featured Articles

Artist-driven community engagement — and all that jazz!

By James Rojas, February 12, 2021. A workshop on public spaces in the Diridon Station Area of San Jose was a perfect opportunity to experiment with innovative, creative, and virtual engagement tools to connect people to the planning process and influence the outcomes.

Pandemic severely impacted taxable retail sales in Napa-Sonoma Wine Country

By John Rau, Feb 11, 2021. An economic analysis of the Napa/Sonoma wine country trade area for the second and…

Manga biography celebrates Denise Scott Brown

Now 89, Scott Brown is an icon of modern architecture and urban planning.

Work through community conflict on climate change by confronting fears

By Geoff Ball and Debbie Mytels, February 15, 2021. Cities are the one community-based institution holding responsibility for tending to…

Northern Section News & Announcements

Sen. Scott Wiener introduced two new housing bills

Director’s note: Is work part of your identity?

Calls for social housing in California, Hawaii

REVIEWER WANTED for “Brave New Home”

Last call for Award submittals

Who’s where

Everyone wants progress but no one wants change

pLANNING nEWS rOUND uP

How SB 35 and AB 1763 pushed through a Marin County affordable housing project

By William Fulton, CP&DR, Feb 8, 2021. Using SB 35, the developer could build twice as many units in a…

Mill Valley resolution would oppose state housing mandates

By Lorenzo Morotti, Marin Independent Journal, January 27, 2021. The resolution addresses both local control preemption and RHNA targets.

Berkeley overhauls off-street parking

By Emilie Raguso, Berkeleyside, January 27, 2021. Most new housing projects in Berkeley will no longer have to build off-street…

How the federal government could help kill highways

By Max Reyes, Bloomberg CityLab, February 1, 2021. A new bill proposes funding for highway removal or alternation.

A Sunnyvale Toyota dealership is turning its car lot into apartments

By Nate Berg, Fast Company, February 3, 2021. The proposal converts the lot and the space above the dealership into…

YIMBYs sue for even more housing via RHNA

By Benjamin Schneider, SF Weekly, February 4, 2021. Pro-housing activists accuse the state of underestimating the Bay Area’s housing allocation…

Analysis: Strategies to lower cost and speed permanent supportive housing production

From UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, February 9, 2021. Four factors led to cost and time savings on…

New proposed bill sets ambitious offshore wind farm target

By Paul Rogers, The Mercury News, February 11, 2021. Humboldt County is one of the most likely locations for the…

The Californians are coming. So is their housing crisis.

By Conor Dougherty, The New York Times, February 12, 2021. For those tethered to the local economy, the influx of…

What happens when SF’s largest employer goes ‘work from anywhere’

By Laura Bliss and Sarah Holder, Bloomberg CityLab, February 12, 2021. After so much baggage attached to Salesforce’s urban footprint,…

“11 Black urbanists every planner should know”

By Pete Saunders, Planning Magazine, Winter 2021. This roundup selects just four of the eleven described in the article.

Northern News March 2021