California

Los Angeles's landmark adaptive reuse ordinance has been credited with helping to spur downtown's dramatic growth over the past decade. However, developers now find it cheaper to build new than reuse the area's historic structures.

January 31, 2013 - Los Angeles Downtown News

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) would like to spend $200 million on improving the city's bike infrastructure over the next 5 years. How many miles of green paint can you get with all that green?

January 30, 2013 - The San Francisco Examiner

During his first State of the City address, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee put reforming MUNI - the city's "notoriously late and overcrowded public transit system" - at the top of his agenda.

January 29, 2013 - San Francisco Chronicle

CA Gov. Jerry Brown stated he had big plans in his State of the State speech on Jan 24. Thanks to temporary tax increases under Prop 30 and spending cuts, the budget is finally balanced. Yet he also called for 'fiscal constraint' - contradictory?

January 29, 2013 - Calbuzz

Efforts to transform L.A.'s maligned river into a public and economic asset got a boost last week with the establishment of a cross-disciplinary and cross-agency planning effort focused on an eight-mile stretch of the river.

January 29, 2013 - KCET Departures

From a giant dam across the Golden Gate to a dozen "ventilated levees," the options proposed for protecting San Francisco Bay from rising seas are neither cheap nor subtle. But with sea level rise "around the corner," hard choices must be made.

January 28, 2013 - San Francisco Chronicle

In the wake of the problem-plagued privatization of Chicago's parking meters in 2008, two WSJ reporters assess conversions (or attempts) in Indianapolis (2010), Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Cincinnati and New York, as well as what went wrong in Chicago.

January 28, 2013 - The Wall Street Jounal

Before Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was thrown off his bike by a taxi, shattering his elbow in the process, L.A. was known as "a pathologically unfriendly bike city." Two years later, the city has made incredible strides in building its bike culture.

January 28, 2013 - Los Angeles Times

By comparing the city's density, scale, and distribution of employment nodes to other major cities, Kristin Eberhard makes the case for why and how transit can work in big, dense, polycentric Los Angeles.

January 27, 2013 - NRDC Switchboard

A proposed 2,700-acre development appears to conflict with the regional plan that complies with SB 375, a 2008 landmark law meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing vehice-miles-traveled. The decision rests with the Board of Supervisors.

January 25, 2013 - Sacramento Bee

San Bernardino was the third city in California to file for bankruptcy last year. Within the past year it has descended from a model of crime reduction to a crime-plagued city.

January 24, 2013 - The New York Times

The arts district in downtown Los Angeles is transforming its industrial buildings into trendy boutiques, restaurants and hotels. The concern is that gentrification will drive out low-paid artists who can no longer afford to live there.

January 23, 2013 - The Los Angeles Times

A new study from the Tax Foundation starts with the premise that user fees - gas taxes and tolls, should pay for road funding. All 50 states are evaluated to see the greatest percentage of user fees. Delaware is rated first; Alaska and Wyoming last.

January 22, 2013 - Tax Foundation

Now that redevelopment projects in CA are officially dead, a retrospective on one of the state's 'most successful' redevelopment projects reveals an inconvenient truth: demolition for surface parking has undermined much of its accomplishments.

January 22, 2013 - UrbDeZine.com

One of the cities that's led the growing trend in urban freeway removal is considering another tear down, report Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross.

January 21, 2013 - San Francisco Chronicle

The homes designed by architect John Lautner have appeared often in films, many times as characters themselves and many times associated with villains. Adam Baer examines what it is about Lautner's designs that inspire associations with evil.

January 21, 2013 - The Virginia Quarterly Review

Renting out luxury homes has become an attractive choice in today's housing market. High-end renters get many of the benefits of owning a home, with greater built-in flexibility, and without the financial risk.

January 19, 2013 - The Wall Street Journal

Interactive before and after images taken nearly six decades apart show L.A.'s changing urban landscape.

January 18, 2013 - Los Angeles Times

Yosh Asato compares the current dot-com and housing boom around South of Market (SoMA), the heart of San Francisco's tech industry, to previous booms that resulted in inevitable crashes. Is there an optimistic future for the city this time around?

January 17, 2013 - Metropolis Magazine

Ryan Holeywell discusses a new report from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley that examines the top reasons people stop using public transit. Frequent, consistent service is most important to riders.

January 16, 2013 - Governing