The Places That May Never Recover From the Recession

[Easy]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It's not the "American way", it's the way of anyone who cares about their community.

Crystal Cove is absolutely spectacular. It's public land, forever. You would have to be insane to prefer a bunch of hideous McMansions and highways over unspoiled Pacific coastline.

I don’t know this specific example but every NIMBY has valid reasons but they aren’t altruistic. People that live at the beach will say the same but their houses aren’t the problem it’s the people after them that spoil the beach and views.

[lio45]

I think self-driving cars will cause a partial rebalancing of real estate values as they get ubiquitous, cooling the market in central residential neighborhoods while boosting the Hemets of the country. The one thing that hinders places like Hemet at the moment is the fact they're just too far from most of the central metropolis' jobs to manage to draw more people than they currently do.

A normally unbearably long commute starts to become completely tolerable if you can work, or sleep, or have breakfast, or read, etc. during it.

That could very well be a game changer for suburban markets. Think about it: if there was an express, high-frequency HSR line built to directly link downtown Los Angeles and Hemet, what would that do for Hemet? Well, self-driving cars will be kind of the equivalent of this, only it applies to all areas.

[M II A II R II K]

Water pipelines that carry an unlimited supply of desalinated sea water would also do wonders as well.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

Water pipelines that carry an unlimited supply of desalinated sea water would also do wonders as well.

An unlimited supply of desalinated sea water would require an unlimited supply of energy (hopefully from renewable sources) and produce an unlimited amount of brine toxic to sea life in the immediate vicinity of the outflows. The "wonders" are not without "issues" that have stopped many projects before now.

[dubu]

it would be easier to make water from pee water

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by dubu

it would be easier to make water from pee water

They do that too in places like Tucson but only use it for irrigation of golf courses and other vegetation not meant to be eaten because of concern the process can't remove the smallest microbes like small viruses and viroids (and, to be honest, because of the "ick factor").

[ocman]

Originally Posted by Easy

I don’t know this specific example but every NIMBY has valid reasons but they aren’t altruistic. People that live at the beach will say the same but their houses aren’t the problem it’s the people after them that spoil the beach and views.

And it doesn't hurt that the value of their home is worth many more millions of dollars as a result.

[dubu]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

They do that too in places like Tucson but only use it for irrigation of golf courses and other vegetation not meant to be eaten because of concern the process can't remove the smallest microbes like small viruses and viroids (and, to be honest, because of the "ick factor").

id only drink it if it was my own pee and there was a real good way to make it water

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by ocman

LA/OC has enough land magnitudes bigger than NYC which itself supports almost 9 million people.

OC is basically 100% postwar suburban sprawl, and any planned development is just more sprawl. Whether OC has the population of NYC, Shanghai, Calcutta, wherever, is totally irrelevant.

Originally Posted by ocman

LA, especially, already has the bones where it can transition to high density structures. The “too big to grow” LA narrative is just fiction.

This is silly. LA has one lightly used subway line and a downtown with the bones of Cleveland or Pittsburgh.

The city is built to support the postwar-era population. LA is massively overdeveloped, in constant gridlock. There is probably no first world city on the planet where there's a bigger disconnect between population/size and practical capacity.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by ocman

California is actually decreasing resource efficiency by pushing people out to these areas in the desert rather than meeting their needs so they can live in the city. It’s in the state’s best interest environmentally and economically to provide housing in job centers rather than restrict it.

This makes no sense. You're assuming that the sprawl dwellers of Southern CA would actually prefer to live in a Hong Kong-style mini-condo in South Central or Van Nuys, but NIMBYism forces them into sprawl.

The reality is that these families don't want that kind of lifestyle. They want a SFH with decent schools, a yard, safety, etc. If you somehow blocked all IE Empire growth they would just move to Phoenix or wherever, or further out of LA in a different direction.

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

An unlimited supply of desalinated sea water would require an unlimited supply of energy (hopefully from renewable sources) and produce an unlimited amount of brine toxic to sea life in the immediate vicinity of the outflows. The "wonders" are not without "issues" that have stopped many projects before now.

From what I've read/understand, California doesn't have a water shortage because of it's population. It's just that 70% or 75% of the water supply goes towards farming and industrial uses. I'm guessing if things became very dire, they would have to redirect those water uses.

I've read Southern California has the same water usage rate as it did in the 1970s, or something to that effect.

[Easy]

Originally Posted by LA21st

From what I've read/understand, California doesn't have a water shortage because of it's population. It's just that 70% or 75% of the water supply goes towards farming and industrial uses. I'm guessing if things became very dire, they would have to redirect those water uses.

I've read Southern California has the same water usage rate as it did in the 1970s, or something to that effect.

I’ve heard that much of agricultural water goes back into the water table. I don’t know the percentage but more than non-agricultural uses I’d imagine.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Easy

I’ve heard that much of agricultural water goes back into the water table. I don’t know the percentage but more than non-agricultural uses I’d imagine.

. . . salinization issues are critical to the sustainability of irrigated agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley and similarly probably to many other areas of the world with relatively closed groundwater systems. Our detailed historic simulations of soil and groundwater salinity in the San Joaquin Valley suggest that irrigation may not be sustainable. Future work should assess the robustness of these conclusions by means of a parameter sensitivity analysis and further field testing of the model simulations (see Supporting Text for further discussion). Although not considered in this study, accumulation of boron and selenium in soils of the San Joaquin Valley pose an additional threat to the sustainability of agriculture

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1257392/

[Easy]

Originally Posted by Crawford

This makes no sense. You're assuming that the sprawl dwellers of Southern CA would actually prefer to live in a Hong Kong-style mini-condo in South Central or Van Nuys, but NIMBYism forces them into sprawl.

The reality is that these families don't want that kind of lifestyle. They want a SFH with decent schools, a yard, safety, etc. If you somehow blocked all IE Empire growth they would just move to Phoenix or wherever, or further out of LA in a different direction.

You can only build so far out. Most people don’t want 5 to 6 hour daily commutes. And while lots of people want sfh many don’t. Why not allow people to have a choice? And the choice doesn’t have to be Hong Kong style either. There’s some room for a middle ground between those options.

[Easy]

Originally Posted by Crawford

OC is basically 100% postwar suburban sprawl, and any planned development is just more sprawl. Whether OC has the population of NYC, Shanghai, Calcutta, wherever, is totally irrelevant.

This is silly. LA has one lightly used subway line and a downtown with the bones of Cleveland or Pittsburgh.

The city is built to support the postwar-era population. LA is massively overdeveloped, in constant gridlock. There is probably no first world city on the planet where there's a bigger disconnect between population/size and practical capacity.

LA has a street grid and a fairly heavily used subway line. Almost 10,000 people per mile. More than anywhere in the US outside the NYC metro and that’s going to go way up after expansion.

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by Easy

LA has a street grid and a fairly heavily used subway line. Almost 10,000 people per mile. More than anywhere in the US outside the NYC metro and that’s going to go way up after expansion.

Crawford,
Downtown LA is much larger than downtown Cleveland or Pittsburgh, come on.
There's only a few downtown areas that are larger than LA in land area.

NYC
Chicago
Philly
SF
DC

[mhays]

Crawford is off the deep end again. Obviously infill doesn't have to be sprawly, or "Hong Kong." And obviously not everybody in the distant suburbs really loves it out there (and vice versa). It's amazing that some of this has to be said.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by mhays

Crawford is off the deep end again. Obviously infill doesn't have to be sprawly, or "Hong Kong." And obviously not everybody in the distant suburbs really loves it out there (and vice versa). It's amazing that some of this has to be said.

None of this is true, obviously.

In order to provide 200k homes in core LA, you would have to force sprawl dwellers into tiny apartments in lousy areas.

And OC is 100% sprawl, so obviously one can assume that new development will be more sprawl.

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by Crawford

None of this is true, obviously.

In order to provide 200k homes in core LA, you would have to force sprawl dwellers into tiny apartments in lousy areas.

And OC is 100% sprawl, so obviously one can assume that new development will be more sprawl.

Or...maybe some of the people living in the semi-dense areas of LA would choose to live in these new "tiny apartments" in more urban areas, opening up their current places for the next down the line, etc. One my friends just moved from a Santa Monica garden apartment to a new highrise in downtown LA. This new tiny apartment didn't force any sprawl dweller to move there.

When a new tower is built in Manhattan, it's typically not bringing in people that would have otherwise bought an exurban mcmansion, but it does still add units of housing to the overall market. Same idea here.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by Crawford

None of this is true, obviously.

In order to provide 200k homes in core LA, you would have to force sprawl dwellers into tiny apartments in lousy areas.

And OC is 100% sprawl, so obviously one can assume that new development will be more sprawl.

You really don't understand this stuff.

The "infill" concept might be new to you. Everything I see in my city is a second-generation denser infill. It's the same in much of LA. Do you think maybe another part of LA could do the same thing?