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486 pages

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For over four decades, California Land Use and Planning Law has provided a succinct and definitive summary of the major provisions of California’s land use and planning laws and has been cited by the California Supreme Court and numerous appellate courts as an authoritative source.

Cecily Talbert Barclay is a partner in the San Francisco office of Perkins Coie LLP, and is the former Chair of the firm’s national Real Estate and Land Use practice group. Cecily regularly assists developers, landowners, and agencies throughout California in all aspects of acquisition, entitlement, and development of land, including land use application processing, drafting and negotiating purchase and sale agreements, negotiating and securing the approval of development agreements, general plan amendments, specific plans, planned development zoning, density bonus applications, annexations of property into cities, initiatives, referenda, tentative and final subdivision maps, and compliance with CEQA. Cecily speaks and writes on topics involving land use and local government law, including programs, books, and articles for the ABA, the APA, California CEB, League of California Cities, UC Extension programs, ULI, and other state and national associations and conferences, and was a member of the ABA’s State and Local Government Law Section’s Publication Oversight Board for over a decade. Cecily has been named San Francisco Land Use and Zoning Law “Lawyer of the Year” by Best Lawyers. She received her law degree with honors from Harvard Law School and graduated with highest honors from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Matthew  Gray is a partner in the San Francisco office of Perkins Coie LLP. Matt represents a range of developers, landowners, and agencies in all stages of the land use entitlement and development process. He assists clients in negotiating and securing approval of development agreements, general plan amendments, specific plans, zoning, subdivision approvals, and annexations of property into cities and special districts; regularly appears before planning commissions and city councils; and advises clients on compliance with CEQA and other federal and state regulatory programs. Matt has experience negotiating affordable housing agreements, complex mitigation fee agreements and conservation easements; forming land-based financing mechanisms, including Mello-Roos Districts; advising clients on issues relating to water supply; and using the initiative and referendum process in the land use planning context. Matts sits on ULI’s Redevelopment and Reuse Product Council and is a member  of Lamda Alpha International, a land economics society. After graduating magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif, Matt clerked for the Honorable Jerome Farris, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Matt graduated magna cum laude from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Cecily Barclay has authored this book since 1999 and was joined by Matt Gray as co-author in 2006. After years of continually expanding the book with added topics, new analysis, and additional authors for certain chapters, Cecily and Matt recently focused on making the book more concise and reader-friendly, while still addressing the most significant new developments of the past several years.

This 40th edition summarizes two years of published decisions, statutory revisions and other agency policies and guidance, including:

•   Analysis of new statutory requirements for expanded or updated General Plan content relating to safety, circulation, and conservation elements (Chapter 2)

•   Discussion of new California Supreme Court authority clarifying what constitutes a prior lawful “division” of property under the Subdivision Map Act for purposes of the Act’s grandfathering provision (Chapter 5)

•   Discussion of new CEQA exemptions for qualified infill residential projects (AB 130) and proposed housing projects that would be exempt “but for a single condition” (SB 131) (Chapter 6)

•   Analysis of new case law addressing CEQA requirements, including stability of project descriptions, substantial evidence required to support exemptions, development of thresholds of significance, reliance on offsets for GHG mitigation, requirements for tribal consultation, and calculating the statute of limitations for NODs (Chapter 6)

•   Analysis of the Corps and EPA’s November 2025 jointly proposed revisions to federal regulations defining “waters of the United States” subject to federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act, and the Corps’ June 2025 proposed reissuance and modifications of Nationwide Permits (NWPs) (Chapter  7)

•   Analysis of the USFWS and NMFS’s November 2025 jointly proposed revisions to the federal regulations addressing Section 7 consultations, decisions to list and delist species, designations of areas of critical habitat, and exclusions of areas from such designations (Chapter 8)

•   Analysis of significant new United States Supreme Court authority—Sheetz v. County of El Dorado—on the application of Nollan’s and Dolan’s nexus and rough proportionality standards to legislatively enacted exactions in California and discussion of how local agencies and California courts may respond to Sheetz (Chapter 12)

•   Discussion of new case law on the distinction between legislative actions subject to referendum as compared to those considered administrative and thus beyond the reach of ballot box challenge (Chapter 13)

•   Discussion of new legislation establishing that qualified transit-oriented housing development projects “shall be an allowed use” on sites zoned for residential, mixed, or commercial development near TOD stops in eight urban counties (SB 79) (Chapter 15)

•   Discussion of revisions to other state housing laws, including Housing Element Law, Density Bonus Law, the Housing Accountability Act and the Affordable Housing and High Roads Act of 2022, as well as of the new Office to Housing Conversion Act (for adaptive reuse projects) (Chapter 15)

•   Analysis of new case law addressing recovery of attorneys’ fees under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5, particularly in light of new Government Code section 65589.5(p)(1), which requires a court give “due weight” to the degree to which the challenged agency approval furthers HAA policies (Chapter 18)