[LongBeachUrbanist]

From L.A. City Beat, 5 July 2006:

The Next Los Angeles
L.A. has more people per square mile than any urban area in the country, and over the next two decades it's going to add millions of new residents. Can smart growth stave off impending citywide gridlock?
~ By MINDY FARABEE ~

http://www.lacitybeat.com/media/161/cover_story.gif
Mark Eveloff, left, wants to know how
Century City will mitigate thousands of new residents.
James Rojas is a planner with the Latino Urban Forum

Neighborhood activist Anne Schermerhorn is not the kind of woman who cries over city ordinances. But there she is, tearing up during the public comment period at a meeting of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission on the 10th floor at City Hall. The frustration, she explains, has been so intense.

"We've been fighting these developments for two and a half years," Schermerhorn is trying to tell the commission, "and this is the first time we've been heard by the city."

For a moment there, she can't go on.

Schermerhorn is attempting for the third time to lobby the powers that be for an Interim Control Ordinance, or ICO, a little bit of jargon that would grant Glassell Park and other Northeast L.A. neighborhoods some control over how big, how high, and how environmentally damaging new developments can be in the hillsides ringing downtown. Like Echo Park, Mount Washington, and Atwater Village that surround it, Glassell Park is the latest working-class neighborhood to be targeted by home-buyers and developers looking to capitalize on lower-priced properties. But the intentions of these new property owners has become an issue. Groups like North East Trees, Occidental College, the Latino Urban Forum, and the Anahuak Youth Soccer Association have sent word that they support more regulated development, and Jose Carlos Romero, the city's own head planner for the area, dims the lights and offers up a Power Point presentation graphically testifying to the 'urgency' of the problem.

"You've provoked us to a better place," Commission President Jane Usher says, and an hour later, the ICO is approved. But it's destined to be a short honeymoon between Schermerhorn and the Department of Planning.

Two weeks later, Schermerhorn informs me she and her group HESC - the Hillside Environmental and Safety Coalition - are suing the city over an eight-house development they believe is being constructed in defiance of city codes but has somehow garnered city approval. The way she sees it, "We were stabbed in the back by city council."

In the past 12 months, land use conflicts have triggered charges of anti-Semitism in Valley Village, dragged Montecito Heights residents into arbitration over the right to walk across one man's lawn, and prompted Venice's neighborhood council to question whether its neighborhood could just stop growing altogether, putting a temporary halt to all commercial development along its major thoroughfares.

All over the city, this clash is repeated, in neighborhood after neighborhood. Why have things gotten so heated? Numbers tell the story: in 2000, the city issued 106,000 building permits. In 2006, it handed out 153,000. Developers have indeed reacted to a booming real estate market, but they are also finally accommodating a mushrooming population. In the last 20 years, some five million additional Angelenos took up residence here, while only one new housing unit was built for every two families. As of the 2000 Census, the Los Angeles area officially became the densest urban region in the U.S., besting New York City and its suburbs by nearly 2,000 people per square mile.

And we're growing. Experts are now predicting that we've got to make space for another two-to-five million neighbors before 2030. (If you're of a mind that 700 miles of fencing could prevent this, you can put down your trowel right now. Anywhere between 40 to 80 percent of L.A.'s projected growth will come from the birth rate of its current residents alone.) At this point, it's hard to argue with a straight face that L.A. will live out its days as a gently sprawling haven for single-family homes and limitless automobiles. One way or another, our fair city is about to become incredibly dense, and rapidly. The question is " are the city's leaders up to the task of managing that density in a smart way? It won't work, of course, to simply deny growth. It's going to happen, no matter what.

"We get that we have to house this population, and there is a lot of support in my community for mixed-use apartment buildings nearer transit corridors," says Helene Schpak, who is working with Schermerhorn to mitigate Glassell Park's growing pains.

Instead, some residents say, the city is flouting its own codes as it offers a glut of more of the same - projects either in the worn-out suburban model or high-end luxury line, both of which may be out of touch with Angelenos' needs, and both of which can't help but overburden an already overtaxed infrastructure. As Barbara Broide, president of the Westwood South of Santa Monica Homeowners Association puts it, "We know we have a housing shortage, but if we have a shortage of $1.2 million condos, I don't know."

"Glassell Park is ground zero for these conflicts, and the problem is not the developers and it's not the community. The problem is the city," says Schpak. "Developers do what they do. It's for the city to bracket what they do with guidelines."

Poor Planning
Of all the historical forces that have contributed to creating the hell on wheels we call Los Angeles, the most significant could be that this is a developer-driven town. "It's in the DNA of the city's power structure [to approve as many developer applications as possible]," says one city hall veteran. So-called "smart growth" has not been on the city menu for several decades. Con Howe, who exited the planning department in 2005 after 13 years as its director, has been accused of presiding over an administration with an institutionalized disregard for zoning codes.

Which is complete turnaround from where we started. Planning, after all, literally created Los Angeles - a boomtown which owes its epic proportions to the awesome force of Midwestern boosterism - mainly through the use of thousands of miles of privately owned trolleys, quite a few of which were laid down in order to open land for developers. Yes, it was mass transit that set in motion Southern California sprawl and helped lay the blueprint for our megalopolis. Then the car companies did away with public transport in the 1950s and '60s. And now the city is trying desperately to rebuild them into the scheme of things again, at outrageous expense, with maximum disruption.

Last October, city Controller Laura Chick released an audit lambasting the department for a host of bad habits and wrong thinking, and this February, when former San Diego planner Gail Goldberg was installed as Howe's replacement, a six-months-to-reform clock began ticking. Not everybody feels they have the luxury of waiting to see how that story turns out, however.

Up in Glassell Park, the story is a familiar one. Old homes are torn down or gutted for massive renovation. Some by homeowners, some by speculators, eager to capitalize on the urban real estate boom.

"Our hillsides are so fragile and falling apart as we speak," Schermerhorn says. "We are not [fighting the city] because of one house. We're here because of 136 houses. No one in the city ever takes into account: Is this one out of two permits or one out of 200?"

Legally speaking, there is some question as to when the city can factor in cumulative effects, as most smaller developments are considered "by right," and often fly under the radar of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a state law designed to ensure that a project's impacts are mitigated.

But that's potentially a bureaucratic sleight of hand with absurdist repercussions. "According to the code, the city can only grant a zoning variance on a unique basis," Schermerhorn says. "All 136 developers asked for a variance. There is no more meaning to the word unique."

Perhaps the word city officials ought to be searching for is "vision," as in "The city has no vision," says James Rojas, an urban planner and founding member of the Latino Urban Forum, a volunteer band of architects, planners, and transportation experts working to improve the city's built environment. LUF advocates for ideas like linking land use policies to transportation systems and comprehensive, citywide thinking that gives considerable thought to how strict zoning codes in, say, Larchmont get played out in the overcrowded apartments of under-regulated East L.A. "The city needs to connect all these dots," Rojas says.

There have been a number of recent projects that get it right, advocates say. In Pasadena, developers created Paseo Colorado, a melange of housing, dining, and shopping designed to generate a community hub. In Lincoln Heights, two mixed-use, mixed-income projects near a transit stop are promising to transform an industrial wasteland into a residential community, and Boyle Heights residents have rallied around the re-imagining of an underutilized Sears warehouse as a live/work/play space destined to be just as accessible by the Gold Line's extension as by automobile.

Avenue of the Cars
For decades, L.A.'s Westside has been the breezy, wide-open cousin to the rapidly urbanizing East end. Since 2003, however, 3,000 condominiums have sprung up in West L.A. alone, and 1,700 more are currently gearing up to break ground. Overall, the Westside still averages out to a less cramped population per square mile, but neighborhoods to the left of Doheny have started feeling the pinch and are wary of what the future could bring.

"There are a number of developments we're watching right now," says Michael Eveloff, president of Tract 7260, a homeowners association in West L.A. Among these concerns, Eveloff lists the New Century Plan at the Westfield mall in Century City, which would bring residential units to a formerly commercial area, the adaptive reuse overhaul of the Robinsons-May department store at the Beverly Hilton, and the redevelopment of a condo building on Bellwood Avenue that could double the building's current occupancy.

"We're not anti-development," clarifies Eveloff. "There are no evil empires here. We have a great working relationship with developers."

But with land selling at exorbitant prices - "A parcel on Santa Monica Boulevard just sold for $110 million," Eveloff says, "That's just for the dirt" - even as the housing market cools, many worry that developers will be under extra pressure to maximize profits by pushing the envelope on density.

And in the meantime, "I can't think of a single development [Councilmember Jack] Weiss hasn't endorsed," Eveloff says. "There are no plans for infrastructure, but plenty of plans for developments. Weiss does a lot of great things, and you can't confuse little and big issues, but on big issues, it seems that the councilmember is not our friend."

On March 15, Weiss told the Los Angeles Times that the Westfield project would improve the neighborhood's appeal as a Westside destination. Eveloff says his jury is still out on the Westfield plan, and they are happy to keep an open mind as they learn more. What concerns them is that Weiss has apparently already made up his own mind. "Weiss came out in favor of the Westfield project without speaking to a single constituent, as far as we can tell," says Eveloff.

Residents on the Westside are still smarting over a 2003 project rubber-stamped by the planning department on the basis of environmental data from the late '70s. The developer had applied to transform a vacant lot into a 35-unit/21-story tower under the assumption that nothing in the neighborhood had changed since the Carter administration. The community begged to differ.

"Sometimes it seems like the [environmental studies] are more about meeting deadlines and doing the process than about studying the effects," says Broide. "A lot of us feel we go through the process and when we listen to the responses, frequently the questions were never answered. We don't have the access, we don't have the high-paid lobbyists. When I'm at city council standing behind the rope, waiting for my turn to speak, I watch lobbyists walking around me to talk to the councilmembers. It's a hopeless feeling."

"Like with many other issues, some areas of the city are better organized and feel more empowered than others," says Lisa Hansen, Weiss's deputy chief of staff. According to Hansen, Weiss remains confident there will be ample time for public input on projects like Westfield as the environmental review progresses. "The neighborhood council system offers a new arena for community input. Certainly, all councilmembers strive to ensure fair public processes."

From his vantage point in Northeast L.A., though, District 14 City Councilmember Jose Huizar has seen how ensuring equal public access can get a little tricky. "Absolutely, I think there is an industry in this city with attorneys and developers who know how to work the system better than residents do," Huizar says. Vice-chair of the Planning and Land Use Management committee, Huizar - along with Weiss and committee chair Councilmember Ed Reyes of District 1 - hears from eight to 20 cases a week in the council's busiest committee.

"I think there is a gap," Reyes says, "between the expectation of what the law says you should be doing versus what you should be doing. We have to fill that gap in education."

And there's the irony. Reyes, Huizar, CD13's Eric Garcetti, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have been preaching the gospel of smart growth for years, and yet, Reyes says, projects get stalled or innovative ideas reach the council dead on arrival, victims of the system, the sanctity of property rights, or NIMBYism.

"We are just beginning to build the internal capacity to effect these changes. It took me three years to change the zoning in Lincoln Heights and get permitted a mixed-income housing complex next to the Gold Line," says Reyes. "Three years and that's one location. To do this on a wholesale level across the city, we're not prepared."

To fully appreciate this irony, know that Huizar is Schermerhorn's councilmember. He professes to agree with her on every point and put his beliefs into the public record even as the city attorney convinced him that backing her appeal could be construed as a "capricious and arbitrary" decision by the developer, which would then open the city up to possible litigation. Schermerhorn's lawyer is now using Huizar's speech to the council as the basis for her lawsuit against the city.

"If residents keep challenging these developments on the CEQA basis, it won't stand up in court," Huizar says. "I'm trying to find ways to make changes at the policy level."

Vision of the Future
Say the word "density" to Diego Cardoso, and it'll be 10 minutes before you can get another word in edgewise. Cardoso is a bundle of kinetic energy on a mission. He's also one of L.A.'s new planning commissioners. "This is a very, very important premise," Cardoso begins his soliloquy. "Density is the outcome of other goals. What we're trying to do is build a livable city. If you just say we're going to add more density, that doesn't make sense."

In about two to three months, Cardoso says, the planning commission will be ready to articulate a new vision for the city of Los Angeles, heavily shaped by Villaraigosa's smart growth platform and councilmember feedback. But anyone swinging by the Department of Building & Safety with a permit application is already hearing about what sort of changes are afoot.

Picture if you will, Cardoso's dream: lofty high rises line up along Wilshire, Olympic, and a number of other strategic locations where developers can trade parking spaces for ground-level storefronts and subway access, then moving away from major boulevards and transit stops, densities fading into smaller, single-family neighborhoods. L.A.'s doctrine of separate use is reorganized, so that residents can walk to the office, have lunch at a sidewalk cafe, take in a movie, and stroll through the park, all in the radius of a few blocks. Let both the Exposition Line and the Red Line stretch out to the ocean, ride your bike from Canoga Park to downtown alongside a re-greened and newly non-toxic L.A. River, and landscape a three-block chunk of open space into the center of downtown. Oh, and - this is where Cardoso, a painter as well as a transportation planner, brings a little artistic license to redesigning L.A.'s urban landscape - in 30 years, tear up any unnecessary miles of disused freeway. "Sure, it will happen," Cardoso says. "The Embarcadero in San Francisco used to be a double-decker freeway."

Back here on earth, even Cardoso acknowledges that reality is proving much more complicated. "I think we have a system of government and an economy that hasn't worked well with large-scale design," he says.

"The Westside is very dense," Cardoso says. "But it doesn't have choices in transportation. Century City is probably one of the best examples of a city that can only be accessed and navigated by car."

These pesky little actualities have homeowners pleading for a slow and cautious advance into the wild new frontier of increased density.

"It seems a little disingenuous to put density on transportation corridors when those corridors aren't moving," Broide says.

"One thing you have to take into account, for instance, in Century City, they're talking about adding a residential population where there wasn't one before," Eveloff says.

Exactly, Hansen says. "Century City employs 40,000 people, if new housing makes it possible for some of those people to walk to work, that will reduce traffic."

After fighting a number of battles with city officials simply to make departments enforce their own regulations, though, Eveloff says many residents have adopted a trust-but-verify approach to municipal promises. To him, it makes sense to build the infrastructure first. "If we could snap our fingers and have the Red Line appear here, that'd be great," he says. "A lot of people used to not want it, but now are thinking that might have been a mistake."

The notion of reviving the Red Line's expansion is once again under consideration at city hall, but should any residents feel their officials appear a little gun-shy on the subject, Reyes says that shouldn't come as a surprise. "There's been a lot of push-back focused on those officials who suggested mass transit," he says "In the world of term limits, who's going to expend that kind of political capital?"

"If there's no strong push for change, things stay the status quo," Huizar says. "With the Northeast L.A. ICO, it took Ed and myself to make sure the planning department focused on that. [Going forward] it's going to take the council and mayor to make sure we move some of these entrenched interests."

© 2006 Southland Publishing, All Rights Reserved. Development and Hosting OurGig.com

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

i like the last third of that article. We need to idenify corridors where dense highrise living will be viable and i can name about twenty of them that should be altered, from Figueroa to Olympic to Santa Monica, etc etc. i wish they take everything into account, such as landscaping, walkability, pedestrian friendly, and other things like that.

[Buckeye Native 001]

Someone a few years back compared L.A. to Tokyo: A potential plan to make L.A. more conducive to high-rise living by building clusters of highrises (condos/apartments/offices) around future subway and light rail stops, much like what you see in parts of Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

If it were put into effect, it'd make L.A. one hell of an interesting city if we could pull it off.

[Wright Concept]

It would be nice to do and execute a "smart growth" plan but part of that smart growth infrastructure also goes to improving utilities and pipes and sewers to accomodate all these new residents so that all the shit doesn't pile up in one area.

Traffic infrastructure on top of Building a mass transit system, the city really needs to serious re-investigate the roadway system and it's zoning of it because Smart growth may require that one block in either direction of the main boulevard will require a street of similar width and traffic capacity to maintain the flows and allow things such as Parking structures to be built allowing more land to be available for housing and parks and mixed-use or converted into one-way streets to improve flows

Let's not forget greenspace such as gardens and small parks that can help calm and provide a visual release from all of the development.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

i think if we ran the city, it would be such a better place!

[SSLL]

I think it's smart to think of adding higher density nodes, and supporting them with appropriate public transit (subways or LRT where warranted).

[Buckeye Native 001]

Is anyone here able to attend city council meetings on a regular basis to see if they can't try to get something implemented?

[yakumoto]

I think it's smart to think of adding higher density nodes, and supporting them with appropriate public transit (subways or LRT where warranted).

I think people who live in the center of the second biggest city in the goddam country they should expect growth.

The problem is that this density and growth is in the context of LA's ridiculous zoning laws...

[Smiley Person]

Someone a few years back compared L.A. to Tokyo: A potential plan to make L.A. more conducive to high-rise living by building clusters of highrises (condos/apartments/offices) around future subway and light rail stops, much like what you see in parts of Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

If it were put into effect, it'd make L.A. one hell of an interesting city if we could pull it off.

Probably the best model to follow, seeing how both cities are huge and multicentric.

[Buckeye Native 001]

^Agreed. We have a downtown, but its not the only place in Los Angeles that has heavy trade and commerce. Hell, we really ought to connect rail out to Century City/Westwood, if anything.

[DaveofCali]

Someone a few years back compared L.A. to Tokyo: A potential plan to make L.A. more conducive to high-rise living by building clusters of highrises (condos/apartments/offices) around future subway and light rail stops, much like what you see in parts of Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

If it were put into effect, it'd make L.A. one hell of an interesting city if we could pull it off.

No shit.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v669/DaveofCali/tokyo1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v669/DaveofCali/tokyo2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v669/DaveofCali/tokyo3.jpg

BTW, see how prominent are the rail lines in Tokyo's City Centers, practically in the middle.

[DJM19]

yeah we gotta plan these areas and change the zoning laws. I mean its nice that people want to preserve a certain density they are use to, but some areas are suitable for higher density and those people are gunna have to suck it up. You cant live in the heart of LA and expect to have some suburban life.

Its the same people who complain about traffic. Well duh, this is LA. Chances are you live near a not-so-obscure steet.

[Smiley Person]

A lot can happen in 13 years...
http://www.jingai.com/bladekanban.jpg
http://trust-me-swan.cocolog-nifty.com/swan/images/geisha.jpg
http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/perki/pics/spinner.jpg

[jessie_sanchez]

Im glad my neighborhood of Highland Park is at least partially protected because it's in a historic preservation zone.

[DJM19]

Thats cuz its worth protecting.

Now Ive been around LA, there are a lot of nasty looking areas. Stuff not worth protecting. And wiith transit improvements, they should make the inevitable density increases and development.

[edluva]

"If we could snap our fingers and have the Red Line appear here, that'd be great," he says. "A lot of people used to not want it, but now are thinking that might have been a mistake."

okay, so the HA head acknowledges this. what I don't understand is how he can justly promote their agenda knowing that their agenda is what caused this quandary (lack of infrastructure) to begin with.

the problem with LA's government is that, like any other government entity, it's power structure is indirectly defined by the built-environment. LA is a premature metropolis because of it. Unlike Chicago or Paris, LA is not "great" in any other way but by sheer accident - greatness mostly by virture of it's monstrosity. Noone willed to concieve a city of greatness. Civic inspiration and common good was absent from the start. It's conception was driven by selfish, greedy speculation first and foremost, and that legacy continues to plague the city to this day.

[MJB22]

LA's denser than NYC and Chicago? Um, I don't know about that. NYC's smaller in area than LA, and it has more than twice the population. But anyway, what the hell's going on there? I've seen so many negative attitudes towards LA on another site from Los Angelens.

[Buckeye Native 001]

Part of it is done in a joking manner, and part of it is that several of us are tired of the hypervigiliant criticism Angelenos encounter on this forum sometimes from people who say that Los Angeles is not a "real city" like Chicago, New York, Boston, or our archrival San Francisco. ;)

For the most part, its all sarcasm nowadays. :tup:

[Art]

Funny, that picture of James Rojas makes him look like a big guy when the dude's like 5'4". Anyways good piece, somewhat, I know a few of the cats quoted.

[MJB22]

Part of it is done in a joking manner, and part of it is that several of us are tired of the hypervigiliant criticism Angelenos encounter on this forum sometimes from people who say that Los Angeles is not a "real city" like Chicago, New York, Boston, or our archrival San Francisco. ;)

For the most part, its all sarcasm nowadays. :tup:

How's LA not a real city? The population's over 4 million and the metro's 18 million.

[Vidiot]

How's LA not a real city? The population's over 4 million and the metro's 18 million.

it's not "real" because it doesn't fit into the typical pre-war city structure.. but LA is rather the poster child for the real first post-war city. it's just a new and different type of city, and people are typically uncomfortable with things that are different. :rolleyes:

that's why LA is trying to reinvent itself. it's NOT a whimsical little town like San Francisco or Boston and it's NOT an uncultured sprawly hellhole like Phoenix or Atlanta... we're something different... and will continue to be.

[yakumoto]

it's not "real" because it doesn't fit into the typical pre-war city structure.. but LA is rather the poster child for the real first post-war city. it's just a new and different type of city, and people are typically uncomfortable with things that are different. :rolleyes:

LA is far from being a city which other post war cities should aspire to. I'm not saying its worse than pheonix or any other city of that nature, but LA can't seem to come to handle its own growth. Unless there is a major overhaul of zoning laws, things will only get worse.

[Guatemalanking]

LA's denser than NYC and Chicago? Um, I don't know about that. NYC's smaller in area than LA, and it has more than twice the population. But anyway, what the hell's going on there? I've seen so many negative attitudes towards LA on another site from Los Angelens.
The article refers to the LA metro area not the city itself.

[edluva]

LA is far from being a city which other post war cities should aspire to. I'm not saying its worse than pheonix or any other city of that nature, but LA can't seem to come to handle its own growth. Unless there is a major overhaul of zoning laws, things will only get worse.


yeah, all this new development is uncoordinated, and the boom is less a result of anything specific to LA than of this nationwide real estate boom. and thanks to our inertia, we're late in the game too. the city has to be engineered from a more central source, but as this article suggests, real political change will depend on the mta's ability to build lines. it's not coming from the inside. It's going to be a slow, tortuous change.

[MJB22]

it's not "real" because it doesn't fit into the typical pre-war city structure.. but LA is rather the poster child for the real first post-war city. it's just a new and different type of city, and people are typically uncomfortable with things that are different. :rolleyes:

that's why LA is trying to reinvent itself. it's NOT a whimsical little town like San Francisco or Boston and it's NOT an uncultured sprawly hellhole like Phoenix or Atlanta... we're something different... and will continue to be.

LA will become one of te greatest, densest cities in the world one day. It just hasn't been around long enough to build up like NYC has. Give it NYC's time to build up, and LA will be massive and dense as hell.:tup:

Go LA!!!

[Damien]

You know I don't really understand the fascination to turn LA into New York, Tokyo or Chicago.

We should learn from their lessons, but establish a distinct architectural and urban landscape that best compliments the city's greatest asset, among them the year-round sunshine.

I wouldn't want wall to wall 20-story plus skyscrapers lining all of our streets like Manhattan and definitely wouldn't want anything like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v669/DaveofCali/tokyo1.jpg

I don't think all of Los Angeles needs to be like Koreatown where some census tracts are on par with those in Chicago and New York with 96K people/square mile. That's not the L.A. people know. Indeed its exactly what a lot of people come to L.A. to get away from.

We undoubtedly have communities that are currently suited for that type of development and have the potential to become it in the future, but the vast majority of Los Angeles communities would be fine with the major arteries having 3-5 story buildings with an occasional 10-story at major intersections.

[edluva]

I don't think LA should become another Chicago. But density isn't something to fear if it's managed well. Just like planning commissioner Cardoso said in the article, density is not the goal but if it happens to occur along the process of creating livability, it's okay too.

Anyways, it's not LA's lack of Manhattanesque urbanism that sucks. I take issue with the planning dept's inablilty to execute large-scale smart-growth and new-urbanist policies, and the relative lack of regional planning here, despite the fact that civic leaders are very idealistic. I'm really annoyed that planning's impotence is the result of a hostile political environment (litigious NIMBY homeowner associations). I'm frustrated with the fact that this hostile political environment is in turn, the result of LA's already existing balkanized built-environment. It's a vicious cycle. Villaraigosa's administration has a lot of geopolitical inertia to overcome. At this point, it's no single group's fault. NIMBY's have reason for concern. LA simply doesn't have the infrastructure for unrestrained development/density. Until we get the next trunk of fixed transit, the most generous density bonuses in the nation won't get us anywhere in terms of real, meaningful progress. From here on, LA's urban future will depend on the MTA's ability to garner funding for the next rail line. Most civic leaders will continue to play secondary roles, as most of them are on autopilot anyhow.

[edluva]

.

[Wright Concept]

^^ But it's not just transit infrastructure but basic utility infrastructrure like sewers, water mains, electrical/phone/data lines that need a consistent upgrade as well.

[edluva]

but transit infrastructure is the key. HA's don't generally base their lawsuits on the premise that sewers, water mains, and data lines are insufficient. these are housekeeping concerns and present regardless of HAs. Transit infrastructure is the only one of these things that catalyzes private investment and changes opinions. Transit infrastructure is the limiting variable for political, social, and economic change. I see it as the only way planners can actively shift and consolidate power from the private interest. Because of this, change will be very gradual.

[DaveofCali]

I don't think all of Los Angeles needs to be like Koreatown where some census tracts are on par with those in Chicago and New York with 96K people/square mile. That's not the L.A. people know. Indeed its exactly what a lot of people come to L.A. to get away from.

We undoubtedly have communities that are currently suited for that type of development and have the potential to become it in the future, but the vast majority of Los Angeles communities would be fine with the major arteries having 3-5 story buildings with an occasional 10-story at major intersections.

The L.A. I originally would've liked would resemble a cross between Kuala Lumpur and Honolulu. But that's not going to happen.

The L.A. I'd like now would have a fully developed Wilshire (16 mile long skyline) with residential areas beyond 2 blocks N/S of Wilshire untouched unless in Koreatown or other currently highly dense areas of Wilshire. Other areas like Vermont and Hollywood boulevard would be lined with dense developments, and central areas like Hollywood would be highly developed (like those Tokyo districts.)

[atlantaguy]

it's not "real" because it doesn't fit into the typical pre-war city structure.. but LA is rather the poster child for the real first post-war city. it's just a new and different type of city, and people are typically uncomfortable with things that are different. :rolleyes:

that's why LA is trying to reinvent itself. it's NOT a whimsical little town like San Francisco or Boston and it's NOT an uncultured sprawly hellhole like Phoenix or Atlanta... we're something different... and will continue to be.


Uh, I've got your uncultured sprawly hellhole right here jackass.

[RBR]

The L.A. I originally would've liked would resemble a cross between Kuala Lumpur and Honolulu. But that's not going to happen.

The L.A. I'd like now would have a fully developed Wilshire (16 mile long skyline) with residential areas beyond 2 blocks N/S of Wilshire untouched unless in Koreatown or other currently highly dense areas of Wilshire. Other areas like Vermont and Hollywood boulevard would be lined with dense developments, and central areas like Hollywood would be highly developed (like those Tokyo districts.)

16 mile long skyline? man that would be so ugly and thankfully that won't happen . A fuller skyline is what we need, not a longer one.

[DaveofCali]

^ Many Angelinos on this forum would like a 16 mile long skyline, especially from that viewpoint where I took that massive Wilshire panorama.

[yakumoto]

Well, any added density, within the context of LA, is going to plunge the city further and further into gridlock...

and DaveofCali, high density along a linear corridor? With low density two blocks away? I can't think of a less efficient system then that. LA's "skyline" should be the least of peoples concerns...

[Buckeye Native 001]

Personally, I'd like to see some of the gaps in the downtown skyline filled before it branches outward.

[yakumoto]

Well I don't see how the city is going to manage any sort of high rise growth if it can't even manage the midrise growth going on now. I don't think its possible to have a functioning dense high rise city that uses cars as the primary mode of transportation (and no amount of rail can realisticly be built in time)

[ocman]

Well I don't see how the city is going to manage any sort of high rise growth if it can't even manage the midrise growth going on now. I don't think its possible to have a functioning dense high rise city that uses cars as the primary mode of transportation (and no amount of rail can realisticly be built in time)

The growth in LA does have a precedent. It's called Tokyo. It's a random and democratic mix of homes, midrises, highrises. Although the transit system isn't the most excellent in the Japanese city, and the traffic horrendous and sprawling, and there is still a heavy reliance on cars, it's managed to function good enough with it's problems, while having probably worse zoning than Los Angeles. In comparison, Tokyo is pretty much like a dense version of LA.

BUt unlike Tokyo (which is horrendous but still able to manage itself), The thing that is in Los Angeles' favor unlike in more established cities like Chicago, SF, and New York, is that structures are easily replaceable in Los Angeles. Homes get built, they get destroyed, they get replaced at such an unbelievable rate. This undeniably is Los Angeles' character. And this is because LA is still predominately low rises and the low rise architecture being so temporary(which can be destroyed at the drop of a penny).

So for this reason, it doesn't need an extensive transit system built "in time". It just needs a map of "possible" transit development. That is enough. Because unlike prewar cities, postwar cities have the strength of flexibility. Instead of a transit system adapting to the residential geography, the geography adapts to the transit system. That's why you see high rises being built around nodes of public transit. And why we currently see demand for these locations. In LA's case, the private sector is making up for the inadequacies of what the goverment sectors cannot. They are taking better urban responsibilty due to it being in their financial interest in predicting the changing desires of the public which are tired of these problems. This is evident by demand for development in Chinatown, Little Tokyo, and Hollywood. Their location near public transit is not coincidence.

But I think that for a city to survive today, you have to adapt to the car. The car is not going away. It works for the island of Manhattan because you can't go anywhere. LA is much bigger. Of course you don't need a parking space for each condo. But contrary to this forum's beliefs, I don't believe it will hurt having that option.

[Buckeye Native 001]

Well I don't see how the city is going to manage any sort of high rise growth if it can't even manage the midrise growth going on now. I don't think its possible to have a functioning dense high rise city that uses cars as the primary mode of transportation (and no amount of rail can realisticly be built in time)

By that logic, why even bother investing in downtown?

[DaveofCali]

Well I don't see how the city is going to manage any sort of high rise growth if it can't even manage the midrise growth going on now. I don't think its possible to have a functioning dense high rise city that uses cars as the primary mode of transportation (and no amount of rail can realisticly be built in time)

I said i'd like, but who said that I wouldn't include total subway access? I'm just fantasizing, after all ;)

Seriously, if Wilshire had both unique architecture and was fully built up, that would be one of the most unique skylines in the world.

[yakumoto]

But I think that for a city to survive today, you have to adapt to the car. The car is not going away. It works for the island of Manhattan because you can't go anywhere. LA is much bigger. Of course you don't need a parking space for each condo. But contrary to this forum's beliefs, I don't believe it will hurt having that option.

Its not a parking spot for each condo, its two and a half, minimum. And the parking requirement is even worse for retail, so rather than having neighborhood markets within walking distance, you have a ralphs which most of the population has to drive in order to reach.

I'm not saying LA doesn't have the potential for growth, but it wouldn't be able to manage it under the current zoning laws.

[SFBoy]

Imagine this,

San Frangeles

http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/6525/sflaea9.jpg

[edluva]

,

[edluva]

The growth in LA does have a precedent. It's called Tokyo. It's a random and democratic mix of homes, midrises, highrises. Although the transit system isn't the most excellent in the Japanese city, and the traffic horrendous and sprawling, and there is still a heavy reliance on cars, it's managed to function good enough with it's problems, while having probably worse zoning than Los Angeles. In comparison, Tokyo is pretty much like a dense version of LA.

Tokyo resembles LA by it's randomness, lack of zoning, and its multi-centeredness, but that's where similarities end. The nimby phenomenon as we know it is almost non-existent there, partly because the transit infrastructrure in Tokyo is so extensive and convenient that traffic is simply not as big an issue to existing homeowners. No homeowner associations to hold the planning department, city council, and private developers hostage.

though I don't agree with his theory about "timeliness", yakumoto's point about the parking requirement is valid. In LA, Highrise development for the masses is financially prohibitive largely because of these zoning requirements. And so highrise construction only pencils out at the ultra-luxury end since developers here wait until sales prices justify the excavation of large underground garages or constructing multistoried parking structures. People simply don't need to drive in tokyo, and car ownership rates are extremely low there, even among the upper crust.

And I disagree with ocman's assertion that developers hold any sort of aspiration to urban responsiblity - TODs are the result of exceptional zoning requirements which are, themselves, only justified by the case that preexisting fixed mass transit infrastructure will mitigate the potential increase in traffic. Remember that, in LA, zoning is done by city planning, and city planning is hostage to homeowner's associations and other private interest. If a proposal adds traffic, neighbors don't stop at the developer. planners and councilmen aren't immune either. In some ways you could say that in LA, zoning is written up by resident NIMBYs.

It's also true the car won't go away. but where do all the new future angelinos drive once they've purhcase their highrise condominiums with 2 underground parking spaces? on the same congested streets we drive on today? Complete auto-reliance is unsustainable in a growing city. If we're to expect traffic to remain as managable as it is today (and that's not saying much), any future urban growth has to be coupled with accompanying growth in mass-transit infrastructure.

So overall, two huge differences seperate LA from other densely populated mutl-centered cities:
1. NIMBYism and 2. prohibitive zoning - and both of these are the 2 sides of the same coin. And that's why I feel that until an alternative, more scalable means of transit is built (rail), we're stuck with this phenomenon.

[ocman]

And I disagree with ocman's assertion that developers hold any sort of aspiration to urban responsiblity - TODs are the result of exceptional zoning requirements which are, themselves, only justified by the case that preexisting fixed mass transit infrastructure will mitigate the potential increase in traffic. Remember that, in LA, zoning is done by city planning, and city planning is hostage to homeowner's associations and other private interest. If a proposal adds traffic, neighbors don't stop at the developer. planners and councilmen aren't immune either. In some ways you could say that in LA, zoning is written up by resident NIMBYs.




To rephrase, it isn't urban responsibility of developers. It's the desires of the public (buyers) for more urban responsibility which is the reason developers are keen to TODs. There's enough of a demand from liberal urban wannabes that are more well-off with money to spend than there used to be. And with the end of LA sprawl coming upon the metro, developers have no option than to build around TOs (because if NIMBY's weren't strong enough to prevent the rail...) . The governmental sector isn't immune to nimbys, but it also isn't immune to pressures to make exceptions in zoning laws from developers who makes promises of urban renewal (and who may or may not deliver). Think of all the concessions to Anchutz. In decrepit and desperate areas like downtown and areas of Hollywood, the development dollar can be as strong as the nimby outcry to a cash strapped city.

As far as parking. 2-1/2 is a lot. But the traffic in LA is headed to Manhattan type levels anyway, with or without PT. Whether or not areas like downtown have a train is not going to alleviate it. Public transit doesn't alleviate traffic congestion, which is inevitable. It just gives one an option to not sit in traffic. But I do think the city requirement is silly and discouraging for development. But if developers themselves want to include it as an amenity, it's better to allow them to do it if they'll make more money from it. It's a different conversation though, if they want to build it overground in a parking structure.

[edluva]

damn, what's up with me and double posting?

[edluva]

As far as parking. 2-1/2 is a lot. But the traffic in LA is headed to Manhattan type levels anyway, with or without PT. Whether or not areas like downtown have a train is not going to alleviate it. Public transit doesn't alleviate traffic congestion, which is inevitable. It just gives one an option to not sit in traffic. But I do think the city requirement is silly and discouraging for development. But if developers themselves want to include it as an amenity, it's better to allow them to do it if they'll make more money from it. It's a different conversation though, if they want to build it overground in a parking structure.

The parking requrement is much more than a discouragement to development. It's a roadblock. Remember how long it took to get Disney hall built? The parking garage sucked up all the initial funds, and stood empty for years. The county had to sell bonds just to get it built, and the garage alone is estimated to account for up to 40 percent of the entire project cost. Parking almost killed the project. The main point is that zoning is responsible for those prohibitive parking requirements. Developers don't elect to build garages, they're forced to by zoning. This has traditionally limited urban infill to the scarce few high-end developments that have broken ground.

The thing with developers is that theirs is usually the losing end of the battle with NIMBYs regarding zoning - keeping in mind "zoning" pertains to changes in regional zoning policy, not the exceptions for individual developments where developers have actually managed to win concessions. But yeah, NIMBY's also do generally prevail at cutting down individual developments where lawsuits are filed - in the majority of the city. And NIMBY's have shaped the existing set of zoning rules this city goes by. Downtown and hollywood are decrepit, just like you say. And that's exactly why the dynamic between developers and cash-strapped civic wooers has been allowed to play out on such a large scale there. No substantial NIMBY outcry to fear. But anyways, the downtown area and hollywood are isolated cases...where metrorail does exist by the way. LA is still very limited on a regionwide scale.

So you're right in saying that mass transit doesn't alleviate existing traffic. But that's not what it should be expected to do. Like you said, it gives us future growth options. That's the point. Urban infill will continue to stagnate (in relative terms) until mass transit allows planners to justify liberalizing the prohibitive requirements that have traditionally stood in the way of developers. Mass transit justifies the less auto-dependent developments by giving NIMBY's a harder case to sell. If developers still choose to build garages, that's fine. That's the free-market. But we need to liberalize these costly zoning requirements so that the free market will also be able to demand housing for the masses who badly need it. Right now that's option's very restricted - though we can't completely blame city planning since it's the NIMBY's that have their arms tied. Anyways, traffic can continue going to hell for those who choose to drive, as it has in other crowded cities such as NY. But unless we get mass transit that works, the entire region will suffer from traffic - directly or indirectly. Think of the opportunity costs of not building mass transit given the above.

[citywatch]

The main point is that zoning is responsible for those prohibitive parking requirements. Developers don't elect to build garages, they're forced to by zoning. Not entirely. There was a report some time ago about how funders for possible conversion projs of old office bldgs around Spring or Broadway won't give money to devlprs unless their apts or condos have more parking spaces per tenant or buyer.

I also remember reading another article around the same time about how even some of the most idealistic new loft dwellers in the hood, who at first said they could survive without a car, or didn't even like the idea of LA being so auto centric, ultimately found themselves, when all was said & done, wanting a car of their own.

[Wright Concept]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez15aug15,1,3122896,full.column?coll=la-headlines-california

From the Los Angeles Times
STEVE LOPEZ / POINTS WEST
Drive-By Fixes Not Enough for Skid Row
Steve Lopez
Points West

August 15, 2006

People often ask me if things are better or worse on skid row than they were last October, when I spent a solid week exploring the grimy nether land east of downtown Los Angeles. To get the answer, I spent parts of Saturday and Sunday nights out there, checking on recent reports of chaos and doom.

The word in some quarters was that drug dealing was out of control and that encampments had grown in number from 100 to 500, largely because police were backing off after a federal court decision in April banned police from rousting people sleeping on the street.

Downtown resident Brady Westwater toured with me over the weekend and said dealers have taken over entire streets, menacing residents and shop owners. Carol Schatz of the Central City Assn. said the owner of a loft building told her that a dozen tenants had moved out because of deteriorating conditions on the street.

But skid row is a place where everyone has an agenda, so it's not surprising that I also heard claims that not much has changed of late, and that police were rousting homeless people as they always have, herding them to the outskirts of the row.

My own take? Based on last weekend, which was surprisingly quiet, and months of once- or twice-weekly visits, things are not significantly better or worse overall than they were last fall. So why is my phone ringing off the hook, with city officials, care providers, business leaders and others offering their two cents worth?

Because there's been a lot of bickering behind the scenes, and everyone's in spin mode. As it turns out, I'm not the only one trying to nail down a reasonable version of the truth.

Last Thursday at 5 a.m., a carload of heavyweights toured skid row to see what's happening nearly one year after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined me on the streets and vowed to get control of a place that LAPD Chief Bill Bratton called "the worst situation in America."

Villaraigosa and Bratton were along for the pre-dawn ride, along with City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo and Torie Osborn, special advisor to the mayor on homelessness. Osborn said the group watched as heroin addicts awoke sweaty and desperate, eager to start the day with a breakfast injection. But they had to wait, because dealers scrambled when they saw the entourage of cops and politicos.

The tour group had two specific points to consider. One is a proposal the mayor will release next month calling for 50 additional police officers, mostly on foot and bicycle, to patrol skid row and crack down on major drug dealers. The plan also calls for high-intensity street lights and video cameras to discourage crime.

The other issue in play is the ruling that said police can't roust campers if no shelter beds or other services are available to them. Police have argued that they were handcuffed by that decision and that the number of skid row encampments has tripled as a result.

Osborn says that under a proposed compromise backed by Villaraigosa and Bratton, the tent villages would be allowed overnight but would have to be cleared out by day. Details are still in the works.

Fine. Work them out and get on with it. But all the players involved deserve a good public flogging for wasting so much time trying to tweak policing strategy and so little time addressing the most glaring needs on skid row.

There aren't enough rehab programs for the huge number of addicts.

There aren't enough mental health services for all the chronically ill people.

There aren't anywhere near enough of the supportive housing programs that could begin to make a real difference.

Would all of that be expensive? Yes, but much more cost-effective than throwing millions at the symptoms of problems that are never addressed. And all of these services have to be scattered around the county, rather than concentrated on skid row, which already has too many people to worry about.

Skid row is a corral for all the public policy failures of the last several decades, and what do we get now, almost a year after a spotlight was shined in every crack and crevice? Endless dickering over the issue of whether police can arrest people in tents.

"There's no Marshall Plan," Osborn admitted to me over lunch Monday, saying the mayor is trying to put one together.

Villaraigosa knows what's needed, Osborn said, but has to have more help from the county and the state to make it happen.

Good luck. You'd need a red-hot poker and two miracles to get city and county officials working together on these problems.

Last week I toured the Hope Gardens facility in Sylmar with Andy Bales, executive director of the Union Rescue Mission on skid row. He's in the process of moving elderly women off the row and into the lovely former retirement home in the middle of nowhere. But there's no telling whether he'll be able to move several dozen children out there too, along with their moms.

It all makes perfect sense, with the plan calling for the moms to take college courses and work toward self-sufficiency. But a few hill-dwellers moaned and whined a couple of miles away in Kagel Canyon, and now the rescue mission may have to battle Mike Antonovich and other L.A. County supervisors to get those kids out of harm's way and into Hope Gardens.

Nonsense like this gives Tim Leiweke hives. Leiweke runs Staples Center and is building the L.A. Live sports/entertainment extravaganza downtown, and he was worked up last week about all the chatter over police strategy and the spray-washing of sidewalks.

Naturally, he agrees that shop owners and residents shouldn't have to step over bodies to go about their day. But Leiweke, who volunteers at the Midnight Mission and has been known to take his checkbook with him, said business people ought to quit yammering about the snail's pace of recovery on skid row and start demanding and supporting programs that can make a lasting difference in people's lives.

Following up on that theme, Westwater noted that in the case of two people he and I helped off the streets earlier this year, our advocacy and support were key. Westwater suggested that social, business and religious groups organize volunteers to take on the same task.

Not a bad idea. And it could be a great opportunity for Cardinal Roger Mahony — who hasn't exactly distinguished himself in certain other matters — to seek redemption here.

Mahony should climb into the pulpit of the Rog Mahal, a stone's throw or two from skid row, and call upon his flock, in every corner of the archdiocese, to volunteer just an hour or so a week, making someone's life a little better.

So how is skid row?

Still hurting. Still waiting for us to turn it around.

*

[Art]

I took a video camera down thru the Skid a week ago on saturday at 7pm. I documented a lot of the shit going down, and am actively recruting more folks with video camersas to roll with me. I figure my education, concerns, tattoos and steretyped ethncity allow me easy acces and intimidation if things get sticky. It was hard driving and videotaping, but I got some raw shiznit. They are obviously pushing the winos and addicts off of Main and mroe eastward towards the river, which is homeless-ville, and it was a bit more cleaned up. I went thru there a few years back at night and shit was popping off much more crazy and many more streets in a much larger area. So things are cleaning up but gettign worse at the same time.

BTW, I got threatend by several people, most of them crazy. But twice I really got threatened by obvious dealers/gangsters for taping them and several times I turned my camera off and hid it because the light was red and it was way too sketchy for me to be videoing people.

[edluva]

[/b]Not entirely. There was a report some time ago about how funders for possible conversion projs of old office bldgs around Spring or Broadway won't give money to devlprs unless their apts or condos have more parking spaces per tenant or buyer.

citywatch, I know about that. But if you read closely, you'll notice I made exception for the downtown area. The conversion projects in downtown were exempted from stringent parking requirements because they were part of a redevelopment zone, complying with the adaptive reuse ordinance..a zoning plan devised to encourage developers to take the risk of entering what was then a questionable market. Remember when lenders wouldn't touch downtown with a ten foot pole? Well ironically, those developers actually wanted to build more parking because their lenders didn't think their projects would sell without a more generous parking ratio. Of course, as you said yourself, this was some time ago, as lenders have overwhelmingly regained confidence in downtown. Thousands of units of adaptive reuse projects are going on without a hitch, even with a low parking/unit ratio.

My point was that this success is difficult to duplicate elsewhere in LA where the strong NIMBY element exists. First, HAs won't allow dense developments in the first place because, to them, it means more traffic. Unlike downtown (which doesn't have many NIMBY's anyways, but we'll assum it does), these areas don't have mass trans as a fallback defense and projects in these areas are autocentric, fueling NIMBY elements to attack proposals to death. Secondly, even if HA's relaxed, developers still don't enter until the return on their projects justify the cost of satisfying the prohibitive zoning requirements (density limits, parking ratios, land use restrictions etc), many of which exist thanks to said HA's.

[Wright Concept]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-aclu16aug16,0,2462725.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail

EDITORIAL
Help the Homeless Don't Need
The ACLU is blocking a deal while downtown just gets worse.

August 16, 2006



AFTER NEARLY 12 MONTHS of platitudes from civic leaders about confronting the homeless crisis, skid row in downtown Los Angeles this summer looks worse, not better. And the people who claim to be helping the downtrodden bear a good portion of the blame.

In the last six months, the number of sidewalk tents has nearly tripled, leaving block after block of chaos and open lawlessness on skid row. The number of rapes and homicides in the area has jumped. And in the most symbolic declaration of defeat yet, law enforcement chose to rope off downtown's Pershing Square, the city center's most important public space, for most of the summer's evenings rather than try to clear the area of open drug users.

Getting downtown under control requires providing more shelter beds and long-term housing, offering more mental health treatment and decentralizing homeless-related services to all areas of the county. These goals are broadly shared by the American Civil Liberties Union. But the ACLU has also stood in the way of another crucial element to any solution: vigorous policing.

In April, the group won an injunction in federal court blocking the police from fining or jailing people for violating the city's anti-camping law. The court ruled, wrongly in our view, that the ordinance can't be enforced unless police demonstrate that there are enough shelter beds for the thousands of people who sleep on the city's streets every night. There aren't, so the LAPD must now leave most homeless where they are. The city is appealing the ruling.

A federal judge this summer ordered both sides into mediation to see if they could agree on a compromise rather than let the case drag on for years while downtown deteriorates. But at the first meeting, held Monday, the ACLU continued to resist compromise, increasing the likelihood that the talks will fail.

For instance, it now appears that the group won't accept a daytime camping ban unless some categories of the homeless are exempted, such as the mentally ill or those who aren't blocking entrance to a business or private property. And an offer to arrest only the same number of people as there are available shelter beds on any given evening also was rejected.

Yes, the ACLU has a court ruling in its favor. But the LAPD, the mayor's office and the district attorney are all more than willing to compromise. The city said it would drop its initial demand that the police be able to clear out large homeless encampments and suggested that it might pay all the attorneys fees in the lawsuit.

That's the spirit of compromise that should motivate these talks as mediation continues next week. Los Angeles can't afford another summer like this one.

[Wright Concept]

citywatch, I know about that. But if you read closely, you'll notice I made exception for the downtown area. The conversion projects in downtown were exempted from stringent parking requirements because they were part of a redevelopment zone, complying with the adaptive reuse ordinance..a zoning plan devised to encourage developers to take the risk of entering what was then a questionable market. Remember when lenders wouldn't touch downtown with a ten foot pole? Well ironically, those developers actually wanted to build more parking because their lenders didn't think their projects would sell without a more generous parking ratio. Of course, as you said yourself, this was some time ago, as lenders have overwhelmingly regained confidence in downtown. Thousands of units of adaptive reuse projects are going on without a hitch, even with a low parking/unit ratio.

My point was that this success is difficult to duplicate elsewhere in LA where the strong NIMBY element exists. First, HAs won't allow dense developments in the first place because, to them, it means more traffic. Unlike downtown (which doesn't have many NIMBY's anyways, but we'll assum it does), these areas don't have mass trans as a fallback defense and projects in these areas are autocentric, fueling NIMBY elements to attack proposals to death. Secondly, even if HA's relaxed, developers still don't enter until the return on their projects justify the cost of satisfying the prohibitive zoning requirements (density limits, parking ratios, land use restrictions etc), many of which exist thanks to said HA's.


The NIMBY times (Daily News) in some respects agree with you. :)


http://www.dailynews.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?article=4187042
Article Last Updated: 8/15/2006 06:52 PM

Editorial
Condo crazed
City Hall needs to look at underlying cause of conversion boom

LA Daily News

THE buzzword du jour in Los Angeles City Hall seems to be "condo conversions." Spooked by news stories about old apartment buildings being converted into condos - leaving old-time renters high and dry - City Council members have jumped from one ill-considered plan to another, all to give the appearance that they're doing "something" about the matter.
First, Councilmen Bill Rosendahl and Alex Padilla suggested bans on condo conversions for their districts only - a classic example of short-sighted L.A. politics, with no thought given to the bigger planning needs of the city.

Then, on Tuesday, a council subcommittee looked into other ways to deal with landlords trying to sell off their properties while the real-estate market is still hot. One idea is to triple the fee for condo conversions in buildings with more than 11 units from $500 to $1,500 a unit. That way, the extra $1,000 could go to displaced renters, presumably to help them find a new place to live.

That sounds nice, but it's no answer to the underlying problem of an insufficient housing stock and a burgeoning population. Jacking up the price of condo conversions would only make homeownership in L.A. even more expensive. And while $1,000 might be a nice windfall for displaced renters, it would do little to affect their long-term housing predicament.

What's needed here is more than feel-good, useless policies, but a real, comprehensive look at how the city plans for its housing and development needs. L.A. has never had a coherent growth plan, and that shortcoming is felt daily on our crowded roads, in our exorbitant housing prices and in a dwindling apartment stock.

The problem isn't condo conversions. It's a lack of planning. And no amount of symbolic politicking is going to fix that.

[citywatch]

I saw an article about NYC today & wondered how that town compared with LA. So I checked the web site of the US Census, found these stats, & think they do relate to the issue of the "next LA".

It's ironic that even though the cost of housing in LA has become so damn high, the city compared with many others is ending up with a smaller % of college grads. In fact, among the largest cities in the US, LA ranks as one of the lowest.

:???: :irked:

Percent of People 25 Years and Over Who Have Completed a Bachelor's Degree: 2005

Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA Metro Area 34.3
Baltimore-Towson, MD Metro Area 33.0
Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH Metro Area 40.6
--Boston-Quincy, MA Metro Division 38.6
--Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA Metro Division 47.5
--Essex County, MA Metro Division 35.1
--Rockingham County-Strafford County, NH Metro Division 34.1
Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL-IN-WI Metro Area 32.1
--Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL Metro Division 32.6
--Gary, IN Metro Division 19.2
--Lake County-Kenosha County, IL-WI Metro Division 37.7
Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH Metro Area 26.6 (lower than LA metro & city)
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metro Area 30.0
--Dallas-Plano-Irving, TX Metro Division 31.9
--Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metro Division 26.1
Denver-Aurora, CO Metro Area 36.8
Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI Metro Area 26.4 (lower than LA metro & city)
--Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI Metro Division 20.2
--Warren-Farmington Hills-Troy, MI Metro Division 31.1
Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX Metro Area 27.8 (lower than LA metro only)
Indianapolis, IN Metro Area 29.3 (lower than LA metro only)
Kansas City, MO-KS Metro Area 32.0

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA Metro Area 29.4
--Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA Metro Division 27.6
--Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, CA Metro Division 34.9
--Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA Metro Area 18.9

Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach, FL Metro Area 27.5 (lower than LA metro & city)
--Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Deerfield Beach, FL Metro Division 28.7
--Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, FL Metro Division 25.2
--West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Boynton Beach, FL Metro Division 30.0
Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI Metro Area 37.0
New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA Metro Area 34.8
--Edison, NJ Metro Division 36.4
--Nassau-Suffolk, NY Metro Division 35.5
--New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ Metro Division 34.0
--Newark-Union, NJ-PA Metro Division 36.7
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD Metro Area 31.7
--Camden, NJ Metro Division 29.3
--Philadelphia, PA Metro Division 32.9
--Wilmington, DE-MD-NJ Metro Division 29.1
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ Metro Area 26.7 (lower than LA metro & city)
Pittsburgh, PA Metro Area 27.1 (lower than LA metro & city)
Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, OR-WA Metro Area 31.9
Sacramento--Arden-Arcade--Roseville, CA Metro Area 29.9
Salt Lake City, UT Metro Area 28.6 (lower than LA metro only)
San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA Metro Area 34.0
San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA Metro Area 43.2
--Oakland-Fremont-Hayward, CA Metro Division 38.9
--San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City, CA Metro Division 48.8
--San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA Metro Area 43.8
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA Metro Area 35.8
--Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA Metro Division 39.3
--Tacoma, WA Metro Division 23.7
St. Louis, MO-IL Metro Area 28.0 (lower than LA metro only)
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro Area 45.9
--Bethesda-Gaithersburg-Frederick, MD Metro Division 52.1
--Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro Division 44.2



New York Area Is a Magnet for Graduates

By PATRICK McGEEHAN
Published: August 16, 2006

These days, it seems, you need a college degree just to live in or around New York City. The degree-holders are rapidly displacing the dropouts, a trend that may help reduce the demand for social services and drive down crime rates. But the trend also worries some sociologists who say it is evidence that lower-income residents are being pushed out.

Between 2000 and 2005, the number of people in the metropolitan area over 25 who had not finished high school declined by 520,000, a drop of almost 20 percent. During the same period, the number of college graduates in the region rose by almost 700,000. “These numbers are startling,” said Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College of the City University of New York. “It means the labor force in New York is becoming much more educated.”

Mr. Beveridge said the statistics also portended that the next set of census numbers, which are due in two weeks, will reveal a widening gap between rich and poor in the city. “If a big chunk of the labor force has become more educated, we can expect even more income inequality,” he said.

Pedro A. Noguera, a sociologist at New York University and the director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, said many New Yorkers would see the growing ranks of college graduates among them as a positive development that could ease the burdens on city services and lead to a lower crime rate. “But unfortunately, it’s more likely to mean that it’s increasingly difficult for poor people without college degrees,” he said. “Affordable housing is not as available. The people who make the city work, who do the hard work in the city — the waiters and janitors — are not going to be able to live in the city.”

Mr. Noguera said the trend was not confined to New York. “Certain cities have become extremely attractive to affluent people,” he said, citing San Francisco and Seattle as others. But according to the latest data, which comes from the 2005 American Community Survey, college graduates are flocking to New York City at a faster pace. Many of the city’s new arrivals, including immigrants, have college educations, Mr. Beveridge said. And many of the residents who have died or retired and moved away had never finished high school, he said.

The rise in the ranks of the college-educated in the city is a blend of college graduates moving in to take high-paying jobs and residents obtaining degrees, said Joseph Salvo, director of the population division of the Department of City Planning. He noted that enrollment at the City University of New York had increased to 218,000 students in 2004, up about 12 percent from 2000.

From 2000 to 2005, the number of New York City residents with at least a bachelor’s degree increased by about 285,000, a gain equal to the total number of college-educated people in San Francisco. During that period, the share of New Yorkers with a college degree rose to 32.2 percent from 26 percent, ranking New York fourth among the biggest American cities.

All parts of New York City became more educated, but Manhattan and Brooklyn stood out. In Manhattan, more than 57 percent of all residents had at least a bachelor’s degree, up from 50 percent in 2000. That concentration ranked Manhattan first among counties with more than 1 million residents and seventh among all counties. Brooklyn is becoming educated even faster. Since 2000, the number of college graduates there has risen by about 80,000, or 24 percent, while residents without a high-school diploma have declined by about 110,000, a 24 percent decline. Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, said that Brooklyn was seeing immigrants and young professionals flood in and that a home there “is becoming less attainable for people that don’t have their college degree or more.”

He cited the continuing loss of manufacturing jobs and the shortage of affordable housing in the borough as factors fueling the change. “We need those jobs too,” he said. “There will always be those who for whatever reason cannot attain high school or college education. There has to be room for them, too.” But Mr. Markowitz also attributed the changes in Brooklyn to a wave of Chinese immigrants for whom “education is the center of their lives” and “an influx of residents from Manhattan and from across the country where Brooklyn is considered chic.”

New arrivals with college degrees say the city has become a more attractive place to start careers.

Jennifer Becker, 26, lived in Virginia after graduating from the University of Virginia, but moved to Manhattan last year when her husband, Christian, joined a law firm in the city. “Part of it was just to be in the big city,” said Ms. Becker, the executive director of the university’s alumni club in New York. “I think people tend to come here for a few years and then move somewhere else.”

From the University of Virginia, for example, about 120 graduates head to New York to live each spring, up from about 75 just five years ago, said Carol Wood, assistant vice president for university relations. “We’re definitely seeing a lot of young grads come up here for jobs right after school,” Ms. Becker said.

[Wright Concept]

There should be a list of schools and their predominate majors right next to that statistic.

Also it goes back to the desire to raise a family OR advance in whatever careers they go into also plays a role into that statistic. For LA unless you want to go into drama/acting/entertainment, the need for a degree isn't as high. Compared to DC which you have the Capitol, Senate and other Federal Agencies headquartered there. NYC and Northeast corridor has Investment bankers(Wall St)/business/Advertising/Lawyers. Chicago it's mostly Architecture and Civil Engineering.

[yakumoto]

Bringing back to an earlier topic...

When anyone talks about "preserving the single family nature of Los Angeles", I have to laugh at how ridiculus that sounds. Anyone who seriously thinks the southland is going to run out of single family homes must be, to put it lightly, severly retarded.

What people are really trying to say: They want their single family home, in the neighborhood they want, for the price they want. Well that is impossible, kind sir. You can protect the value of the neighborhood at the expense of density, and you can protect the character of the neighborhood at the expense of price. Until the demand for housing simply goes away, people are going to have to deal with that.

[edluva]

The NIMBY times (Daily News) in some respects agree with you. :)

...

The problem isn't condo conversions. It's a lack of planning. And no amount of symbolic politicking is going to fix that.


without going any deeper than this, yeah, I'd have to agree ;)

[solongfullerton]

^^^ but you also have to agree that Daily News editorial writers are really good at complaining and not very good at coming up with answers. the most of the daily news that i ever get is through this forum, and it seems that the whole paper is nonstop bitching. mexicans this, traffic that, the mayor sucks, dont waster our money on your trains, it costs too much to live here, buses are running us over, blah blah blah......I bet kotkin is an avid reader.

[edluva]

^yeah, I agree that they only complain. And in contrast to them, I have an answer. Let LA continue on it's current trajectory (unrestrained pop growth, congestion, and "browning") and have the MTA do its stuff in response - build rail. I really don't see a solution coming directly from the old-guard council - waxman merely swayed to the tides of change - the increasingly mainstream concept of an overcrowding, increasingly diverse city. MTA's reaping the benefits. City planning? bah. Roger Snoble is as close as we'll get to a substantive planning director.

If you want to be a proactive community activist, support a rail-advocacy group.

[austin356]

uncultured sprawly hellhole like Phoenix or Atlanta... .


We may not be as "civilized", in your context, as you are; but we arent some fucking rednecks raising cows. Pull your head out of your own ass. Sprawling hellhole, yes (even though this city, 1/8th the size of LA, has more highrises uc, more appr., and more proposed than LA does), uncultured hellhole as you put it, no.



Why dont you go check the stats on college education % posted a few post above this one. Since to some education is generally a reasonably good measure of how well one is "cultured" (at least in the elitest way), then we are significantly more cultured than LA.

[austin356]

Oh and regarding this topic; LA MUST learn to allow itself to densify at a rapid pace. This is the only way to keep residents from being forced 1)to the inland empire and 2)to other states notably NV, AZ, and TX.

It is simple economics, when there is nowhere to sprawl but the population continues to increase, either single family homes will begin to densify into multifamily homes, or (if that is not allowed via zoning, stringent regulations, etc) then prices skyrocket to the point where anyone who doesnt own a home cannot afford to even think about purchasing a home.

The ability for a mature, but growing, metropolis to densify is the most basic (and important) fundamental to the continued growth and sucess to that metro. This is somewhere LA needs to actually take a lesson from Hoston, which has NO limits on density or uses. Though since Houston is a much much less mature and much much smaller metro than LA it hasnt reached the point where densification is required, since it still has plenty of room to continue to sprawl without having to drive over 100 miles. But when houston does reach the point where development wants to come back into the city, then it will be in the position to become much more urban than LA due to its ability to adapt to the market driven demand for intown housing.


I believe, as stated earlier at the begining of the discussion, that the city would be best off it it developed a comprehensive transit plan for the future, and then allowed extreme (in American context) density along future transit lines. If this was the strategy, then it would be absolutely essential that the city begin buying up ROWs for future expansion, for both short and long term projects.


But, you guys really shouldnt listen to what I have to say, since I am just some stupid redneck. Thats fine, my city will reap the benefits of a "population capped" LA.

[arkiLA]

In NYC, the subway system had been in existence for decades prior to any increase in the city's density. In other words, mass transit helped initiate densification, hi-rise development and economic growth, not the other way around. No wonder there is so much opposition to hi-density, hi-rise developments in West LA. Traffic is the culprit and there are no concrete plans at the moment to alleviate it in the near future. Unless LA comes up with a viable or "doable" plan for mass transportation for the entire region, all this "Vision of the Future" rhetoric is worthless....

[Damien]

^ I don't know about that. NYC has been the country's densest area since probably ... I'm not sure. My guess would be Boston and/or Philadelphia at one time prior to the establishment of the famous NYC grid had more, but even then I'm doubtful. We might be talking pre-Revolutionary War.

And austin,

Much of what you suggest are theories that the majority of the City Council and Mayor hold. It's the process of implementation which is way too slow.

[yakumoto]

Much of what you suggest are theories that the majority of the City Council and Mayor hold. It's the process of implementation which is way too slow.

Some has been done in terms of planning for future transportation needs, but almost nothing has been done in terms of land use planning and zoning laws.

[Damien]

It's a big city. And apparently the Council is too weak to just tell people to STFU and designate some corridors for dense developments.

[Wright Concept]

Not just too weak, too lazy and in bed with the bad developers (Not guys like Gilmore) to make that work.

[yakumoto]

Bad developers meaning the big developers who create the big projects. The zoning laws destroy any incentive to create neighborhood retail...

the sort that would not even force people to walk (as the boo-hoo-hoo asshole nimbys accuse) but at least give people the option to walk. Now here's the irony: you can find what i said, in nearly the exact same words, on the LA city planning website.

[yakumoto]

For the visual learners out there, here is an example of BAD urban planning:

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l313/assrapist/Downtown/other.jpg

Boooo! Why is it bad? Because theres not a parking space for every 250 sq feet of retail, obviously.

Heres some GOOD urban planning:

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l313/assrapist/Downtown/ralphs.jpg

Yay! It's a Ralphs if you couldn't tell. The enterance is actually off the street next to the parking garage.

It's a big city. And apparently the Council is too weak to just tell people to STFU and designate some corridors for dense developments.

I'm sorry, but you are dead wrong. It really has nothing to do with density, it has to do with auto dependency. Picture number two is part of a denser development than picture number one.

[Wright Concept]

Not exactly in the city limits of LA. But I post it here because some have the vision of turning our streets into Rodeo Drive.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-granite25aug25,0,6214417.story?coll=la-headlines-california

THE STATE
Seeing Granite as a Paving Grace
Beverly Hills may replace concrete sidewalks with something less pedestrian.
By Bob Pool
Times Staff Writer

August 25, 2006

Want your road to riches to remain paved with gold? Then you'd better pave your sidewalks with granite.

That's the view of Beverly Hills administrators who fear the community's famously opulent shopping district is on the verge of losing its elite shopping base to luxurious competitors.

City Manager Roderick Wood wants to start jack-hammering the dull concrete sidewalks along Rodeo Drive and surrounding streets — home to some of the world's fanciest boutiques including Prada, Gucci, Cartier and Tiffany — and replace them with glimmering Kenoran Sage granite pavers.

Never mind that the city just wrapped up a $16-million, two-year streetscape makeover that included new concrete sidewalks.

"Places like Las Vegas and Dubai and enclaves like Vail and Martha's Vineyard and developments like the Grove, Century City and South Coast Plaza are eroding the base of the long-established markets and specifically in Beverly Hills," Wood counseled the City Council this week.

"The greatest peril in today's luxury market is for one to rely on history only to become history."

Rodeo Drive's new concrete walkways would be "a very nice addition in Riverside or Indio," Wood said. But "even in places like Fresno," far-sighted officials have begun jazzing up their city streets.

But the proposal has received a rocky reception — especially when city officials showed samples of the granite to shop owners.

"The tile looks like something from a shower stall. It is very ugly, " said Manijeh Messa, manager of the Bijan designer men's store. "I told the gentleman from City Hall I wasn't in favor of it."

Messa and other merchants catering to celebrities, splurging tourists and the wealthy also cringe at the thought of another round of sidewalk barricades, construction dust and noise in front of their fancy restaurants and expensive boutiques.

During the recent sidewalk redo, Rodeo Drive "looked like a war zone; there were piles of dirt for six months," said Bijan's assistant manager, Marjan Townsend. "People were cutting themselves" on construction debris as they walked.



Then there is the price. The city wants merchants to pay the $850-per-linear-foot cost of the granite.

Property owners would be required to install granite sidewalks when any reconstruction or tenant improvement costing $250,000 or more was undertaken.

That means sidewalks could have a patchwork look to them for years — another thing that worries the aesthetically minded along Rodeo Drive.

"We don't find that Rodeo Drive looks shabby the way it is now," said Karl Schurz III, whose family owns property on the thoroughfare.

City officials have spent months coming up with just the right color and texture.

Three different shades of mottled granite have been proposed. The greenish Kenoran Sage seems to blend in better with most storefront facades than its grayish and beige-tinted counterparts, according to city staffer Daniel Cartagena.

Unlike the polished granite countertops now popular in high-end kitchens, the sidewalk pavers would have a rough surface less likely to cause pedestrians to slip and fall in wet weather.

Despite the reaction of merchants, Wood believes Beverly Hills needs the granite to burnish its reputation as the ultimate posh shopping district. He said the competition for business is fierce, noting that nearby shopping areas such as Century City, West Hollywood and L.A.'s Robertson Boulevard and Melrose Avenue are hot on Beverly Hills' heels.

"To be the elite of the elite does not mean flat, white concrete and ho-hum green bushes for landscaping with no focus on a unique and exceptional quality of experience," Wood wrote in a memo this week to the City Council.

On Rodeo Drive, however, pedestrians were puzzled Thursday over why anyone would want to change the look — or feel — of the palm-shaded street.

"That's so silly, thinking you need granite to save Beverly Hills," laughed tourist Marjorie Kaplan, visiting from Boston with husband Dan and daughters Jenna, 11, and Sophie, 6. "It doesn't look bad the way it is."

Dan Kaplan shook his head as he and his daughters posed for a snapshot next to a bright yellow Ferrari.

"In Boston they'd spiff things up by putting a few little rows of bricks in the sidewalk and installing some old-fashioned lampposts," he said.

The sidewalk controversy ultimately will be decided by the City Council, which so far has not taken a formal position.

For now they're stonewalling on granite.

[Wright Concept]

http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/welcome-to-gentrification-city/14285/

LA WEEKLY

Welcome to Gentrification City
Written by David Zahniser


http://i8.tinypic.com/25jckcp.jpg

Teardowns. Evictions. Investment. Rebirth. And the significance of that new gelato stand. The perils and pleasures of gentrification


Paul Giannotti couldn’t wait another day to embrace the big city. Bored in his placid corner of the San Fernando Valley, he had been searching for a shorter commute, an apartment with charm and a much larger selection of restaurants. So he and his girlfriend, Dianne Marti, uprooted themselves from their three-bedroom ranch house in Granada Hills and headed for Koreatown, where they found a three-story walkup with two bathrooms and a balcony.

The move alarmed Giannotti’s family and friends, who warned the pair they were risking their lives by placing themselves in such a crowded, ethnically complex environment. Yet the couple swooned at the sight of their Spanish Colonial Revival apartment, with its arched doorways and coved ceilings. They loved Koreatown too, and got to know the neighbors, the local businesses and the community’s cultural life cycle — L.A. Marathon in the spring, Korean cultural parade in the fall.

In demographic terms, the pair were tiny minnows swimming against the tide. Los Angeles in 1987 was changing fast, with Mexican, Central American and Korean immigrants pouring into the central city and Anglos moving ever outward, to West Hills, Calabasas, Alta Loma, Costa Mesa. The city was in a state of churn, with the civic elite acquainting themselves with the concept of multiculturalism and the city’s white middle classes voting with their feet.

http://i8.tinypic.com/25jcjes.jpg

In those years, Los Angeles was still hung-over from more than a decade of civic combat over busing, the court-ordered desegregation of the city’s public schools. Families with means had migrated to the suburbs in search of lower crime rates, better schools and a more homogenous culture. With so much talk about white flight — and later, middle-class flight — no one seemed to entertain the possibility that a comfortable middle class, Anglo or otherwise, might one day come back.

http://i8.tinypic.com/25jclrs.jpg

Disregarding the trends, Giannotti plunged into the life of the neighborhood. When Pope John Paul II came to Los Angeles, the couple held a party, serving guests a round of Bloody Marys before rushing down to Olympic Boulevard to see the papal motorcade. When their street got hit with a spate of thefts, Giannotti confronted a man stripping a car and even took the witness stand to testify against a burglar. Even when the crime situation got dicey, Giannotti and Marti marveled at the fantastic sunsets they saw from their balcony, and the 360-degree fireworks display visible from their roof on the Fourth of July.

The city is once again in a state of churn, and from the roof of his 1927 apartment building, Giannotti sees the signs. Apartment buildings have been razed. Office buildings are being reinvented as housing. Construction craters occupy half a block. But Giannotti did not experience the disruption firsthand until July 14, the day he received a letter telling him his landlord plans to demolish his rent-controlled apartment building and replace it with a pricey, six-story condominium complex. “After 20 years, how can I replace this?” asked the 58-year-old Giannotti, as he walked past the sliding glass-pocket doors of his $1,250-per-month apartment. “It’s impossible. I can’t do it.”

Giannotti, Marti and their neighbors decided to fight back, sending letters to the planning department and hanging a banner from the apartment that reads: “Save our neighborhood. Your building could be next.” But while Los Angeles provides rent control to more than 600,000 households, nothing in its legal arsenal can prevent a property owner from invoking the Ellis Act, the state law allowing landlords to remove themselves from the rental market and offer residential units for sale instead. And there is the bitter irony. Giannotti could soon be rewarded for his good civic behavior by being expelled from the very neighborhood be embraced.

“It’s not just having to pick up and find another apartment, which will be smaller and more expensive,” said Giannotti, who runs a company that repairs espresso machines. “It’s also breaking the ties to the community that we’ve had for 20 years now. We’ve been to various neighborhood parties. We’ve hosted neighborhood parties. We’ve patronized the local businesses here. It’s total upheaval.” ....

To read and see the rest of the article go to this link (http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/welcome-to-gentrification-city/14285/) Warning: It is very long but a well written read.

[RAlossi]

He doesn't address the reasons behind gentrification -- like the strength of the job market, the lack of housing in traditional areas, and other factors. So what's his solution to the housing problem? People are STILL moving to LA by the thousands.

Not only that, but LA has had some VERY CHEAP housing for the longest time and only recently is getting back to a more respectable level in tune with its value.

[citywatch]

That LAW article spends a lot of time describing what's going on in Manhattan Bch, Venice & Silver Lake, & I don't know if gentrification is such a big deal in those hoods since they've been AOK or even prime space for ppl with $$ for a long time. However, Echo Pk & the hoods south of Koreatown are a different matter, although the writer seems more vague about whether a lot of gentrification actually is taking place in those parts of town too.

As I mentioned in post #54 above, NYC is seeing a lot of ppl with $$ (or at least college degrees) moving in & replacing less successful ppl. But the same amt of change doesn't seem to be happening here in LA, & I wonder if some of that is because many more ppl (at least with college degrees) still are a lot more hesitant about moving to borderline hoods in So Ca. IOW, LA still may be a very burban type town, or more like KC or detroit instead of NYC, where even more ppl remain committed to ending up in newer hoods that are as far removed as possible from the problems of the city.

[MapGoulet]

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro Area 45.9
--Bethesda-Gaithersburg-Frederick, MD Metro Division 52.1
--Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro Division 44.2


I went to High School in Bethesda and grew up in the DC area! YAY! I guess it's only downhill from there, huh?

[Wright Concept]

But the same amt of change doesn't seem to be happening here in LA, & I wonder if some of that is because many more ppl (at least with college degrees) still are a lot more hesitant about moving to borderline hoods in So Ca. IOW, LA still may be a very burban type town, or more like KC or detroit instead of NYC, where even more ppl remain committed to ending up in newer hoods that are as far removed as possible from the problems of the city.

It would be interesting to do a poll from college students and ask why they would or wouldn't stay in LA. Part of that maybe Traffic and lack of public transit system, but I believe Denver scored higher than LA.

Could it be the stereotypes that LA has still thinking of 1992 and South Central instead of South LA? Or that the lack of decent school/playground facilities available for these students to want to raise a family.

It could be the jobs/industries that are available for graduates out of College. Just a hypothesis, around D.C you're going into Law, Medicine or Politics working on a Seantors or Congressman's staff.

[ocman]

Well, you need to have a comparison of the number of college grads that are coming into the city. Statistics of the percent of college grads that make up LA's population don't really reveal much. It may say more about LA's education system, rather than the number of college grads the city is attracting from elsewhere. LA has a healthy immigrant population coming mainly from the poorer/uneducated countries around the Pacific Rim like China, Vietnam, Mexico etc. Even if LA is attracting a healthy number of transplants with a college education, it's going to be overshadowed by the huge number of uneducated immigrants coming into the city.

[citywatch]

^ The stats on the % of ppl here or elsewhere who have college degrees is a more recent way of listing what's going on in various cities throughout the US. I really wouldn't have even thought of that angle if it were't for the article about NYC several days ago in the NY Times.

I know LA has also ranked pretty low in per capita income too, dating back to a time when the amt of immigration to So CA was far lower than it is today. I'm referring to stats I've seen in old US almanacs published in the 1970s.

It's ironic that if the cost of living & housing is so high here, then how come a lot of the ppl who are moving to & ending up in LA aren't exactly college grad material with a lot of $$?

[citywatch]

Could it be the stereotypes that LA has still thinking of 1992 and South Central instead of South LA?
I think some (or even alot) of it is rooted in what is being referred to here (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=2226473&postcount=1909), here (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=2218478&postcount=6), here (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=2218989&postcount=20), here (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=2226023&postcount=38), here (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=2228003&postcount=55), or here (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=2228003&postcount=55).

I really believe LA would rate alot higher in many more ppl's minds if larger numbers of its hoods were like Bev Hills, SaMo, or the nicest parts of even DTLA. Unfortunately, way too much of it is like the hoods that sit east of LAX, stretching for several miles, all the way to Downey or Norwalk, & towards OC.

[LosAngelesBeauty]

I said i'd like, but who said that I wouldn't include total subway access? I'm just fantasizing, after all ;)

Seriously, if Wilshire had both unique architecture and was fully built up, that would be one of the most unique skylines in the world.


You mean something like this? But I don't think this skyline stretches for 16 miles though.

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/4571/saopaulo05al0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[LosAngelesBeauty]

Remember how long it took to get Disney hall built? The parking garage sucked up all the initial funds, and stood empty for years. The county had to sell bonds just to get it built, and the garage alone is estimated to account for up to 40 percent of the entire project cost.

I thought the $100 million County-owned garage's figure was separate from Disney Hall's $274 million cost?

Either Disney Hall including the garage is $374 million or Disney Hall itself is only $174 million. :shrug:

[edluva]

including the garage, it costed $274m

[edluva]

regarding education, LA has been suffering a brain-drain for decades now. LA is a large, blue-collar megalopolis with a disproportionately small educated class despite it's quality colleges and universities. Probably the only reason we still have the educated class we do is that it is employed by the regional operations of companies that base their highest level "brainwork" elsewhere, or by a homegrown cottage-industry that has filled a niche that large multi-national companies haven't entered (think small local banks such as CityNational and EastWest)

For instance, the size of our financial services industry is more a byproduct of LA's size, and less of it's actual role in the global finance network. We have Deloitte and Touche because every big economy of 18 million needs a centralized auditing and accounting touchpoint. Still LA doesn't house a dominant financial services industry largely because it has no white-collar trade platform...no stock exchange.

The industries LA does dominate are usually blue-collar ones - for example the port complex. How many educated people does one need to operate a fleet of forklifts or cranes? Aerospace has also gone this route, with LA having become "the hands" of large engineering firms based elsewhere. Biotech? LA is not nearly the crucial nerve-center for academia-industry partnersips that SF and Boston are. IT? We have a branch operations of Cisco, Microsoft, and Sybase, each of which employs some educated workers, but so does Buenos Aires and Mexico City. Most of these are housekeeping, not decision-making concerns.

The story of LA's white-collar economy over the decades has been one of initial promise, then loss. Large industries have come and gone, only to leave their remnants as a reminder of LA's white-collar legacy. We've seen LA lose the banking, insurance, aerospace, and engineering industries to other cities and regions. LA has a huge trillion-dollar economy, but it's more the case with LA that our economy is merely the aggregate of a myriad small businesses with little global consequence. But we do have a huge bureaucracy.

[citywatch]

It would be interesting to see how the city's population, & stats on it, would have changed through the yrs if a lot more of its hoods had been built for the pickier, well educated type of person. IOW, most ppl who are moving on up (getting college degrees, etc), to the high life, generally don't want to end up in a dive environment, for the same reason such ppl don't want to be seen driving around town in a broken down, late model car.

While it's easy to send an old Ford or Toyota to the wrecking yard, it's next to impossible to do the same with the city's many hoods, such as Mar Vista, Canoga Pk, Lomita or Hawthorne, that were built at a time when $$ & architectural work were very modest, created before many of us were even born.

There may be some gentrification possible anywhere in LA, but a lot of the city's older hoods prob will always stay rooted as turf for mainly a blue collar population.

[edsg25]

I hope this comes across the right way. You Angelenos often confuse the heck out of me.

Your city is world class and great on any level. The fact that it is different in the way it grew through sprawl rather than centralization is more an asset than a detriment....you have something unique that other people don't have (and if other cities can't understand what you have is special, that's there problem, not yours).

I'm from Chicago. I love my home town. However, I have never visited LA without, first, enjoying it, and second, thinking it was anything other than the major city is is (every bit as much as my city is).

If you don't mind me saying, this thread and others show a defensiveness that LA should not have. It is too great, too major, too important to have to either prove itself or compare itself with others.

I say...screw how NY, Chgo, SF, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc., deal with density and choose how LA wants to do it...in its own unique special way.

I can't imagine a city as great as Los Angeles needing to care what any city has to tink of it.

******

On a practical note, it would be utterly insane not to have the Red Line extended out to the West Side. The Wilshire corridor's density is probably greater than any such strip in the US and absolutely screams for a major rapid transit line.

[Trojan in NYC]

a sixteen mile skyline along wilshire sounds nice but that won't happen for awhile.

[ocman]

I thought the $100 million County-owned garage's figure was separate from Disney Hall's $274 million cost?

Either Disney Hall including the garage is $374 million or Disney Hall itself is only $174 million. :shrug:


I've heard the price was around 310. So 100 for the garage and 200 for the concert hall.

[Damien]

I read the LA Weekly article and thought several things, all of which can probably be summarized with the question: Where's the plan?

Where is the plan to improve the local economies and safety of communities without displacing law-abiding residents?

It appears the experts have no voice, and the task forces don't exist. How can that be?

[yakumoto]

Its like LAB and others say: We need to find ways of housing the poor, and we need to do it in ways so that they're not seen! Hooray for gentrification, because it solves the problem of poverty!

[Wright Concept]

It sure does solve the problem by making it someone elses problem.

[cookiejarvis]

edsg25: point taken. Angelenos drift toward hairtrigger punditry due to all the Sriracha sauce running in our veins. It's annoying, but we mean well.

Good news regarding affordable housing downtown.

http://www.cityfeet.com/News/NewsArticle.aspx?PartnerPath=&Id=20417

Monday, August 21, 2006 - LOS ANGELES-A Calabasas-based partnership called the Buxbaum Group plans to convert the 463-room, 100-year-old Alexandria Hotel Downtown into work force housing. The new owner paid about $30 million for the property, which in its heyday was known as one of the places that presidents and celebrities stayed when visiting Los Angeles.

The renovation of the Alexandria is expected to take about two years and cost $14 million, according to Scott Ruscyk, the head of business affairs for the Buxbaum Group, which is a turnaround investment group that is headed by Paul Buxbaum. Ruscyk says that the restoration of the hotel at 501 S. Spring St. will “renovate the rundown structure into affordable housing for workers in Downtown Los Angeles.”

After the transformation, the hotel will be geared toward “housing for working men and women who can't afford to pay high rents," Ruscyk says. The Alexandria has been operating for some time as a single room occupancy hotel, catering to poor and elderly tenants.

(continues)

[Wright Concept]

LA Downtown News: NINE STEPS (http://www.ladowntownnews.com/articles/2006/08/28/news/opinion/edit03.prt)

Nine Steps for a Livable City
by Sam Hall Kaplan

How can Downtown be made more livable?" asked Lewis MacAdams, the venerated founder of the Friends of the Los Angeles River. More specifically, he asked how more people could be enticed to energize and enjoy the local street scene, "like in a real city."

A friend, a fellow flaneur and a recent emigre to Downtown living, MacAdams was repeating questions he had been asked to write about for a local publication in the throes of discovering the Downtown in which it happens to be located.

Being fond of MacAdams, I agreed to try to come up with some provocative recommendations to spice up the article. "Be irreverent," he suggested, as if he had to encourage me.

The result was a pleasant lunch over which we chatted about poetry (MacAdams is a poet, as is my middle son), Princeton University (we were both there at about the same time) and, of course, how to make Downtown Los Angeles more livable without having to mock suburbia or New York.

However, not knowing what suggestions of mine he would choose, and that other Downtown boosters and suspects were to be interviewed, I indicated I also would incorporate them into my own column. Commenting that all's fair in love, war and writing, MacAdams just asked that I not identify his publication.

The resulting off-the-wall list includes the suggestions made to MacAdams, and also some others ideas, new and remembered from past articles, plans and pleas I have been a party to concerning Downtown. They are offered here in no priority or regards to political correctness, other than a trust that if pursued, their feasibility would by decided by the potential users and not by an insulated editorial writer or an entrenched bureaucrat.


1) Encourage vendors everywhere Downtown where people might gather and for everything that might sell, be it flowers, fruit, coffee, hot dogs, secondhand books and publications or t-shirts. Let the markets reign free and open.

One prime spot could be the southwest corner of Grand Avenue and First Street, in front of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, where an attractive stall would be a viable public art alternative to the proposed, overpriced, overblown bowtie. Just think of eating a hot dog there as being performance art.

2) Encourage owners to reduce commercial rents down to near nothing for the now vacant street-level stores scattered across Downtown, particularly in the Financial District and Historic Core. Desperately needed there to entice pedestrians are stores with window displays, be they art galleries, pawnshops, music stores, satellite museums, kite factories, botanicas, whatever. The more offbeat, the better.


3) Create a diversity of themed retail districts, including a "thieves" market of sorts for "seconds" and bargains, perhaps on Wilshire Boulevard between Flower Street and Grand Avenue where the street could occasionally be closed. Allow merchants there to be entrepreneurial and not constantly have to worry about being harassed by the labels police. Think of the area as a free trade zone.


4) One "district" that should receive special consideration is Broadway. The theaters and history are there. All that is needed is more diverse cultural venues, such as art film houses, unique theaters, concert halls and clubs. The result could be a colorful entertainment district for both tourists and hip residents.


5) To calm traffic and encourage parking Downtown for short-term shoppers and protect pedestrians, allow angled parking on select streets. Some key streets also should be made two-way, and actually be closed at times to allow street fairs and farmers and folk markets.

Needed are fewer speed lanes and more social spaces: more mid-block bus stops and crosswalks. Letting pedestrians rule and feel safer just might tempt more people out to walk and catch a scene.

6) More and better landscaping and streetscaping. Nothing new here, except a reiteration of the many past pleas prompted by countless studies of Downtown recommending select plantings, shade trees and street furniture, along with improved maintenance and street cleaning programs.

To be more specific and provocative, I also suggested to MacAdams:

7) Closing the dining rooms and cafeteria of the Los Angeles Times, as well as those of other large corporations. This would prompt those who don't "brown bag" it to work to perhaps explore and experience Downtown other than just driving through in a blur to and from home.

The results would be good for local businesses and healthy for those walking the streets to search for favored eateries.


8) Closing the Disney Hall underground parking garage, especially for concerts. This would force those driving to attend a performance to search out parking in the surrounding area and actually walk to the venue. Who knows, this may prompt a few new restaurant openings, perhaps a busker or two to perform, and a police presence to calm the anxieties of the local gentry experiencing a Downtown sidewalk.


9) Take away the parking privileges along with the parking subsidies of city and county employees, except, of course, for those who really need to use their vehicles for work or are handicapped. This would force many to use and thus support mass transit, while putting more people on sidewalks, at least walking to and from a bus or train station to their offices.

Sam Hall Kaplan is the author of L.A. Lost and Found. He is the former design critic for the Los Angeles Times and a former Emmy Award-winning reporter for FOX 11.

[citywatch]

To be more specific and provocative, I also suggested to MacAdams:

7) Closing the dining rooms and cafeteria of the Los Angeles Times, as well as those of other large corporations.

8) Closing the Disney Hall underground parking garage, especially for concerts.

9) Take away the parking privileges along with the parking subsidies of city and county employees, except, of course, for those who really need to use their vehicles for work or are handicapped. That's way more specific than necessary and, ultimately, very unworkable or unrealistic. If anything, it would make even more ppl think of DT as a pain in the ass, as an inconvenient part of town that should be avoided at all costs. And that isn't a good thing when LA continues to be a very burbanized, non DT oriented type of city.

I saw an example of that after reading the following in the paper. It shows how ppl, businesses & all the $$ they bring to a hood have been flowing several miles to the west of DT:


Renee Travlos skips breakfast some mornings to begin the half-hour commute from her Fairfax district home to her job as office manager for a law firm near Brentwood. If she leaves later than 8:15, her drive time doubles and she's late for work.

Travlos' nearly seven-mile drive takes anywhere from half an hour to an hour or more, including 20 minutes to travel the mile between the Santa Monica Freeway and her Barrington Avenue office.

In her previous job, Travlos, 35, drove seven miles in the opposite direction — along Olympic Boulevard into downtown Los Angeles — in a mere 20 minutes.

"It was no problem," she said.

[citywatch]

If Sam Hall Kaplan wants to become very specific, here's something else he should consider :D :


Fulton to Get Rid of Power Poles

Unsightly utility lines will go underground as part of its beautification.

By Bill Lindelof -- Bee Staff Writer
Thursday, June 8, 2006

It's a tradition at groundbreakings for officials to turn the soil with shovel heads spray-painted gold. Last week there was more ominous talk: ceremonial chain saws. More than one person mentioned in jest that chain saws would be more appropriate at a groundbreaking to mark a project that will remove ugly-duckling utility poles from Fulton Avenue. County transportation director Tom Zlotkowski sounded the utility pole massacre theme during project startup ceremonies at the Lexus of Sacramento dealership on Fulton.

"We were thinking about getting mini-chain saws, but people might get carried away," he said before the ceremonial turning of the earth.

Such is the sentiment toward the poles that will be taken out as part of a $7.1 million project over the next two years. The poles besmirch a street lately brightened by landscaping that includes star jasmine and good-sized trees. They hide light poles sporting a large decorative "F," meant to gussy up Fulton, a prime generator of tax revenue for Sacramento County. And, since the power poles are planted right in the sidewalk in many spots, they are impediments to pedestrians and others. People who use wheelchairs and parents pushing strollers must roll into the street or parking lots to avoid the poles.

The poles are from a different era, predating many of the businesses along the street. While the poles are called blight by the county, they are true workhorses, carrying electrical and telecommunication service to the bustling avenue lined with restaurants, car dealers and retail shops. The utility pole planted in the sidewalk in front of the Lexus dealership held eight power or communication lines.

The project to place the lines underground is scheduled to be completed in spring of 2008. The effort is being funded by Measure A local sales tax funds, federal transportation money and funds from the Fulton Avenue Association.

County Supervisor Susan Peters said part of the county's mission is to stimulate economic growth. Placing the lines underground will make Fulton Avenue a more pleasing place to shop. "I want to thank you all for being here today on the next phase of Fulton Avenue's extreme makeover," she said.

A trench will be dug; then utility companies will take the lines off the poles and put them into the ground. The poles will then be taken down. Zlotkowski said the county real estate division first had to acquire 80 property easements from parcel owners. "This is eight years of work," he said. "But this is what the business owners wanted done when we first met back in 2000."

Sacramento County Executive Terry Schutten said the pole project is part of an effort to revitalize inner county neighborhoods. "I'm looking forward to seeing that big saw cutting those buggers down," he said.

Tim Cahill, president of Charles Bell Inc., a Fulton Avenue property owner, said the beneficiaries of the project will be those who shop and do business on Fulton and the surrounding neighborhoods. Also, he said, "it will be for those people who come after us."

SMUD board member Howard Posner said once other communities learned that utilities would be placed underground on Fulton Avenue, "we heard from Auburn Boulevard, Folsom Boulevard and Florin Road. People there ask why they can't get this done. The answer is simple: 'You have to put in the effort that Fulton Avenue did.' "

Randy Graham said his family first built on Fulton Avenue in 1967. The power lines preceded his Braley & Graham Buick Pontiac GMC at 2200 Fulton Ave., and his Kia operation next door at 2194 Fulton Ave. "We really haven't known it any other way, but they really are an eyesore," he said of the light poles. "And frankly, they are a problem for pedestrians, being right in the middle of the sidewalks. It's expensive, but everyone gains."

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e135/jreeves76/DSC00175.jpg

[Wright Concept]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-morrison31aug31,1,524487.column?coll=la-news-columns (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-morrison31aug31,1,524487.column?coll=la-news-columns)
PATT MORRISON

Patt Morrison: Cramming L.A. With McMansions

How much longer will the city allow massive houses on tiny lots to engulf Los Angeles?
Patt Morrison

August 31, 2006

SAN CLEMENTE, former home of Richard Nixon — now those people know how to fight a zoning war: Gallons of human poo furtively dumped in an enemy's yard in the Shorecliffs neighborhood; the word "abortion" daubed across a hated house; little children cruelly struck from birthday party guest lists.

In Los Angeles, we're still fighting our zoning battles on paper. So far.

Shorecliffs, says the Orange County Register, is at war with itself over second-story add-ons that block the views of the houses behind, whose owners then want to add a second story to regain their view, and so on until — well, probably until San Bernardino.

Los Angeles' equivalent war is over McMansions, the lotline-to-lotline monstrosities that can turn a green, airy neighborhood into a street as solid, massive and unfriendly-looking as the Raiders' offensive line.

City Council member Tom LaBonge, who recently asked for stricter rules about building on hillsides and in canyons, now wants the planning department to answer that age-old question: How big is too big? Dump an 18-year patchwork of varying rules, he says, and set a standard for every teardown and every vacant lot that catches the eye of a builder.

I can't say that I can actually hear the developers snickering, but LaBonge must have more faith in the process than I do. For years, some city building and safety officials have rattled the tin cup for contributions from developers for a "charity and special events" fund. They've been inclined to look on every project house by house, rather than as a piece of a neighborhood whole. They also have given fast-track treatment to some political insiders' projects, and the head of the department was just ordered to tell a Superior Court judge why he shouldn't be held in contempt for ignoring the city's own rules when he approved a million-dollar home remodel in the Palisades.

Just how often do people complain that "L.A. has no neighborhoods"? Probably as often as other people set about trying to screw up the ones it does have. South Pasadena battled against a freeway that would slice it in half as neatly as the Black Dahlia. The Englishman who made the remark about every man's home being his castle wasn't being literal, but the Irishman who said that each man kills the thing he loves was.

The McMansion wars pit neighborhoods against builders, and sometimes family versus family.

The rich started it, of course. Aaron Spelling's Holmby Hills mansion, with its mythic gift-wrap room and doll museum, is at least 1,000 square feet bigger than the White House; but then, a president only has to run the country; Spelling had to run a TV empire.

Trickle-down culture meant McMansions began appearing in ZIP Codes other than 90210 and its satellites. Families are smaller, but every one of them has to have four bedrooms, a home office, a room for Grandma and more space than George Washington required at Mount Vernon (the father of our country made do with 8,000 square feet; 9,000 if you count the back porch). And instead of the green yards beloved by earlier Angelenos, homeowners now gaze out their windows onto … the neighbor's McMansion.

Elsewhere in America, the houses are small and the people are fat. Here, the people are emaciated but the houses are huge — often with more bathrooms than bedrooms, which suggests just how some residents stay so thin.

Other cities confronted this long before Los Angeles — Glendale, Laguna Beach, San Marino, Westminster, Burbank, Rancho Palos Verdes. Even Beverly Hills has a lid on the house-to-lot-size ratio, though it's more generous than historic-minded places such as Pasadena, whose Millionaires' Row of a century past sat on land that could rightly be called grounds. Sure, land is expensive — but cramming every last inch of it with house?

Thankfully, all this can reach its limits. I went to see a recently McMansionized Hollywood Hills house that is, I am assured, so overdone that it hadn't sold even in the recent omnivorous market and is being rented out for porn shoots. I couldn't see past the gates, the curlicues and the stonework and fancy lighting, but if that was any gauge, behind the gates was more of the same — five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, nearly 7,000 square feet worth of over-the-topness.



THE TEAR-DOWN and build-over mega-house came upon us as another plague did 20 years ago — the strip mall. Many communities finally put a stop to them, but not before thousands went up. (The biggest mini-mall-maker was La Mancha Development, with its Don Quixote logo. The builders thought the name was Spanish for "the impossible dream," like the song. Instead it means a stain or a spot — something disfiguring, which gets no argument from me.)

Los Angeles is a mutable place. Still, it has had some sense of scale and proportion, however inadvertent. So what would the place look like if everyone had a McMansion? Every street shoulder to shoulder in facades of stone or stucco, every home in perpetual shadow, perpetual airless proximity, perpetual lack of privacy. I'm getting the picture. Yes, I think I can imagine it now. It's … it's … McPrison.

[Damien]

SAN CLEMENTE, former home of Richard Nixon — now those people know how to fight a zoning war: Gallons of human poo furtively dumped in an enemy's yard in the Shorecliffs neighborhood; the word "abortion" daubed across a hated house; little children cruelly struck from birthday party guest lists.

Oh that's just child's play.

THIS is how you fight a zoning war (http://archive.recordonline.com/archive/2006/07/26/news-omhorsehead-07-26.html):
Slate Hill - The bent windshield wipers annoyed her. The sex toy glued to her windshield back in June made her furious. But finding a horse's head in her swimming pool yesterday hit Wawayanda Councilwoman Gail Soro right where she lives.

[....]

"Everyone's seen 'The Godfather,' " Gail Soro said last night, doing a slow, sad burn as she pondered whether to put surveillance cameras among the many bird feeders hanging above her immaculate lawn.

She was born and raised in this town, and she's never feared for her safety until now.

"There's a message here," she said.
More
Soro, who is the only Democrat on the Town Board, said last week she believed the harassment was political, stemming from her vocal opposition to the town's newly adopted master plan.

She said the horse's head marked an escalation in a pattern of harassment against her that included a sex object left on her car and bent windshield wipers.

On Thursday, Soro voted against zoning legislation needed to bolster to the master plan, saying it had not addressed recommendations made by Orange County Planner David Church.

[Wright Concept]

http://www.ladowntownnews.com/articles/2006/09/04/news/opinion/edit02.prt

Editorial
Truth in Concrete and Stone



Sometimes nothing says more about a community than its sidewalk politics. Take the recent proposal by Beverly Hills City Manager Roderick Wood to replace Rodeo Drive's sidewalks with granite pavers (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=2268349&postcount=69), a move he said would keep the famed shopping district a step ahead of the likes of the Grove and Old Town Pasadena.

Oh, to have such concerns. Less than 10 miles inland and seemingly more than a world away, Downtown Los Angeles - itself once the elite retail center in the city - has its own sidewalk issues. Only these are born of an emerging city reclaiming its centrality, and are as varied as any found elsewhere in Los Angeles, in a concentration found nowhere else.

Outside Disney Concert Hall, glinting curves of brushed aluminum not only draw tourists on a pilgrimage to the oft-touted pinnacle of modern architecture. They also cook the sidewalk with reflected heat on summer days.

In the Arts District, the question of who can best keep the sidewalks clean and safe has become a chief focus of the Central City East Association's controversial push to slip a couple of words into the equation and incorporate the area into an Arts Business Improvement District. With the votes already out, area stakeholders await the City Council's September 12 meeting on the subject, when they'll learn the fate of their sidewalks' caretaking.

In Skid Row, sidewalks have become the battleground in the latest scuffle between homeless advocacy and law enforcement. The sheer number of tents and temporary homesteads blocking the path of nonexistent passers-by marks the moment's champion, for good or ill.

And, as those who have made the move to Downtown in the latest wave of re-urbanization are discovering, sidewalks have a purpose entirely other than providing solid footing for parking meters. They have in the past served as the first option for getting around for all of life's little errands, and, as gas prices inflate almost as quickly as the collective American waistline, they will do so again.

It's not always logical to compare Downtown to its Westside neighbors. And, it's not surprising that Beverly Hills would spawn such an extravagant ploy, or that granite pavers are even such a bad idea - after all, every city needs its gimmicks to stay ahead, or even merely to survive.

But, when the unusual announcement of a proposal for stone-paved sidewalks comes amid reports of homeless tents tripling in Skid Row, when Downtown is trying to get people to feel comfortable walking along its thoroughfares and when the cultural focus of Los Angeles is shifting inexorably inland, the comparison comes easily. And it's a telling one.

Granite is great, but life is the true luxury.

page 4, 9/4/2006

[LosAngelesBeauty]

I hope this comes across the right way. You Angelenos often confuse the heck out of me.

Your city is world class and great on any level. The fact that it is different in the way it grew through sprawl rather than centralization is more an asset than a detriment....you have something unique that other people don't have (and if other cities can't understand what you have is special, that's there problem, not yours).

I'm from Chicago. I love my home town. However, I have never visited LA without, first, enjoying it, and second, thinking it was anything other than the major city is is (every bit as much as my city is).

If you don't mind me saying, this thread and others show a defensiveness that LA should not have. It is too great, too major, too important to have to either prove itself or compare itself with others.

I say...screw how NY, Chgo, SF, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc., deal with density and choose how LA wants to do it...in its own unique special way.

I can't imagine a city as great as Los Angeles needing to care what any city has to tink of it.

******

On a practical note, it would be utterly insane not to have the Red Line extended out to the West Side. The Wilshire corridor's density is probably greater than any such strip in the US and absolutely screams for a major rapid transit line.


Awww how cute! I like you. :tup:

[Wright Concept]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-housing7sep07,1,4912983.story?coll=la-headlines-california (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-housing7sep07,1,4912983.story?coll=la-headlines-california)

Little Gain Seen in Affordable Housing in L.A.
The razing, converting of rent-controlled units almost equals the building of new ones, study says.
By Nancy Cleeland
Times Staff Writer

September 7, 2006

The city of Los Angeles has made little headway in expanding the supply of housing for low- and middle-income residents because old affordable units have been destroyed almost as quickly as new ones have been built, according to a new study.

The analysis, to be released today by the Southern California Assn. of Non-Profit Housing, is likely to fuel an increasingly heated debate about housing and gentrification in the city.

Using municipal and U.S. census data, the study by the trade association of nonprofit housing developers found that 12,800 affordable rental units were built through city incentive programs since 2001, while 11,000 older rent-controlled apartments were either torn down or converted to condominiums.

The study found that the loss rate has accelerated, far outpacing new construction since 2005.

Market-rate rents in Los Angeles grew by about 30% during the same five years, to $1,770 a month, according to RealFacts, a Bay Area real estate consulting firm that surveys large apartment complexes.

Paul Zimmerman, director of the association that produced the report, said it showed the need for a comprehensive housing strategy in Los Angeles.

"Housing is like water," he said. "You need a production pipeline and a preservation strategy. Unless you have both you're not going to take a dent out of the problem."

The association backs a moratorium on the demolition or conversion of rent-controlled apartments. Los Angeles City Councilmen Bill Rosendahl and Alex Padilla have proposed moratoriums for their own districts. Their proposals haven't drawn much support from colleagues, and Rosendahl's is now before a committee.

"I like incentives better than requirements. This is America," said Councilman Herb Wesson, who is the chairman of the housing committee that has the bill.

He added later, "I gave Mr. Rosendahl my word I would talk to him and listen to his argument. But I'll be honest, this problem is a city issue and I'm not big on piecemeal approaches."

Rosendahl's 11th District, on the Westside, has lost more than 4,000 rent-controlled units since 2001 — one-third of the citywide total, according to the analysis.

"I want to take a time out and come up with other strategies," Rosendahl said. "It's not fair that the ocean and fresh air be just for the rich."

He said he expected his moratorium to pass this year, despite opposition.

Wesson recently proposed his own strategy, which the full council adopted last month. The measure created a task force to look at comprehensive solutions and a committee to study the 1978 rent control law that limits rent increases in older buildings.

Developers and business leaders, who acknowledge a severe shortage of affordable housing, have argued for market-based solutions that encourage more dense housing along transportation corridors.

"At minimum you have to develop the opportunity for the private sector to supply those affordable units. That's at least half the battle. Beyond that, the marketplace will dictate where such profitability resides," said Stuart Gabriel, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. "From an economic perspective, rent control is not always a good long-run solution in the sense that it does not result in significant added supply of affordable units…. We need to turn our attention to a series of incentive structures and programs that go beyond rent control."

Gabriel saw the results of the analysis differently.

"The fact that we're even able to remain at the level of prior years should be viewed as a positive outcome, given market forces that make it nearly impossible to develop affordable housing," he said.

Zimmerman said affordability in Los Angeles has been shrinking for 25 years in a largely unfettered market.

"I don't trust the market," he said. "If we had a functioning market, it would be producing housing that is affordable to people at different income levels. But because of macroeconomic factors, the market is only producing high-end product now."

nancy.cleeland@latimes.com

[Art]

In Boyle Heights and South LA, the LAPD and LAUSD have been half assedly building new low-rise developments in the densest parts of the city. The new LAPD hollenbeck station eats up almost an entire block of (now demolished) victorian houses which were generally low income housing, which could have easilly mitigated by making the police structure a bit taller than 3 story Costco-esque monstrosity they are now beginning to build. In the Aliso-Pico projects over 1/3rd of units were destroyed and not replaced when they re-did the housing projects, and they just recently demolished the remaining affordable units(as well as original street facades) north of 1st street to make an enormous school. Message to LAUSD: there are plenty of schools over 2 -3floors and it is possible to incorporate other uses in these developments, look at the precedence DAMN IT.

[Wright Concept]

Oh yeah, they're starting demolision of some homes around Central City West to build a new school and Rampart Police station. That is one thing that isn't mentioned in that article. That part of the new school building program knocked down some of the older housing units to use some of the land.

Too bad one can't tell the difference between the design of the schools and the police stations cause they both look like prisons.

[citywatch]

I guess ppl's opinion of LA could be even shakier (http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=593), as it was back in 1997.

:gaah: