Emeryville has embraced housing on a scale that no other Bay Area city has even considered. In particular, the city hopes to not only meet its Regional Housing Needs Allocation goals, but to exceed it — by as much as 50%.

HCD says 70% of draft elements don’t meet the state’s enhanced requirements.

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.

Some cities are welcoming the units, but others appear to be adopting regulations designed to put up barriers.

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.

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?

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.

CP&DR to discuss exactly what combination of art and science will be required for cities to undo single-family zoning

Amid pressure from community groups, Inland Empire cities reconsider benefits of big warehouses.

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.

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.

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.

The California Legislature has come roaring back in 2021 with a whole new set of bills affecting planning and development