It is immensely frustrating to me to read about serious, controversial policy issues (like, say Iraq) that take one policy, dissect the problems with it and the sometimes stupid, incompetent, and venal behind it – and neglect to look at the problems with the alternatives and the sometimes stupid, incompetent and venal people who support them.
In the LA Weekly last week, reporter David Zanheiser has three well-researched, intelligent, and deeply incomplete articles about growth in Los Angeles – “What’s Smart About Smart Growth“, “Peddling Smart Growth“, and “Do As We Say, Not As We Do“.
Go over and read them to get a sense of the murky world of land-use politics in Los Angeles. Which are actually far worse than he sets out…the ‘iron ricebowl’ that local land-use provides in many cities where developers, homeowner groups, lobbyists and politicians all rely on a system that does very little real planning.Then stop and think for a moment. I don’t have the time to do a post that really does justice to the gaping holes in Zanheiser’s article, but let me do a quick introduction.
We live in a city and region that is growing in population (as most coastal cities really are). Growth in cities is usually a good thing, because the option tends to be collapse a la Detroit rather than the kind of benign stability I think everyone hoped for. If the population grows, you’ve got four axes on which you can grow – you can increase the density within the housing you have (doubling up, multigenerational families), you can increase the density of housing (building up), you can increase the size of the community field (building out), or you can try and throttle back on growth by allowing none of the above.
Each of those alternatives has costs and problems.
Most of these policies have been tried in different places, so we have experience we can look to.
Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara County have done a lot to throttle growth, using water connections as a limiting factor. They’ve done this for close to 30 years, and as a result housing prices in Santa Barbara are among the highest in the nation – and they also have terrible traffic problems, as the people who work in Santa Barbara and increasingly can’t afford to live there commute further and further to get there.
I’m not suggesting that more density is in fact the best policy in Los Angeles (although I do think that it’s inevitable and that if managed well need not destroy the city). I am stating that Zanheiser did half a job by failing to put the policy into a framework of policy alternatives, their histories, and their impacts, and that it’s frustrating to see him fall into the easy narative of developers, greed, and craven politicians.
Cities face hard decisions; Los Angeles more than most, I believe. We’d be really well served with a local press that could understand, explain, and follow planning issues better than the one we have…I’m hoping this article is a step on that path. Let’s see what the next few look like. C’mon Jill…
AL —
Great links. A few thoughts:
Villaraigosa and the rest are idiots. People will never give up cars, certainly not to sit next to street people or worse. People will never live in high-crime areas, which most of LA will become. That’s why those guys don’t live anywhere but exclusive (read: rich and safe) neighborhoods.
Smart growth is all about Elites hatred for the ordinary guy. Take away his/her single family home, car, etc. and stuff them in boxes. Control how many squares of toilet paper they use each bathroom visit, while the elites jet about.
That’s what it’s all about. The Liberal Elite war on the Average American.
Los Angeles’ problems are really not that difficult. Much of the blame for inefficient land use can be laid at the feet of politically based zoning and other decisions. Most zoning laws should be repealed. That alone would encourage manufacturing businesses to locate closer to residential and commercial neighborhoods, thus reducing the need for car travel as people could walk to work. It would be just like a “smart-code” without the artificial scarcity and the skyrocketing land prices. Manufacturing is the engine of wealth creation. Commercial businesses only shuffle wealth around. That would have an immediate positive effect on prosperity and livability in LA. There are plenty of other bad laws that could also be repealed. I define bad laws as any laws that have a perverse effect that is worse than the original problem the bad laws were meant to solve.
The main remaining problems are resource issues. Anti-automotive-pollution laws drive up the costs of autos and make it harder for poor people to get around. The rich still drive their Hummers or their Lexus hybrids, depending on their personal hierarchy of values, but the non-rich all over America are having to switch to (more dangerous) motorcycles, scooters, lighter cars, and so on, or to time-consuming and inconvenient public transportation. Water is also a problem all over America, and especially on the coasts. Just look at your water bill this month and twenty years ago for all the proof you need. Yet there is an ocean of water on the coasts. Desalinization plants are the obvious answer and need to be developed and built as quickly as possible. Petroleum platforms need to be made as safe as they can be and new ones built as close as they need to be to all American beaches, no matter how rich and self-righteous the Marxists who live on the waterfront may be. Keep them a couple of miles out and nobody is going to see them from the beach anyway.
Imagine a new gold rush or a new Hollywood starting up in today’s California. They would not have a chance. They would be crushed before they could start. California is killing its own future.
And as with California, so with the rest of the United States.
I think i agree with Wolf. Chicago went through a similar phase about 10 years ago when the reverse commute from suburbs to city became the rule rather than the exception. Since then Mayor Daley has done remarkable (if contraversial) things with zoning like tearing down projects and cleaning up sketchy neighborhoods and then pushing through zoning for residential buildings with certain percentage of low income housing required. People have screamed gentrification- but in reality it has brought the middle class back to the city in a big way and turned literally the worst neighborhoods in the city (heck in the nation) into some of the most up and coming. If anything, there is a housing glut in Chicago brewing, which nicely keeps housing costs relatively low. Particularly for renters, as everyone is so eager to buy condos.
I think a new dynamic in urban planning has sort of been invented by the market and smart planning. Government projects for the poor were one of those well intended disasters. Forces builders to include low income opportunities into revamped middle class areas may be genius- it allows the poor access to better schools and services and away from crime and poverty. This is a great recipe for breaking the poverty cycle I think. This kind of thing should be held up as a great example of creative thinking that can mesh ideas of Right and Left. The people that are implimenting it are more interested in results than in winning the idealogical battle, which is rare in this day and age.
_Most zoning laws should be repealed. That alone would encourage manufacturing businesses to locate closer to residential and commercial neighborhoods . . ._
Unless you can show me that people want to live next to manufacturing and manufacturers want to develop next to residences, I don’t think that will work.
Before the first zoning ordinances in the 1920s, big industry could be liable for operating “common-law nuisances”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuisance if their odors, lights, noises, pollution, etc. were deemed unreasonable injuries to neighboring property owners. This was a legacy of English property law and the notion that every property owner had a right to quiet enjoyment of his or her property. Even if zoning laws were eliminated, it would still be in industry’s interest to locate in places that avoid potential conflict with neighboring property owners. I would also add that many cities build or improve infrasture in areas to encourage such outcomes anyway.
_time-consuming and inconvenient public transportation._
That would be one difference between my experiences in Chicago and Los Angeles. Chicago has a pretty good public transportation system and it attracts people to urban areas near stops. Mark B might correct me, but the main issue that drives Chicagoans to the ‘burbs (at least in my age-group) is the schools.
I’d add that, while zoning has many faults, nuisance litigation is the worst imaginable way to regulate land use. Throwing dice would be much cheaper and more egalitarian.
PD, stick your head in the Plame thread.
I think most commenters here are missing the point about LA:
1. Incredible population growth from a torrent of illegal immigration pushes up competition for limited housing stock and land for housing.
2. Mobility is gone as growth strangles commuting, because public transport is hostage to PC law enforcement.
Take the first point. LA is hemmed in by the San Gabriels, to the East, the Pacific to the West, so it has a relatively narrow north-south axis in which to expand. People seeking low-crime, lower housing costs have to expand northwards into the Antelope Valley since Orange County is so built up.
Illegal immigrants pouring into SoCal only make this immeasurably worse. Pour more people into an area with limited land for housing and watch prices soar beyond most ability to pay for it.
Gentrification is impossible in most places. PC policing makes it very difficult (no real law enforcement) and only a few areas are colonized. So Echo Park, yes. South Central? No. People need a safe place and that is usually way out in the Antelope Valley.
Mobility is impossible: you can add all the buses you want but they won’t go anywhere. A measly 12 miles an hour? Pshaw! You can add rail, which is much faster and efficient (separate roadways) but it costs, zoning and other fights makes it slow to build and very expensive, and people won’t use it anyway unless the political will to have tough policing is there. Which isn’t in existence in LA.
Nothing is going to get done, it will only get worse. The future of LA is basically Mexico City: a few gated enclaves, like Hancock Park, etc. with poor and violent neighborhoods and far-flung suburbs with horrendous commutes.
And the failure is directly tied to Liberalism: the refusal to enforce public safety, make rational investments in transport, and limit population growth (admittedly not a local responsibility).
Chicago? Once Daley passes from the scene it will become a pit again. The same factors are at play, and the key one is refusal to enforce public safety which is the cornerstone of Liberalism. Public safety is seen as “racist” so Liberals abhor it. Lack of it of course also punishes the “little people” which is a plus for Liberals, who are generally wealthy elites like the LA Weekly columns illustrate.
Armed,
Your comment that most coastal cities are growing reminded me of “this May 8 article by Michael Barone.”:http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010045 Here’s the relevant excerpt:
bq. Start with the Coastal Megalopolises: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago (on the coast of Lake Michigan), Miami, Washington and Boston. Here is a pattern you don’t find in other big cities: Americans moving out and immigrants moving in, in very large numbers, with low overall population growth. Los Angeles, defined by the Census Bureau as Los Angeles and Orange Counties, had a domestic outflow of 6% of 2000 population in six years–balanced by an immigrant inflow of 6%. The numbers are the same for these eight metro areas as a whole…
bq. This is something few would have predicted 20 years ago. Americans are now moving out of, not into, coastal California and South Florida, and in very large numbers they’re moving out of our largest metro areas. They’re fleeing hip Boston and San Francisco, and after eight decades of moving to Washington they’re moving out. The domestic outflow from these metro areas is 3.9 million people, 650,000 a year. High housing costs, high taxes, a distaste in some cases for the burgeoning immigrant populations–these are driving many Americans elsewhere.
_”Mark B might correct me, but the main issue that drives Chicagoans to the ‘burbs (at least in my age-group) is the schools.”_
At present, that is largely the case- although Chicago public schools are slowly being brought to task more than a lot of places via charter school competition and some actual oversight. I still wouldnt send my kids there, assuming i loved them.
I’d say the number one reason for urban flight in Chicago at this point though is business flight. Taxes are just brutal, so why wouldnt Motorola move 30 miles west? I get the paradox between urban renewal and low taxes, but Illinois in general is one of the most business unfriendly states in the nation. That needs to be addressed because more than anything businesses are fleeing across the Indiana and Wisconsin borders. Our idiot governor tried to propose a gross sales tax which might be the worst idea in the history of taxation, and fortunately ended up opposing his own proposal just to make it go away it was so hated.
_”Chicago? Once Daley passes from the scene it will become a pit again.”_
There’s always another Daley in the wings 😉 The irony of a virtual monarch being the only one remotely capable of cleaning up such a huge city via greasing the right wheels and kicking any asses that get in the way isnt lost on this libertarian. Sometimes you just need to shrug and live with the devil you know, particularly when he produces.
Timothy – Barone may have a point about immigration driving the growth (not sure) but he’s way off base on population projections. SCAG projects that the Los Angeles County population will rise from 9.5 million in 2000 to 12.3 million in 2025…
A.L.
This is called demography crisis. I hope it will end soon
PD responds to me:
bq. _Most zoning laws should be repealed. That alone would encourage manufacturing businesses to locate closer to residential and commercial neighborhoods . . ._
bq. Unless you can show me that people want to live next to manufacturing and manufacturers want to develop next to residences, I don’t think that will work.
Manufacturing is not always hazardous nor does it always have toxic byproducts. Yet zoning prevents manufacturing near enough to peoples’ homes for them to *walk* to work and avoid the whole commuting problem. Manufacturing and agriculture are the “engine of wealth creation”:http://wolfpangloss.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/on-the-creation-of-wealth/ in the world. Anything we can do to make manufacturing easier, including changing the way things are built to allow employees to walk to work, will make the economy better.
Zoning could still be allowed to force polluting and noisy companies farther from residential neighborhoods. The problem is when all manufacturing is tarred with the same brush as polluters. After all, a guitar shop is not the same as a tannery.
Jim Rockford
bq. 2. Mobility is gone as growth strangles commuting, because public transport is hostage to PC law enforcement.
While telecommuting will lighten the load for knowledge workers, it will not make things easier for those who build tangible products. That is why zoning reform, to allow people to walk to work at a manufacturing company, is necessary. If they walk to work they don’t get on the freeway.
AL,
I live in a pretty rural area of Central CA, and, even here, you can see something of the idiocy of todays “Metropolis”.
40 years ago “lumber & logging” were mainstays of our economy (today its state & federal workers who’ll deal with a 50 mile commute)and both are still operative, kinda!
Every day on State Hiway 49, you can watch loaded lumber trucks (logs)going both North and South. Obviously, the free market has decided that the hauling of logs 50+ miles is better than hauling 2+ miles? I mean these loaded trucks pass each other in a N/S way every five minutes or so.
So, if my beloved “free market” and I am a free market Conservative, can be so inefficient, why would any rational person think “government” could possibly create an efficient “metro area”?
Mike