LOS ANGELES—At the annual Land Use and Planning Summit, experts took a moment to discuss some of the major land-use issues and challenges shaping the industry, including funding for affordable housing, seismic issues and density growth. To get an insider's view of the discussion and the changes to the industry, we sat down with Stan Lamport, partner at Cox, Castle and Nicholson and the chair of this year's summit. Here is what he told us:

GlobeSt.com: Tell our readers some of the land-use issues that panelists discussed at the Land Use & Planning Summit?

Stan Lamport: The panels discussed a wide range of topics that will affect anyone associated with land use and planning in California, including the current regional planning challenges in the Southern California region, the direction the California Coastal Commission moving in regulating land use, the greater role that ballot box planning will play in the foreseeable future, the effect of new earthquake mapping to future land uses, how tribal cultural resources will have a greater impact on future development in the wake of AB52, how changing wetland regulations will affect landowners, how the nine pending CEQA cases before the California Supreme Court could affect to environmental review will be conducted, as well as issues concerning the regulation of fracking and water availability.

Across nearly all of these topics, a few common themes arose. First, there are now more millennials in the workforce than Baby Boomers. Current Generation Y demographics trends favor denser, urban housing over suburban development and more of a reliance on mass transit commuting, rather than driving. Millennials generally are having children much later that prior generations. Combine this dynamic with Baby Boomers who are downsizing their homes and we see a significant shift in the demand for housing product types, transportation infrastructure, and social services. If you are a builder or planner, you need to adjust to these new realities, if you have not done so already. Between 1980 and 2000, 80% of local housing developments were single family. Now, 90-plus percent is multifamily.

Second, with the shifting demographics in urban areas, affordable housing becomes a bigger concern, as a resulting of competing housing demands within the urban core. This was a big topic of conversation in the regional planning panel discussion. One of the speakers in that session mentioned a prominent TOD project in Boyle Heights near downtown Los Angeles that is very much in jeopardy because local residents understand the impact it will have on housing and rent prices. The rent gradient with housing units within a half-mile of a rail station is incredibly steep.

GlobeSt.com: How are developers navigating around these issues and challenges?

Lamport: The issue of affordable housing poses its own set of challenges, especially in helping developers pencil out the financials on their projects when they have “inclusionary housing,” that being government-mandated below-market units.

One of the speakers stated that there is no sustainable funding source for affordable housing in California when re-development was ended.

Another key issue that was discussed with regard to increasing housing within the urban core involved an environmental justice concern. Studies have shown that residents who live within 500 feet of a freeway are 25 times more likely to contract cancer due to the particulate matter in the area than those who live 1.5 miles away. If residents live within 1,000 feet of the freeway, they are 10 times more likely to suffer air quality health issues than residents living 1.5 miles away from the freeway.

Typically, logistics companies want space near freeways, which introduces more diesel fuel, which increases the particulate matter, which increases the nearby residents' risk of developing cancer. It also increases the chances of developing asthma and decreases longevity overall. Thirty-three (33) percent of people live close to a freeway, and these health issues raise some real ethical questions.

GlobeSt.com: As densities grow throughout Los Angeles, there is a greater need to develop upwards. What are the seismic regulations and challenges of developing skyscrapers in Los Angeles?

Lamport: Earthquake fault mapping is becoming more detailed and precise and the result of this mapping will affect how new projects are cited. Under California law, one cannot build a building or a residence on a mapped fault. So the improvement in the mapping is going to have a much greater impact on where new structures can be sited. This will be more of an issue than the updates to the seismic regulations in building codes that constantly change is the need structural engineering evolves.

Kenneth W. Hudnut, PhD, a Research Geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, outlined his use of GPS and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) in earthquake research to help understand the San Andreas Fault system and earthquake source physics and how the Napa earthquake last year revealed new information about fault mechanics. This new information is causing the scientific community to rethink how the law currently addresses building in proximity to faults, which, in turn, may influence legislative changes in the near future.

GlobeSt.com: Securing entitlements is by far the lengthiest process for developers. What are the new entitlement regulations this year that developers should know?

Lamport: There were no new regulations that are statewide. Many of the new regulations we saw in 2014 were local, such as Measure R in Malibu that enacted a 30-percent cap on the number of chain stores in shopping centers citywide, and created a voter-approval requirement for new commercial centers to be built if they are more than 20,000 square feet.

AB52 is very significant for developers on a statewide basis as it results in Native American tribal cultural resources having a much more significant role in the CEQA process. The new law defines tribal cultural resources broadly to encompass many things that may encompass many more properties than has historically been the case. The law takes effect in July and many its consequences could be profound.

GlobeSt.com: Development across property sectors was a major theme of 2014. Do you except to see the same robust development in 2015, why or why not?

We expect the momentum from 2014 to continue in 2015 with the understanding that—as the demographics skew more millennial – the housing emphasis will continue to shift way from new detached single-family-housing that will be counter-balanced by more high-density, infill multifamily development in urban areas. This does not mean that developers will stop building single-family homes. It's just an acknowledgment that -- for the most part—millennials are avoiding the suburbs, at least for the foreseeable future.

Also pragmatically, Dr. Hasan Ikhrata from the Southern California Association of Governments projects that the Southern California region (excluding San Diego) will grow to 22.5 million residents in the next 25 years. That's four million more people, which is roughly one and a half times the size of Chicago. Looking at historical trends for population growth in the area, Dr. Ikhrata was very confident that this anticipated growth will occur. These people will need a place to live. The transportation infrastructure will need to accommodate this growth.

Frankly, as a result of the rapidly growing population and the rapidly changing development patterns, it's difficult for urban planners to keep up with all of the planning consequences that result from these trends.

Instant Insights /

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