Some post tax deadline stock advice

Now that you have waded through another rough tax season, you are probably wondering how to recoup your losses. Here’s a little friendly stock advice on planning issues to help you get your financial footing back. Remember, state and federal tax laws apply to all investment proceeds.

This has become such a moving target it’s hard to believe the project is proposed to be constructed on a track. The High Speed Rail Authority recently approved another revised plan for the statewide system, slashing the project budget from nearly $100 billion to $68 billion. Compared with what voters approved in 2008, the new plan doubles the price tag, delays the start of service to 2029, reduces rider counts, increases fares, and shortens the route. We’re well aware of the many solid arguments that support what economic and environmental benefits can result from the system, but this lack of consistency isn’t doing much to solidify support.

Kudos to SCAG for getting its RTP and first-ever Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) approved, and similar kudos to the 17 other Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) in California also tasked with developing their first-ever SCS’s to comply with SB 375. Here’s what SCAG faced: a mandate to develop and incorporate a new document (the SCS) into its Regional Transportation Plan, on which billions in federal transportation funding is predicated. No funding was provided by the State to SCAG for developing the SCS. And, there is no mandate for local jurisdictions to implement the plan, which made it difficult to garner serious attention. With those obstacles, SCAG did a great job of creating an environment for serious regional dialogue to occur regarding Southern California’s land use and transportation future. Now, for the first time in recent memory, there is a sense in the six-county region that there is more that unites us than divides us.

Lots of unneeded fear mongering going on related to the impacts of SB 375 and its required Sustainable Communities Strategy. Demographer Wendell Cox recently lamented that these plans are calling for a greater percentage of future development to be concentrated near transit (click HERE to read article). He says California is “declaring war” on the single-family home, but also states that his own research blames high housing prices as the principal factor that has caused more than 1.6 million to leave California. What? Higher density units are generally more affordable than their single-family counterparts, and increasingly surveys are revealing that consumers (namely young homebuyers and baby boomers) are trending toward higher densities. Besides, the market will ultimately determine what gets built, and where.

The 2012 Air Quality Management Plan (AQMP) is under development. Many still complain about over-regulation, but clean air in this region is a critical component of the region’s future economic success and quality of life. Increasingly, new medical studies report that air pollutants comprise even greater risks to public health than the studies before them. Evidence of health impacts from bad air grows daily, but we still seem to have trouble making connections among good air quality, good public health, and good economy. Why is that?

Redevelopment is history, as are California’s more than 400 redevelopment agencies. The far-reaching effects on how and whether cities and counties will even think about urban redevelopment, much less finance it, remain to be seen. But it doesn’t look good for local jurisdictions seeking to revitalize blighted areas, provide affordable housing and increase economic development. Foes of redevelopment were often critical of the blurry lines used to define “blighted” areas for purposes of creating redevelopment area boundaries. Without tools to replace redevelopment, defining “blight” in hundreds of communities will get a lot easier.

Amid growing evidence that demonstrates the relationship between urban design and public health (obesity, heart conditions, lack of access to fresh food, asthma and heart conditions caused by poor air, water and soil contamination, etc.), planners and policy makers are finally taking interest in what medical experts have been telling us for decades: the way we plan our buildings and communities can help, or hinder, public health. Riverside County recently ranked 52nd out of 58 counties for a physical environment conducive to health, and its rates of obesity exceed those of California and the United States. Long commutes, limited mass transit options, lack of integration of land uses and locations of sensitive receptors (schools, day care facilities) are often flagged as key contributors to unhealthy suburbs. Fortunately, jurisdictions like the County of Riverside and the City of Murrieta have recently adopted stand-alone healthy communities elements to their general plans, with sections that address land use, multi-modal transportation, increasing physical activity, access to healthy foods, social capital, and environmental health. WRCOG received a grant from the Southern California Gas Company to create a template element that might be used by other jurisdictions. Here’s to good health.

We understand that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the exceptions to this rule have to be the thousands of structures built during the 1960s-1980s under an architectural style known for blockish appearances and predominance of concrete. Examples abound in government buildings, low-rent housing, shopping centers, and college campuses. Fittingly, the term “Brutalist architecture” has been coined to describe the style. Are some buildings just too ugly to survive? Or, do these structures deserve a place in our architectural history that should be preserved? If architecture is an art form with a purpose to stir the soul and positively influence a community’s sense of place, the advice here is to adopt a “we can do better than that” approach, tear them down and rebuild.

Take the FBI building in Washington, D.C. ... please

If the National Library in Pristina, Kosovo, isn’t the ugliest building in the world, then perhaps the housing structures behind it are.

As clothes fashions come full circle from decades past, so too might certain architectural styles, whether you like them or not. Designs that return to the 1950’s and 1960’s, an era generally not fondly remembered for architectural good taste, are back on the landscape. These new structures are not as gaudy, cheesy, and tacky as their prior-generation counterparts (with a few notable exceptions – see the Longaberger Basket Company building in Newark, Ohio, below),

Basket Case (Longaberger Basket Company Building)

But make no mistake about it: a mild “kitschy renaissance” is occurring. Maybe not the 30-foot high rotating donut sign way of occurring, but it’s occurring nonetheless. In some cases, retro looks attempt to recapture some of the old classic designs (see the 1953 and 2010 McDonald’s restaurants, below). Or, it can get a bit “Toon Townish” (see the Carl’s Jr. restaurant, below).

We’re o.k. with it, to a point. Kitschy buildings can provide a bit of architectural whimsy to otherwise ho-hum landscapes, but let’s be careful not to re-create the same cheesy landscapes that municipalities have spent the last few decades trying to rid themselves of.

McDonald’s in Downey, CA, built in 1953.

New retro McDonald’s

Planning dilemma. Is that a load-bearing french fry?