May 31, 2025 • 45 mins
In this episode, I sit down with Bill Fulton - urban planner, professor, former Ventura mayor, and author of one of my favorite books (The Reluctant Metropolis) - for a wide-ranging conversation on how California stopped growing and what it will take for the state to build again. We explore how the state’s postwar growth machine broke down, how laws like Prop 13 and CEQA warped local incentives, and why so many cities now chase warehouses and retail instead of housing.
This is also a conversation about California’s evolving identity from the death of the suburban dream to the rise of a more urban, infill-driven future. We talk about generational divides in housing politics, lessons from Houston’s deregulated model, and why building more homes isn’t just about entitlement reform—it’s about labor, capacity, and culture.
If you care about how California can remain a place where regular people can live and thrive, this episode is for you!
Make sure to subscribe at californiafuturesociety.org, youtube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Chapters:
00:00 — Intro
02:55 — Why Did Growth Stop?
08:08 — Sales Tax Dynamics and Local Government Funding
12:56 — Accepting SoCal's Urban Identity
16:03 — Intergenerational Perspectives on Growth and Development
17:47 — State vs. Local Control
22:49 — The Role of Unions
26:25 — CEQA
30:03 — Land-Use Lessons from Houston
33:28 — SoCal After Sprawl
37:23 — Demographics and the Changing Landscape of California
42:09 — Hope for California’s Housing Crisis
Keywords:
California housing policy, urban planning, Prop 13, CEQA, NIMBY vs. YIMBY, sales tax incentives, local control, state intervention, entitlement reform, zoning, infill development, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), post-sprawl urbanism, Inland Empire, Houston vs. LA, light rail, construction labor shortage, environmental law, unions and housing, demographic shifts, affordability crisis, generational change
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
California is never going to have spectacular population
growth again, at least not in mylifetime.
And I'm, I think probably not inyours.
The big shift is that, you know,the era of suburban Los Angeles
is over. The era of urban Los Angeles,
where people have less living space if they want to stay
except for the very wealthy, is well upon us.
(00:21):
California ended 500,000 people a year for almost 70 years.
I don't know of any industrialized society today has
ever grown that fast for so long.
Somebody the other day quoted Ronald Reagan that if the
Pilgrims had landed in California, they never would
have bothered to discover the rest of the country.
Hello and welcome back to the California Future Society
(00:42):
podcast. This week I spoke with Bill
Fulton. Bill has an incredible wealth of
knowledge. It was a really fun
conversation, and I think you can tell in the first couple
minutes how excited I am to speak with him as someone who
I've read for a long time. So the chance to interview him
and ask him questions about his work was just a lot of fun for
me. And I think there's also a lot
of practical insights, whether you're someone who just cares
about the future of the housing crisis, if you're just someone
(01:03):
who is very into the weeds on urban planning and local policy,
and then what that looks like and where these different laws
came from. Or if you're someone who just
thinks about how LA might evolveand how it compares to cities
like Houston, where Bill worked and how it shapes the future of
the state. So it was a lot of fun in the
conversation. I hope you enjoy it too.
As always, you can subscribe wherever you're hearing this or
(01:25):
at California futuresociety.com.Here's Bill.
Well, Bill, I'm really excited to talk to you today.
I have you with me, your book, The Reluctant Metropolis.
This book personally means a lotto me.
It was a turning point in my ownthinking, helped clarify and
provide a framework for a lot ofthe issues that California faces
today. So excited to talk to you.
(01:46):
And to start, I know you've worna lot of hats over the years.
Can you give a quick introduction to who you are and
your connection to California? Right.
I've lived in California for most of the last 40 plus years.
I worked at Rice University in Houston for eight or nine years.
In the middle of that, I was on the City Council of Ventura for
(02:07):
a long time. I was the planning director of
San Diego. I went to planning school at
UCLA. I also wrote the standard urban
planning textbook for Californiaguide to California Planning.
So land use and transportation planning in California.
And my my first career was as a journalist.
So researching, writing about and understanding California's
(02:33):
growth patterns has been the thethe major, the major effort of
my life, I guess you might say. Currently I'm a professor of
practice at the Design Lab and in the Department of Urban
Studies and Planning at UC San Diego, and I'm the Co director
of something we just started, the Center for Housing Policy
(02:53):
and Design at UCSD. Well, it's it's part of why I'm
excited to talk to you is it's rare to to talk to someone who
has not only been on both the journalism side of it as well as
some of the more, you know, likethe planning professional side
of it, as well as all the different roles between academia
and actually being in City Council as a mayor, you know,
having these different roles allacross Southern California.
(03:15):
That's a pretty rare combination.
And I think that's part of what made your book so compelling to
me was the first time I read it was not just it's readability.
You know, there's a lot of wonkyreading and writing about land
use and planning, but you know, it is is fueled by human
emotions, human stories. It captured the the
personalities at play. And so I want to start, you
(03:36):
know, we're not only going to talk about this book, but I want
to start here in particular. There's a passage in the intro
as I was reviewing it before this, and I'll jump around a
little bit in it. But you say so it's not so
surprising that when Los Angelesfinally grew so vast has to be
unfathomable even to those who live there.
When the gap between the illusion of a spacious suburban
lifestyle and the daily reality of a massive metropolis could no
(03:59):
longer be papered over with dreams, the growth machine began
to collapse under its own weight.
And then, skipping ahead a little bit, in short, the
formula that had built Los Angeles so quickly no longer
worked. And the reason I want to start
there and ask you what you were thinking about and how that
motivated the book is because today I think people in my
(04:19):
generation and just a lot of people who maybe haven't been
following these issues as closely are wondering how do we
get here? How do we get to a state, to a
region, to a political system where we're so resistant to
growth and there's so many barriers and policy barriers to
growth. Can you talk to that and how
that emerged and and where that came from and why we ended up
where we are today? Most of that goes back to the
(04:42):
crazy growth years of the post war era from, well you know,
from I would say from the end ofthe Great Recession to the
beginning. I'm sorry, from the end of the
Great Depression to the beginning of the Great
Recession, California ended 500,000 people a year for almost
70 years. I don't know of any
industrialized society that has that has ever grown that fast
(05:06):
for so long starting. So this is ancient history, I
realize, but starting in the late 50s there began to be
resistance to this dramatic growth.
There was in about 1958, in 1959was when San Franciscans
successfully challenged the completion of the Embarcadero
Freeway. That was really the first anti
(05:28):
growth movement ever. There was a, there was a report
done about that time called California going Going gone.
And between the late 50s and theearly 70s there was a growing
consensus that growth was out ofcontrol and it had to be reined
in. There were a couple of other
(05:51):
things that played into that. One was the rise of the
environmental movement and the general approach to
Environmental Protection that wesee in the California
Environmental Quality Act, whichsort of begins with the
assumption that the status quo is better than any possible
change. That was one thing.
And then the other thing was California's peculiar governance
(06:16):
structure in two ways. One was in the 70s in
particular, it became a bunch ofcourt cases came down that made
it clear that the initiative andreferendum process was just as
powerful at the local level as at the state level.
And you could change land use policy at the ballot box.
And the other one was that Sequain particular made access to the
(06:39):
courts for practically anybody really, really easy.
So one of the things that did was that made I'll, there's
another aspect I'll talk about in a minute.
But one of the, but one of the things that did was it made it
easy for what we now call limbies or people who are were
resistant to or skeptical of growth to reject political
(07:02):
compromise and either go to court and go to the ballot where
either they'd win or they'd go down in flames without
compromising and feel really, feel really righteous about it.
The other thing that happened was the passage of Prop 13 in
the late 70s, which introduced this whole concept that new
(07:27):
growth should not have any fiscal consequences at all for
the people who already live in California, no matter whether
their own growth had had burdened others.
And that this has led to specialtaxes and impact fees and all
kinds of burdens on new development that that older,
(07:47):
that older homeowners do not bear.
But, but it was this, but it wasthis concept that it was a, it
was a concept that growth is bad.
Any change is bad and and therefore all social,
environmental and and fiscal costs should be borne by new
development, if we allow it at all.
(08:09):
I wanna. Get back to the mechanisms that
NIMBY's use and all those changes that you mentioned in
sequel. But while we're on this topic of
Prop 13, I think of the chapter in your book anytime I drive to
visit my family in the Central Coast.
I grew up in the Inland Empire, but I've siblings in Santa
Barbara, Ventura and your description of sales tax Canyon
along the 101. Can you talk more practically?
(08:30):
I know a lot of people talk about Prop 13.
They say, oh, it like you're saying it puts the burden on new
growth, it warps the way that weuse land.
But can you talk about that practically from a city
perspective in case someone maybe doesn't know the issue is
intimately or what that practically?
Is Prop. 13 does two things which are very beneficial to
homeowners but but warp the way cities approach their fiscal
(08:54):
affairs? Most people know this may not be
your property tax is capped at 1% of your assessed value.
And the second one is that you are not reassessed except on
sale. Both of these things are very
unusual nationwide. No other state has anything.
I mean, they, I was going to sayno, the state has anything
remotely close to this. That's not true.
(09:15):
Other states have things that are remotely close to this.
Not every state has things that are that are much like this.
So what that means is that new development, particularly if you
have impact fees, gives you kindof a a hit of new property tax
(09:35):
revenue. And then over time the property
tax revenue declines in buying power and your costs increase.
And sooner or later, every subdivision almost loses money,
even if he makes money at the beginning.
But unregulated under Prop 13 oranything else is the use of the
(09:55):
local share of sales tax. Every local government gets.
We pay the underlying sales tax is 7 and a quarter percent, 1%
of that is returned to the jurisdiction of where the sales
transaction occurs. I'll get to Amazon in a minute.
So what that meant in the post Prop 13 euro was that as
(10:17):
property tax became less important, there became
tremendous battles between neighboring cities, often over
businesses that generate a lot of retail sales and therefore a
lot of sales tax. Auto dealerships, big box
stores, up until recently regional malls.
And in the Reluctant Metropolis,which I wrote in the 90s, I
(10:41):
wrote about what I called sales tax Canyon was, which was the
linear area along 101 in VenturaCounty, where essentially
Camarillo, Oxnard and Ventura, we're all battling each other
for these sales tax producers. And more recently, obviously
some of the traditionally powerful sales tax producers,
(11:03):
especially regional malls have declined.
But now the, the way the, the sales tax distribution works is
that a, a, a, a warehouse, like an Amazon warehouse, for
example, is considered to be thepoint of sale.
And so therefore the latest battle is over Amazon
warehouses. And there was a, you've seen
(11:25):
lots of stories in the media about, you know, some city in
the Central Valley that has an Amazon warehouse that's right
next to a city that doesn't. And one is well funded and
relatively prosperous, at least in terms of the, the city's
fiscal affairs. And the other one is not, but
essentially, and, and this, thisoccurs everywhere to some
(11:46):
extent, but because of prompt 13, it is more accentuated in
California. Your your ability to raise to
raise revenue off of property tax is limited and it's mostly
out of your control. So, but your ability to raise
revenue off of sales tax is not limited, is limited only by your
(12:06):
ability to attract retail sales producers.
Yeah, no, the point on on warehouses is relevant for the
area. I grew up in the Inland Empire,
which is kind of the the warehouse hub of Southern
California. One of my friends, one of my
friend's dad's works for the city of Ontario, which has a lot
of these massive warehouses. And he was just talking about
(12:28):
how well funded the city is. Because whether it's QVC or all
these other companies, they havetheir point of sale in the city
and so they generate this disproportionate amount of sales
tax. Even though City side, even
though for a variety of other reasons, there is no push back
against warehouses in the InlandEmpire in particular.
Yeah, there's almost like this mini anti growth and anti growth
(12:50):
cycle that mirrors the broader California experience taking
taking place out there. So let's before we get to into
the weeds on on, I could ask a lot of the different policy
specific questions, but I want to talk about kind of the step
back at a bigger picture, the conception of Southern
California as a region, the premise of that book, the relic
(13:11):
to metropolis. It's all these far-flung suburbs
and exurbs that define themselves, you know, in
opposition to Los Angeles, yet inevitably are part of this
broader this broader place. How do you feel like now 20 plus
years later, since the writing of the book?
Do you feel like that's shifted?I know whether it's, you know,
(13:31):
the development of of transit and some of these other
initiatives that some people have argued that LA and Southern
California has more of a regional identity relative to 30
years ago. Or do you feel like that's not
true at all? How do you how do you think
retrospectively? I still think people's
perception of where they live and what they identify with is
atomized. I don't think that people in
(13:53):
Ventura County think they're part of Lai don't think people
of Orange County think they're part of LA.
I'm sure people in Redondo Beachdon't think they're part of LA,
but what has changed is a generational acceptance that
that Southern California is a more urban place.
(14:13):
What I wrote about in the growthin the Reluctant Metropolis,
which is essentially a chronicleof growth that wars of in the
80s and 90s in in LA, in Southern California.
What I wrote about there was I when I was really chronicling
was the death of the post war suburban development of Southern
(14:36):
California. As the region began to run out
of land, as the as the freeways became more congested, it became
harder and harder to argue that it was not large metropolis.
Also I will say in the 80s, it was really not until the 80s
that Los Angeles itself became really viewed worldwide as a
(15:00):
world city. A lot of that had to do with the
Olympics, but I remember in the 80s there was a cover story in
the Atlantic called The Big Orange, you know, and things
like that. So I think people your age, and
in a certain way, reading The Reluctant Metropolis must be a
(15:22):
surreal experience for you because it sort of explains the
world you grew up in. I've talked to other people like
that. Yeah, but for people, for the
people your age, the idea that Southern California is crowded
and urban is not a foreign idea for your in your grandparents
generation, the generation that may have come here after World
War 2, that was a very foreign idea.
(15:44):
And, and, and it and, and it was.
And part of the point of living in Southern California was that
you were not living in a traditional urban, urban area.
But I think I think the perception of people your age
has changed a lot, which is partof the reason why we have this
intergenerational YIMBY versus NIMBY battle, right?
Now, it's very true on the generational point, my great
(16:05):
grandfather moved to Upland, where I grew up to grow oranges
during the Depression. And so my grandpa described as a
child there being only five points where they had to stop
the car between Upland and the 40 miles to downtown Los
Angeles. There's only, you know, five
stop crossways where they had tostop.
Obviously the thought of only stopping the car five times is
absurd to anyone growing up in my age.
(16:27):
Yeah. And 15 to 20 years ago when I
was doing 15 years ago, let's call it when I was doing general
plans, I did that. I was the principal in charge of
the general plan and the downtown specific plan for
output and. Really.
And there were at that time, say2010, twenty O 9, there were
(16:48):
still a lot of people of that generation around.
And they just, you know, they were horrified that the orange
Groves had gone away and they just didn't want anything to
ever change ever again still. And so you.
So that really was that suburbanideal.
That suburban semi agricultural ideal really was a both a pre
(17:11):
and a post war Southern California ideal that just has
been overtaken I think by eventsand reality since then.
Yeah, well, I, I could go on andon.
I don't want to, you know, bore people with, with the
intricacies of, of upland land use because I, I can talk about
that forever. But let's zoom out and think
about the broader state because obviously, like you were saying,
there's this intergenerational energized movement around EMB
(17:34):
ISM. And every single year it feels
like they're climbing higher andhigher.
And earlier, one of my first interviews was with the one of
the directors of advocacy and research for, for California
EMB. How do you feel like, I feel
like in your writing, you've taken a, a moderate stance of,
of state versus local control. You know, so much of the recent
(17:55):
EMB victories are premised on the concept of we're just going
to override local control. The state is going to, in some
form or fashion, whether it's, you know, through regional
planning processes or just by right, you know, we're going to
remove a lot of the restrictionsand tools that people have used
traditionally at the municipal level to stop growth.
Do you think there's ever a point where you can overdo it as
(18:18):
a state and, and get too top down?
Or how do you think about that dynamic and and what a path
forward is? I think the path forward is
probably a little more nuanced than than the MBS and the
housing advocates in California believe, because I think I'm not
(18:39):
the kind of person who believes that the state should have no
control over land use. Obviously something has gone
wrong and and it has to be corrected.
And part of the problem is the is the reluctance of local
governments to entitle housing projects, right?
So that has to be corrected somehow or other.
(19:02):
So I don't dispute that. What concerns me is that it goes
like this. Every year the legislature
passes more and more bills essentially overriding local
control. Our poor local planners in this
state cannot keep up with all those changes.
(19:23):
These planning departments are not well funded enough for them
to, to, to understand and groundthemselves in what's really
going on. The other thing that really
strikes me is that even though we've passed starting nine years
ago in 2016, we've passed all these laws, hundreds of laws,
with the exception of AD U.S. housing production has not gone
(19:46):
up. So what that tells me and, and
interestingly enough, if you look at the transit Orient
communities in ED1 in LA, most of the, if I'm not mistaken,
this is an anecdotal impression I have.
I hope it's right. Most of the projects that have
been approved under those programs have not been built.
(20:06):
So there's something else going on besides entitlements, right?
And I think it's time. If, if I could wave a magic
wand, I would say it's time for the state to do 2 things.
One is take a step back and figure out OK.
On this entitlement reform what's really working and what's
simply not working and focus on and refine what's working and
(20:26):
forget about the rest of it and then try to figure out, OK, what
are the post entitlement impediments to develop to actual
construction. And there are a lot of them,
interest rates, which the state can't do much about, the cost of
the cost of construction materials, the general lack of
(20:47):
construction labor, which I think the state can do something
about. It has not done enough about.
I think the state, I think the state should be, you know,
they're clearly not enough construction workers.
I will say as well from my experience, and I often say
this, there are not enough planners or developers either.
I can, I can tell you, and again, this is a somewhat
anecdotal, anecdotal impression,but a large number of planners
(21:10):
and developers left the field inCalifornia during the Great
Recession and have never come back.
And then. And the number of planners and
developers in California today, I think is not what it was in
2008. So the capacity of the system to
do all this is much more limitedthan it used to be.
And I think the state has to figure out how to encourage how
(21:35):
to how to encourage post entitlement action.
An obvious thing for the state to do would be to work with with
the carpenters union and others to really ramp up apprenticeship
programs and and so forth. Another thing that I've come to
realize recently, which is not aCalifornia specific problem is
(21:57):
construction. Construction techniques and
supply chain systems in the construction industry are are
ancient and probably need to be dramatically revised and
updated. We still build, we still build
houses and provide housing, building supplies to
construction sites now the same pretty much the same way we did
(22:21):
when I was born. And and so there are a lot of
post entitlement things that have to happen.
The legislature seems to be entirely focused on entitlement
because that's something they can easily control and that is
part of the problem. But I think we've gotten to the
point where we've had we we've passed hundreds of bills.
(22:42):
Production hasn't really gone upwith the exception of AD us.
And so I think it's time to takea look at what else is wrong
with this system. I want to.
Ask you about the politics of growth.
You mentioned the carpenters union and so many people I
talked to when it comes to statepolitics feel frustration to
varying degrees at which they'rewilling to speak about it
(23:03):
publicly. But the role of, of unions in
negotiating and and scoping someof the bills, whether it's
requiring prevailing wage and just stepping back without
wading into the politics of today.
I find that really interesting because if you look at the,
let's say like the Pat Brown era, post war California growth
machine, unions were a key pillar of that because more
(23:24):
growth, more opportunity, you know, was aligned with their
interests. But it seems that with the
exceptions of some of the carpenters unions today, those
alignments have really shifted fundamentally.
How do you make sense of that? I think that's hard to make
sense of. Of course, in the post war era,
not most but a large percentage of the workforce was unionized
(23:48):
and we were in a completely as the tariff battle reminds us
everyday we were in a completelydifferent competitive situation
with the rest of the world. We dominated we dominated the
the world economy, which we don't today.
So I think what both public and private unions today are sort of
playing defense all the time, right?
(24:08):
You can see that prevailing wage.
So prevailing wage is put into alot of this housing reform
because, because it's an end runaround sequa and the unions use
sequa to to blackmail developersto get PL. as and other pro
union things. You take that away from them.
(24:29):
They have to have something else.
And so that's why you you have prevailing wage.
There might be, there has been some discussion about a
residential prevailing wage thatmight be lower, right?
I think something has to give there.
And the unions themselves are not always in alignment with
each other. My experience has been that the
(24:52):
trades are pretty recalcitrant, whereas the carpenters union is
much more willing to play ball. You would think for example,
that factory built housing wouldbe part of the solution, right?
Because. It's last week.
I just interviewed someone who, or I guess it'll be two weeks
before this episode, someone who's doing kind of innovative
(25:14):
new factory built housing model.Right.
You would think that that would be part of the solution.
The unions are split on that, right.
So I do think that part of the issue is the unions take a
somewhat narrow perspective, right?
Understandably, they are representing their members, but
(25:38):
you know, world where most people are not union members and
where people who are not union members who attempt to buy or
rent houses have to bear the higher cost.
I think that raises some questions about what's the best
way to approach the situation. I think it is, and we're so much
more polarized as a society around issues like labor issues
(26:01):
that I think that becomes very difficult to resolve.
I I do think one of the things I've seen in my career is the
increase in the use of sequel bythe unions and similar to the
use of sequel by Nimbys to simply stop projects.
I guess. It seems to me it'd be a use of
(26:22):
sequel that is probably not in the original spirit of the law.
I'll put it that way. Well, let's let's touch on
sequel before we move on. Is, you know, it's it's a hot
topic right now. It's kind of considered this
third rail for a long time. Like you can't touch sequel?
You can't change it. And now this year the governor
coming out and saying, hey, it'spart of my budget, I'm going to
include these two bills from Senator Weiner and Assembly
Member Wicks that would essentially, you know, simplify
(26:44):
the streamlining and or eliminating sequa for large
multifamily infill. So building large units in
existing cities. How does that shock you?
I know you've written about the topic and the need to reform
sequel over the years. No, it's, it's, it doesn't
surprise me. It's it's been a movement.
Once you took the unions out of the picture with prevailing
(27:06):
wage, the opposition, the opposition diminishes.
I will say the frustration that I've seen is when the
legislature doesn't do anything about sequa except when it one
particular project becomes a bigissue and then they and then
(27:27):
they punch a hole in sequa. I've called that Swiss cheese
Sequa right. So when when the state lost two
court cases about the expansion that the new capital Annex 2
Sequa court cases and John Lairdof all people, a real very
reliable Liberal Democrat from Santa Cruz takes charge and
(27:49):
says, well, we must exempt Sequa.
We must exempt this project fromSequa because it's costing the
state $5,000,000 a month to not build this.
You know, you think, well, what's different about what's
different about the the capital annex from every housing project
in the state, right? Every developer is screaming at
their at their TV or or computeror whatever like that.
(28:10):
We've been saying this for decades, yeah.
Right, right. And I guess my attitude about
Sequa is you should protect the environment.
You should ensure that people have a say.
But, but is this really the way to do it?
It's a kind of it, it's kind of an outdated way to do things at
this point, in my opinion. Doesn't mean you shouldn't
(28:32):
protect and the environment doesn't mean you shouldn't have
a give people a say. What's happened in San Diego,
where I live now, is the city has moved a lot of the Sequa
analysis and the public debate up to the plan level.
And if a project conforms to theplan, it's ministerial in, it's
ministerial in approval. And you know, that's hard for a
(28:52):
lot of long time activists to deal with because it's not what
they're used to. But I've always said, and other
SQL experts coming back to the 90s have always said that that
is preferable to have that debate at the plan level and
then just projects get filled afterwards.
It's a little bit. Every single plan.
Right. Every single project, it's a
little bit complicated by the fact that the state has so many
(29:18):
density bonuses and so forth. So it's a little difficult to
know what's actually going to emerge from the plan, because
what can get built could be muchbigger, right?
So. That's something that's
currently has my neighborhood a buzz is AED one project.
I live in West LA and near Sawtell Stoner Park and an Ed
(29:38):
one project that got approved and then all they stacked all
the density bonuses on as any developer would.
And so it's, you know, an 88 story unit without parking that
has some of my neighbors in a tizzy and showing up at the the
park across the street. From now, I think, I think
that's one of the things that makes today trying to sequelize
the plan level is that the ultimate outcome with all the
(30:01):
bonuses and stuff is a little hard to predict.
Well, you know, we might have lost anyone who wasn't into
intricacies of land use law by this point in the conversation.
But I want to zoom out. I know you spent some some
significant time in Houston thinking about it.
What are the lessons from Houston?
It gets held up as this alternative, you know, non
zoning paradise for Yumby's. But what are the practical
(30:21):
lessons that you learned comparing Houston to the cities
that you lived in in Southern California?
You know, it's interesting. I moved to Houston in 2014, and
at that time, Houston was generally viewed by most
urbanists as a laughingstock that wasn't to be taken
seriously. And by the time I left in 2023,
was being held up as a model of a regulation light that allows
(30:43):
development to. Maybe because you were there,
Bill. I don't know the correlation.
I don't think there were that was a correlation, but not a
causation. My experience in Houston tells
me that truth. A couple of things about when
you when the market dominates asopposed to the regulation 1 is
(31:05):
that good things and bad things things happen really fast.
Good things happen really fast and bad things happen really
fast. The other is that just because
there's light regulation doesn'tmean developers are going to
build all different kinds of housing in, you know, at all
(31:25):
different price points. What what developers in Houston
know how to build are fairly expensive townhomes in the
center and which I lived in one 5 / 1 fairly expensive
apartments, which I also lived in one more than one and and
suburb and relatively inexpensive suburban homes with
(31:47):
the fringe. That's what they know how to
build. So that's what they build and
they build it and build it and build it and build it.
That may or may not be what the market what the what people,
it's what the market. It's what they know how to build
and they know there's a market for what's I think what's
missing is more different housing types for more different
(32:09):
people at more different price points because that's just not
what builders build. Remember, developers and
builders usually have particularproduct types they specialize in
that they that they know how to build and they just want to
build that over and over and over and over again.
The other thing I found was manyof the big multi family
(32:32):
developers that are active in California are based in Houston.
Camden is based in Houston, Hanover is based in Houston.
Others and what they always toldme off the record was, yeah, we
do our worst work in Houston and, and I said, why would you
do your worst work in your hometown?
They said because nobody's forcing us to do anything
better. We know when we go to LA we got
to up our game, but in Houston we know we can just build the
(32:56):
basic stuff and get away with it.
So I think there's a lot of prosand cons.
I think there are some lessons from Houston.
Houston was not by any means a completely free market.
There was a lot of parking requirements, a lot of set back
requirements. But I think that there's a lot
of pro lessons, pro and con about, about a market oriented
(33:18):
approach. And I I think in California, a
somewhat more market oriented approach, learning some lessons
from Houston is probably a good thing.
What is the world or what do cities look like in the next
generation after sprawl? It seems like in Southern
California, to oversimplify, youknow, we had Spanish ranches
(33:39):
that then became farms and that then became like the sprawling
subdivisions. And I know you've thought a lot
about this question, but are there models that Southern
California, Houston or other sprawling Sunbelt or Southern
American cities can look to as examples of what an evolution
looks like for the city that works a little better and is a
(33:59):
little bit more affordable? That's a good question.
I think that you're going to see, first of all, sprawl won't
stop completely. And particularly in a world
where some people do not have tocommute or do not have to
commute very often, you're goingto see more sprawl.
You'll see more development in the Antelope Valley.
(34:20):
You'll see more, you'll see moredevelopment in Banning and
Beaumont. I used to think of Moreno Valley
as kind of the kind of the kind of the outer limit, right.
But now you see a lot of development in, in through the,
the other side of the pass in Beaumont and Banning.
So you're going to see that to acertain extent.
I think you're also going to see, I always think of, I always
(34:44):
think of the typical Southern California suburban HOA
subdivision as kind of a petrified forest, right, or or
freeze dried subdivision that, you know, it's, it's basically
impossible to change anything. So but I do think what you're
gonna see in those places because the state has overridden
(35:05):
the locals and the HOAS is you're gonna see a lot of AD us.
I think that's probably in the, in the existing suburban
communities, that's the biggest change you're going to see.
And not all of them will be on the market as rental housing.
A lot of them will be housing for extended families.
A lot of them would be just extra essentially in addition to
your house, extra extra space touse as an office or whatever.
(35:27):
And then in the, and then you'regoing to see, as we already see
intense infill residential development in, in, in places
where you can make a pencil suchas West LA.
So I think you see all of the above going on.
What that adds up to other than a much more urban, slightly more
(35:53):
sprawling, but significantly more dense, still mostly auto
oriented region. I, I think that's what it is.
My view about the, about the LA light rail system, which is now
gigantic but pretty slow, is that a hundred, 100 years from
(36:14):
now, it's going to be viewed as a fabulous investment.
In the meantime, you know, most people don't live near stations.
And so and so I think it will have it.
It will not blossom in the next 10 or 20 years as much as
everybody hoped. But in 50 or 100, I think it
saves the region to be honest with you.
(36:37):
I agree on the light rail. I live near an Expo, the Expo
line station in West LA, and it's just changed my
relationship to downtown and therest of the city that other
parts that feel impenetrable during those peak traffic hours
now are are more accessible. If you can, if you can access
it, it's tremendously valuable. I live, I live in downtown San
Diego. I go to the campus a lot.
(36:59):
The the any other way of gettingto the campus is a big pain in
the neck, but you can take the light rail and it drops you off
right? Actually literally right next to
the building that my office is in.
So it can, if you can access it,it can completely change your
relationship to the city. But but most people, that is not
(37:20):
the case for most people. Switching gears a little bit,
how much do you think about demographics in the future of
cities in California? It's just the future of
California itself. So there's this broader
conversation around slowing birth rates.
And then in California, particularly if you don't
already own a home or have family who's already owned a
(37:42):
home, like figuring out how to start a family and live here.
Or, you know, there's already been a lot of documentation of
the working class leaving and people who can't afford to stay.
How do you think this will shapethe future of the state?
Going forward, well, I think I, I've said this before and I've
written about it. I wrote about this in Slate.
California's going to become more like a place like New York
(38:04):
where people with big dreams andbig aspirations will move here
no matter what the, no matter the, the financial, you know,
financial barriers. But most of the people who live
here are going to be people whose families live here and who
grew up here, and that it fundamentally changes things.
(38:29):
And a lot of those people, of course, are leaving.
So I think #1 California is never going to have spectacular
population growth again, at least not in my lifetime.
And I'm, I think probably not inyours.
We're just going to have to get used to the idea that
California's population grows slowly, if at all.
(38:49):
And then we, and then we have to, as I've written about in the
LA Times, we have to untether ourselves from the idea that,
that that new growth will pay for everything, right?
Because because there won't be that much of it.
And we can't bail our, we can't bail ourselves out with it.
And and finally, you wonder the other similarity to New York is,
(39:12):
and I think this is already happening to a certain extent,
people who are from here, whose families are here and want to
stay here, begin to get accustomed to a different
lifestyle. Either they commute extremely
long distances or, or, or they live in smaller living spaces
like they do in Tokyo, like theydo in New York, like they do,
you know, do in other major worlds like they do in San
(39:34):
Francisco, like they do in othermajor world cities.
I think that is going to be the big shift is that, you know, the
era of suburban Los Angeles is over and the era of urban Los
Angeles, where people have less living space if they want to
stay, is except for the very wealthy.
(39:56):
Is is is is. All is well upon us.
I feel like there's weird socialand psychological effects when
you experience that transition in in real time, right When the
city already exists that way andyou move to Tokyo and you know.
People just live in small units.There's no expectation of having
(40:16):
a yard near downtown or anythingof that nature.
People just accept it. That's what the city is.
That's what New York is. But I feel like we're living
through this transition. And for people like myself,
whose parents and grandparents had a certain standard of
living, just knew, oh, well, if you live in the SoCal area and
you have an average wage, you can own a home.
You can own this type of, you know, it's that feeling of, of
(40:38):
loss of, of a relative material well-being I think is very
difficult for a lot of people toto navigate.
It is difficult for a lot of people, but I do think the UNB
generation, such as your generation, is going to have a
different attitude, which is OK.I want to stay in California.
I want to stay in Southern California.
(41:00):
I'd rather live in a town home or a 2A2 bedroom apartment than
in my parents basement or in Phoenix, right yeah.
And and so and so there is an accept or there is AI think a
gradual acceptance generationally of a different of
a different lifestyle. And in order to make that work
(41:20):
the and I know you talked to Rick Cole a while ago and he
would be a big advocate of this too.
In order to make that work, the neighborhood fabric, the
community fabric, the community amenities have to be strong and
they have to be rewarding to people so that what what they
might be losing by not having a backyard, they gain by living in
(41:42):
a, in a, in a very vital neighborhood or community with a
lot of things to do and a lot ofplaces to go.
Yeah, Rick definitely would resonate.
He was talking about, you know, Amish barn raisings and all
types of other community features.
That's that's very Rick. I I didn't know they had any
Amish barn raisings in Pasadena,but.
No, no, not in Pasadena, but as a model of, you know, community
(42:04):
connection. Yeah.
That was a fun conversation speaking with him.
And you're just laying out this vision of of what the future of
SoCal in the state looks like. What gives you hope for the
future of California and what, yeah, gets you most excited
about the future of the state? What gives me hope is that even
the people who are leaving stillwant to live here.
(42:26):
And you know, somebody, somebodythe other day quoted Ronald
Reagan a quote. I'd never heard of that If the
pilgrims had landed in California, they never would
have bothered to discover the rest of the country.
You know that that people want to live in California and the
only reason they don't live, themain reason they don't live here
(42:48):
is because housing. So if we can crack that nut to
some extent, then California will continue to be an and, and
we still have an extremely vibrant economy.
So and we are still the world center of innovation and
especially technological innovation.
So if we can even partially crack the housing problem, then
(43:09):
we have a vibrant future. The future will be different
than the past. It'll be more urban.
It'll be more of a hassle for a lot of people, but it will still
be a great place to live if we can make enough houses available
at a reasonable price to enough people.
And that's that gives me hope. As one quick follow on what what
(43:29):
do you think we can reasonably achieve that?
And what does that look like? Like, are we at the worst of the
housing crisis, I guess is what I'm asking.
I think we're actually past, just past the worst the for a
variety of reasons, prices are stagnant now you know you.
And if you're trying to solve this problem, part of the
problem is to make sure that housing prices stagnate while
(43:50):
incomes go up. Other incomes are going to go up
in the next few years is anybody's guess, but we've seen
that happen in the past in California, we saw it happen in
the 90s. Prices stagnated for seven or
eight years, but it was a very prosperous time.
And, and, and so I think that what we see is more housing
(44:10):
constructed or different types of housing constructed.
We've got to find ways to we really, we really are, in the
words of the of the book, stuck.A lot of people just aren't
moving. You have to create more
mobility, but I think that thoseare the kinds of things that we
can move on. What the entitlement problem is
(44:31):
still there, but we've worked onit for a long time.
If we can move on to start to crack the other aspects of this
problem, then we begin to see more, more houses, more types of
houses, different types of houses in the past for more
people who have more opportunityto stay because California is
still a place where people want to live.
Awesome. Well, Bill, thank you so much
(44:52):
for your time. Thank you.
Sure. This.
California is never going to have spectacular population
growth again, at least not in mylifetime.
And I'm, I think probably not inyours.
The big shift is that, you know,the era of suburban Los Angeles
is over. The era of urban Los Angeles,
where people have less living space if they want to stay
except for the very wealthy, is well upon us.
(00:21):
California ended 500,000 people a year for almost 70 years.
I don't know of any industrialized society today has
ever grown that fast for so long.
Somebody the other day quoted Ronald Reagan that if the
Pilgrims had landed in California, they never would
have bothered to discover the rest of the country.
Hello and welcome back to the California Future Society
(00:42):
podcast. This week I spoke with Bill
Fulton. Bill has an incredible wealth of
knowledge. It was a really fun
conversation, and I think you can tell in the first couple
minutes how excited I am to speak with him as someone who
I've read for a long time. So the chance to interview him
and ask him questions about his work was just a lot of fun for
me. And I think there's also a lot
of practical insights, whether you're someone who just cares
about the future of the housing crisis, if you're just someone
(01:03):
who is very into the weeds on urban planning and local policy,
and then what that looks like and where these different laws
came from. Or if you're someone who just
thinks about how LA might evolveand how it compares to cities
like Houston, where Bill worked and how it shapes the future of
the state. So it was a lot of fun in the
conversation. I hope you enjoy it too.
As always, you can subscribe wherever you're hearing this or
(01:25):
at California futuresociety.com.Here's Bill.
Well, Bill, I'm really excited to talk to you today.
I have you with me, your book, The Reluctant Metropolis.
This book personally means a lotto me.
It was a turning point in my ownthinking, helped clarify and
provide a framework for a lot ofthe issues that California faces
today. So excited to talk to you.
(01:46):
And to start, I know you've worna lot of hats over the years.
Can you give a quick introduction to who you are and
your connection to California? Right.
I've lived in California for most of the last 40 plus years.
I worked at Rice University in Houston for eight or nine years.
In the middle of that, I was on the City Council of Ventura for
(02:07):
a long time. I was the planning director of
San Diego. I went to planning school at
UCLA. I also wrote the standard urban
planning textbook for Californiaguide to California Planning.
So land use and transportation planning in California.
And my my first career was as a journalist.
So researching, writing about and understanding California's
(02:33):
growth patterns has been the thethe major, the major effort of
my life, I guess you might say. Currently I'm a professor of
practice at the Design Lab and in the Department of Urban
Studies and Planning at UC San Diego, and I'm the Co director
of something we just started, the Center for Housing Policy
(02:53):
and Design at UCSD. Well, it's it's part of why I'm
excited to talk to you is it's rare to to talk to someone who
has not only been on both the journalism side of it as well as
some of the more, you know, likethe planning professional side
of it, as well as all the different roles between academia
and actually being in City Council as a mayor, you know,
having these different roles allacross Southern California.
(03:15):
That's a pretty rare combination.
And I think that's part of what made your book so compelling to
me was the first time I read it was not just it's readability.
You know, there's a lot of wonkyreading and writing about land
use and planning, but you know, it is is fueled by human
emotions, human stories. It captured the the
personalities at play. And so I want to start, you
(03:36):
know, we're not only going to talk about this book, but I want
to start here in particular. There's a passage in the intro
as I was reviewing it before this, and I'll jump around a
little bit in it. But you say so it's not so
surprising that when Los Angelesfinally grew so vast has to be
unfathomable even to those who live there.
When the gap between the illusion of a spacious suburban
lifestyle and the daily reality of a massive metropolis could no
(03:59):
longer be papered over with dreams, the growth machine began
to collapse under its own weight.
And then, skipping ahead a little bit, in short, the
formula that had built Los Angeles so quickly no longer
worked. And the reason I want to start
there and ask you what you were thinking about and how that
motivated the book is because today I think people in my
(04:19):
generation and just a lot of people who maybe haven't been
following these issues as closely are wondering how do we
get here? How do we get to a state, to a
region, to a political system where we're so resistant to
growth and there's so many barriers and policy barriers to
growth. Can you talk to that and how
that emerged and and where that came from and why we ended up
where we are today? Most of that goes back to the
(04:42):
crazy growth years of the post war era from, well you know,
from I would say from the end ofthe Great Recession to the
beginning. I'm sorry, from the end of the
Great Depression to the beginning of the Great
Recession, California ended 500,000 people a year for almost
70 years. I don't know of any
industrialized society that has that has ever grown that fast
(05:06):
for so long starting. So this is ancient history, I
realize, but starting in the late 50s there began to be
resistance to this dramatic growth.
There was in about 1958, in 1959was when San Franciscans
successfully challenged the completion of the Embarcadero
Freeway. That was really the first anti
(05:28):
growth movement ever. There was a, there was a report
done about that time called California going Going gone.
And between the late 50s and theearly 70s there was a growing
consensus that growth was out ofcontrol and it had to be reined
in. There were a couple of other
(05:51):
things that played into that. One was the rise of the
environmental movement and the general approach to
Environmental Protection that wesee in the California
Environmental Quality Act, whichsort of begins with the
assumption that the status quo is better than any possible
change. That was one thing.
And then the other thing was California's peculiar governance
(06:16):
structure in two ways. One was in the 70s in
particular, it became a bunch ofcourt cases came down that made
it clear that the initiative andreferendum process was just as
powerful at the local level as at the state level.
And you could change land use policy at the ballot box.
And the other one was that Sequain particular made access to the
(06:39):
courts for practically anybody really, really easy.
So one of the things that did was that made I'll, there's
another aspect I'll talk about in a minute.
But one of the, but one of the things that did was it made it
easy for what we now call limbies or people who are were
resistant to or skeptical of growth to reject political
(07:02):
compromise and either go to court and go to the ballot where
either they'd win or they'd go down in flames without
compromising and feel really, feel really righteous about it.
The other thing that happened was the passage of Prop 13 in
the late 70s, which introduced this whole concept that new
(07:27):
growth should not have any fiscal consequences at all for
the people who already live in California, no matter whether
their own growth had had burdened others.
And that this has led to specialtaxes and impact fees and all
kinds of burdens on new development that that older,
(07:47):
that older homeowners do not bear.
But, but it was this, but it wasthis concept that it was a, it
was a concept that growth is bad.
Any change is bad and and therefore all social,
environmental and and fiscal costs should be borne by new
development, if we allow it at all.
(08:09):
I wanna. Get back to the mechanisms that
NIMBY's use and all those changes that you mentioned in
sequel. But while we're on this topic of
Prop 13, I think of the chapter in your book anytime I drive to
visit my family in the Central Coast.
I grew up in the Inland Empire, but I've siblings in Santa
Barbara, Ventura and your description of sales tax Canyon
along the 101. Can you talk more practically?
(08:30):
I know a lot of people talk about Prop 13.
They say, oh, it like you're saying it puts the burden on new
growth, it warps the way that weuse land.
But can you talk about that practically from a city
perspective in case someone maybe doesn't know the issue is
intimately or what that practically?
Is Prop. 13 does two things which are very beneficial to
homeowners but but warp the way cities approach their fiscal
(08:54):
affairs? Most people know this may not be
your property tax is capped at 1% of your assessed value.
And the second one is that you are not reassessed except on
sale. Both of these things are very
unusual nationwide. No other state has anything.
I mean, they, I was going to sayno, the state has anything
remotely close to this. That's not true.
(09:15):
Other states have things that are remotely close to this.
Not every state has things that are that are much like this.
So what that means is that new development, particularly if you
have impact fees, gives you kindof a a hit of new property tax
(09:35):
revenue. And then over time the property
tax revenue declines in buying power and your costs increase.
And sooner or later, every subdivision almost loses money,
even if he makes money at the beginning.
But unregulated under Prop 13 oranything else is the use of the
(09:55):
local share of sales tax. Every local government gets.
We pay the underlying sales tax is 7 and a quarter percent, 1%
of that is returned to the jurisdiction of where the sales
transaction occurs. I'll get to Amazon in a minute.
So what that meant in the post Prop 13 euro was that as
(10:17):
property tax became less important, there became
tremendous battles between neighboring cities, often over
businesses that generate a lot of retail sales and therefore a
lot of sales tax. Auto dealerships, big box
stores, up until recently regional malls.
And in the Reluctant Metropolis,which I wrote in the 90s, I
(10:41):
wrote about what I called sales tax Canyon was, which was the
linear area along 101 in VenturaCounty, where essentially
Camarillo, Oxnard and Ventura, we're all battling each other
for these sales tax producers. And more recently, obviously
some of the traditionally powerful sales tax producers,
(11:03):
especially regional malls have declined.
But now the, the way the, the sales tax distribution works is
that a, a, a, a warehouse, like an Amazon warehouse, for
example, is considered to be thepoint of sale.
And so therefore the latest battle is over Amazon
warehouses. And there was a, you've seen
(11:25):
lots of stories in the media about, you know, some city in
the Central Valley that has an Amazon warehouse that's right
next to a city that doesn't. And one is well funded and
relatively prosperous, at least in terms of the, the city's
fiscal affairs. And the other one is not, but
essentially, and, and this, thisoccurs everywhere to some
(11:46):
extent, but because of prompt 13, it is more accentuated in
California. Your your ability to raise to
raise revenue off of property tax is limited and it's mostly
out of your control. So, but your ability to raise
revenue off of sales tax is not limited, is limited only by your
(12:06):
ability to attract retail sales producers.
Yeah, no, the point on on warehouses is relevant for the
area. I grew up in the Inland Empire,
which is kind of the the warehouse hub of Southern
California. One of my friends, one of my
friend's dad's works for the city of Ontario, which has a lot
of these massive warehouses. And he was just talking about
(12:28):
how well funded the city is. Because whether it's QVC or all
these other companies, they havetheir point of sale in the city
and so they generate this disproportionate amount of sales
tax. Even though City side, even
though for a variety of other reasons, there is no push back
against warehouses in the InlandEmpire in particular.
Yeah, there's almost like this mini anti growth and anti growth
(12:50):
cycle that mirrors the broader California experience taking
taking place out there. So let's before we get to into
the weeds on on, I could ask a lot of the different policy
specific questions, but I want to talk about kind of the step
back at a bigger picture, the conception of Southern
California as a region, the premise of that book, the relic
(13:11):
to metropolis. It's all these far-flung suburbs
and exurbs that define themselves, you know, in
opposition to Los Angeles, yet inevitably are part of this
broader this broader place. How do you feel like now 20 plus
years later, since the writing of the book?
Do you feel like that's shifted?I know whether it's, you know,
(13:31):
the development of of transit and some of these other
initiatives that some people have argued that LA and Southern
California has more of a regional identity relative to 30
years ago. Or do you feel like that's not
true at all? How do you how do you think
retrospectively? I still think people's
perception of where they live and what they identify with is
atomized. I don't think that people in
(13:53):
Ventura County think they're part of Lai don't think people
of Orange County think they're part of LA.
I'm sure people in Redondo Beachdon't think they're part of LA,
but what has changed is a generational acceptance that
that Southern California is a more urban place.
(14:13):
What I wrote about in the growthin the Reluctant Metropolis,
which is essentially a chronicleof growth that wars of in the
80s and 90s in in LA, in Southern California.
What I wrote about there was I when I was really chronicling
was the death of the post war suburban development of Southern
(14:36):
California. As the region began to run out
of land, as the as the freeways became more congested, it became
harder and harder to argue that it was not large metropolis.
Also I will say in the 80s, it was really not until the 80s
that Los Angeles itself became really viewed worldwide as a
(15:00):
world city. A lot of that had to do with the
Olympics, but I remember in the 80s there was a cover story in
the Atlantic called The Big Orange, you know, and things
like that. So I think people your age, and
in a certain way, reading The Reluctant Metropolis must be a
(15:22):
surreal experience for you because it sort of explains the
world you grew up in. I've talked to other people like
that. Yeah, but for people, for the
people your age, the idea that Southern California is crowded
and urban is not a foreign idea for your in your grandparents
generation, the generation that may have come here after World
War 2, that was a very foreign idea.
(15:44):
And, and, and it and, and it was.
And part of the point of living in Southern California was that
you were not living in a traditional urban, urban area.
But I think I think the perception of people your age
has changed a lot, which is partof the reason why we have this
intergenerational YIMBY versus NIMBY battle, right?
Now, it's very true on the generational point, my great
(16:05):
grandfather moved to Upland, where I grew up to grow oranges
during the Depression. And so my grandpa described as a
child there being only five points where they had to stop
the car between Upland and the 40 miles to downtown Los
Angeles. There's only, you know, five
stop crossways where they had tostop.
Obviously the thought of only stopping the car five times is
absurd to anyone growing up in my age.
(16:27):
Yeah. And 15 to 20 years ago when I
was doing 15 years ago, let's call it when I was doing general
plans, I did that. I was the principal in charge of
the general plan and the downtown specific plan for
output and. Really.
And there were at that time, say2010, twenty O 9, there were
(16:48):
still a lot of people of that generation around.
And they just, you know, they were horrified that the orange
Groves had gone away and they just didn't want anything to
ever change ever again still. And so you.
So that really was that suburbanideal.
That suburban semi agricultural ideal really was a both a pre
(17:11):
and a post war Southern California ideal that just has
been overtaken I think by eventsand reality since then.
Yeah, well, I, I could go on andon.
I don't want to, you know, bore people with, with the
intricacies of, of upland land use because I, I can talk about
that forever. But let's zoom out and think
about the broader state because obviously, like you were saying,
there's this intergenerational energized movement around EMB
(17:34):
ISM. And every single year it feels
like they're climbing higher andhigher.
And earlier, one of my first interviews was with the one of
the directors of advocacy and research for, for California
EMB. How do you feel like, I feel
like in your writing, you've taken a, a moderate stance of,
of state versus local control. You know, so much of the recent
(17:55):
EMB victories are premised on the concept of we're just going
to override local control. The state is going to, in some
form or fashion, whether it's, you know, through regional
planning processes or just by right, you know, we're going to
remove a lot of the restrictionsand tools that people have used
traditionally at the municipal level to stop growth.
Do you think there's ever a point where you can overdo it as
(18:18):
a state and, and get too top down?
Or how do you think about that dynamic and and what a path
forward is? I think the path forward is
probably a little more nuanced than than the MBS and the
housing advocates in California believe, because I think I'm not
(18:39):
the kind of person who believes that the state should have no
control over land use. Obviously something has gone
wrong and and it has to be corrected.
And part of the problem is the is the reluctance of local
governments to entitle housing projects, right?
So that has to be corrected somehow or other.
(19:02):
So I don't dispute that. What concerns me is that it goes
like this. Every year the legislature
passes more and more bills essentially overriding local
control. Our poor local planners in this
state cannot keep up with all those changes.
(19:23):
These planning departments are not well funded enough for them
to, to, to understand and groundthemselves in what's really
going on. The other thing that really
strikes me is that even though we've passed starting nine years
ago in 2016, we've passed all these laws, hundreds of laws,
with the exception of AD U.S. housing production has not gone
(19:46):
up. So what that tells me and, and
interestingly enough, if you look at the transit Orient
communities in ED1 in LA, most of the, if I'm not mistaken,
this is an anecdotal impression I have.
I hope it's right. Most of the projects that have
been approved under those programs have not been built.
(20:06):
So there's something else going on besides entitlements, right?
And I think it's time. If, if I could wave a magic
wand, I would say it's time for the state to do 2 things.
One is take a step back and figure out OK.
On this entitlement reform what's really working and what's
simply not working and focus on and refine what's working and
(20:26):
forget about the rest of it and then try to figure out, OK, what
are the post entitlement impediments to develop to actual
construction. And there are a lot of them,
interest rates, which the state can't do much about, the cost of
the cost of construction materials, the general lack of
(20:47):
construction labor, which I think the state can do something
about. It has not done enough about.
I think the state, I think the state should be, you know,
they're clearly not enough construction workers.
I will say as well from my experience, and I often say
this, there are not enough planners or developers either.
I can, I can tell you, and again, this is a somewhat
anecdotal, anecdotal impression,but a large number of planners
(21:10):
and developers left the field inCalifornia during the Great
Recession and have never come back.
And then. And the number of planners and
developers in California today, I think is not what it was in
2008. So the capacity of the system to
do all this is much more limitedthan it used to be.
And I think the state has to figure out how to encourage how
(21:35):
to how to encourage post entitlement action.
An obvious thing for the state to do would be to work with with
the carpenters union and others to really ramp up apprenticeship
programs and and so forth. Another thing that I've come to
realize recently, which is not aCalifornia specific problem is
(21:57):
construction. Construction techniques and
supply chain systems in the construction industry are are
ancient and probably need to be dramatically revised and
updated. We still build, we still build
houses and provide housing, building supplies to
construction sites now the same pretty much the same way we did
(22:21):
when I was born. And and so there are a lot of
post entitlement things that have to happen.
The legislature seems to be entirely focused on entitlement
because that's something they can easily control and that is
part of the problem. But I think we've gotten to the
point where we've had we we've passed hundreds of bills.
(22:42):
Production hasn't really gone upwith the exception of AD us.
And so I think it's time to takea look at what else is wrong
with this system. I want to.
Ask you about the politics of growth.
You mentioned the carpenters union and so many people I
talked to when it comes to statepolitics feel frustration to
varying degrees at which they'rewilling to speak about it
(23:03):
publicly. But the role of, of unions in
negotiating and and scoping someof the bills, whether it's
requiring prevailing wage and just stepping back without
wading into the politics of today.
I find that really interesting because if you look at the,
let's say like the Pat Brown era, post war California growth
machine, unions were a key pillar of that because more
(23:24):
growth, more opportunity, you know, was aligned with their
interests. But it seems that with the
exceptions of some of the carpenters unions today, those
alignments have really shifted fundamentally.
How do you make sense of that? I think that's hard to make
sense of. Of course, in the post war era,
not most but a large percentage of the workforce was unionized
(23:48):
and we were in a completely as the tariff battle reminds us
everyday we were in a completelydifferent competitive situation
with the rest of the world. We dominated we dominated the
the world economy, which we don't today.
So I think what both public and private unions today are sort of
playing defense all the time, right?
(24:08):
You can see that prevailing wage.
So prevailing wage is put into alot of this housing reform
because, because it's an end runaround sequa and the unions use
sequa to to blackmail developersto get PL. as and other pro
union things. You take that away from them.
(24:29):
They have to have something else.
And so that's why you you have prevailing wage.
There might be, there has been some discussion about a
residential prevailing wage thatmight be lower, right?
I think something has to give there.
And the unions themselves are not always in alignment with
each other. My experience has been that the
(24:52):
trades are pretty recalcitrant, whereas the carpenters union is
much more willing to play ball. You would think for example,
that factory built housing wouldbe part of the solution, right?
Because. It's last week.
I just interviewed someone who, or I guess it'll be two weeks
before this episode, someone who's doing kind of innovative
(25:14):
new factory built housing model.Right.
You would think that that would be part of the solution.
The unions are split on that, right.
So I do think that part of the issue is the unions take a
somewhat narrow perspective, right?
Understandably, they are representing their members, but
(25:38):
you know, world where most people are not union members and
where people who are not union members who attempt to buy or
rent houses have to bear the higher cost.
I think that raises some questions about what's the best
way to approach the situation. I think it is, and we're so much
more polarized as a society around issues like labor issues
(26:01):
that I think that becomes very difficult to resolve.
I I do think one of the things I've seen in my career is the
increase in the use of sequel bythe unions and similar to the
use of sequel by Nimbys to simply stop projects.
I guess. It seems to me it'd be a use of
(26:22):
sequel that is probably not in the original spirit of the law.
I'll put it that way. Well, let's let's touch on
sequel before we move on. Is, you know, it's it's a hot
topic right now. It's kind of considered this
third rail for a long time. Like you can't touch sequel?
You can't change it. And now this year the governor
coming out and saying, hey, it'spart of my budget, I'm going to
include these two bills from Senator Weiner and Assembly
Member Wicks that would essentially, you know, simplify
(26:44):
the streamlining and or eliminating sequa for large
multifamily infill. So building large units in
existing cities. How does that shock you?
I know you've written about the topic and the need to reform
sequel over the years. No, it's, it's, it doesn't
surprise me. It's it's been a movement.
Once you took the unions out of the picture with prevailing
(27:06):
wage, the opposition, the opposition diminishes.
I will say the frustration that I've seen is when the
legislature doesn't do anything about sequa except when it one
particular project becomes a bigissue and then they and then
(27:27):
they punch a hole in sequa. I've called that Swiss cheese
Sequa right. So when when the state lost two
court cases about the expansion that the new capital Annex 2
Sequa court cases and John Lairdof all people, a real very
reliable Liberal Democrat from Santa Cruz takes charge and
(27:49):
says, well, we must exempt Sequa.
We must exempt this project fromSequa because it's costing the
state $5,000,000 a month to not build this.
You know, you think, well, what's different about what's
different about the the capital annex from every housing project
in the state, right? Every developer is screaming at
their at their TV or or computeror whatever like that.
(28:10):
We've been saying this for decades, yeah.
Right, right. And I guess my attitude about
Sequa is you should protect the environment.
You should ensure that people have a say.
But, but is this really the way to do it?
It's a kind of it, it's kind of an outdated way to do things at
this point, in my opinion. Doesn't mean you shouldn't
(28:32):
protect and the environment doesn't mean you shouldn't have
a give people a say. What's happened in San Diego,
where I live now, is the city has moved a lot of the Sequa
analysis and the public debate up to the plan level.
And if a project conforms to theplan, it's ministerial in, it's
ministerial in approval. And you know, that's hard for a
(28:52):
lot of long time activists to deal with because it's not what
they're used to. But I've always said, and other
SQL experts coming back to the 90s have always said that that
is preferable to have that debate at the plan level and
then just projects get filled afterwards.
It's a little bit. Every single plan.
Right. Every single project, it's a
little bit complicated by the fact that the state has so many
(29:18):
density bonuses and so forth. So it's a little difficult to
know what's actually going to emerge from the plan, because
what can get built could be muchbigger, right?
So. That's something that's
currently has my neighborhood a buzz is AED one project.
I live in West LA and near Sawtell Stoner Park and an Ed
(29:38):
one project that got approved and then all they stacked all
the density bonuses on as any developer would.
And so it's, you know, an 88 story unit without parking that
has some of my neighbors in a tizzy and showing up at the the
park across the street. From now, I think, I think
that's one of the things that makes today trying to sequelize
the plan level is that the ultimate outcome with all the
(30:01):
bonuses and stuff is a little hard to predict.
Well, you know, we might have lost anyone who wasn't into
intricacies of land use law by this point in the conversation.
But I want to zoom out. I know you spent some some
significant time in Houston thinking about it.
What are the lessons from Houston?
It gets held up as this alternative, you know, non
zoning paradise for Yumby's. But what are the practical
(30:21):
lessons that you learned comparing Houston to the cities
that you lived in in Southern California?
You know, it's interesting. I moved to Houston in 2014, and
at that time, Houston was generally viewed by most
urbanists as a laughingstock that wasn't to be taken
seriously. And by the time I left in 2023,
was being held up as a model of a regulation light that allows
(30:43):
development to. Maybe because you were there,
Bill. I don't know the correlation.
I don't think there were that was a correlation, but not a
causation. My experience in Houston tells
me that truth. A couple of things about when
you when the market dominates asopposed to the regulation 1 is
(31:05):
that good things and bad things things happen really fast.
Good things happen really fast and bad things happen really
fast. The other is that just because
there's light regulation doesn'tmean developers are going to
build all different kinds of housing in, you know, at all
(31:25):
different price points. What what developers in Houston
know how to build are fairly expensive townhomes in the
center and which I lived in one 5 / 1 fairly expensive
apartments, which I also lived in one more than one and and
suburb and relatively inexpensive suburban homes with
(31:47):
the fringe. That's what they know how to
build. So that's what they build and
they build it and build it and build it and build it.
That may or may not be what the market what the what people,
it's what the market. It's what they know how to build
and they know there's a market for what's I think what's
missing is more different housing types for more different
(32:09):
people at more different price points because that's just not
what builders build. Remember, developers and
builders usually have particularproduct types they specialize in
that they that they know how to build and they just want to
build that over and over and over and over again.
The other thing I found was manyof the big multi family
(32:32):
developers that are active in California are based in Houston.
Camden is based in Houston, Hanover is based in Houston.
Others and what they always toldme off the record was, yeah, we
do our worst work in Houston and, and I said, why would you
do your worst work in your hometown?
They said because nobody's forcing us to do anything
better. We know when we go to LA we got
to up our game, but in Houston we know we can just build the
(32:56):
basic stuff and get away with it.
So I think there's a lot of prosand cons.
I think there are some lessons from Houston.
Houston was not by any means a completely free market.
There was a lot of parking requirements, a lot of set back
requirements. But I think that there's a lot
of pro lessons, pro and con about, about a market oriented
(33:18):
approach. And I I think in California, a
somewhat more market oriented approach, learning some lessons
from Houston is probably a good thing.
What is the world or what do cities look like in the next
generation after sprawl? It seems like in Southern
California, to oversimplify, youknow, we had Spanish ranches
(33:39):
that then became farms and that then became like the sprawling
subdivisions. And I know you've thought a lot
about this question, but are there models that Southern
California, Houston or other sprawling Sunbelt or Southern
American cities can look to as examples of what an evolution
looks like for the city that works a little better and is a
(33:59):
little bit more affordable? That's a good question.
I think that you're going to see, first of all, sprawl won't
stop completely. And particularly in a world
where some people do not have tocommute or do not have to
commute very often, you're goingto see more sprawl.
You'll see more development in the Antelope Valley.
(34:20):
You'll see more, you'll see moredevelopment in Banning and
Beaumont. I used to think of Moreno Valley
as kind of the kind of the kind of the outer limit, right.
But now you see a lot of development in, in through the,
the other side of the pass in Beaumont and Banning.
So you're going to see that to acertain extent.
I think you're also going to see, I always think of, I always
(34:44):
think of the typical Southern California suburban HOA
subdivision as kind of a petrified forest, right, or or
freeze dried subdivision that, you know, it's, it's basically
impossible to change anything. So but I do think what you're
gonna see in those places because the state has overridden
(35:05):
the locals and the HOAS is you're gonna see a lot of AD us.
I think that's probably in the, in the existing suburban
communities, that's the biggest change you're going to see.
And not all of them will be on the market as rental housing.
A lot of them will be housing for extended families.
A lot of them would be just extra essentially in addition to
your house, extra extra space touse as an office or whatever.
(35:27):
And then in the, and then you'regoing to see, as we already see
intense infill residential development in, in, in places
where you can make a pencil suchas West LA.
So I think you see all of the above going on.
What that adds up to other than a much more urban, slightly more
(35:53):
sprawling, but significantly more dense, still mostly auto
oriented region. I, I think that's what it is.
My view about the, about the LA light rail system, which is now
gigantic but pretty slow, is that a hundred, 100 years from
(36:14):
now, it's going to be viewed as a fabulous investment.
In the meantime, you know, most people don't live near stations.
And so and so I think it will have it.
It will not blossom in the next 10 or 20 years as much as
everybody hoped. But in 50 or 100, I think it
saves the region to be honest with you.
(36:37):
I agree on the light rail. I live near an Expo, the Expo
line station in West LA, and it's just changed my
relationship to downtown and therest of the city that other
parts that feel impenetrable during those peak traffic hours
now are are more accessible. If you can, if you can access
it, it's tremendously valuable. I live, I live in downtown San
Diego. I go to the campus a lot.
(36:59):
The the any other way of gettingto the campus is a big pain in
the neck, but you can take the light rail and it drops you off
right? Actually literally right next to
the building that my office is in.
So it can, if you can access it,it can completely change your
relationship to the city. But but most people, that is not
(37:20):
the case for most people. Switching gears a little bit,
how much do you think about demographics in the future of
cities in California? It's just the future of
California itself. So there's this broader
conversation around slowing birth rates.
And then in California, particularly if you don't
already own a home or have family who's already owned a
(37:42):
home, like figuring out how to start a family and live here.
Or, you know, there's already been a lot of documentation of
the working class leaving and people who can't afford to stay.
How do you think this will shapethe future of the state?
Going forward, well, I think I, I've said this before and I've
written about it. I wrote about this in Slate.
California's going to become more like a place like New York
(38:04):
where people with big dreams andbig aspirations will move here
no matter what the, no matter the, the financial, you know,
financial barriers. But most of the people who live
here are going to be people whose families live here and who
grew up here, and that it fundamentally changes things.
(38:29):
And a lot of those people, of course, are leaving.
So I think #1 California is never going to have spectacular
population growth again, at least not in my lifetime.
And I'm, I think probably not inyours.
We're just going to have to get used to the idea that
California's population grows slowly, if at all.
(38:49):
And then we, and then we have to, as I've written about in the
LA Times, we have to untether ourselves from the idea that,
that that new growth will pay for everything, right?
Because because there won't be that much of it.
And we can't bail our, we can't bail ourselves out with it.
And and finally, you wonder the other similarity to New York is,
(39:12):
and I think this is already happening to a certain extent,
people who are from here, whose families are here and want to
stay here, begin to get accustomed to a different
lifestyle. Either they commute extremely
long distances or, or, or they live in smaller living spaces
like they do in Tokyo, like theydo in New York, like they do,
you know, do in other major worlds like they do in San
(39:34):
Francisco, like they do in othermajor world cities.
I think that is going to be the big shift is that, you know, the
era of suburban Los Angeles is over and the era of urban Los
Angeles, where people have less living space if they want to
stay, is except for the very wealthy.
(39:56):
Is is is is. All is well upon us.
I feel like there's weird socialand psychological effects when
you experience that transition in in real time, right When the
city already exists that way andyou move to Tokyo and you know.
People just live in small units.There's no expectation of having
(40:16):
a yard near downtown or anythingof that nature.
People just accept it. That's what the city is.
That's what New York is. But I feel like we're living
through this transition. And for people like myself,
whose parents and grandparents had a certain standard of
living, just knew, oh, well, if you live in the SoCal area and
you have an average wage, you can own a home.
You can own this type of, you know, it's that feeling of, of
(40:38):
loss of, of a relative material well-being I think is very
difficult for a lot of people toto navigate.
It is difficult for a lot of people, but I do think the UNB
generation, such as your generation, is going to have a
different attitude, which is OK.I want to stay in California.
I want to stay in Southern California.
(41:00):
I'd rather live in a town home or a 2A2 bedroom apartment than
in my parents basement or in Phoenix, right yeah.
And and so and so there is an accept or there is AI think a
gradual acceptance generationally of a different of
a different lifestyle. And in order to make that work
(41:20):
the and I know you talked to Rick Cole a while ago and he
would be a big advocate of this too.
In order to make that work, the neighborhood fabric, the
community fabric, the community amenities have to be strong and
they have to be rewarding to people so that what what they
might be losing by not having a backyard, they gain by living in
(41:42):
a, in a, in a very vital neighborhood or community with a
lot of things to do and a lot ofplaces to go.
Yeah, Rick definitely would resonate.
He was talking about, you know, Amish barn raisings and all
types of other community features.
That's that's very Rick. I I didn't know they had any
Amish barn raisings in Pasadena,but.
No, no, not in Pasadena, but as a model of, you know, community
(42:04):
connection. Yeah.
That was a fun conversation speaking with him.
And you're just laying out this vision of of what the future of
SoCal in the state looks like. What gives you hope for the
future of California and what, yeah, gets you most excited
about the future of the state? What gives me hope is that even
the people who are leaving stillwant to live here.
(42:26):
And you know, somebody, somebodythe other day quoted Ronald
Reagan a quote. I'd never heard of that If the
pilgrims had landed in California, they never would
have bothered to discover the rest of the country.
You know that that people want to live in California and the
only reason they don't live, themain reason they don't live here
(42:48):
is because housing. So if we can crack that nut to
some extent, then California will continue to be an and, and
we still have an extremely vibrant economy.
So and we are still the world center of innovation and
especially technological innovation.
So if we can even partially crack the housing problem, then
(43:09):
we have a vibrant future. The future will be different
than the past. It'll be more urban.
It'll be more of a hassle for a lot of people, but it will still
be a great place to live if we can make enough houses available
at a reasonable price to enough people.
And that's that gives me hope. As one quick follow on what what
(43:29):
do you think we can reasonably achieve that?
And what does that look like? Like, are we at the worst of the
housing crisis, I guess is what I'm asking.
I think we're actually past, just past the worst the for a
variety of reasons, prices are stagnant now you know you.
And if you're trying to solve this problem, part of the
problem is to make sure that housing prices stagnate while
(43:50):
incomes go up. Other incomes are going to go up
in the next few years is anybody's guess, but we've seen
that happen in the past in California, we saw it happen in
the 90s. Prices stagnated for seven or
eight years, but it was a very prosperous time.
And, and, and so I think that what we see is more housing
(44:10):
constructed or different types of housing constructed.
We've got to find ways to we really, we really are, in the
words of the of the book, stuck.A lot of people just aren't
moving. You have to create more
mobility, but I think that thoseare the kinds of things that we
can move on. What the entitlement problem is
(44:31):
still there, but we've worked onit for a long time.
If we can move on to start to crack the other aspects of this
problem, then we begin to see more, more houses, more types of
houses, different types of houses in the past for more
people who have more opportunityto stay because California is
still a place where people want to live.
Awesome. Well, Bill, thank you so much
(44:52):
for your time. Thank you.
Sure. This.
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