Are the stars aligning on growth policy in Sacramento, for better or worse? It feels a little funny to be writing this story yet again. I have been writing it for 16 years, yet the state growth policy universe has changed little. This time, though, there might be something to it. >>read more

This month's selection of In Brief items includes: a Santa Barbara County jury awards landowner $5.6 million in damages; a Bush administration settlement infuriates enviornmentalists; Riverside County approves revised plan for large subdivision; and more...

An appellate court has overturned separate environmental impact reports and project approvals for two Bakersfield shopping centers with Wal-Mart supercenters as anchors.

The long-running legal fight between a hotel and San Francisco has finally reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court agreed in December to review the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' most recent decision in San Remo Hotel v. San Francisco.

A state law that mandates affordable housing development for projects within the coastal zone does not apply if a housing project that straddles the coastal zone boundary places no houses or other private facilities within the coastal zone, the California Supreme Court has ruled.

A state appellate court has upheld the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board's comprehensive regulations regarding municipal storm drainage discharges.

For a variety of reasons, ranging from real estate prices to market demand to planning trends, New Urbanist projects are becoming more common in California. But the execution of these projects - the on-the-ground-reality - is spotty.

As two recent economic efforts illustrate, some job-creating projects require large public subsidies, and others do not. The public agencies running a former military base in San Bernardino and a reserve base in Moreno Valley waged a campaign involving millions of dollars in public subsidies in an effort to attract a DHL cargo sorting and shipping hub. March Air Reserve Base in Moreno Valley won the competition in December.

Everything about the federal government's newest endangered species recovery plan is big. It took nearly 10 years to complete. It addresses 33 types of plants and animals scattered across the length and breadth of California. It's 593 pages long.

Behold the common skateboard, a machine that can give new life to parks, especially those areas that previously seemed unusable. Little more than a plank of wooden laminate, this machine is shaped like a surfboard.