Overturning the decision of a trial judge, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled that the City of Palm Springs’s decision to eliminate minimum residential densities from its general plan is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act.

Ports can sometimes seems like neither fish nor fowl from a planning perspective. Though they often operate as a world apart, they are as big and complex as many cities are. Planning them therefore poses a challenge. It's a challenge that San Diego Port CommissionerAnn Moore took on enthusiastically. 

What do touchdowns, trade shows, room service, rivers, and dorm rooms have in common? In San Diego, quite a bit.

Localities weighed in on marijuana, fracking, development, and more on June 6.

In Wal-Mart case, Victorville gets caught between GP, EIR, and parcel map findings.

Overturning a trial judge, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled that the private water company Cadiz Inc. and two public agencies did not violate the California Environmental Quality Act in moving forward a groundwater pumping and restoration project in San Bernardino County.

BEVERLY HILLS, May 2, 2016 - As the saying goes, when you're holding a hammer, the world looks like a nail. What if you have a 3-D printer instead of a hammer?

Medical marijuana in California may be a pretty intense battleground, but at the same time, to mix metaphors, it usually looks like a policy cul-de-sac. Advocates of access to medical marijuana are generally single-issue folks who don't care much about any other local issue. And advocates of strict regulation - who include a vast number of local elected officials throughout the state - don't break down along traditional ideological grounds.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on April 25 to take a case from Connecticut that would have overturned the 1985 case Williamson County Regional Planning Comm'n v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U. S. 172, a pre-First English case in which the court ruled that property owners seeking to a regulatory taking case in federal court have to first ensure that all administrative remedies at the local or state level are exhausted and then seek compensation through whatever mechanism is provided by the state.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided on Monday not take the appeal in California Building Industry Association v. City of San Jose, the case in which the California Supreme Court upheld San Jose's inclusionary housing requirement. But the court was not completely silent. 

Uber has finally arrived in Oakland. Not the ride service - that's been around for a while - but rather the company itself, which recently moved its headquarters from San Francisco to a former Sears department store. What would be a triumph of economic development for many cities is making many Oaklanders nervous. They fear that what Uber has done to the taxi industry, wealthy residents and boutique businesses might do to Oakland's working-class heritage.

Sexy-sporty clothing brand American Apparel has long been one of the Los Angeles' most beloved, and most controversial, corporate citizens. It is known for paying decent wages and treating its workers well.
 
When it easily could have outsourced jobs to Asia, it has also resolutely kept its main factory in Los Angeles, occupying a muscular, seven-story industrial building on the southeast edge of downtown since 2000. American Apparel has proudly championed social-justice causes, including immigration reform and gay rights, and assured consumers that they are buying "sweatshop-free" garments made by well treated workers.
 
They're just the sort of workers who might  might benefit from the forthcoming increase in California's minimum wage. If only they - and every other low-wage worker in Los Angeles - had decent roofs over their heads.

Steve Jobs. 

I would like to buy Joel Kotkin a beer. I vote we try a gastropub downtown. Or maybe a rooftop lounge. I'll take the subway, and he can take a taxi. That way, neither of us has to drive.

In repealing a medical marijuana ordinance that a referendum sought to overturn, the Kern County Board of Supervisors erred in also repealing the underlying ordinance that the referendum's backers were seeking to reinstate, the Fifth District Court of Appeal has ruled. It's the third appellate ruling in a medical marijuana zoning case to be issued in the last month.

Coastal California has long been known for harrowing natural hazards: wildfires, drought, floods, the occasional tsunami, and, of course, earthquakes. It has also developed some serious human-made hazards too: chronic poverty, sea level rise, crime, pollution, riots, fragile energy grids, stratospheric housing costs, among others. 

So, why does a court ruling on a medical marijuana ban in Upland affect the Chargers ability to build a new stadium in San Diego?

A state law that prohibits charter cities from receiving state funds for a public construction project if it allows the contractors to not pay prevailing wage has been upheld by a split appellate court.

In the second medical marijuana ruling out of the City of Upland in the last week, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled that Upland's ban on mobile medical marijuana dispensaries is not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act.

Local governments in the Inland Empire won one and lost one in rulings about medical marijuana, both from the same panel of justices on the Fourth District Court of Appeal.