Bay Area
A "floating village" has been proposed for a San Jose neighborhood, with building riding on pontoons as a safeguard against repeated flooding.
San Jose Mercury News
Kathleen Pender, business columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, points to two reasons why home prices rise amidst a Bay Area exodus to other states. On a state level, out-migration shows California's strong but dysfunctional economy.
San Francisco Chronicle
While tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple have approached the Bay Area's housing crisis gingerly the CEO of Yelp has thrown himself into the YIMBY movement. His activism says a lot about the real world and the virtual world.
California Planning & Development Report
AB 2923, which would allow the Bay Area Rapid Transit District to rezone their properties near stations for transit-oriented development, passed its first committee. The California chapter of APA objects to the preemption of local land use authority.
California Chapter of American Planning Association
Beware of transportation officials promising traffic reductions, according to this opinion piece.
The Mercury News
Bike safety could become part of the second-grade curriculum districtwide.
San Francisco Examiner
With piles of them strewn around stations, the transit agency is "cracking down" on bikeshare companies.
San Jose Mercury News
According to a new study by UC Berkeley and Columbia University, local land use processes, specifically the approval process, rather than the California Environmental Quality Act, is the main impediment to housing production in California.
Los Angeles Times
For the next several months, nine sites will be the focus of efforts to design for resilience as sea levels rise. Proposals involve "threading nature back into an urbanized terrain."
San Francisco Chronicle
In Oakland, California and Torreon, New Mexico, Julian Brave NoiseCat reports that "[f]or Indigenous people, the crisis of the home is intergenerational."
High Country News
"Four piers from the old eastern span of the Bay Bridge will live on as a public boardwalk and vista point in Oakland and on Yerba Buena Island," reports Erin Baldassari.
The Mercury News
A modest toll increase, $3 over six years, took a major step forward with the approval of a key Bay Area Toll Authority committee. With the exception of the Bay Bridge, the round-trip toll on each of the region's seven state-owned bridges is $5.
SF Gate
According to a UC Berkeley poll released Dec. 22, 52% of likely voters statewide would support either of two initiatives that hope to be placed on the ballot next November to repeal the gas tax that took effect Nov. 1, while 43% would retain the tax.
The Mercury News
The effects of one of the most expensive housing markets in the country are in display in this data analysis of migration to and from the San Francisco Bay Area.
Buildzoom
Not all of them, just the I-580 lanes. One of the reasons is that most users are actually paying, unlike the other two express lanes where a majority of users are clean-air vehicles or carpools, neither of which pay.
San Francisco Chronicle
A new study finds evidence that the ripple effect from the San Francisco Bay Area's housing affordability crisis has reached all the way to Sacramento.
The Mercury News
Daniel Borenstein points out the irony that while the Bay Area may be the world's top tech hub, BART has no real plans to consider driverless trains.
The Mercury News
It is now up to the Bay Area's transportation planning agency to determine when to ask voters to hike tolls on seven Bay Area bridges, by how much, and whether to phase the increase. A bill to allow voters to fund Caltrain was also signed.
SF Gate
The fires in Northern California have caused at least 21 deaths, with over 500 people missing in Sonoma County. Wired science editor, Adam Rogers, looks at the problems posed when urban development encroaches wildlands.
Wired
Due to the high level of existing congestion, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission warns motorists that the new I-680 Contra Costa Express Lanes will offer relief just before and after the peak commute hour.
SF Gate
