Bitter homes & gardens?
Soon after taking the job of director of the Los Angeles Department of City Planning in 2006, Gail Goldberg made a declaration that let slip how City Hall is allowing developers to pursue a building frenzy straight out of the storied tale Chinatown. la weekly | related
6 Comments
I believe in increasing the density of some districts and corridors of Los Angeles - but with more control and planning. The west side real estate development frenzy showed what not to do and where not to do it. Blame Maxman and others for blocking the subway to the sea - the orange line isn't compensation for that failure. Build the infrastructure, then develope - but LA never understood that, even with water resources... will the council ever learn?
it seems like la developes only to mimic the previous developer's profits. now it is the loft frenzy and replacing 2 story apartments with 3-5 story condominiums.
here is a picture around wilshire and western, note the building construction on the upper right. a new 5 story condo replacing the 2 story courtyard apartments, which i don't mind being replaced even though i like dingbats. they are close to metro and commercial zone.
here is something different, a totally inward bedroom community where the commuters live. no traffic relief insight for the older surrounding areas. it has no contribution to urban life with gates and guards. this is playa development. you never see anybody walking in or out of there.
ive got to get to LA. I just want to rent a car and drive around for 2 days to see it.
Anyways - the article implies that the zoning laws are broke and if the modus operendi is variances then maybe the system should be fixed. The city grows organically no matter how much we try zone it. Its pent up demand thats asking for and getting all these variances it sounds like. They should focus more on who and why certain people are getting the variances to ensure its fair to any developer or builder. Like the councilman in the article says, "the city is not going to stop growing"
In my experience, variances in LA are only more frequent (and generous) for large projects because the clients are more sophisticated and they are paying higher caliber professionals to process the variance application. Influence may play a role (and the head of B&S was under some scrutiny because of apparent impropriety) but just as often a home owner gets away with something because they called their council member, who assigned a deputy to go to bat for them. I have very little patience for the low density "smart growth" crowd - my neighborhood group bitches incessantly about traffic while simultaneously fighting every coffee shop and convenience store that tries to open in my neighborhood. Los Angeles is never going to return to a landscape of pastoral orange groves - it's time to accept that and make the city better through intelligent densification.
P.S. Please keep Yaroslavsky out of the mayors office.
Ahh the LA Weekly. It often seems to me that their idea of balanced journalism is to be histrionic about BOTH sides. That being said, I appreciate the depth of the article. For me, the "problem" of LA's fits-and-starts densification is not where it is happening (usually along transportation corridors, duh), or even the type of development (mixed use is kind of a trend here) but in the scale of the developments themselves. Janosh is right-- like in NYC, variances and special conditions are much easier to receive if one is a gigantic conglomerate. However, the "smart growth" people here often seem like little more than slightly disguised NIMBYs. When I first moved to LA i thought that nobody could possibly support the urban status quo in this city. Boy was I wrong. Once again it reminds me of New York-- all of those penthousers in Community Board 1 that fight any new development because they want to maintain the "artistic community feeling" of SOHO, completely oblivious to the fact that they live in the Strip Mall of Manhattan.
Growth over the long term is a given. Therefore density should be encouraged. However, obviously one needs to be careful about including the public in the debate. Density doesn't automatically equal better. Factors include; affordability, level of density, existence of infrastructural support and most importantly planning. the conversation needs to be had.
Obviously large scale developer driven development and the associated issues of scale and power dynamics need to be addressed. Density doesn;t have to mean large developer driven projects. It can include infill, creative and flexible zoning techniques etc. For example the stuff Teddy Cruz is doing..
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