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...