Land Use

A “thank you” to legislators who exempted the proposed L.A. football stadium from California’s environmental review law?

Last fall, I wrote about the California Legislature’s effort to exempt the proposed football stadium in the City of Industry from further environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).  I didn’t follow up on that post, but the Legislature ultimately approved the exemption in a special session in the fall.  Now, Los Angeles Times …

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Oil Speculators, Land Use Planners, and Those Sticky Tar Sands

Three separate items in the news, this past week, underscore the fact that we still have much work to do before we can claim to have a viable plan for reducing fossil fuel use, and the related environmental damage. Energy Daily reports on a new paper from Rice University’s Baker Center for Public Policy showing …

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The new American Dream

Anti-government conservatives have long ridiculed urban planners and environmentalists for their efforts to concentrate development in urban centers and limit the growth of sprawl. They argue that these ‘grand visionaries’ and urban planners are attempting to engineer top down control over consumers, who by and large desire the stereotypical American dream: a detached, single family …

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Obama on Transportation, Land Use and Energy Use

Stunning news from the White House: we actually have a US president who understands the connection between land use patterns and energy use. Obama’s stimulus bill was weak on spending for transit projects (as opposed to highway projects). But that was because it was a bill about jobs, and more highway projects just happened to …

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Gobama Bounce?

Two days ago, the Emmett Center hosted what we thought would be a tidy, manageable panel and “roundtable discussion” on SB 375, California’s new anti-sprawl law and the state’s latest legislative attempt to tackle GHG emissions from passenger vehicles.  In line with turnout to similar past events, we booked a room that holds 90 people …

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