By Tom Elias, Columnist The TV commercials and online ads are fast becoming ubiquitous: “We’ll buy your house as is,” they trumpet. “No need to spend any money fixing it up.” That’s commonly the message […]

In large complex systems with dynamically balanced forces, it’s paradoxically often hard to tell when something has actually happened, For example, when did the British Empire start to crumble? What was the first sign of […]

The Narrative: Santa Monica’s decades-long housing construction “shortage”  The Narrative endlessly repeats the refrain that for decades Santa Monica has built almost nothing. The implication is that residents should feel guilty about “selfishly” wanted to […]

By Tom Elias, Columnist The numbers suggest a major change is underway in California. It would take a Nostradamus to know if that change is real and long lasting or if those proclaiming it are […]

All too often these days we find ourselves wondering how we could have been so correct about so many planning issues that we have written about over these last nine years, and yet so frequently […]