Tag Archives: Los Angeles

Is this “the best city park in America”?

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Here is one argument for Griffiths Park in Los Angeles as the best urban park:

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At 4,210 acres, Griffith outshines other extraordinary city parks of the US, such as San Francisco’s Golden Gate, which barely tops 1,000 acres, and New York’s Central Park, a mere 843 acres. Griffith’s peaks tower above those flat competitors too, with nearly 1,500 feet in elevation gain, making it practically vertical in orientation. And LA’s crown jewel of a park is still largely uncut, much of it remaining a wilderness area preserved more than 100 years ago, and barely developed, unlike the pre-planned “wild” designs of Golden Gate and Central Park.

Add its history, views, recreation opportunities, unique and hidden spaces, a free Art Deco observatory and museum, the most famous sign in America and the park’s overall star-power, and you have a compelling case that Griffith is not just epic in scope but the greatest city park in the nation.

There’s something for everyone there: a zoo, playgrounds and an old-timey trainyard for the kids; challenging and steep trails for hikers; dirt paths for equestrians; paved roads for bikers; diverse flora and fauna for nature enthusiasts; and museums for the science and history learners.

Two features stand out in the above description. First, the sheer size of the park. This is very unusual in large cities as they have some space for parks but also have many other land use demands. Second, the variety of features and activities in the park. There is not just one thing to do here; there are numerous options serving different groups.

Given that this is Los Angeles, what might this land be if it had been open to developers? Given what is on some of the other hills, just more expensive houses?

And how much can the claim that the park is “barely developed” matter when it is exposed to the pollution in the region and the activity of many nearby humans?

To settle this, how about a national city park contest? There are a number of important parks and there are a lot of different criteria that could be used.

Imagining a car-free Los Angeles and using the coming Olympics to move that direction

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The city of Carmageddon is interested in hosting a 2028 Summer Olympics with little car use:

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“A no-car Games,” she said.

Doubling down on something she discussed with The Times in April, Bass told reporters at the 2024 Paris Olympics that she envisions expanding public transportation to a point where fans can take trains and buses to dozens of sports venues, from Crypto.com Arena downtown to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood to the beaches of Santa Monica.

“That’s a feat in Los Angeles — we’ve always been in love with our cars,” she said at a news conference Saturday, adding that people “will have to take public transportation to get to all the venues.”

The LA28 organizing committee — a private group charged with staging the Games — prefers to say it is planning a “public-transit-first” Games. Some venues will have ample parking, others will not. Organizers say no one will be told they cannot drive to a competition, but public transportation might be an easier option.

This is a bold vision in a city and region famous for driving, highways, and sprawl. The realism is okay too; trying to do this all in 4 years is a tall task.

But why stop at the Olympics and that several week window? Why not imagine a Los Angeles in ten or twenty years that relies much less on cars? Why not pursue some of the same strategies – working from home, staggered work schedules, more buses – with additional strategies – more mass transit options that do not involve roads, ban planning that does not just keep adding lanes, etc.?

Even if these efforts require the long view and a large amount of resources, the time to start is now. Developing needed infrastructure is costly but pays off down the road. What if the lasting legacy of the Olympics in Los Angeles was not property or stadiums that people do not know what to do with (a common issue in recent Olympic cities) but a new approach to the streetscape and getting around?

Combining a new Costco and affordable housing in LA

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Costco plus affordable housing is set to arrive in Los Angeles in a few years:

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An approved upcoming Costco location in South Los Angeles (the Baldwin Village/Crenshaw area specifically) is slated to open in the coming years, and it combines the company’s more-is-more brand with a novel new approach to residential construction. The project, to be built by developer Thrive Living and architects AO, was first announced early last year in a press release that revealed renderings of a mixed-use model with multiple floors, open courtyard spaces and other amenities. All told, the build would encompass not only the Costco store (and necessary parking) but a whopping 800 residential units, including 184 set aside specifically for low-income tenants…

According to real estate analysts CoStar, this entirely new mixed-use model isn’t just something novel for Los Angeles, it “may have national retail implications for Costco.” That could mean smaller footprints, more transit-oriented openings, or Costco itself getting even further into the housing market…

So yes, 800 small apartments can fit on top of a Costco in the middle of Los Angeles, with 23% of those units reserved for low-income residents and all units eligible for Section 8 vouchers. And if done right and embraced by locals, developers, big box retailers and public officials, the project could be a novel model for future build-outs statewide.

It sounds like Costco and the housing units will coexist. Are there ways that they might be more intertwined? I could imagine some deeper partnerships:

  1. Special deals for those living in the development.
  2. Jobs for those living in the development.
  3. Costco block parties for neighbors.

While this development will help provide affordable housing units, it is also interesting how it weaves a big box store into a denser environment. Developers and planners have tried a variety of ways to incorporate big box stores into cities. Is putting the big box store in with housing a new formula for success for both?

The endless search for water in the (fictionalized) origin story of Los Angeles

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The movie Chinatown highlights the ways acquiring water helped Los Angeles grow and hints at what may need to happen for the city and region to keep growing:

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If Chinatown’s ending forces the audience to sit in a feeling of hopelessness, it should also disturb anyone invested in Los Angeles’s future. The history of water in 20th-century California was defined by mammoth feats of engineering and an enduring belief that someone like Mulholland would eventually come along and enable the impossible. Each new dam or aqueduct only guaranteed the arrival of the next one—the population growth allowed by Mulholland’s aqueduct, for example, later resulted in L.A. tapping other water sources, such as the Colorado River. California has had a few good years of rain recently, but the long-term sustainability of the state’s water supply depends on collective conservation efforts: drastically reducing the amount of water used by Big Agriculture, moderating suburban tasks such as watering lawns, regulating the state’s groundwater.

“There is no more water to capture with big projects. There just isn’t. The future is really about much smarter water management,” Stephanie Pincetl, a UCLA professor who specializes in urban policy and the environment, told me. Conservation measures, she argues, are the way forward even if politicians wish they could stump for some grand technological innovation the way their 20th-century predecessors did: “The approach to the 21st century has to be a lot more subtle, a lot more place-based, and a lot more guided by the realization that water is a scarce resource, and so we need to treat it like a scarce resource.”

Finding water in Los Angeles, the Southwest, the West, and the United States more broadly may become more paramount in the coming decades. Which cities and regions would do well in competing for water? Would a lack of water in some places lead to growing populations in places with plenty of water?

While we are at it, why not tell more exciting stories in these categories:

  1. Origin stories of modern places. Take any of the big cities in the United States and put its origin story in a movie or a miniseries. How about the rise of Phoenix?
  2. It would be interesting to popularize more stories about water and other necessary resources in daily life. How about a thrilling tale about concrete? It is hard to imagine modern life without out. Or air conditioning. Can’t have a lot of the global development of the last century without it. Or salt. Where do we get all this salt in our daily lives from?

If Chinatown can entertain and inform about place, why not engage in more storytelling that explains where places have come from and where they might be going?

An abandoned large development in LA turns into graffiti canvas

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A large development in Los Angeles that has gone unfinished now goes by the name “Graffiti Towers” to nearby residents:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/10/style/graffiti-oceanwide-plaza-los-angeles-skyscrapers/index.html

Climbing up abandoned, unfinishedfloors and tightrope walking across balcony ledges, backpacks clanging with cans of alkyd and acrylic, a collective of Los Angeles graffiti artists have transformed their craft beyond urban aesthetics to champion community issues.

Their choice of canvas: Oceanwide Plaza in Downtown LA. Occupying over a full square city block, the plaza was imagined as a vast mixed-use building project, offering city residents over 500 lavish condominiums, a five-star hotel, retail spaces, restaurants and a private 2-acre park.

However, construction on the $1 billion project, which began in 2015, was shelved after the Chinese-backed contractor Oceanwide Holdingsran out of funding in 2019 — and it has lain unfinished ever since…

Transformed in part into an art installation, Oceanwide became an opportunity for the graffiti artists to leave a message to the city below, and a call-out to policy makers who leave buildings to rot…

“People forget that people live here. People own businesses here and they don’t want to have to spend the time and money to clean it up,” said Blair Besten, executive director of the Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles, an organization which works to improve the quality of life in downtown neighborhoods. The Historic Core prioritizes street sweeping, trash collection — and graffiti removal.

This article showcases the multiple sides of an ongoing public debate about graffiti: is it a response to difficult social and economic conditions? Is it art? Is it criminal behavior that should be punished?

At the same time, how is there such a large abandoned project in Los Angeles? What can a municipality do to finish the development or pursue another use?

Put these two ideas together: are there cities willing to have large-scale platforms for graffiti in or near their downtowns? If graffiti and its place in society is multi-faceted, how might Los Angeles or other large cities incorporate it or work with graffiti artists?

Barbie could only live in the Los Angeles region

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Barbie is one of the most famous toys and she resides near Los Angeles. Could she live anywhere else? I pondered this when seeing Barbie:

This scene, along with others in the movie, firmly place Barbie in and around Los Angeles. There are palm trees. Beach scenes along the ocean and boardwalk. The mountains looming in the background. A replacement for the “Hollywood” sign. Her dreamhouse is in Malibu.

Could Barbie live in other locations? How about Manhattan Barbie? Atlanta Barbie? Omaha Barbie? These are harder to imagine. Barbie has a lifestyle tied to a postwar vision of the American Dream exemplified by life in Los Angeles. She was not alone; TV shows endlessly showed life in southern California, Disneyland first opened there, and sprawling suburbia became a model.

A new city and/or region could become the marker of a new era and new toys. Perhaps Houston? A different city that will grow rapidly and look different or exhibit different patterns of life and development?

From Carmageddon to Highway-Fire-Mageddon to new transportation options in LA

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Whereas construction closed down a significant Los Angeles highway in 2011 (and a follow-up in 2012), a fire has now closed down a mile stretch of important highway in Los Angeles:

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The situation poses a commuting challenge that L.A. has not seen in years, with hundreds of thousands of commuters facing detours and heavier-than-normal traffic. Starting Monday, some worked from home and others took mass transit, but many simply endured the delays.

The closure caused gridlock in some areas, but there was general sentiment that L.A. survived the first morning and evening commute without too much chaos thanks in part to warnings sent to residents’ cellphones…

Federal, state and local agencies are scrambling to determine what happens next after the sudden closure of the mile-long section of the heavily trafficked freeway between Alameda Street and the East L.A interchange, a key east-west route through downtown. Mayor Karen Bass said that U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg called and reassured her that federal officials were aware of the impact from closing one of the busiest freeway corridors in the country.

“Losing the stretch of the 10 Freeway will take time and money from people’s lives and businesses,” Bass said. “It’s disrupting in every way. Whether you were talking about traveling to and from work, or your child care plans, and the flow of goods and commerce, this will disrupt the lives of Angelenos.”

Los Angeles and the region depend heavily on highways. This is true of all metropolitan areas in the United States but Los Angeles is famous for its driving and its lack of mass transit within a sprawling region.

While I am sure the focus here will be on getting this highway going again as soon as possible, why not think as well as future transportation options? The initial Carmageddons in Los Angeles went rather smoothly but this is another chance to think about additional travel options and building an adaptable and redundant system. If for a variety of reasons residents of the region cannot drive to work or where they need to go, do they have viable alternatives? Fires like this are rare but individuals face all sorts of challenges in getting where they need to go.

More broadly, can more people in the region regularly shift their transportation away from driving alone to other options? As the population of the region grows, the traffic is not going away. Roads do need to be maintained. Accidents will happen on the roadways. When I rode the LA subway on a recent visit, it worked okay one-way (the return trip was derailed by a long delay that pushed me to walking several miles) but it had limited options of where I could go. Are many people willing to ride buses and other forms of mass transit when they might drive?

The highway detours will end at some point but will driving return to normal immediately? Probably yes…but there will likely be more opportunities to consider other transportation options in the years to come.

The largely unbuilt California City once intended to rival LA

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A planned large city in the California desert never bloomed the way it was hoped:

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“For lack of a better description, [developers] really understood and pitched California City as an alternative and potentially competing city with Los Angeles,” Shannon Starkey told SFGATE. Starkey is an associate professor of architecture at University of San Diego and has spent years researching the city.

Piecemeal development was responsible for Los Angeles’ traffic problems, California City’s developers thought. They believed that LA, which appeared to be pressing against its population ceiling, was unprepared for California’s postwar population boom. New communities would need to pick up the slack. California City was designed to fit the bill: a sprawling, self-sufficient city in the desert. In the original plan, Starkey said, the city was projected to hold 400,000 people…

The town was incorporated in 1965 with a population that hovered around 600. According to Gorden, who moved to California City early in the decade, nearly everybody gathered in the newly built elementary school, which hadn’t yet opened, for a big dance. Mendelsohn and California’s lieutenant governor took turns sharing remarks. The mood in the 1960s, Gorden said, was one of “absolute expectations.”…

Grievances over false advertising culminated in a civil penalty issued against Great Western by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC found Great Western responsible for deceptive sales practices, requiring the company to refund $4 million to over 14,000 of its customers. (Great Western Cities also had developments in Colorado and New Mexico.) At the time, it was the largest refund ever issued by the commission. 

Shortly afterward, the Hunt brothers, who were heirs of an oil tycoon, acquired the company through a hostile takeover. According to Efford-Floyd, the Hunts only bought the company to drain its accounts, which they did as fast and as hard as they could…

Perhaps part of the reason that the city’s population never exploded is that it never developed an economic base of its own. “For many years, this was considered a bedroom community,” Jim Creighton, who serves on California City’s City Council, told SFGATE.

This would not quite be a ghost town as people do live there. However, it is an example of another common feature of the American landscape: a developer once had big plans but they did not pan out. Here, the eventual development did not match the grand vision. Elsewhere, other development might have eventually landed on top of what had once been planned. Either way, the community did not reach the lofty goals once set.

Should there be a name for such places? We would have to account for the scale of the plans. The ambitions here of a big city with hundreds of thousands of residents is different than a big subdivision that never quite got off the ground. We retell the stories of some of the planned communities that did happen, such as Levittown, New York or Columbia, Maryland or River Forest, Illinois. How many other places did not make it in the same way?

The modern box houses of Los Angeles

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In the last few decades, more modern box houses have come to Los Angeles:

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During the 20th century, Los Angeles home styles were as eclectic as its populace. Wood-shingled Craftsmans mingled with white stucco bungalows. Depending on the neighborhood, you might get an ornate Victorian, chic Midcentury Modern or even a Mayan Revival-style showplace — something that begs you to look at it, admire it. A house that invites an opinion, good or bad.

But although the box houses’ bulk draws attention, its design is basic. They’re like an iPhone: simple and smooth. Clean lines, glass walls, simple shades of white or black. Critics see them as soulless and inert.

Modern homes don’t have time or money for a turret, overhanging eave or stained-glass windows. Sloped ceilings, skylights and other superfluous accents take away from the bottom line — the largest amount of square footage possible for the cheapest possible construction price…

When such homes started popping up in the wake of the housing crash in 2008, some assumed the trend would be temporary. But demand for the style still rages on today…

The “bento boxes of today,” as Parsons calls them, are shiny, sleek and sexy, but he said they’ll be tomorrow’s tear-downs.

The article suggests these architectural styles are cyclical: builders, developers, real estate agents, municipalities, buyers, and others are involved in changing architectural styles. So, then the question here is whether these homes are here to stay or whether another style will emerge and the modern box home will fade?

If I had to guess, I would suggest the modern box home will hang on as a consistent but small presence in the LA housing market for several reasons. They are simple and relatively cheap to build. They offer a lot of space. In uncertain economic times and pricey housing markets, these are hard factors to overlook.

There is also a segment of the market that finds them attractive. The modernist home has been around for decades. Most Americans might not choose it as their preferred style but some would. In a large metropolitan region like Los Angeles, some will prefer this design.

Given the unique housing market of Los Angeles, perhaps the real question is whether modern homes are catching on elsewhere in the United States. When housing costs are not as high, is the modernist house one people want? In my area, several such homes come to mind but they are rare.

Consequences of the mansion tax in Los Angeles

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Los Angeles has a new mansion tax since April 1 and here are some of the consequences:

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Measure ULA adds a transfer tax of 4 percent for sales above $5 million and 5.5 percent for deals above $10 million; real estate transactions in the city below those levels pay the already-established transfer tax rate of .56 percent.

“The flurry of activity that happened up until April 1 was pretty phenomenal,” says real estate attorney Loretta Thompson, a partner at Withers Worldwide. “And then, of course, after that, people started pulling their listings. There’s been a quantifiable pause in anything that’s over $5 million. It chilled the market immediately, which was what everyone expected it would do.”…

There are some winners. Independent Los Angeles County cities like Beverly Hills and Malibu have become more desirable since the measure does not apply to them. It is also shifting the balance of power in luxury real estate, long a seller’s market. “Buyers are being picky right now,” says Nourmand, adding that some people are willing to wait in hopes that sellers bring down prices on mansions: “They feel they have the upper hand in the high-end market. They don’t feel like they have to rush — they think time is on their side.” James Corden, for instance, listed a Brentwood house in January for $22 million, then dropped it to $18 million before selling it in July for $17.1 million. According to Dirt.com, Corden’s sale is subject to nearly $1 million in taxes under the ULA Measure.

However, many hope the tax will be revamped or rescinded. With two lawsuits already challenging the measure, the City of Los Angeles finance director has been instructed to hold any monies received, rather than use them as planned to create affordable housing options in the city.

Will any of these consequences affect legal rulings? Whether this is allowable is a different kind of question compared to how it is working out in practice.

Will the new revenue effectively address affordable housing? At the moment, the revenue is tied up. But, put together taxes from several of these sales and some new housing units could emerge.

It will be interesting to see where the turning point in the market is. Wealthier homeowners will still want to buy and sell property. There will likely still be demand from those outside the region who want to move into these homes.