Density in Los Angeles

Joel Kotkin thinks LA is making a mistake by becoming more dense and adding in more public transportation.

Transit has limited effect in Southern California because this region functions best as a network of “villages,” some more urban than others, connected primarily by freeways and an enviable arterial street system. Inside our villages, we can find the human scale and comfort that can be so elusive in a megacity. This arrangement allows many Southern Californians to live in a quiet neighborhood that also is within one of the world’s most diverse – and important – cities.

These villages span all the vast diversity of Southern California. Some areas, like Downtown Los Angeles, increasingly appeal to young professionals who seek a version of dense urban living. They share a universe with cohorts found in many older cities: young hipsters, a small sample of empty nesters and a sizable population of homeless who live on the edges of the gentrification zone.

But Downtown hardly provides a template for the rest of the region. Mostly we live in lower-density villages, many of which – in the San Gabriel Valley, East Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Westminster and L.A.’s Leimart Park, for example – reflect largely ethnic cultures with deeply established roots.

Even newer areas, like Irvine – which still ranks among America’s fastest-growing cities – are now majority Asian and Latino. Irvine’s appeal is largely the much- dissed suburban virtues of clean streets, good parks and excellent schools.

His description of Los Angeles as a series of villages accurately describes living here. I see all these new dense, urban type of townhomes going up all around Mid-City, Hollywood, and Silver Lake. They don't exactly capture the California dream home experience, which involves a little yard, but they do offer a nice in-between option for young families.

I think the best thing Los Angeles could do for families is to bust up the LA Public School system and create smaller districts by neighborhood. Explain to me how that would make things worse?