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
ABAG Grapples With RHNA Appeals
ABAG has received 28 appeals from 24 cities and three counties
Summer Book Roundup, 2021
California always offers ripe inspiration for scholarly and popular books alike. The past year or so has produced a particularly impressive crop, both in number and quality.
Lancaster’s BLVD Delivers
An unlikely strip of urbanism in an unlikely place, The BLVD is a model more urban cities in California could learn from.
The Plex Paradox
CP&DR to discuss exactly what combination of art and science will be required for cities to undo single-family zoning
E-Commerce Boom Leads To Warehouse Moratoriums
Amid pressure from community groups, Inland Empire cities reconsider benefits of big warehouses.
California Cities Cut Parking Requirements
Cities across California are eliminating parking minimums in order to reduce automobile dependency and promote better urban design. The state legislature is getting in on the act too.
Eli Broad, Urbanist
The great irony of the philanthropist’s life was that he made his billions on sprawl — and then poured it into making Los Angeles a more urban city.
Surplus Land Act Upends Public Agency Development Plans
According to the Surplus Land Act (SLA), a relatively new state law whose implementing guidelines went into effect in January, all of these properties must be made available to affordable housing developers first. While state officials defend the guidelines, the landowning agencies say the law will undermine their vision for the property – and maybe even hinder their ability to build the affordable housing that the law seeks to create.
The Phony Debate Over Wall Street and the Housing Crisis
Over the past few years, concerns about “Wall Street ownership” of houses in California has grown increasingly serious, with the The Blackstone Group being the poster child for a handful of finance companies that buy up single-family homes, often in disadvantaged areas, only to kick out tenants and increase rents.
Updated Cal EnviroScreen Will Improve State’s EJ Efforts
In March, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) released the draft of its fourth iteration of CalEnviroScreen (CES). First released in 2013, CES is a database of environmental hazards that forms the basis of myriad state and local efforts to limit human exposure and strive for environmental justice.
Proposed Legislation Would Give Cities Fewer Excuses for Blocking Housing
The California Legislature has come roaring back in 2021 with a whole new set of bills affecting planning and development
Podcast: L.A. Planner-Councilmember Nithya Raman
In November, Nithya Raman became only the second trained urban planner to be elected to the Los Angeles city council. CP&DR spoke with Raman about how planning influences her political agenda
How Berkeley Will Move Away From Single-Family Zoning
The council vote was unanimous, but now comes the hard part: Implementing an upzoning in a city with strong homeowner advocacy and fire-prone hillside neighborhoods.
SCAG Shoots Down RHNA Appeals
Many housing advocates considered the assignment of 1.3 million new housing units to Southern California via 2019’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation process to be a serious win. It was followed up by an intra-regional allocation process that weighted units toward high-cost, high-demand coastal cities, for another win. Last month, they scored a few more wins — 50 to be exact.