Those of you concerned w overdevelopment, etc. . (Orange: real estate, mortgage)

[majoun]

Originally Posted by Yermum

I have no problems increasing residential units in already dense places like downtown, Koreatown, or West Hollywood. Building highrise condos apartments along the light rail lines is a good idea.

However, ripping out SFRs and big oak tree in the suburbs far from metro lines to build tons of mid rise 4 story apartment complexes is just a bad idea.

Hollywood's full. However there are parts of the city that are not.

Too much of the city is zoned R1. We could rezone half the SFR neighborhoods and we'd have a lot more housing at more affordable prices. That would do a lot more to keep prices down than rent control has.

[NativeOrange]

Originally Posted by majoun

Orange County also has those issues of unaffordability and income inequality. And it has just as many NIMBYs, if not more so, given that OC"s NIMBYs are even more successful at shaping policy than LA's.

Of course it does. But it does not currently have any rail or mass transit infrastructure to sustain such growth so traffic would be a bigger issue than it already is. LA's is rapidly expanding and were talking about locations that already have rail in place. Hmmm, maybe that means OC's NIMBY's actually have a better argument against dense development than LA's. (Even though Irvine, HB, Anaheim and Santa Ana are mostly building 4-7 story multi family buildings right now, but that's beside the point).

Now, I'm not saying that all NIMBY's are evil incarnate, so I apologize if I mentioned that anywhere in this thread, because that isn't the case. I'm all for preserving the character of a neighborhood, especially if it has multiple cultural or historic buildings. I'm also all for developers gaining the necessary community input so that the architects will design something that correlates well with the neighborhood. But it's organizations like the AIDS Foundation, who is currently using funds that could very well have gone to AIDS research, but are being funneled into a battle against a single development right next door, which is the exact same size.

Obviously this group is just one example, but there are so many more exactly like it.

[majoun]

Originally Posted by NativeOrange

Of course it does. But it does not currently have any rail or mass transit infrastructure to sustain such growth so traffic would be a bigger issue than it already is. LA's is rapidly expanding and were talking about locations that already have rail in place. Hmmm, maybe that means OC's NIMBY's actually have a better argument against dense development than LA's. (Even though Irvine, HB, Anaheim and Santa Ana are mostly building 4-7 story multi family buildings right now, but that's beside the point).

Now, I'm not saying that all NIMBY's are evil incarnate, so I apologize if I mentioned that anywhere in this thread, because that isn't the case. I'm all for preserving the character of a neighborhood, especially if it has multiple cultural or historic buildings. I'm also all for developers gaining the necessary community input so that the architects will design something that correlates well with the neighborhood. But it's organizations like the AIDS Foundation, who is currently using funds that could very well have gone to AIDS research, but are being funneled into a battle against a single development right next door, which is the exact same size.

Obviously this group is just one example, but there are so many more exactly like it.

And why doesn't OC have that infrastructure? Because its NIMBYs are even greater in number and have been even more successful than LA's NIMBYs.

[Exitus Acta Probat]

What a lot of people don't understand, because they're new to L.A. and they don't know how things work here, is that for decades there has been a close coupling between commercial growth and residential growth. Developers build commercial, in many cases by bribing city officials to give them zoning variances, and then yet other developers (or perhaps the same ones!) claim that there's a housing shortage so we need more apartments for the new commercial buildings. And the cycle repeats ad infinitum.

If you people in your twenties who just moved here five minutes ago and think you know a lot because you just got your bachelor's degree would take a little time to look at what Los Angeles once looked like, you'd see that images of L.A.'s past support what I've stated. The growth will never end until this city becomes an over-congested dystopian nightmare and the criminals responsible will be long gone with their bags of money, leaving us wallowing in the mess they've created. Perhaps some of you reading this want to live like roaches, but I do not, and neither do many other people who live here. So you people who want to live in an overly congested city can go live in New York, Beijing, Mumbai, or wherever it suits you, but don't try to pull us down into your twisted conception of what a city should be. Thank you.

[Astral_Weeks]

Originally Posted by Exitus Acta Probat

What a lot of people don't understand, because they're new to L.A. and they don't know how things work here, is that for decades there has been a close coupling between commercial growth and residential growth. Developers build commercial, in many cases by bribing city officials to give them zoning variances, and then yet other developers (or perhaps the same ones!) claim that there's a housing shortage so we need more apartments for the new commercial buildings. And the cycle repeats ad infinitum.

If you people in your twenties who just moved here five minutes ago and think you know a lot because you just got your bachelor's degree would take a little time to look at what Los Angeles once looked like, you'd see that images of L.A.'s past support what I've stated. The growth will never end until this city becomes an over-congested dystopian nightmare and the criminals responsible will be long gone with their bags of money, leaving us wallowing in the mess they've created. Perhaps some of you reading this want to live like roaches, but I do not, and neither do many other people who live here. So you people who want to live in an overly congested city can go live in New York, Beijing, Mumbai, or wherever it suits you, but don't try to pull us down into your twisted conception of what a city should be. Thank you.

HaHa. Thanks for the lecture.

I am from LA County and definitely not in my 20's.

Is a PhD in economics good enough for you? As Christopher Thornberg, former UCLA economist, has noted this is a statewide problem:

“What’s driving this housing crisis? It’s a classic problem of supply and demand. The state doesn’t build enough housing to accommodate its population growth. California is home to roughly 13 percent of the nation’s population, and has slightly greater than average population growth. Yet, over the last 20 years the state has accounted for only 8 percent of all national building permits.”

http://www.caeconomy.org/reporting/e...more-attention

[majoun]

Originally Posted by Exitus Acta Probat

What a lot of people don't understand, because they're new to L.A. and they don't know how things work here, is that for decades there has been a close coupling between commercial growth and residential growth. Developers build commercial, in many cases by bribing city officials to give them zoning variances, and then yet other developers (or perhaps the same ones!) claim that there's a housing shortage so we need more apartments for the new commercial buildings. And the cycle repeats ad infinitum.

If you people in your twenties who just moved here five minutes ago and think you know a lot because you just got your bachelor's degree would take a little time to look at what Los Angeles once looked like, you'd see that images of L.A.'s past support what I've stated. The growth will never end until this city becomes an over-congested dystopian nightmare and the criminals responsible will be long gone with their bags of money, leaving us wallowing in the mess they've created. Perhaps some of you reading this want to live like roaches, but I do not, and neither do many other people who live here. So you people who want to live in an overly congested city can go live in New York, Beijing, Mumbai, or wherever it suits you, but don't try to pull us down into your twisted conception of what a city should be. Thank you.

I've been here longer than you have. It has been many years since there was a close coupling between commercial and residential growth. There hasn't been an R1 neighborhood that has been wholly converted to multifamily since the '70s. There has been woefully insufficient building since rent control came in, and especially in the last 25 years.

Los Angeles used to have almost no zoning, which is why one sees so many multiple units on lots in back of SFRs in older neighborhoods, and why one used to see a lot of small neighborhood markets in residential areas, before it had the strict zoning that came in during the late 1940s. If Los Angeles had maintained that minimal zoning, we wouldn't have a housing crisis now.

[Yermum]

Originally Posted by majoun

Orange County also has those issues of unaffordability and income inequality. And it has just as many NIMBYs, if not more so, given that OC"s NIMBYs are even more successful at shaping policy than LA's.

That was my point with the comment about the same octa and the metro lines.

To say that LA is full of NIMBYs while living in OC which is NIMBY central is quite hypocrital.

[SpaceMonkyPunks]

Originally Posted by majoun

Los Angeles used to have almost no zoning, which is why one sees so many multiple units on lots in back of SFRs in older neighborhoods, and why one used to see a lot of small neighborhood markets in residential areas, before it had the strict zoning that came in during the late 1940s. If Los Angeles had maintained that minimal zoning, we wouldn't have a housing crisis now.

Not only would we have more housing ,but a lot of the outerlying subrub(ish) neighborhoods would arguably have a lot more character and better quality of life. You'd not only have more housing, but more of what you mentioned: small neighborhood markets, walkable places to run errands, buy groceries, etc.

[radiolibre99]

Exitus are you a native yourself. I've noticed a big portion of people bit ch in about growth are just older transplants. They act as though they're natives but brought their butts over here from New York them act as though they're vastly superior from both natives and newer transplants

[jm1982]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkyPunks

Not only would we have more housing ,but a lot of the outerlying subrub(ish) neighborhoods would arguably have a lot more character and better quality of life. You'd not only have more housing, but more of what you mentioned: small neighborhood markets, walkable places to run errands, buy groceries, etc.

What happened is that there were certain neighborhoods that were developed after most people had cars.
It's not totally obvious which neighborhoods these were because a lot of homes have been remodelled or torn down and the shops look a lot different too.
Of course Downtown L.A is the most obvious. It's not 'walkable' because people or politicians had an ideal of building a walkable area , it's walkable because it was built out in an era when most people didn't own a car.

Overall though I'm not really sure how important walkability is for some people. Many will be using a car to commute to their jobs regardless so if they have to run errands , many people might run them after work.
Or there might be a small neighborhood market , but you can't find everything there or the prices might be higher than you would like to pay.

Which neighborhoods are you thinking of when you mention the suburbish neighborhoods?
Just asking because I used to live in West L.A for a long time and now live not too far from Burbank and I think that parts of Burbank especially near Downtown Burbank are a lot more walkable and have a better quality of life than West L.A . Cleaner, lot's of free parking, less aggressive drivers a wide range of options from big box chain stores to smaller stores.

Just mentioning this because a lot of people seem to dismiss Burbank as "the suburbs" , while they wouldn't say the same about parts of the Westside that seem even more suburban.