PLANNING WATCH / PLAN-IT LOS ANGELES

DICK PLATKIN     30 NOVEMBER 2017 LOS ANGELES PREVIOUS ARTICLE Affordable Housing Meets Free-Market Fantasy NEXT ARTICLE What’s Wrong with This Picture? UC’s Napolitano Gets Scolded, but Keeps Her Job! TOOLS  PRINT   EMAIL PLATKIN ON PLANNING-On Saturday, December 2,  City Watch  readers are invited to attend the  Resist Gentrification Action Summit . The conference, sponsored by  Housing is a Human Right.org ,  takes place at Audubon Junior High School, 4120-11 th  Avenue, Los Angeles, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.  Facebook   Twitter   Google+   Share According to Damien Goodman, the conference organizer, the gentrifiers have a three-word mantra for every problem facing Los Angeles, “Build more housing!” For those who listen carefully, their hymn has a second verse. It calls for rolling back zoning and environmental regulations on high-end real estate projects. This  not affordable housing  is the actual focus of their build-more-housing crusade.  Little do thes

DICK PLATKIN     14 DECEMBER 2017 LOS ANGELES PREVIOUS ARTICLE Loser Trump: Uniquely Awful and at the Tipping Point NEXT ARTICLE First-Person Report: Cancer-Causing Chemicals Endanger SoCal Kids TOOLS  PRINT   EMAIL PLATKIN ON PLANNING-In the fanciful world of high school and college “civics” and political science classes, government is portrayed as a neutral force blindly balancing many competing interest groups. While a few gullible students might fall for this claim, a quick look at the City of Los Angeles puts this notion to rest.  Facebook   Twitter   Google+   Share When it comes to land use decisions, City Hall places a very heavy thumb on the scale in numerous ways to help real estate developers, while simultaneously placing a host of barriers in the way of community and neighborhood groups. Let us, therefore, take a closer look to see how this game is fixed from the start.  How City departments place many barriers in the way of community grou