In California Development Report I recently saw a story [unfortunately inaccessible to those without an account], about Manhattan Beach and the regulations it was putting in place to define itself. Manhattan Beach is at one and the same time a […]
California
The ‘Single Family or Bust’ People Will Probably Leave Southern California, No Matter What Land Use Policy We Now Follow
A lot of people, especially families with children, would prefer a single-family home. Of course they would, and I’m not going to find fault with that lifestyle as long as it’s not forced on everyone. Perhaps they should be required […]
Where in Southern California Could We Fit New Suburbs?
People like Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox have argued, to some extent rightly, that the majority of Americans prefer a suburban environment; and even the younger Millennial generation, willing to live in more urban places during their single and cohabiting years, […]
Declining Hubs: A Good Location for Experimenting with High Speed Rail
I stumbled recently on a page in Therichest.com listing seven airports in America that are declining in their status as hubs, and it is interesting that they seem to be concentrated in one region: the area between the Great Plains […]
June Gloom All Year Round
Joel Kotkin has got a post up, partially entitled, “Coastal Cities are Old News – It’s the Sunbelt that’s Booming.” In it, he declares, “people seem to, once again, be streaming toward the expanse of warm-weather states extending from the […]
After a Century, Why is the San Francisco Bay Area Kicking our Butt Now?
I was young in the early Sixties, when the cultural rivalry between Los Angeles and San Francisco was strong and active. Jack Smith, for Los Angeles, and Herb Caen, for San Francisco, used to feud regularly in their newspaper columns […]
California Law and Sex Partner Switch
This is a strange story. A man got a woman to sleep with him by pretending [in the dark, I suppose] to be her boy friend. Now apparently if you impersonate a husband in this way, it is rape under […]
California, Sea Otters, and the Russians
Interestingly enough, the reason that sea otters remain a threatened species even today is because the Russians, when they occupied the Fort Ross enclave from 1812 to 1841, they nearly exterminated them. In response to: “End of ‘no otter’ zone […]
Changing my mind about single family homes
I used to believe that social justice required that a region be overbuilt [or at least over-entitled at law] in high-density housing and other locally undesirable land uses. Now, thanks to Joel Kotkin’s influence, I believe that social justice requires […]
Last Call in California
Huh? It would make a lot more sense, automobile-dependent as California still is, to keep the alcohol closing hour at 2 a.m. and insist that Starbucks and other coffee houses stay open till 4 a.m. If I went pub-crawling in […]