Judging by the likes of Oakland, Berkeley, and, of course, San Francisco, a plan to encourage density, transit use, and environmentalism in the Bay Area might seem redundant. But these vibrant urban centers are just small elements in the sprawling, nine-county region that is the subject of the fourth and final Sustainable Communities Strategy to be drafted for California's major urban areas.
For many jurisdictions that are part of California's "Big Four" metropolitan planning organizations, Senate Bill 375 has ushered in new, unprecedented degrees of collaboration. But whereas SB 375 makes a regional planning revolution for many, for the jurisdictions of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, the SCS is business as usual.
The Sustainable Communities Strategy unveiled in December by the Southern California Association of Governments struck its member cities and counties with all the uncertainty of an unwrapped Christmas gift.
By now, most CEQA practitioners have faced the problem of what to do when a project opponent submits the attorney general's 18-page list of potential greenhouse gas mitigation measures, when many of the measures in the list may not be appropriate for a particular project. On June 30, 2011, the Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District held that the lead agency is not required to explain why each of the proposed measures is inappropriate for the project at issue.
Jurisdictions across California have slowly come to accept that their environmental reviews under the California Environmental Quality Act now must address greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, relatively few rulings exist to help jurisdictions establish thresholds by which to analyze a project's GHG impact. A recent case suggests that Assembly Bill 32, California's 2006 climate change law, may provide a reasonable guide.
As one of the most prominent organizations lobbying on environmental and land use issues in Sacramento, the Planning and Conservation League has led campaigns on everything from global warming to public health to local dam removal. Its history includes the promotion of such landmark measures as the California Environmental Quality Act, the California Coastal Act, and Prop 12, the 2000 Parks Bond measure.
The midpoint of 2011 is rapidly approaching, and that means the first glimpses of the "Sustainable Communities Strategies" created under SB 375 are beginning to emerge. In particular, the "Big Four" metropolitan planning organizations � those from the Los Angeles Area, the Bay Area, San Diego, and Sacramento � are all moving forward with their SCS processes, and discernable trends are beginning to emerge.
In 2007, then-Attorney General Jerry Brown established a new paradigm for planning in California. With his settlement in a lawsuit against San Bernardino County, he clearly signaled that cities, counties, and county subregions would have to account for, and attempt to mitigate, greenhouse gas emissions in their general plans under the California Environmental Quality Act and AB 32. In fact, Brown went so far as to vow to sue any city that failed to account for its greenhouse gas emissions.
A great deal of literature has already anointed the hero in the fight against climate change: the city. Beginning with David Owens' Green Metropolis and including the work of Paul Hawken, Ed Glaeser, and countless others, the city has come to symbolize all the ways that humans can live densely and tread lightly on the Earth.
These accolades might be premature. In his brief but wide-ranging book Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in a Hotter Future, Matthew Kahn renders no such heroes.
