to understand what bills really say will have to find some other shortcut.

This month – October 10, to be exact – marks the 100th anniversary of initiative and referendum in California. It's hard to imagine that Gov. Hiram Johnson, the godfather of the constitutional amendment, could have imagined all the different ways that the initiative process would be used – especially by the moneyed interests that were his target in 1911. But it's equally hard to imagine that Johnson could have foreseen the way the initiative and referendum process would transform planning and development in California. The bottom line is pretty stark: Almost everywhere in the nation, "ballot-box zoning" is non-existent, but in California it is common. This divergence occurred over a period of many decades and several milestone court cases. The result is that even in places where land use initiatives are rare, the threat of the ballot changes the political equation for development.  Whether the prevalence of ballot-box zoning is a good thing or a bad thing depends on your point of view, but one thing is for sure: In the arena of local government – unlike at the statewide level – grassroots efforts usually prevail over the moneyed interests. In some cases this has forced innovative change, but in many other cases is has cemented the status quo and created a barrier to change of virtually any kind. It's clear that Johnson and the other California Progressives who pushed the idea of direct democracy didn't think much about its use on local ballots. They were focused on breaking the power that the Southern Pacific Railroad had over the Legislature. In fact, initiative and referendum powers were rarely used on the local level – until communities around the state began to resist growth in the 1970s. At that time, initiatives that amounted to ballot-box zoning were rare and it was unclear whether they passed legal muster. Initiatives and referenda apply to legislative actions only, not quasi-judicial actions. Many planning decisions fall into the latter category – variances, conditional use permits, and the like. The big legal question was whether a zone change was a legislative act. In 1980, the California Supreme Court concluded that the answer to this question is yes: Since zoning must conform to the General Plan, a zone change is therefore a legislative act. ( Arnel Development Company v. City of Costa Mesa , 28 Cal. 3d 511 (1980)) The Arnel ruling opened the floodgates for ballot-box zoning in California, which really took off during the real estate boom years of the 1980s. According to an analysis we at CP&DR did about a decade ago, there were 600 land use-related ballot measures on local ballots over the next 15 years.  The result has been voter-imposed restrictions on development of all shapes and sizes: height, density, number of residential units per year, outward urban expansion. Interestingly, as our analysis concluded, the types of legislation being enacted by the voters were no different than the types of legislation being enacted by elected officials. The only difference was that because they were enacted by the voters they could only be changed by the voters – and in many cases they explicitly required subsequent voter approval on specific types of land use changes. The most famous of these "subsequent voter approval" initiatives are the SOAR initiatives passed in Ventura County between 1995 and 2000 (see CP&DR blog Dec. 2000 ). Encouraged by the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Napa County's initiative requiring voter approval to change the zoning of any piece of agricultural land, SOAR established urban growth boundaries, which have changed little since the initiatives were passed. In most Ventura County cities the boundaries encompassed enough land to accommodate suburban-style growth, though such land will clearly become scarce once the real estate market booms again. (The city with the tightest growth boundary is – yes, you guessed it, Ventura.) Has SOAR been a good thing for Ventura County? On the one hand, it has constrained outward urban expansion, protected agricultural land, and forced infill development. On the other hand, it has – well, it's done all the same things, possibly increasing housing costs along the way. SOAR has also caused agricultural landowners in Ventura County to change their practices. They are moving aggressively toward higher-value crops (meaning a reduction in scenic orchards) and greenhouses. So the landscape has changed – just in different ways than the initiative's drafters expected. The use of ballot-box zoning has not been evenly spread across the state. Overall, it reflects the deep cleavage between the coastal and inland parts of the state. Ballot-box zoning is common in coastal communities – even in historically development-friendly Orange County – and rare in the Inland Empire and the Central Valley. (The exceptions would be college towns like Davis and affluent suburbs near struggling central cities, like Redlands near San Bernardino and Lodi near Stockton.) Traditionally, it's been most politically successful at the city level – especially smaller cities – where footpower counts the most. Grassroots citizen groups have often gained a political foothold through ballot initiatives, and their leaders have often gone on to become elected officials. Ballot-box zoning has generally done poorly in large county elections, where a big-money campaign by developers can overpower a grassroots campaign. In all the years that former editor Paul Shigley and I tracked ballot-box zoning on these pages, the conclusion we most often came to was mixed bag. It was always hard to know what political events would trigger the nuclear explosion of a ballot measure and harder still to know the effects. Indeed, John Landis, formerly a planning professor at UC Berkeley (now at Penn), once conducted a major research project and came to the conclusion that both the political forces and the policy outcomes were not that different in communities that had imposed growth control via initiative and those that had done so through conventional processes.  Still, I think the impact in many individual communities has been profound – and not always good. A number of cities that adopted restrictive ballot measures in the 1970s, for example, have never gone back and changed the restrictions. For example, Alameda – an island near Oakland in the San Francisco Bay – banned apartments via initiative in the 1970s and banned densities higher than 21 units per acre in 1991. An attempt by SunCal to override the ballot measure to accommodate a large project reusing an old Navy Base was crushed in 2010 by an 85-15 vote (see CP&DR Vol. 25, No. 3 Feb. 2010 ).  Whether you liked the SunCal project or not, you have to admit that Alameda has protected something and sacrificed something by adhering to its ballot measures for the past 40 years. Alameda today is a lovely, isolated, and relatively low-density community, featuring mostly single-family houses and older (and not very attractive) apartment buildings. The ban on multi-family development has not, of course, led to the razing or redevelopment of the apartments that nobody likes, and it has prevented construction of the attractive mixed-use projects that have characterized the Bay Area. Similarly, ballot-box zoning in California has protected some things and sacrificed others. It's often protected a particular scale and type of development – usually older, lower-density, suburban style development. Yet it's often prevented the construction of new, often high-quality development for which there's market demand. After a quarter-century of watching this stuff, my conclusion is that ballot-box zoning in California is still a mixed bag – and a crapshoot.

For a lot of planners, the idea of an "infill exemption" to the California Environmental Quality Act has been a kind of holy grail over the past few years. CEQA is a fact of life in California and unlikely to go away. But having to run though the entire CEQA process for a project a quarter-acre infill site – just as you might for a project on 5,000 acres of raw land – has been more than a little frustrating for developers and planners alike. Sure, an infill project has an impact. But if getting environmental clearance is a hassle, then what's the point? CEQA's previous infill exemption was narrow and carried a lot of conditions with it – so it wasn't easy to use. But now the holy grail appears to be within grasp. SB 226 – promoted heavily by Gov. Jerry Brown and signed by him earlier this fall – creates the first comprehensive CEQA infill exemption. So, will this exemption do the trick? Or will CEQA continue to be used to hang up even worthwhile infill projects? SB 226 – carried by Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto – sure looks like the realization of a longtime dream. Brown, though an ardent defender of the environment, has always promoted a slightly different view of CEQA than other environmentalists. As mayor of Oakland, he pushed through a strong infill exemption that applied only to certain locations in Oakland. And even before taking office, he placed a high priority on CEQA reform for infill projects and small-scale rooftop solar. SB 226 moves the ball forward on infill and rooftop solar both. On the infill front, SB 226 contains two important provisions. First, it greatly limits CEQA review of infill projects under certain circumstances – and those circumstances are much broader than under the previous infill exemption. Second, it prohibits a finding of significance on greenhouse-gas emissions from overriding any categorical exemption under CEQA. Dealing with GHG emissions are part-and-parcel of CEQA analysis these days – thanks in large part to the actions of Jerry Brown when he was attorney general – so this is no small matter.  SB 226 also creates a statutory exemption for rooftop solar facilities on industrial and commercial facilities and, under some circumstances, parking lots and parking garages as well. The absence of a strong alternative CEQA process for infill development has been frustrating to planners and developers for many reasons – but the main one has simply been that neighbors and other project opponents can use CEQA's many procedures to slow down or even stop a worthy infill project. NIMBYs have used the greenhouse gas issue extensively to slow projects down. Traffic is almost always an issue under CEQA, and of course an infill project is likely to have localized traffic impacts. And project alternatives may well include either sites or densities that would kill the project.  All of these stall tactics, of course, depend on the idea that even a worthy infill project must be judged on its own merits. There is no mechanism in CEQA for determining whether the environmental impact of an infill project would be less than a project of equivalent size in some greenfield location – an analysis that would almost always make the infill project look good rather than bad. The new infill rules – contained in a new Section 21094.5 of CEQA – contain several provisions that should help infill projects in the CEQA process. First, the new law says that if an infill project was covered by a programmatic environmental impact report – for a General Plan Update or a Specific Plan, for example, subsequent CEQA review is limited only to (a) effects specific to the project of its site; or to (b) "substantial new information" that suggests the project's effects will be more significant than the prior EIR suggested. Second, CEQA review would not be required at all if (a) the previous EIR did not consider the project's likely effect to be significant; or (b) the lead agency finds that development policies and standards previously adopted – which apply uniformly to this project and others – will substantially mitigate the impacts identified in the previous EIR. And third, even if an EIR is required for an infill project, that EIR would not need to consider growth-inducing impacts and would not require the alternatives analysis to deal with alternative locations, densities, and building intensities. When you add it all up, these are pretty significant changes. If you did a plan-level EIR and incorporated mitigation measures into the development standards that implement the plan, your infill project is exempt. If analysis is needed, it's limited to new information or the project's site only. And even if you have to do an EIR, you're freed up from doing two significant back-of-the-book analyses that have the potential to shoot down a project – growth inducement and lower densities. Now that the bill has been signed, the action moves to the Governor's Office of Planning & Research, which is charged in the law with revising the CEQA Guidelines to implement the infill exemption. (CEQA Guidelines are ultimately issued by the Natural Resources Agency, but OPR must write the actual Guidelines amendments.) More than in most administrations, OPR is heavily loaded with lawyers these days – partly because Brown bought over an assistant from the Attorney General's Office, Ken Alex, to run OPR and partly because legalistic CEQA reform was a high priority. So it will be interesting to see whether OPR's new Guidelines actually help simplify environmental review of infill projects or whether the involvement of so many lawyers makes the infill exemption/streamlining more complicated. (Another question is how much effort OPR will put into the infill reform as opposed to the rooftop solar exemption, considering that streamlining permitting processes for renewable energy is Alex's top priority.) And, of course, it remains to be seen whether cities and counties will actually use the truncated review in a meaningful way. As is so often the case with CEQA, that will depend on the jurisdiction's underlying philosophy toward growth. If a jurisdiction is pro-infill, this will help; if a jurisdiction is anti-growth, they'll likely find a way around this. One thing is for sure, however: SB 226 is a lot more powerful than the previous CEQA exemption – and more powerful than the exemption contained in SB 375, which exempts projects compliant with Sustainable Communities Strategies – but which also must meet a laundry list of other requirements. The history of CEQA reform is more like 375 than 226 – with environmental lobbyists in Sacramento circumscribing exemptions and streamlining very carefully so that they usually don't make much difference. With Jerry Brown, however, CEQA has reached its Nixon-goes-to-China moment, and the broad and simple nature of SB 226 may be far more important than the exemptions that have come before.

In a hastily called press conference to roll out the 2012-2013 budget on Thursday afternoon, Gov. Jerry Brown said he would consider funding redevelopment only if the Legislature brings him offsetting cuts. The California Redevelopment Association is seeking legislation that would postpone the elimination of RDAs beyond the February 1 date set by the state Supreme Court last week. In response to a reporter's question about whether Brown would support an extension "for a few months," Brown said: "Our position is the Supreme Court has invalidated AB 1x 27 and we're left with AB 1x 26 and that's the way it stands. I know that people have concerns about ecoonomic development and housing, and I'll be glad to hear whatever thoughts people can bring forward. But, remember, we cut out redevelopment not because I dislike redevelopment – I don't exactly – but we are short of money, and we're just saying core services trump the redevelopment program. And if people want to add back spending, we're going to have to find that substitute, because if we're gonna finance redevelopment, we've got to get the money from somebody."

For now, redevelopment in California is dead. But that hasn't eliminated the need for public policy to support urban revitalization.  Indeed, Gov. Jerry Brown still supports aggressive policies in this vein – for example, implementing the SB 375 regional planning law passed in 2008 as part of the climate change effort, and streamlining environmental review for infill projects. So the question is not whether redevelopment will come back, but how and in what form. And the fact is that both the state government and California's cities can take steps right now to encourage infill development and urban revitalization without going back to redevelopment. The state has a bundle of tools and funds that could be packaged and organized better to help cities with infill development. The state has at least two pots of money that local governments use for planning – Proposition 84 funds and Caltrans planning grants – and this money could be pushed out the door faster, with a focus on redevelopment-style efforts. The same goes for the infill infrastructure funding and transit-oriented development housing money provided by Proposition 1C, which was passed in 2006. In addition, the state could also speed up implementation of SB 226, a law to create faster environmental review of infill projects that Gov. Brown signed earlier this year. Individually, all of these reforms can help cities create valuable urban projects that promote the state's policy goals. But they can be far more effective if they are coordinated. The Brown Administration should fast-track a package of strategies that will help move urban projects forward in the absence of redevelopment Cities have options too – even with redevelopment gone. Four options look strong: land, sales-tax increment, bonus densities, and streamlined processing. Land: Redevelopment has always sought to "level the playing field" with suburban development, which is subsidized in other ways. Traditionally redevelopment agencies have subsidized land in order to make urban projects work. But there are ways to make land available cheaply. All government agencies – cities, counties and school districts for example – own urban land. Nonprofit institutions located in urban areas – universities, hospitals and the like – also tend to be land-rich. These agencies and institutions don't want to give away their land. But they can come to the redevelopment table as equity partners, committing their land at no cost to a redevelopment deal upfront in exchange for a back-end financial payoff. Sales-Tax Increment The redevelopment law only affects property tax. Some cities also have aggressively used tax-increment financing drawn from sales-tax generating projects – essentially, committing a portion of the future revenue stream to pay for infrastructure or subsidize development. Obviously, this method will work only if the project throws off sales tax. In the past, sales-tax-increment deals have been used to fund suburban-style shopping centers and auto dealerships. But this technique could assist urban projects with a retail component or an employment center that generates a lot of taxable business-to-business sales – an often-overlooked source of funding. Bonus Densities By offering higher densities in exchange for infrastructure and amenity funds, cities can make well-rounded urban projects worthwhile for developers. Transferring development rights is tricky, but can also help. The idea is this: Developers "buy and sell" existing rights to either wind up with a more advantageous zoning restriction or generate cash to pay for infrastructure and subsidize land costs. This technique has been used successfully in both downtown Los Angeles and downtown Seattle. Streamlined Processing Cities can also help by creating "specific plans" for whole urban neighborhoods, which frontloads the environmental and community review process so that individual developers can then construct projects more quickly at the back end. Obviously, the state's actions can help local efforts. For example, aggressive guidelines to streamline environmental review under SB 226 can help expedite local specific plans, while state planning grants can fund them. And surplus state land could be made available to cities to help make urban projects work. Even if redevelopment is gone for good, California will need public policy to promote infill development and urban revitalization in the years ahead. The state needs to make sure those opportunities are available, but these opportunities must be packaged in a coordinated and strategic way. And California's cities must get used to thinking more broadly about how to make redevelopment work. This piece also appeared in the Feb. 4, 2012 Sacramento Bee.

California Senate leader Darrell Steinberg has predicted that the Legislature will pass his post-redevelopment legislation – assuming the state revenues remain healthy. Steinberg has introduced two bills – SB 1151 and SB 1156 – that would allow cities and other local agencies to form a new redevelopment entity with access to billions of dollars in former RDA assets, though not to the tax increment.  Speaking to the Sacramento District Council of the Urban Land Institute on Tuesday, Steinberg said: "I don't know what the May revision is going to say about the state's revenue. If May keeps us stable, then boom – aggressive all the way to the governor's desk and I think he would likely sign the bill. If however growth is slow, we're going to have difficult decisions to make." Ever since redevelopment was dissolved on February 1, Steinberg has looked to former RDA assets as a possible way to continue redevelopment activities around the state. He claims that the RDAs went out of business with at least $2 billion in cash "in the bank," not counting the $1.4 billion in unencumbered affordable housing funds that is the subject of separate legislation. He estimated the overall value of RDA assets – including real estate – at $10 billion. SB 1151 would seek to avoid the widely-feared "fire sale" of RDA assets by requiring all successor agencies to prepare long-term asset management plans by the end of the year. The asset management plan is supposed to "outline a strategy for maximizing the long-term value of the real property and assets of the former redevelopment agency for ongoing economic development and housing functions. SB 1156 permits a city and a county to create a "Community Development and Housing Joint Powers Authority" that would take over the role of the successor agency. The bill specifically calls out reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, infill development, and transit-oriented development as high-priority policy goals to be furthered by these new agencies. Neither of the bills propose going back to the previous tax-increment system. But together, they are intended to give local communities an incentive to engage in long-term redevelopment activities, using RDA assets. "My bill would say, 'let's keep those assets in trust for former RDAs, for the cities and counties, and let's allow the agencies to decide how to best use those assets so long as those uses are consistent with ED,'" Steinberg said. He acknowledged that, if state revenue continues to be sluggish, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature could view RDA assets as a source of cash to balance the budget. Speaking prior to Steinberg's arrival, Sacramento City Manager John Shirey – the former executive director of the California Redevelopment Association – said Steinberg's bills would not help his city much. "We don't have any assets," he said. "We practiced buying land, redeveloping it, and getting rid of it to put it back on the tax rolls. I've got probably 200 parcels of land that if you want to buy right now, we'll sell it to you. If you want a little triangular piece that you'd be lucky to park your car on, we'll sell it to you."

Even as the redevelopment wind-down process continues, the Legislature is beginning to play around with possible ways to bring it back in a more limited form. Many of the ideas involve tinkering with tax-increment financing in ways that will hold the state financially harmless. Others would allow cities to keep some or all of their former redevelopment agencies' cash and land assets, which are likely worth several billion dollars. "The body is dead and it is sitting in our front yard rotting away," said Assemblyman Chris Norby, a Fullerton Republican and longtime redevelopment opponent, at an Assembly hearing Wednesday. "Some people are picking at the carcass and carting pieces away. But now the undertaking must begin." In a prepared statement to the hearing, Assembly Speaker John Perez said: "It was never the intent of the members of the Assembly to eliminate redevelopment" but rather "to rein in bad practices." Whatever the Legislature is considering, however, Gov. Jerry Brown has not tipped his hand. So far Brown has shown no willingness to consider reviving redevelopment in any form. The only representative of Brown's office who spoke Wednesday was Pedro Reyes, policy chief at the Department of Finance, who talked about the wind-down process. He said Finance had reassigned 20 auditors to work on post-redevelopment issues and will likely reassign more in the future. A parade of witnesses at the Assembly hearing proposed a variety of post-redevelopment solutions. For example, Claudia Cappio, director of the California Housing Finance Agency and Gov. Jerry Brown's former housing chief in Oakland, called for a "permanent revenue source for affordable housing." She said she had not cleared the idea with Brown and she did not specify a possible source. However, at a Senate hearing two weeks ago she mentioned the possibility of a real estate transfer tax, a technique used to fund both affordable housing and open space protection in other states. Most of the discussions had to do with tax-increment financing, however. As Michael Coleman, a fiscal consultant to the League of California Cities, out it: "TIF has a long history all over the world of being used and used well." It was the cities' expansive use of TIF, of course, that did redevelopment in. With little state oversight, TIF had expanded to include close to $6 billion a year, or about 12% of the state property tax. Because the state is required to backfill the financial loss to schools, TIF was costing the state approximately $3 billion per year. Many of the new TIF ideas involve collaborative relationships among local governments that receiving a portion of the property tax funds and/or holding the state harmless. The most obvious possibility would be to permit cities and successor agencies to receive TIF on all property tax revenue except revenue that goes for schools. This would still drain property tax from counties and special districts, so some proposals would require the creation of a joint-powers authority including those other agencies in order to perform redevelopment functions. John Lambeth of Civitas, the state's business improvement district guru, asked the Legislature to give cities the power to create TIF districts in which they divert only the tax-increment that would otherwise flow to the city general fund – generally about 15% of total property tax. He called this strategy the Downtown Economic Vitality Authority, or Downtown EVA.  Meanwhile, on the Senate side, Senate president pro tem Darrell Steinberg has been proposing that cities and successor agencies be permitted to keep former RDA assets even if TIF revenues are redistributed. At the Senate hearing a couple of weeks ago, Steinberg noted that RDAs cash assets of at least $2 billion – and possibly more – at the time they were dissolved on February 1. The value of RDA real estate assets is impossible to determine at this point, but it is probably billions more. In addition, RDAs were sitting on about $1.3 billion in unencumbered funds earmarked for affordable housing. Both Senate and Assembly bills are likely to include protections for the $1.3 billion as well as language designed to avoid a "fire sale" of former RDA assets. Quick sale of assets is encouraged by the language of AB 1x 26, the law that eliminated redevelopment.

All the urban planners in the country are in Las Vegas this week, and it's clear they have a love/hate relationship with the place. Vegas is kitschy and over the top, and at first glance it always looks like the least sustainable place on the planet. Vegas is acres of neon plastered across the front of 30-story casinos in the 100-degree desert – each casino more outlandishly upscale than the other – along with the occasional lake and 200-foot water fountain. The thousands of attendees at the American Planning Association conference in Las Vegas this week like to say they hate all this stuff, and no doubt a good percentage of them will flee to the desert to tromp around among the spring wildflowers. But they'll definitely be missing out. Because after the latest building boom, there's no denying it: Vegas is the most rapidly evolving – and, in many ways, the most exciting – urban environment in America. The Strip is the densest employment center in the West, and because many hotel and casino workers make modest incomes, Vegas has one of the fastest-growing transit systems in the country. Cities all over the country have dreamed of monorails, but Vegas built one. Thousands of people mob the sidewalks every day and night. Rich and poor live alongside each other – not always in a graceful coexistence, but in close proximity to one another. Planners think great cities are created by thoughtful analysis and political leadership that recognizes eternal land use principles. But Vegas is a not-too-subtle reminder to planners about how great cities are really created: You stuff vast amounts of money into a tiny space for decade after decade until the mixture of wealth, commerce, entertainment, and culture becomes so combustible that it finally explodes. Paris, London, Tokyo, San Francisco, Chicago, New York – all were built on this model. Vegas isn't there yet – but it's getting close. You'll often hear planners compare Vegas unfavorably to New York, but the truth is that Vegas is probably more like New York at this point than any other American city. Indeed, it has positioned itself effectively to become the next New York. The most obvious comparison is in the area of live entertainment. New York has been the center of live entertainment in America for a century and a half, since the beginnings of vaudeville. But Vegas is catching up fast. Live entertainers who used to have to commute from New York for special gigs can now make a living year-round in Vegas, and they choose to live here. Las Vegas is also replacing New York as the new headquarters of the deal-based economy – but with a twist. At its peak, New York was one big office, where people shuttled around doing deals during the day and going to expensive dinners and fancy shows at night. Vegas is one big hotel – with the same result. The only difference is that the dealmakers live here only temporarily – a few days at a time for their trade show – rather than permanently. Tell me this isn't a great city in the making. – Bill Fulton