This week we’re joined by Josh Stephens, Contributing Editor to the California Planning and Development Report about his new book The Urban Mystique. We had a long conversation about LA, the availability of bars, opposition urban commentators, and historic propositions that might need an update to stay connected to the times.
I can’t speak for disadvantaged communities directly, but we know that many residents are wary of development, even though housing is short tens of thousands of units in Los Angeles and millions of units across the state.
Shopping malls, built as meccas of U.S. retailing and mainstays of suburban life, had been suffering for a decade or more due to a “retail apocalypse” brought on by the rise of online shopping.
CP&DR Editor Bill Fulton speaks with Contributing Editor Josh Stephens about his new book, The Urban Mystique: Notes on California, Los Angeles, and Beyond.
A cliche about art is that it is supposed to help people see the world differently. Christo literally made the world look different.
Low-cost transformation of streets to public — and restaurant — spaces may help enliven city neighborhoods and revive their sales tax bases
The first book from veteran urban planning journalist Josh Stephens, The Urban Mystique: Notes on California, Los Angeles, and Beyond covers everything from the minutiae of setbacks, the impacts of transit investments, the promise of smart growth and sustainability, and the precariousness of urban politics in the 21st century.
Many armchair planners are trying to blame the virus crisis on density. Real planners shouldn’t let them get away with it.
Many elements of great, but forbidden, urbanism are on display in a bygone version of Los Angeles
Visual depictions of projects remain an issue — though accessibility might actually be improved for some. Brown Act has been loosened for the duration of COVID-19
Even entitled buildings won’t be built unless they have financing
We’re supposed to hate Solvang’s kitsch. But it’s got great bones — for several blocks in all directions
As the coronavirus shuts down California, planning departments across the state are adapting and staying on-task
I send warm greetings from Los Angeles and hope you are all healthy and safe wherever you may be. I am in the annual lull following the college application season. My students had a fantastic …
The best tea shop in Old Delhi is not a shop at all. It’s a cart, a bottle of propane, a guy, and his assistant…
In Golden Gates, Conor Dougherty chronicles the rise of the YIMBY movement and California’s battle over housing — with the aplomb of an East Bay skateboarder
A typical jumble of land-use measures — but they suggest California’s future direction