Planning Los Angeles

by David C. Sloane (Editor)

Los Angeles isn’t planned; it just happens. Right? Not so fast! Despite the city’s reputation for spontaneous evolution, a deliberate planning process shapes the way Los Angeles looks and lives. Editor David C. Sloane, a planning professor at the University of Southern California, has enlisted 30 essayists for a lively, richly illustrated view of this vibrant metropolis. Planning Los Angeles launches a new series from APA Planners Press. Each year Planners Press will bring out a new study on a major American city. Natives, newcomers, and out-of-towners will get insiders’ views of today’s hot-button issues and a sneak peek at the city to come.

Genres: Urban Planning

336 pages, Hardcover

First published May 16, 2012

Reviews

[Herman · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many writers in these essays arguing that there really is a plan for LA county. Yet, I was never convinced that there was. The history of public transportation in LA was most interesting. The decimation of the electric railcar system by special interests (mainly suburbs) is, looking back, a mistake. The car took over and now we're still in a traffic jam. Still, this book was a little over my head in terms of understanding and relating to all of the essayists' arguments. I don't regret reading this narrative.

[Patrick Ping-tze · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good material. Terrible book design. Very hard to read. Book designer is totally not up to the job. Cannot finish reading the book.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains about forty planning-related essays about Los Angeles- some as short as a page, some longer, some boring, some interesting. Most of the essays emphasize, of course, that Los Angeles has been planned as much as any other American city. Some of the more interesting points:

*Los Angeles's car-oriented streets were shaped in large part by the city's 1924 Major Traffic Street Plan, which created a grid of widened streets; by contrast, a similarly ambitious plan for parks was never implemented. One essay suggests that the Chamber of Commerce opposed the plan because it did not give them enough power (though that doesn't make sense to me because they could have lobbied for amendments).
*The city has aggressively downzoned in recent decades, causing a housing shortage and high rents. Until the 1960s, developers and homeowners usually agreed. But once the city's open land started to dwindle, infill became more popular with developers, causing tensions with homeowners.
*Los Angeles is much more like its suburbs than most cities- whether you look at the city's ethnic diversity or its poverty rate or its density levels and urban form.
*Why didn't Los Angeles build new rail in the 1950s and 1960s? In 1948, the city council voted a rail proposal 8-6. Suburban business interests lobbied against it, because they had no interest in making it easier for people to reach downtown stores.
*The city tried to subsidize downtown housing in the 1980s without much success. But once the city modified regulations that precluded such housing (such as parking/setback/density rules designed for suburbs), landowners were able to reuse older buildings and downtown started to become residential.