L.A.
Let LA be LA.
There is something goofy when people talk about LA in terms of why can't it be more like New York - with respect to transportation and living space, etc - but isn't half the pleasure of living in LA the fact that it isn't New York?
3 comments:
While you are by no means alone on this, what you saying here directly contradicts the Viriginia Postrel piece you linked to awhile ago. In her article on elites and land use she said this:
"As I have argued elsewhere, there are two competing models of successful American cities. One encourages a growing population, fosters a middle-class, family-centered lifestyle, and liberally permits new housing. It used to be the norm nationally, and it still predominates in the South and Southwest. The other favors long-term residents, attracts highly productive, work-driven people, focuses on aesthetic amenities, and makes it difficult to build. It prevails on the West Coast, in the Northeast and in picturesque cities such as Boulder, Colorado and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The first model spurs income convergence, the second spurs economic segregation."
See that part about "liberally permits new housing?" That is what this new LA policy is really about. They aren't mandating anything, they are just removing restrictions in order to let the free market decide what it wants. If the free market decides it wants tall buildings around transit hubs and small rentals in backyards, and more density, then LA should let that evolve. For urban planners, it's not about turning LA into Manhatten, it's about allowing economic clusters to happen.
Artificially restricting certain types of building because of worries it will increase the traffic ore block the natural light? That's a classic type of ELITE argument against development. If you worry about that, fine, but it's an anti-free market argument.
i see where you are coming from and you make a good argument. i'm not enough of an expert on the local politics of zoning to really know what i am talking about, but nevertheless i will try to respond.
i think any community must have a design and some organizational principles. no community is just a total free-for-all. for instance, washington dc has no buildings taller than the washington monument. san francisco was purposely designed to be built into the landscape and not to obstruct views of the bay. new york obviously takes pride in their skyscrapers and so forth.
i took the LA article to recognize this and rather than lessening restrictions, it seemed like Villaraigosa and his allies were trying to top-down redesign the city by giving specific tax breaks to certain kind of developments - and types of developments that weren't popular and not characteristic of LA. the thing that stood out to me was the new W hotel with something like 29 of the 123 residences sold.
so i'm not exactly sure where i stand on these matters...but it is a topic that is gaining my interest and i look forward to reading more about it since it effects my day to day life -- certainly a lot more than the israel-palestine conflict or other such ridiculous issues.
What you say is true, and when I went back to the article it did occur to me that by easing restrictions concerning density and building height in certain areas, the city planners are indeed pushing a certain agenda, because if they weren't, they would ease all restrictions and not just these ones.
That said, I think the fundamental drive for building up and more densely around transit hubs is to reduce traffic by allowing people to live near convenient public transportation, as well as allow for increased economic activity in high-desireabilty areas.
For example, Silicon Valley could have even more economic growth than it currently does if it built more tall buildings with apartments and condos. But the people who already have houses are against this for a number of reasons, so you have restrictions on new housing. As a result, only Mark Zuckerberg can afford a house in Palo Alto now, and many who would like to live in Silicon Valley don't, because the higher salary would just go to paying for an expensive house. More tall buildings would mean cheaper housing options, and more people taking jobs in Silicon Valley.
Check out the short but excellent ebooks by Matt Yglecias "The Rent is Too Damn High" and Ryan Avent's "The Gated City" for more on this. If you liked Tyler Cowen's book, you'll like these.
All in all, writers like Joel Kotkin here and Virginia Postrell are a bit vexing because they have common ground with liberals sometimes but prefer not to acknowledge it.
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