The California Planning and Development Report reported on a study by the law firm of Holland & Knight that looked at 95 legal challenges filed against development projects under the California Environmental Quality Act, finding that that CEQA was used to challenge more infill projects (60%) than greenfield projects. The irony being that, from an environmental perspective in particular, infill projects are much less damaging because they don't encroach on habitat and species.

CPDR, however, looked at the outcomes of these legal challenges to infill projects and found that only 31% were successful, compared to 55% of the challenges to greenfield projects. CPDR's analysis also notes:

• The success rate for legal challenges has been dropping steadily since 1997 – from 70% in the 1997-2002 period to only 34% in the 2007-2012 period.


• Legal challenges are most likely to succeed against infrastructure and industrial projects (more than 60%). Challenges were least likely to be successful against commercial projects (less than 30%).


• Legal challenges against public projects were more successful than legal challenges against private projects, though the difference was small (50% to 44%).


• Local plaintiffs were more likely to succeed than non-local plaintiffs, though again the difference was small (49% to 41%).

Read it on Bill Fulton's blog.