Cityhoods

Three cities, three frameworks

The Palos Verdes Peninsula divides into four incorporated cities (Palos Verdes Estates, Rolling Hills Estates, Rolling Hills, and Rancho Palos Verdes) and one unincorporated pocket, Academy Hill. Each city brought its own general plan, its own zoning code, and its own reading of the private covenants it inherited from the Palos Verdes Corporation.

Palos Verdes Estates incorporated in 1939. Rolling Hills, built on the framework of Declaration 150 (1936), incorporated in 1957 as a gated municipality. Rancho Palos Verdes — the largest, the coastal, and the one the rest of this story is about — incorporated in 1973, twenty-four years after the 1949 Declaration No. One recorded the WPBCA framework on Tract 14649.

The Coastal Act arrives

In 1972 California voters adopted Proposition 20 — the Coastal Zone Conservation Act — which froze coastal development and required local governments to submit plans for state approval. Marilyn Ryan, who had moved to what became RPV in September 1967, served as RPV's Mayor in 1975 and signed the City's first General Plan and its first EIR. She then ran for state Assembly, winning the 53rd District seat in 1976 and serving through 1982. Her UCLA / California State Archives oral history (taken November 2000 and January-March 2001) captures her characterization of the peninsula:

"One of the problems with the peninsula is there's a landslide and you can't… It's very difficult to get…"

The California Coastal Act of 1976 codified Proposition 20. Ryan helped pass it. On December 19, 1978, the City of Rancho Palos Verdes adopted the Coastal Specific Plan via General Plan Amendment 3 (Resolution 78-81), dividing the City's coastal zone into subregions. Subregion 4 covers Abalone Cove and Portuguese Bend — the 81 lots of WPBCA plus the surrounding public and quasi-public parcels. The Coastal Specific Plan, as subsequently certified by the California Coastal Commission, became part of the City's Local Coastal Program.

The moratorium

The Portuguese Bend Landslide began moving in 1956 (see Era 6). The Abalone Cove Landslide reactivated in 1974. In 1978 the City adopted a Landslide Moratorium Ordinance, identifying zones within which new construction would be prohibited pending geological stabilization. Over the next several decades, City housing elements — 1990, 2001, and subsequent cycles — treated moratorium parcels as binding constraints on development. The 2001 Housing Element's inventory language is blunt:

"Portugese Bend [sic] 230 OH, In landslide moratorium / Steep slopes"
"RDA Property in Portugese [Bend] 10 acres, vacant"
"Mostly in Landslide Moratorium / City owned / Open space preserve / Not buildable"

In 2008, the California Court of Appeal (Second District) decided Monks v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes, 167 Cal. App. 4th 263. The court upheld the moratorium framework against a facial challenge by bluff-lot owners. The framework survived.

In September 2018 the City adopted a new Safety Element. Its Figure 3 — the Landslide Inventory Map — draws on the California Geological Survey's 2007 mapping of the peninsula. Section 5.9 of the 2018 Safety Element validates the 40-foot bluff setback Declaration One-A imposed on WPBCA Lots 1-5 in 1950. The City's own document, sixty-eight years later, confirms the private restriction.

On August 19, 2025, by ordinance amending RPV Municipal Code Chapter 15.20, the City made the moratorium's construction prohibition permanent in the zones where it had been renewed cycle by cycle since 1978. That ordinance is the backdrop against which Era 9 plays out.