Archinect - News

LA's new 101 Freeway wildlife crossing to break ground on Earth Day

2022-04-21T14:49:00-04:00

The much-anticipated Wallis Annenberg Wildlife crossing will break ground on Friday, which is Earth Day. The bridge will ultimately be 210 feet long and 165 feet wide and will span all 10 lanes of the Ventura Freeway at Liberty Canyon in Agoura Hills. It is meant to promote biodiversity among Southern California mountain lions, which are isolated by the freeway, by connecting them with mountain lions in Northern California.

The groundbreaking ceremony of the much-anticipated, $90 million Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing project will be live-streamed on April 22 from 10 am Pacific Time at savelacougars.org.

Previously on Archinect:

People over mountain lions; California town is dropping its attempt to avert the state’s new housing laws

2022-02-09T10:51:00-05:00

Following four days of widespread scorn after attempting to block a new state law allowing duplexes on single-family lots by declaring itself a “mountain-lion habitat,” the wealthy Silicon Valley enclave of Woodside has backed down. At the end of a town emergency Town Council meeting Sunday night, almost all of which was held in closed session to discuss potential litigation, city officials announced they would begin accepting applications for new duplexes.

Woodside’s tired attempt at circumventing two of the most important and proactive laws in favor of affordable housing in recent memory drew an incredible amount of ire online before being withdrawn Sunday night following a letter from Attorney General Rob Bonta warning the town that “there is no valid basis” to its broadly disproven claims as an animal sanctuary.

The scheme was first exposed in a local newspaper and then picked up by the LA Times in addition to several additional national outlets, which amplified the pressure on the town. Woodside is an 11-square-mile showcase for luxury architecture, frequently listing noteworthy real estate for top-of-market prices while playing host to the dream homes of tech titans like Google CEO Larry Ellison, whose 23-acre replica Japanese emperor’s palace complex was completed in 1999 at a cost of $200 million (or about $340 million today).

An affluent California town is going to ridiculous lengths to get around affordable housing regulation

2022-02-04T18:00:00-05:00

The well-heeled Silicon Valley suburb of Woodside has come up with a novel way to block plans that would potentially bring in more affordable housing: Declare itself Cougar Town. Last week, officials in the enclave of 5,500 people announced that all of Woodside was exempt from a new state housing law that allows for duplex development on single-family home lots. The reason? The entire town is habitat for potentially endangered mountain lions.

The move is potentially foreshadowing of the ways in which local governments in California will, as predicted before Governor Gavin Newsome signed S.B. 9 into law in September, attempt to brush off the state’s efforts to mandate zoning that would engender an increase in multi-family residential units and affordable housing.

Critics say the pushback stems from the age-old notion of California living as an ever-expanding idyll of freeway-connected suburbs filled with single-family homes that has become outdated and regressive under the modern economy, pushing many to leave the state for greener pastures. The mountain lion population in Woodside constitutes in their eyes an egregious attempt to use wildlife as a shield in the town leadership’s preservation schemes.

“Don’t believe for a second that this is driven by mountain lion habitat concerns,” former town council member Daniel Yost told the LA Times. “It is not. It is resistance by some members of the Town Council to do our fair ...

Housing developments change puma behavior

2015-02-16T18:47:00-05:00

Female pumas kill more prey but consume less when their territories bump into human development, UC Santa Cruz researchers report in a new study based on monitoring more than two dozen pumas in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The presence of humans -- homes, roads, and other development -- means pumas are fearful and stay on the move rather than returning to a kill site to fully consume prey, the study finds

The research utilized data from tracking devices that record not only a puma's movement but also increases in speed and other behavior that signifies hunting behavior. Looking at the actions of 30 animals, the scientists were able to discern, among other things, that, "Females killed 36 percent more deer per year in developed habitats than in areas with little housing."

According to the report, increased kill rates suggest that the pumas are wasting more energy than they would in an environment devoid of human habitations. This also affects the population of prey species, in particular deer.

Studies like this shed light on the complex interdependency of human and non-human species. Architecture is never an exclusively human activity and, more often than not, we dwell at the expense of other species. For more information on this topic, check out Architecture of the Anthropocene (part 1 and part 2).