LA Weekly has a reactionary piece on the Planning Department’s attempts to boost the city's housing densities. Author Steven Leigh Morris’ bias and lack of nuance are immediately apparent in the two-dimensional portraits he paints of the villains of this story: greedy developments and duplicitous politicians. He casts every statement by and interaction with density proponents in the most insidious and unflattering light. It is revealing when he quotes City Planning Director Gail Goldberg as saying, "All I ask is that you don't scare people into paralysis." Sounds like she pretty much knows what to expect of the author. Likewise, he holds up Westside and North Hills homeowners associations as the besieged victims of the City’s drive towards density, leaving unexamined the role these low-density, exclusionary neighborhoods play in hogging valuable space in the region’s core, displacing development further outward, and driving up housing costs.
He also approvingly cites the Silverlake Neighborhood Council’s logic- and evidence-free argument against the Parking Reduction Ordinance, saying it “will eventually punish the working poor (who actually use public transit), helping to prod them out of neighborhoods where hipster, ‘transit-oriented’ projects lacking parking would almost inevitably be paired with luxury rentals.” It’s hard not to sense that this self-righteous advocacy for the working poor is little more than a cover for the Council’s NIMBY-ism and the author’s own resentment of hipsters.
But most appalling is the fawning portrayal of Zev Yaroslavsky (by both the author and Yaroslavsky himself) as courageous, world-weary defender of LA’s quality of life under the banner of slow-growth. His championing of slow-growth is hardly a risky stance; it strikes me more as opportunistic pandering to the same vocal and active middle-class homeowner lobby responsible for Proposition 13. Yaroslavsky goes on to defend his blocking of Purple line construction in 1985 (and again in 1996) by citing the Orange Line in the Valley and the under-performing Gold Line. How this explains why we are now, over 20 years later, trying to complete the very same system, I don't know.
It frustrates me to see these important issues trivialized and distorted through such misinformation and scare-mongering (“density also breeds much more crime”). LA is confronting real, inter-related issues regarding density, growth, and transit, and hysterical, hyperbolic arguments like Morris' serve only to incite the most reactionary impulses. But also, anti-growth obstructionists always assume that the lifestyle they so anxiously defend is incompatible with higher residential densities. What they never consider is the possibility that higher densities might in fact enhance LA's quality of life by supporting smaller-scale, local commercial districts and freeing residents of the need for a car. Yes, we should maintain a healthy skepticism and make sure our elected officials are representing us. Yes, we should be demanding development appropriate for the surrounding communities. But a dialogue on these issues needs to occur, in good faith and with room for compromise and questioning of assumptions from all sides.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
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2 comments:
This is a great blog:
I really liked this comment:
"It frustrates me to see these important issues trivialized and distorted through such misinformation and scare-mongering (“density also breeds much more crime”). LA is confronting real, inter-related issues regarding density, growth, and transit, and hysterical, hyperbolic arguments like Morris’ serve only to incite the most reactionary impulses. But also, anti-growth obstructionists always assume that the lifestyle they so anxiously defend is incompatible with higher residential densities. What they never consider is the possibility that higher densities might in fact enhance LA’s quality of life by supporting smaller-scale, local commercial districts and freeing residents of the need for a car."
Steve Lopez, who I normally like, wrote a one-sided commentary this weekend in the L.A. Times about development in North Hollywood. I actually wrote him a letter stating he missed the boat.
The story is not that people are upset that increased development is happening in the Valley. The story is that NBC is moving to Universal City in the first place. The story is that businesses no longer assume that their customers and employees will be able to drive to any location in Southern California. The story is that a tipping point has been reached. A corporation has factored accessibility to public transit as an important value.
The car culture is based on the premise that everyone drives a car and, if they don’t, they would if they could, and therefore non-drivers need no thought or consideration, especially if they are poor minorities and the undesirables. In other words, Tom Rubin’s model of public transportation as transportation welfare.
While many if not most people will still own cars, it is clear that the NBC decision is a tipping point. Businesses who do not have altruistic motives have started no longer buying into the old L.A. car culture model that everyone will have or use a car.
THAT is the real underlying story that many in the L.A. car driving press missed, even the L.A. Weekly.
If three million more people are coming to Southern California in the next few years, they need to be put somewhere. It makes only logical sense the go near the transit and North Hollywood has TWO transit lines where Century City is still struggling to get one.
The truth is, and I will vote for any politician with the courage to say this: “The traditional low-density, car culture, suburban-within-urban, lifestyle made famous in popular culture and lore is no longer sustainable in all parts of the city. Sprawl caused rural areas to become suburban. Now some suburban areas are going to become more urban. We should have an honest discussion of what neighborhoods can still be surburban and what one’s have to get more urban. In the decades ahead, there will also be neighborhoods like downtown, perhaps Century City, where it will be considered foolish to drive and park a solo-occupancy vehicle. The best days of the car culture as we have known it are now behind us and we will have to invest as heavily and enthusiastically in our public transit infrastructure over the next five decades as we did in roads and freeways over the last five decades.”
Of course, that politician wouldn’t win the election. But it would be the truth. We can responsibly plan for the increased population or we can do what we’ve normally done — let NIMBYS keep their stranglehold on the city, have increasingly worse congestion, increasingly negative impact to our economy and environment, and increasingly reduced quality of life, all to preserve the delusion of a car culture, suburban-within-urban Los Angeles.
I just roll at the “This is not New York” comment. A false dichotomy that we either have the L.A. car culture sprawl or Manhattan. I think everyone should take a trip to London — a city that proves over and over again that a sprawling metropolis like Los Angeles is compatible with extensive heavy/light/commuter rail and bus service.
North Hollywood and possibly the Warner Center have to be the San Fernando Valley's contribution. I lived in NoHo for six years myself. It’s not a suburb, no matter how many holdovers there are from the Sam Yorty / John Ferraro days want to continue to delude themselves that it still is.
I appreciate the compliment and the commentary, Dan!
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