Archinect - News

Los Angeles gets a new Deputy Mayor of Housing

2023-02-03T08:30:00-05:00

New LA Mayor Karen Bass has elevated current City Planning Commissioner Jenna Hornstock to a newly-created post as the Deputy Mayor of Housing, according to the city's announcement on Wednesday afternoon.

The appointment aligns with Bass’ comprehensive shakeup of the city’s existing multifaceted housing apparatus. It will create an office that is accountable for efforts to address the dual crises of affordability and homelessness that have become hot-button political issues for Angelenos over the past decade.

Honstock comes to the position with experience as the acting Deputy Director of Planning and Land Use for the Southern California Association of Governments and was a former aide on the Housing and Business team of former Mayor James Hahn. According to her Linkedin page, she is also the current board of advisors member for the Urban Land Institute and holds an MPP in Urban Economic Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

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LA Mayor Karen Bass announces first round of reforms aimed at expediting the construction of affordable housing

2022-12-20T17:24:00-05:00

New Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass is wasting no time dismantling the regulatory process that’s long been held up as the source and exacerbator of the city’s intertwined homelessness and affordable housing crises.

Declaring that the “time for useless regulations is over,” Bass went to the construction site of the new 49-unit Boyle Heights Lorena Plaza development last week to announce an executive directive mandating all city departments involved in the review and approval of new housing and shelters to complete their portion of the process within 60 days.

The directive will also waive the discretionary review process of all developments not requiring zoning changes. These types of developments are often curtailed to 49 units or less in order to get under the review and public hearing process, which requires all developments of 50 units or higher to be subject to them. According to reporting in the LA Times, there are currently 31 projects in the city that will be affected by the ch...

LA mandates all new buildings be all-electric in major milestone

2022-12-15T16:42:00-05:00

[The] Los Angeles City Council put an end to the expansion of local natural gas infrastructure on December 7th when they unanimously approved an ordinance requiring that all new buildings within city limits be constructed all-electric. With this vote, Los Angeles became the largest city in the state and the second largest city in the country to mandate a definitive shift away from fossil fuels in new construction.

LA City Hall had previously adopted a similar ordinance for all its municipal buildings in 2020 and passed a ban on gas appliances along with a mandate for emissions-free new constructions at the end of spring. The new building code changes are set to go into effect with the new year. A test run for a fleet of driverless EV taxis is also set to hit the streets soon in what could be a complicated counterbalance to the impact of car culture in the city.

The move now gives 70 California cities some form of an all-electric requirement, prompting speculation that a statewide code update might come in 2025.

Christopher Hawthorne leaves LA Times to become Chief Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles

2018-03-12T14:15:00-04:00

After 14 years as the Los Angeles Times' resident architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne is moving on to become chief design officer for the city of Los Angeles. Announced this morning, Hawthorne explained that "beginning next month, [he'll] be working in the mayor's office to raise the quality of public architecture and urban design across the city—and the level of civic conversation about those subjects." His position will be housed in the city's Office of Economic Development.

Created by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the position has been something he has openly proposed over the years as he's discussed the future of the city. In a story for the New York Times last year, Garcetti described the role as "a guru who can marshal the forces of the city and look at every bus stop, curb, utility box, every facade, every subway portal.” Beyond bus stops and subway portals, Hawthorne will collaborate on a wide range of public projects, oversee design competitions, and enlist talent...

Can beautiful architecture inspire Americans to become good citizens?

2014-11-26T14:04:00-05:00

A hundred and some years ago, an aesthetic force called the City Beautiful movement professed the theory that grand public buildings, lovely civic palaces, could inspire Americans to become good citizens. [...] Since the 1960s, though, it seems as if great civic architecture has become an embarrassment. Politicians who love to cut ribbons find it hard to justify paying for beautiful on top of functional. The result is a style I call Sunbelt Stalinism [...].