PLANNING WATCH / PLAN-IT LOS ANGELES

The Failed Logic of Planning in Los Angeles: Full Speed Into the Rocks Dick Platkin, CityWatchLA, December 30, 2020 PLANNING WATCH: The many shortcomings of City government in Los Angeles include the inability of City Hall officials to make their cover stories for top-down gentrification programs stick. Despite their congratulatory back-patting about 150,000 new housing units, most of them expensive apartments near express bus lines and subway stations -- population, employment, homelessness, transit ridership, and climate change trends are all moving in the wrong direction. There have been a few winners, however. Property owners and developers have hit pay dirt through induced gentrification. They have built these luxury apartments or flipped their recently up-zoned and therefore, more valuable parcels. Nevertheless, the jerry-rigged numbers that City Hall uses to justify its top-down housing programs do not add up. LA’s population growth is portrayed as a

The failed logic of planning in Los Angeles. Full speed into the rocks, even when the numbers don’t add up. By Dick Platkin* Planning Watch: The many shortcomings of City government in Los Angeles include the inability of City Hall officials to make their cover stories for top-down gentrification programs stick. Despite their congratulatory back-patting about 150,000 new housing units, most of them expensive apartments near express bus lines and subway stations -- population, employment, homelessness, transit ridership, and climate change trends are all moving in the wrong direction. There have been a few winners, however. Property owners and developers have hit pay dirt through induced gentrification. They have built these luxury apartments or flipped their recently up-zoned and therefore, more valuable parcels. Nevertheless, the jerry-rigged numbers that City Hall uses to justify its top-down housing programs do not add up. LA’s population growth is portrayed as a pe