Greening Los Angeles – Filling the Mostly Empty Glass By Max Tomaszewski and Dick Platkin * (Published in CityWatchLA on August 3, 2012) In the field of city planning there is little mystery about the relationship between urban land use patterns and climate change. Los Angeles’s auto-centric design forces automobile travel, and therefore locks most residents into extensive use of greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels. These emissions have immensely contributed to SMOG and now to climate change; have pushed the atmosphere’s carbon content to dangerous levels, with some outcomes, such as this summer’s extreme weather events, already observable. Los Angeles’s Auto-Centric Design : In Los Angeles, auto-centric development blankets the metropolis from the foothills of the San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and Verdugo mountains to the Pacific coastline. An extensive freeway network connects this urban quilt, now over 70 years old. Horizontal, automobi...
Posts
The Antonio to Eric Handoff: LA’s Quality of Life Disaster — Deregulating Planning, Zoning and Building Code Enforcement Posted June 3, 2013 on Ron Kaye’s LA http://ronkayela.com/2013/06/the-antonio-to-eric-handoff-las-quality-of-life-disaster-deregulating-planning-zoning-and-building-code-enforcement.html#respond EDITOR’S NOTE: Former LA City Planner Dick Platkin, now Adjunct Instructor of City Planning at USC’s Price School of Social Policy, originally wrote this article on the devastating impact of the merger of LA Planning and Building and Safety Department for KCET. This is the most far-reaching issue threatening the quality of life in every neighborhood, yet it is being rushed forward by the current mayor and the mayor-elect, with the unanimous support of the City Council and without the massive citywide protests from residents that it deserves. By Dick Platkin ( rhplatkin@yahoo.com ) Before the election the Wall Street Journal descri...
UPDATE ON HOLLYWOOD AND WILSHIRE CORRIDOR
Good Density or Bad Density, That is the Question Dick Platkin, 20 Nov 2012, CityWatchLA, WILSHIRE CORRIDOR, HOLLYWOOD UPDATE - The Update of the Hollywood Community Plan has been challenged by three lawsuits. As this litigation slowly works its way through the court system, the debate about increasing planned and zoned density has not quieted down. Let us therefore revisit that debate as it applies to two Los Angeles neighborhoods with mass transit, Hollywood and the Wilshire Boulevard Corridor. Density, in the form of larger buildings and more people, is welcome in Hollywood, Wilshire Boulevard, and elsewhere, but only when it is properly planned. In fact, when it is done right -- instead of being added on the cheap as an after thought to spark real estate speculation – increased density can be extremely beneficial for health, social, and environmental reasons. Hollywood: In the case of the Hollywood Commun...