Sea level rise is becoming increasingly unavoidable for planners in coastal California.
Why California Should Not, Cannot Solve Its Housing Crisis By Building New Cities
A recent essay advocates for the development of a new city in California to alleviate the state’s housing crisis. The argument needs a few tweaks.
Reaching for the Heavens
Review of Super Tall, by Stefan Al, about engineering and urbanism in contemporary skyscrapers.
Josh’s 2021 Year-in-Review
It’s cool and all that journalism is “the first draft of history.” Sometimes it would be cooler if the history wasn’t quite so overbearing as it was last year. I can’t complain too much, though. 2021 provided …
Cities Struggle to Comply With Tougher Housing Element Rules
HCD says 70% of draft elements don’t meet the state’s enhanced requirements.
Ballot Initiative Seeks to Override Recent State Housing Laws
An advocacy group led by municipal officials is seeking to put a measure on the ballot that would curtail almost all of Sacramento’s power to influence local planning, zoning, and housing production.
Cities Move Quickly to Regulate SB 9 Housing Units
Some cities are welcoming the units, but others appear to be adopting regulations designed to put up barriers.
The Metaverse Lands in Downtown Los Angeles
The more excited we get about the virtual world, the more the real world will suffer.
Let’s Retire Our Ideological Labels For Cities
Cities can be open to change and open to new residents, in whatever configuration suits them best. Or they can be closed, choosing to serve their own and hope that other people will find refuge in other places. Neither position bears on a city’s attitude towards peace and love–just on the number who can be loved.
The YIMBY-NIMBY Debate Gets ‘Uninteresting’
Labels like “YIMBY” and “NIMBY” may be crude—but so what? One of them wants to solve America’s housing crises. The other does not. Un-housed and under-housed people cannot wait for a perfect ideology to come along.
CP&DR’s Top Stories Of 2021
What is it about duplexes that make them such a popular topic? And why did only one CEQA case make the top five legal stories of the year?
The Top Urban Planning Books of 2021
Planetizen’s annual list of the top urban planning books of the year is here—maintaining a tradition that dates back to 2002.
Are Market-Rate Units Unwelcome In San Francisco?
San Francisco has become equally famous for rejecting projects, including, recently, everything from a branch of a locally beloved burrito restaurant to a 13-story, 316-unit building in the Tenderloin. The apartment building, at 469 Stevenson, met the same fate—for now—on a 8-3 vote in late October.
Housing Developers Look To Retail and Office Locations
One trend that is not new at all is California’s housing crisis. If anything, it only got worse during the pandemic. Now, cities, developers, and lawmakers are trying to figure out whether these three crises might have a common solution: Can excess office and retail space be used for housing?
Housing Developers Look To Retail and Office Locations
The pandemic accelerated the “retail apocalypse,” rendering storefronts and mall spaces vacant. And that raises the question of what will happen to all that excess retail space.
Will SB 9 and SB 10 Make Any Difference?
Many of the state’s housing advocates are overjoyed at the imminent adoption of Senate Bills 9 and 10, which passed both houses of the legislature in the past week and now await the signature of an apparently willing Gov. Newsom