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Showing posts from 2021

Planning Watch for September 16, 2021

The housing crisis – in LA and elsewhere -- results from deliberate decisions at all levels of government. https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/22565-a-12-step-program-to-create-a-housing-crisis

Planning Watch column for July 22, 2021.

The main problem with up-zoning to solve the housing crisis is that is doesn’t work. It makes the housing crisis worse, not better. https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/22121-the-latest-false-claims-to-sanitize-speculative-real-estate-investments

Los Angeles Planning Watch, July 8, 2021

Local officials have responded to the elimination of public housing programs and increased economic inequality by promoting expensive, in-fill apartments. This is how they made an imposed housing crisis even worse. https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/22027-how-albert-einstein-guides-city-hall-s-approach-to-the-housing-crisis

Raman Recall Remorse, Planning Watch for June 24, 2021

In Los Angeles the recall of a new Councilmember with a great left head fake to camouflage her objective support for real estate speculators and greater Green House Gas emissions is poorly understood, especially by the red-baiters after her. https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/21925-raman-recall-remorse

Discredited planning concepts don't die, the just surface at City Hall to promote real estate speculation

The urban growth machine has learned how to reinvent its real estate scams, but they mostly fool themselves. https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/21787-discredited-planning-concepts-don-t-die-they-just-resurface-at-city-hall-to-promote-real-estate-speculation

How the mainstrea media tries to fool the public in its reporting on the housing crisis.

The mainstream media, like Hebrew National hotdogs, reports to a higher authority, in this case their corporate owners, when slanting their coverage of the housing crisis and City Hall’s responses to it. https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/21436-why-the-mainstream-media-tries-to-fool-the-public-with-its-misleading-reporting-on-the-housing-crisis

Conversation with a local fauxgressive reveals a dystopian los angeles.

Some fauxgressives are duplicitous while others truly believe that the elimination of laws and regulations will solve social problems. Either way, though, the damage is done. Their solutions make social problems, like homelessness, worse. https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/21360-pathway-to-a-dystopian-los-angeles-revealed-in-my-conversation-with-a-local-fauxgressive

The Failed Logic of Planning in Los Angeles: Full Speed Into the Rocks

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

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