Ball 3

Mayor Garcetti’s recently announced Great Streets Initiative got me thinking about how Los Angeles uses its streets compared to other urban cities. While the region has some long, important thoroughfares (Wilshire, Sunset, Figueroa, and PCH immediately come to mind), few would argue that they are on the same level of the Champs Elysees or the Mall in Washington DC. LA’s major boulevards often have great settings and go through interesting neighborhoods, but an important ingredient that makes streets great is missing - place . Like pretty much any public problem, both the public and the private sectors are to blame. Let’s look at where they’ve fallen short and what they can do to improve our streets: More of this. The Public Sector - Lack of public space . Look at Wilshire, Sunset, Figueroa, and Pacific Coast Highway on google maps and you’ll see that these 4 major thoroughfares combined have only 2 major parks along their entire stretch - MacArthur Park on Wilshire and Exposi...

A map of LA's home ownership. Lighter areas have higher rates of renters. It seems that people are often quick to dismiss projects in the LA region due to its culture. We shouldn’t expand mass transit because people love their cars too much. We shouldn’t build high density developments because people want to raise their kids in the suburbs with big backyards. However, recent data from the Census and the American Community Survey shows that our “LA culture” may not be as deeply ingrained as we often think it is. In looking at the data, you can come up with three major takeaways: 1. 52% of residents in the LA metro area are renters (the highest rate in the country) 2. Half of these renters are spending too much of their income on their monthly rent 3. 45% of households own one or fewer cars These numbers present a great opportunity for the region’s city planners and developers. Half of the population is incredibly mobile - they don’t have the anchor of home owner...

I traveled abroad for the first time this past summer and there were many things that stood out to me from a city planning perspective.  Perhaps the most stark contrast between European cities and Los Angeles, however, is that LA is severely lacking in centrality .  Although LA isn’t the huge, sprawling region that it is often characterized to be, the Los Angeles metro area is extremely decentralized.  There are many major hubs of jobs and cultural activity - Downtown, Santa Monica, The Valley, Westwood, Century City, just to name a few.  From a planning perspective, this is a major problem because it is hard to devote transportation resources so many areas.   Metro map with future rail alignments. Los Angeles has largely responded to this problem by focusing its efforts on the Downtown core and having its mass transit system branch out to Hollywood, Santa Monica, and other major hubs.  Thus, a person who lives or works Downtown has pretty good reso...

Let's bring this back in 2024! With Los Angeles officially announcing its candidacy to host its third Olympics  last week , many questions come to mind.  While the city and the Olympics themselves will likely look very different in 11 years, LA is certainly one of the best equipped cities in the world to host the games.  In this post, I'll take a quick look at why Los Angeles would make a great host and examine some things that will need to be done in order to put on such a large event . The 1984 Olympics were one of the most successful games in history, proving that the Olympics could be staged without losing huge sums of money for the host city.  In fact, the 1984 games made a profit and have had a positive legacy for Los Angeles to this day. Los Angeles last bid for the 2016 games , which eventually went to Brazil.  Although this was a serious bid, there seemed to be a general lack of imagination that the Olympic committees look for in choosing a...