Minimum wage increases don’t mean much if housing supply does not increase.
Los Angeles’ Moral Failing
urking behind every data point and every policy are forces like curiosity, relationships, open-ness, diversity, civic self-image, and values. These factors are often disregarded by short-sighted wonks and bureaucrats not because they’re not crucial but because they aren’t easily quantified.
Hyperloop and Hyperbole
Where the Falcon 9 goes, they don’t need roads. But Hyperloops still need rights of way.
Stop Blaming Airbnb for Your Apartment Search Woes
Focusing on how home-sharing sites are worsening L.A.’s rental market is diverting us from addressing much bigger housing problems
Silicon Beach Misses Chance to Curb Rising Rents
As of last month, Silicon Beach can officially blame themselves for some of this housing crisis.
Papacy Comes Down to Earth on Climate Change
It turns out that two of the world’s biggest proponents of smart growth are Catholic.
Brentwood should raise a glass to more bars
San Vicente is, by any measure, one of Los Angeles’ great commercial streets and a hub of which any neighborhood would be proud. But attractiveness alone does not a complete community make.
In L.A., thirsting for a decent bar culture
The answer in Los Angeles is not fewer bars, but more of them; not tighter, costlier regulations, but looser ones; not suspicious neighbors, but friendlier ones.
Los Angeles’ Slow-Growthers Have Gotten What They Wanted
Los Angeles’ population is, after 100 or so years of development, just about equal with the city’s maximum allowable population.
Photos Signal Warning About a Future of Flooded Cities
“Sink or Swim: Designing for a Sea Change,” a photo exhibition about sea-level rise and the fate of cities at the Annenberg Space for Photograph in Los Angeles, remind[s] us that the disaster has already arrived.
CEQA: The Cause of All Problems in California
Somehow, among all the laws, regulations, micro-, macro-, and global economic trends that impact on and emanate from our state, the overriding cause of California’s malaise is — wait for it — CEQA.
Sprawl Depends on More Than Just Density
Density in L.A. presents an opportunity, and a tremendous one at that. It’s an opportunity to take all the people, buildings, capital, and spirit that are crammed in here at 6,100 people to the square mile and figure out how to design our buildings, transportation network, public spaces, and civic life in a way that makes the most of what we have.
KVPR Interview: High Speed Rail: Comparing California’s Future Bullet Train To Taiwan’s
Interview with Joe Moore of KVPR’s “Valley Edition” on the future of high-speed rail in California.
Los Angeles’ Slow Burn
For some urbanists in Los Angeles’ smart growth crowd, the only thing better than the destruction of one faux-Italian megablock apartment complex would be the destruction of four faux-Italian megablock apartment complexes.
Not All NIMBYs Are Alike
The ethics of NIMBYism depend largely on the kind of environment that you’re trying to save.
Explaining the Country’s Worst Rental Market
Surely, homeowners are entitled to worry about traffic, sight lines, city services, and all the rest. What I suspect, though, is that many homeowners really want to do is what any rational, self-interested actor would want when he or show owns a valuable asset. They want to constrain supply.
Transit Branding’s Virtuous Cycle
If a beer company can fool the public into throwing away its money on the same old product, then aren’t transit agencies doing the very same thing when they promoting and rebrand themselves?
Beware the ‘Density Cult’
Joel Kotkin, Los Angeles-based urban theorist and persistent critic of downtown revitalization, would have you believe that advocates of smart growth. . . all want to turn their cities into putrid slums.