So, one of the biggest questions in planning and development today – in California and elsewhere – is what accounts for the Millenials' preferences for urban living and less driving. Is it generational? Or a lousy economy?

"I think our answer is yes," says Brian Taylor, an urban planning professor at UCLA and head of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies there. 

Fresh from its major Atherton win (see Bill Fulton's writeup at http://www.cp-dr.com/node/3540), the High-Speed Rail Authority won another key ruling July 31 that upheld the validity of its authorization to issue bonds for the project and said the project's preliminary funding plan did not need to be redone.

The Governor's Office of Planning & Research is a month late in issuing its final recommendation on whether to replace "level of service" as the measurement of significant transportation impacts in transit priority areas under the California Environmental Quality Act. But there's not much mystery: OPR has sent clear signals that it is going to propose replacing LOS with vehicle miles traveled, or VMT.

Had it been written about, say, Shanghai or Dubai, Railtown would have been scarcely longer than a page. Autocracies have a knack for infrastructure development. >>read more

Where is Robert Bruegemann when you need him?

A few years back, Bruegmann wrote Sprawl: A Compact History, an exaltation of low-density growth. It called for cities to double-down on all the conventions and mistakes of the previous 50 years. It was a disturbingly anachronistic, but it was provocative, and it was passionate.

It seems that these days there's still plenty of in urbanist literature, but, for better or worse, provocation is getting harder to come by.

As expected, President Obama has picked a mayor to succeed Ray LaHood as Secretary of Transportation. But it's not Los Angeles's Antonio Villaraigosa. It's Anthony Foxx, the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Watch out, Copenhagen.

Like so many a rider at the back of the peleton, California cities have long lagged behind their European counterparts in their embrace of bicycling. But they are now clipping in and gearing with the dramatic arrival of bike sharing. With zero major bike-sharing systems currently in the state, no fewer than five California cities will be adopting pilot projects by mid-2013.  

It's not quite the Golden Spike, but the completion of Phase I of the Los Angeles Expo Line light rail marks a momentous occasion in the history of westward rail expansion.

A few weeks ago the nation's public radio listeners let out a collective sigh of lament when the Tappet Brothers announced the discontinuation of Car Talk. Cars are so much of who we are that it's no wonder that Car Talk was public radio's highest rated show. It's also no wonder that there's no outcry for a "Public Transit Talk" - though two authors are trying to change that.