featured Articles

Crescent City’s ‘Economic Cookbook’

By Krystle Heaney, AICP, September 23, 2021. In the “cookbook,” the “recipes” are for projects. Easy as pie, a recipe can be “prepared” when the City has the right “ingredients.”

Calif. court upholds limiting local governments’ ability to deny housing developments

By Alan Murphy and Angela Luh, September 20, 2021. The opinion in California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund v….

Ten principles for regional transit planning

By Alan Hoffman, September 19, 2021. ReX is a smart, ambitious, transit network for the Bay Area, but the principles…

Comprehensive Planning sucks. These Oaklanders want to make it better.

By Oscar Perry Abello, Next City, August 24, 2021. “The Oakland People’s Plan” is a response to the city’s RFP…

Meet a local planner: Jennifer Fierman, AICP

A Florida transplant is helping to improve Bay Area transit system performance, service reliability, and real-time passenger information. Interview by…

Northern Section News & Announcements

HUD report on housing affordability in high-cost, high-productivity metros

Planning news from the Redwood Coast region

Opportunities to preserve housing, increase production

Who’s where

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International planning finds a way

pLANNING nEWS rOUND uP

Tension over new development rises amid water scarcity in Healdsburg

By Mary Callahan, The Press Democrat, August 23, 2021. Opponents claim the city’s 2015 Urban Water Management Plan considered an…

Oakland residents fighting a mysterious startup taking over their quiet street

By Georgia Freedman, SFGate, August 23, 2021. Neighbors argue that CloudKitchens, a kitchen-to-delivery startup, gamed the city’s zoning and permitting…

Judge rules that UC Berkeley must study the impacts of growth before raising enrollment

By Frances Dinkelspiel, Berkeleyside, August 24, 2021. Cal must redo the SEIR to address certain issues, including how student enrollment…

How arenas like the Oakland Coliseum became emblematic of California’s housing crisis

By Erika Paz, Calmatters, August 24, 2021. California’s Department of Housing and Community Development cited Oakland and two other cities…

Bay Area cities and counties falling dramatically short of affordable housing goals

By Kiley Russell, Bay City News Foundation, August 27, 2021. New local financing strategies and the state’s first regional affordable…

City of Napa housing division revamps rental housing rehabilitation loan program

By Edward Booth, Napa Valley Register, August 30, 2021. The maximum loan for home repairs has increased by tens of…

San Jose approves strategy to spread out multi-unit affordable housing citywide

By Lloyd Alaban, San Jose Spotlight, August 31, 2021. The plan divides San Jose into three categories to prioritize where…

Chinese ghost cities are finally stirring to life

By James Mayger, Lucille Liu, Yujing Liu, Lin Zhu, and Yinan Zhao, Bloomberg News, September 1, 2021. The government wants…

Berkeley seeks objective standards for thorniest aspects of new developments

By Nico Savidge, Berkeleyside, September 5, 2021. Objective standards are becoming an increasingly important way for cities to exercise local…

Cupertino again at odds with the state over the SB 35 Vallco project

By Marisa Kendall, Mercury News, September 7, 2021. Department of Housing and Community Development says the project’s special approval under…

Over 3,000 acres of East Bay open space to be preserved as state park in $31 million deal

By Joseph Gena, East Bay Times, September 8, 2021. Scientists have described the land as a ‘biologically unique habitat’ and…

How can the pedestrian malls of the past inform today’s shared streets?

By Stephan Schmidt, Bloomberg CityLab, September 9, 2021. A Cornell study analyzed over 100 past pedestrian malls to see what…

San Mateo loses housing ruling with big statewide implications

By Curtis Driscoll, San Mateo Daily Journal, September 14, 2021. Upholding the Housing Accountability Act could lead to new housing…

Gov. Newsom abolishes most single-family zoning in California

By Marisa Kendall, East Bay Times, September 17, 2021. SB 9, now law, allows up to four units on single-family…

SF piloting tiny cabins for homeless people as a cost-effective alternative to tents

By Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle, September 20, 2021. 70 tiny homes (cabins), similar to those used in Oakland and…

Drought: Marin, Saudi crown prince eyeing same desalination plants

By Will Houston, Marin Independent Journal, September 20, 2021. Desalination is still the district’s secondary option to prevent it from…

low buildings and skyscrapers line a busy street — Where Boylston becomes Essex Street, the tree image (3rd floor of low brick building) represents an early icon of the American Revolution — the Liberty Tree planted there in 1646.

A city skyline is seen behind and below a large bridge across an expanse of water — Where Boylston becomes Essex Street, the tree image (3rd floor of low brick building) represents an early icon of the American Revolution — the Liberty Tree planted there in 1646.

Northern News October 2021