… On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills that scale back CEQA—curtailing local power to stop urban development, and particularly housing, on environmental grounds. After more than a decade of reform talk, the state’s housing and homelessness crisis has finally prompted an overhaul of a development procedure that a state study compared to “urban warfare—contested block by block, building by building.” CEQA reform is not really a defeat for environmentalism—as the New York Times insisted on framing it. Rather, it reflects a 21st-century understanding of the environmental movement, one that recognizes that an existing neighborhood is the greenest place for housing to be built. (Of note, one of the bills also permits a variety of non-housing stuff to be built in cities without environmental review, including day cares, food banks, water infrastructure, and critically, “advanced manufacturing” plants, in industrial zones.)

Related articles:

• Local News Matters (Berkeley, Calif.): New CEQA exemptions pave way for more housing, infrastructure in California
• The National Law Review: Effective immediately: CEQA reform legislation
• Grist: Can weaker environmental rules help fight climate change? California just bet yes.​
• The Orange County Register (Irvine, Calif.): Editorial: Newsom holds firm and scores big CEQA reform​