The California Supreme Court decided unanimously Monday that cities and counties may require developers to provide below-market-rate housing as a condition of a building permit.

The decision is expected to make it easier for Los Angeles and other cities with housing shortages to force developers to build or pay for affordable housing. — LA Times

For decades, tourists have been coming to Southern California's Coachella Valley, drawn by spectacular mountain vistas, great weather and lush landscapes.

Those landscapes have been, for the most part, man-made — an artificial oasis in a land of desert. [...]

As California enters a fourth year of drought and state and local water officials unveil a series of conservation dictates, at least some hotels in the valley — big and small — have begun launching water conservation measures. — USA Today

A diverse alliance of communities — including Los Angeles County's third-largest city — is fighting California's long-planned bullet train route into the heart of the San Fernando Valley, saying it would bring irreparable harm... The coalition of communities is demanding that only routes that are predominantly underground should be considered.

The growing resistance is coming in part from urban, working-class neighborhoods that are portraying the surface route as an environmental injustice. — LA Times

Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today issued an executive order to establish a California greenhouse gas reduction target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 - the most aggressive benchmark enacted by any government in North America to reduce dangerous carbon emissions over the next decade and a half. "With this order, California sets a very high bar for itself and other states and nations, but it's one that must be reached - for this generation and generations to come," said Governor Brown. — gov.ca.gov

This project [titled 'Projection'], announced last October, is probably the first time in a long time that the old inn (aka the Sunset Pacific) has gotten so much attention. The Bates—whose nickname is as much a callback to 'Psycho' as it is to the motel's location near the intersection of Bates and Sunset—has been vacant for decades, except for the squatters and the occasional, totally fun-looking, likely illegal party — la.curbed.com

South of San Francisco, a whole town is being deformed by plate tectonics. [...]

This is Hollister, California, a town being broken in two slowly, relentlessly, and in real time by an effect known as “fault creep.” A surreal tide of deformation has appeared throughout the city.

As if its grid of streets and single-family homes was actually built on an ice floe, the entire west half of Hollister is moving north along the Calaveras Fault, leaving its eastern streets behind. — bldgblog.blogspot.com

For every barrel of oil Chevron produces in its Kern River oil field, another 10 barrels of salty wastewater come up with it. So Chevron is selling about 500,000 barrels of water per day...back to...the local water district that delivers water to farmers within a seven-mile slice of Kern County...But it’s a risky dance; over time, high sodium can change the properties of the soil, making it impermeable, unable to take in any more water...Eventually, the soil becomes barren. — Newsweek

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday imposed mandatory water restrictions for the first time on residents, businesses and farms, ordering cities and towns in the drought-ravaged state to reduce usage by 25%... [amounting] to roughly 1.5 million acre-feet of water (an acre-foot of water equals about 325,000 gallons) over the next nine months... "We're in a new era," Brown said. "The idea of your nice little green grass getting lots of water every day, that's going to be a thing of the past." — CNN

This publication documents an exhibition-oriented initiative that prompts artists and architects to develop installations highlighting Rudolph M. Schindler’s domestic experiment...Visitors often ask detailed questions. They are curious about Schindler’s thought process when designing and constructing the house; how the house has been used, understood, and canonized throughout the decades; and how the house is holding up today. — Schindler Lab

An unregulated squatter settlement, Slab City is home to perhaps 150 year-round residents — refugees from mortgages and bill collectors, former hippies, rebels and self-identified misfits — who live in personal camps made from old trailers, truck campers and crude lean-tos, and call themselves Slabbers. From October to April, the population swells to perhaps 2,000 as snowbirds, attracted by the guaranteed sunshine and zero fees, arrive in sometimes majestic motor homes. — NY Times

When it was unveiled in New York City in April 1931, the starkly modern Aluminaire House was an overnight sensation that emboldened an architectural movement. Designed as a case study by architects A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, the three-story house, which was built in 10 days, became the first all-metal prefabricated house in the U.S. — Palm Springs Life