CP&DR

Conservation Dollars Do Indeed Go South

Apr 1, 2000

Stephen Svete, Trends, Vol. 15 No. 04 Apr 2000

Among the hardest dictums for regulatory planners to swallow is this: possession is 90%. Nonetheless, it's a truism not lost upon a growing number of state conservancies, which have shown that acquisitions are among the best ways to safeguard California's natural resources and open spaces. And even though there has been grumbling about a perceived bias for funding of north state acquisitions over Southern California ones, recent history does not appear to support the complaint. The state's...

Monster Houses Devour Neighborhood Scale

Feb 1, 2000

Stephen Svete, Trends, Vol. 15 No. 02 Feb 2000

In a currently popular coffee-table book titled The Not So Big House, Minneapolis-based architect Sarah Susanka argues for an age-old idea that seems quaint in our hyper economic boom times: quality is better than quantity. When it comes to addressing the current planning dilemma called monster houses ï¿½ the phenomenon of tearing down older houses and rebuilding with Godzilla proportions in Bambi neighborhoods ï¿½ Susanka may be to the 2000s what Andres Duany was to the 1990s: an architect that has desig...

New Wave of Coastal Planning Comes Ashore

Dec 1, 1999

Stephen Svete, Trends, Vol. 14 No. 12 Dec 1999

Like a powerful winter swell, political action related to California's treasured coastline is generating waves in halls of local government, the capitol and even courtrooms these days. Political, environmental, and economic development interests are combining forces to create some of the most intensive changes to coastal planning since the passage of the Coastal Act in 1972. Even cities that are many miles inland could feel the effects of this beach-protection movement. Perhaps t...

A Foreign Concept for Planners to Consider

Oct 1, 1999

Oxnard, Stephen Svete, Trends, Vol. 14 No. 10 Oct 1999

It's no surprise that Ephrain Corona didn't have time to talk when I called. The immigrant owner of a five-store Mexican roasted chicken chain based in Oxnard was too busy growing his business. What Corona undoubtedly realizes is that the time is ripe to cash in on California's fastest growing consumer segment: foreign immigrants. Joining this growing group of entrepreneurs are a few developers and a handful of planning departments – mainly redevelopment agencies – all of whom may have found the...

A Roundabout Way of Solving Congestion

Aug 1, 1999

Stephen Svete, Trends, Vol. 14 No. 08 Aug 1999

It was bound to happen. The neo-traditionalist planning movement is making inroads into the most doctrinaire of planning dynasties – Caltrans. Late last year, in a little-noticed but potentially monumental policy shift, the state road bureaucracy issued Design Information Bulletin Number 80, thereby granting guarded approval of modern roundabouts as part of California's highway design toolbox. Now it's up to local governments to press ahead with a back-to-the-future concept: intersections where...

Getting Beyond a Ctitical Mass

Jun 1, 1999

Stephen Svete, Trends, Vol. 14 No. 06 Jun 1999

They come with Spandex and attitude. And they come with an agenda no less ambitious than to change urban transportation. They are adherents to the merry prankster of grassroots planning movements — Critical Mass. Massers have a simple modus operandi: (1) organize mass bicycle rides once a month, (2) ride through the city, sharing travel lanes with cars, (3) demonstrate that bicyclists have road rights, too. Like other anarchist-oriented movements, Critical Mass boasts no central organizatio...

Construction Pace Quickens

Apr 1, 1999

Stephen Svete, Trends, Vol. 14 No. 04 Apr 1999

It is said that a rising tide lifts all ships. It would stand to reason, then, that California's resurgent economy is uniformly raising construction activity. But tides are, after all, fluid. Swells and surges may drop a boat here or there, depending on the harbor. And so it is with California's building. Some of the trends that we began to notice last year are holding strong, while others have reversed — suggesting that the current boom manifests in ways that are particular to Califor...

Reatiling and the Web

Feb 1, 1999

Stephen Svete, Trends, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

One of the more interesting outcomes of the explosion of the Internet on our culture is the wave of anxiety it has produced at City Halls and in Sacramento. And it's not because the powerful new interactive media isn't already being used in hundreds of ways by state and local government to connect and its constituents - or otherwise benefiting our technology-strong economy. It is because the Web's success threatens to siphon off the lifeblood of the public agency revenue stream: sales tax. The threat...

BIDs: Private Local Government?

Dec 1, 1998

Stephen Svete, Trends, Vol. 13 No. 12 Dec 1998

As California's planning practice escalates toward a regulatory function increasingly detached from life on the street, the question presents itself: Who's minding the store? In the case of central business districts and outlying commercial precincts, the answer may lie with a collection of loosely organized and highly local affinity groups called BIDs - Business Improvement Districts. On the one hand, the growing power of the BIDs around California might threaten traditional city hall-based planning...

Cars and Planners

Oct 1, 1998

Stephen Svete, Trends, Vol. 13 No. 10 Oct 1998

For most planners, society's reliance on - and even outright integration - of the car into our social and physical culture is a tough pill to swallow. We believe we are fundamentally concerned with environmental, social, and health issues; and so the car is the machine against which we rage. To counter its evils, we push for neo-traditional urban design that promotes pedestrians and transit and eschews automobiles. We advocate for bicycles. We craft trip reduction ordinances that penalize e...

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