California

Vision California, the state's first planning document in over thirty years, was released Wednesday and concludes that planners "should focus on creating compact development in already established cities," over continued suburban sprawl.

June 25, 2010 - San Francisco Chronicle

Writing for The New York Times, Timothy Egan takes a look at some of the empty cities that were abandoned after the housing crash, and why they will be the slums of tomorrow.

February 14, 2010 - NYTimes: Opinionator Blog

There's no looking back now in the shift away from suburbs to a more sustainable urban model, writes Andre Shashaty, president of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities.

November 19, 2009 - Salon.com

Policymakers are closer than ever to coming to an agreement on comprehensive water legislation. They've agreed on major parts, but have yet to officially finalize the details.

October 22, 2009 - Los Angeles Times

Citing the estimated current cost of repairs as a partial reason for noncompliance with federal law, Caltrans heads to court against disability advocacy groups. The agency has failed to maintain or upgrade thousands of curbs and intersections.

September 18, 2009 - Los Angeles Times

Major environmental groups hope this year's park closures, caused by the California budget crisis, will inspire support for parks at the ballot box next year.

September 15, 2009 - San Jose Mercury News

Commentator Andrei Codrescu speculates that with the economy in dire straits, California may experience a population loss as people move back to the states they left in the Great Depression.

July 26, 2009 - National Public Radio

San Francisco residents will get their first peek today at an inventive Internet-based tool that lets them track their personal carbon footprint and gauge how green their neighborhood is compared with the rest of the city.

April 24, 2009 - San Francisco Chronicle

The green marketplace is the marketplace of the future. From Wal-Mart to Toyota to the neighborhood dry cleaner, it seems like every business is going out of its way to tell us how green they are. That could either be a great thing because these businesses are actually using environmentally-friendly practices, or it could be a bad thing because they're just claiming to be green. Regardless of whether it's one or the other, what's certain is that they say they're green because that's what we want to hear.

January 28, 2009 - Nate Berg

One of the largest and most complex river restorations in the West, on the San Joaquin River, should pass the Senate later this week- but not without controversy.

January 14, 2009 - The Modesto Bee

Astride the maze of rivers east of San Francisco that crisscross California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta stand two imposing edifices — the pumping stations that supply water to vast swaths of the state. When operating at full throttle, the Harvey O. Banks Pumping Plant, managed by the state of California, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's C.W. "Bill" Jones Pumping Plant, have the capacity to entirely reverse the flow on the delta tributaries upon which they sit.

August 8, 2008 - Miller-McCune

In early 2008, the Mayors' Institute on City Design received a generous gift from the Edward W. Rose III Family Fund, directed through the National Endowment for the Arts, to support technical assistance teams going into the communities of alumni mayors who have already attended one of our traditional Mayors' Institute sessions. The four cities that we selected for the pilot phase of this work were Santa Rosa, CA, Lincoln, NE, Cincinnati, OH, and Tulsa, OK.

July 18, 2008 - Jess Zimbabwe

The historic lighthouse of Wellfleet, Massachusetts had mysteriously disappeared in 1925. Recently, an intrepid researcher uncovered its unlikely location.

June 5, 2008 - Cape Cod Times