Palo Alto

Silicon Valley real estate agents and residents are primed for the potential rush of "newly minted Facebook millionaires," now that the company is on its way to becoming publicly traded.

The California Environmental Quality Act, a landmark 1970 environmental law now considered an obstacle to smart growth by some urban planners, has claimed another victim in a project that seeks to reduce car use while promoting biking and walking.

With 79.7 percent of its residents with a bachelor's degree or higher, Palo Alto, home to tech giants Facebook and Hewlett-Packard, is the most educated city in California, reports Joanna Lin for California Watch.

Three neighboring Peninsula cities scored a major victory in court by forcing the CA High Speed Rail Authority to reopen and revise the environmental document for the San Jose to San Francisco segment that they had hoped was finally completed.

The improvements involve a lane reduction for a 3 1/2 block business district in Palo Alto known as California Avenue. The four-lane street is within a "pedestrian-transit oriented district" due to a Caltrain station at the end of the avenue.

It was to be expected. After the first lawsuit was dismissed, the plaintiff's attorney warned that the revised environmental document was inadequate. Menlo Park and Atherton were joined by Palo Alto as well as some non-profits.

Palo Alto is where Silicon Valley started, yet locals eagerly pick up the Daily Post, the Daily News, as well as read PaloAlto-Online. The New York Times investigates why print media flourishes here while regional and national papers struggle.

A gunfire detection tool used by the city of Palo Alto will be used in the investigation into a plane crash that killed three local auto executives.

Dan Zack, downtown development coordinator for Redwood City, CA, gave a 50-minute presentation on Delightful Density to a Palo Alto audience on Nov. 5. This 12-minute excerpt is composed of 17 buildings - get out your pencils and guess their density.

In this op-ed, Verlyn Klinkenborg posits that cycling, at least on the Stanford campus, is more about asserting one's identity than anything else.

John King visits the new Taube Koret Campus for Jewish Life in Palo Alto, which he sees as an example of the challenges of infill development.

In this political column, Sac Bee columnist Dan Walters opines that the $.9 billion of CA's HSR $9.9 billion bond measure may be the only realistic accomplishment of Prop 1A due to budgetary and political hurdles the train may not be able to succumb.

A group of cities in the San Francisco Bay Area are going to file a lawsuit next month over the chosen route for California's planned high speed rail route between the Bay Area and Southern California.

Views are already beginning to clash as the California high-speed rail project begins its development process. But until environmental and design reports are available, many questions are to be left unanswered.