Smart Growth or "Smart Sprawl"?

Posted on Planetizen today is a new op-ed that is well worth a read. Southern California-based planning consultant Wally Siembab argues that rather than pursue an overambitious, too-idealistic strategy of "smart growth", we'd be better served by cost-effective, locally focused examples of what he calls "smart sprawl". OK, maybe Siembab's new term is largely a clever marketing device for his consultancy, but I think his ideas are worth serious consideration as we gradually (or not so gradually) enter a post-oil age. As Siembab argues, "The challenge is to quickly and affordably retrofit the built environment in a way that leads to re-inventing metropolitan mobility systems while also stimulating the regional economy." In other words, how can we wisely and efficiently shift our lives away from their current and near-complete automobile dependence? For Siembab, a more realistic option than wholesale transformations of the urban landscape as called for by many so-called smart growth proponents, would be a simpler retrofitting of existing suburbs (i.e., "smart sprawl"). My only real gripe with Siembab's piece is that while he calls for "new alternate fuel, zero emission transportation technologies known as neighborhood vehicles", he is perhaps missing (or at least not stating) the potential of older technologies. What better "neighborhood vehicle", after all, is there than the bicycle!! Let's leave the electric golf carts for the snowbirds in Scottsdale.

A sad moment for Los Angeles

Tuesday's Los Angeles Times reported that the LA Conservancy has officially given up its fight to save the historic Ambassador Hotel from demolition by the LA Unified School District. While not surprising, this is nonetheless a sad event that we will long regret. More than a blow to historic preservation, this is a significant loss for the very school children that are supposedly being served by the School Board's decision to raze the hotel to make room for desperately needed, but extremely poorly and unimaginatively planned, new schools in central Los Angeles. For those unfamiliar with the situation, the Ambassador Hotel is a 1920s landmark located in the heart of the Wilshire Center district west of downtown LA, near Macarthur Park and Koreatown (3400 Wilshire Blvd., 90010). After closing its doors for good in 1989, and being briefly controlled by "the Donald" as the would-be site of a new Trump Tower, this highly historic building and property was acquired by LAUSD at a bargain price. While nobody disputes the need for new schools in the neighborhood, nor even the idea of using the sprawling Ambassador site for such schools, LAUSD's plans have been controversial because they would destroy most of the Hotel's main building--something that doesn't sit very well with preservationists, who are most vociferously represented by the LA Conservancy. And despite a number of creative, promising-looking compromise proposals designed to serve both the interests of historic preservation and public education, the majority of the School Board has defiantly, stubbornly, and blindly stuck to its original plan. The real tragedy here is that the public debate, despite the Conservancy's tremendous efforts, has simplistically pitted the two interests (preservation and education) against each other, when the reality is that they so closely overlap. In other words, an opportunity was missed here for an exciting win-win project that could have further established Los Angeles as a leading force in adaptive reuse and progressive, public-spirited architectural preservation. For more on the Ambassador Hotel and LAUSD's plans, check out the following:

• The LA Conservancy's viewpoint: November 2004 and August 2005
• Another save-the-hotel website
• The villain in this story - LAUSD
• thoughts from the local Wilshire Center neighborhood business association

Finally, to further reveal why I am so saddened by the Ambassador's iminent demise, here is the text of an advocacy letter I sent last year to the LAUSD school board: "Please, Please, Please save the Ambassador Hotel! "I am the parent of a young child who attends an LAUSD school, as well as an educator at a local community college. I teach, among other subjects, an introductory class in urban studies, and one of the central themes of that class is the fascinating, multi-layered history of Los Angeles and greater Southern California. Sadly, another theme of the class is how that history remains popularly unknown, all too often erased from the landscape, to the degree that our local communities and larger metropolitan society struggle to orient themselves in time and space. As eloquently argued by internationally known scholars such as Dolores Hayden and Kevin Lynch--among countless others--there is a very real "power of place" (to use Hayden's phase) that can be preserved and cultivated in the landscape for the greater social good. We obviously live in a large, diverse society, and one of the best ways for all of us as individuals and groups to develop a true, humane sense of local community (and communities) is through a broadly preserved but also actively used urban landscape. "A creatively and sensitively designed adaptive reuse of the Ambassador Hotel as a center of public education would be an outstanding addition to several other noteworthy preservation and adaptive-reuse efforts throughout the city and region. The LA Conservancy has demonstrated the financial feasibility of such a project. To close the door on their vision for the property's future would represent a closing of a much more important door--the opportunity to instill in our children, through the public schools, an historically informed sense of place, and indeed, a real pride of place. We live in a truly great city, and it's a shame that too many people derive their pride in this place from a far-too-short list of icons: the Lakers, the beaches, and, perhaps, Disney Concert Hall. This city has far more to offer; please don't sell our children short."

One reason why bicycles are so necessary

The BBC reports today the lastest bad news concerning Americans' health, or lack thereof. Increasingly, we're not just becoming a country of people who weigh a little bit more than perhaps we ideally should; more and more of us are becoming truly obese. This is a complex issue in terms of both causes and effects, but it seems clear that bicycling offers a significant path to improvement. Indeed, this is exactly the theme of September's issue of Bicycling magazine.

Get up to speed on Homelessness and Skid Row in LA

Today's LA Times contains a nice Q&A primer on downtown's Skid Row. Another good source to check out for basic info on the issue of homelessness in Southern California is the Weingart Center's Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty.

Coastal Housing Crunch

It's old news that there exists a housing-affordability problem--if not crisis--throughout much of the wealthier parts of the world. This most certainly includes coastal metropolitan areas in the United States, such as Southern California. While much of the blame might be assigned to a "housing bubble" of some type, fueled by loose monetary policy and a sluggish stock market, there also is a lot of evidence suggesting that tight supply is a significant part of the problem. In short, metro population growth has been proceeding at a much faster rate than new housing construction. The August 22 Christian Science Monitor provides a nice summary of this issue--something that promises to be one of the biggest issues facing urban planners (and voters) well into the foreseeable future. Specifically, the article quotes Harvard University economist Edward Glaeser in describing the highly restrictive zoning environment that now exists. Glaeser says the old "growth machine" of Baby Boom era has yielded to new "homeowners' cooperatives" creating a housing market now defined by "man-made scarcity." This isn't the whole story, but it does raise questions about the challenge society faces in trying to navigate a path of socially progressive environmental conservation: controlling growth while promoting economic opportunity for the masses. One option, of course, is to build up, and the August 21 Arizona Republic discusses exactly such a scenario for Phoenix-region community of Tempe. All of this echoes my previous post about the dense population concentrations that increasingly define the allegedly sprawling cities of the West.

LA and the urban West not so sprawling after all

Something that most urban scholars, especially those living and working in the far West, have known for some time, cities in California and its fast-growing neighboring states are some of the most densely populated areas of the country. This is a point I recently made for Orange County, and an article in the Washington Post has now extended the idea further. Examination of Census 2000 data that limits the analysis to "urbanized area" only (i.e., factoring out all of the rural land that surrounds major cities even though it lies within official "metropolitan" counties) reveals that the three most densely populated urban regions in the country are in California: LA/OC #1, SF/Oakland #2, San Jose #3. New York comes in only at fourth. While only San Francisco has a densely populated traditional core in the same league as Manhattan, a physical geography constrained by water supplies and mountains has combined in California with never-ending immigration and population growth to make for extremely dense "suburban" communities. While counter to conventional wisdom that posits a crowded East in contrast to a sprawling West, these Census data wouldn't be too much of a surprise to anyone looking for affordable housing or space on the freeway on a stereotypically sunny California afternoon. Here's the rest of the complete list of ten most densely populated urbanized areas, which includes six in California and another two in the neighboring West. 1. LA/OC 2. SF/Oakland 3. San Jose 4. New York - Newark 5. New Orleans 6. Davis, CA 7. Vallejo, CA 8. Honolulu 9. Tracy, CA 10. Las Vegas