Planning Calif: the Intersection of Climate, Land Use, Transportation & the Economy

Cities and urban areas have always been transformed by major external changes like pandemics and public health crises. California is both in the midst of its greatest economic recession since the Great Depression and experiencing a pandemic that has the potential to reshape many aspects of life. Planning for cities and regions, however, is a long game that requires follow-through on decisions made sometimes over many decades. How do we balance the shocks to our assumptions from the current Covid world with the need to plan long-term for issues like affordable housing and equitable cities, and perhaps most fundamentally, prepare our cities and communities for the inevitability of climate change and climate impact? This course takes an interdisciplinary view of the key contemporary planning topics in California. It does so from looking at the intersection of climate laws, land use changes, the need for housing, travel patterns and the availability of high quality jobs and employment. This course will give you an understanding of the roles of key levels of government, from the state to the region/metropolitan scale, to the city and county, down to the neighborhood and parcel level. it will give students insight into leading themes and issues of the day in California such as the future of downtowns, the role of high speed rail, the impact of telework, automation in the construction of housing, drawing from examples in San Jose and San Francisco, the Central Valley, the state legislature, Southern California. Within each of these topics we will look at the impact of decisions on equity as well as climate and the economy. The instructors are Kristy Wang, formerly SPUR¿s Community Planning Policy Director, and Egon Terplan, Senior Advisor for Economic Development and Transportation in the California Governor¿s Office, formerly SPUR¿s Regional Planning Director. (Affiliations for identification purposes only)