Focusing on how home-sharing sites are worsening L.A.’s rental market is diverting us from addressing much bigger housing problems
Planners Across America: Josh Whitehead Helps Memphis Live Within Limits
Josh Whitehead, planning director of the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning & Development (OPD), discusses competing with suburbs, implementing a new zoning code, and redeveloping, for a second time, historic streetcar corridors.
How One City Will Change Its Entire Bus System Overnight
After three decades, Houston is revamping its entire bus network — more than 80 routes, 1,200 buses and a quarter-million daily passengers — literally overnight.
Mega-Building Projects and their Impact
Guest on KOCE/PBS’s public affairs show “Studio SoCal,” discussing the impact of Los Angeles’ development boom.
California City Moves Toward Innovation Zone for Marijuana
City officials believe it would be the country’s first-ever land use designation specifically meant to promote and regulate the production of marijuana and cannabis-related products.
L.A. Wants to Throw a Different Kind of World Party
Ambitiously called Los Angeles World’s Fair (LAWF) — no “proposal” or “candidate city” about it — the group is promoting what it describes as a new type of World’s Fair, one that is fitting not only for Los Angeles but also for the 21st century.
San Francisco Tries to Combat the Business Side of Gentrification
Campos has proposed a ballot initiative that, while it will not save every threatened legacy business, may buoy enough of them to prevent the city’s commercial landscape from being overrun by Starbucks and Chipotle.
Silicon Beach Misses Chance to Curb Rising Rents
As of last month, Silicon Beach can officially blame themselves for some of this housing crisis.
L.A. Asks Makers to Stand Up and Be Counted
With over 350,000 manufacturing jobs, Los Angeles County has more than any other county in the U.S., and an attendant number of factories.
Review of ‘Water to the Angels’
Les Standiford, an accomplished novelist, sets out to tell this gripping story in Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles.
Planners Across America: Brad Buchanan Shepherds Denver’s Explosive Growth
In this interview for the “Planners Across America” series, Denver Planning Director Brad Buchanan details Denver’s efforts to reactivate the urban core with strong planning, transit investments, and new residential and commercial developments.
Papacy Comes Down to Earth on Climate Change
It turns out that two of the world’s biggest proponents of smart growth are Catholic.
Book Review: ‘City by City’
Tortorici writes like Joan Didion’s cloying little sister, drawing monumental conclusions from vast stores of hearsay, personal experiences, and idle speculation.
Los Angeles Metro Tackles First Mile, Last Mile Problem
The challenge Metro now faces – on a scale arguably larger than that of any other major city – is of getting riders to and from its trains and buses.
Ride-Hailing Apps Go the Extra Mile
By some accounts, Uber and Lyft, which are each operating in dozens of metro areas around the country, have only one major challenge left to overcome. It is the one that has baffled transportation planners, highway builders, soccer moms and weary executives for generations: mobility in the suburbs.
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.
If You Build Startup Row in the Desert, Will They Come?
Through it all, the city’s famous slogan — “The Biggest Little City in the World” — remains harmless kitsch, for sure. But its essential meaninglessness also speaks of a city unsure of itself.
Cities Seize Chances to Avoid CEQA Review through Voter Initiatives
In the cities of Carson and Inglewood, competing sponsors of stadium proposals are employing, simultaneously, a newly legitimized tactic to exempt their projects from review under the California Environmental Quality Act.