Heads up, Angelinos
El Mayor Villareigosa is gonna “Smart Growth” yer neighborhood
Anticipating Los Angeles Basin population growth from 16.7 to 23 million by 2030, Los Angeles Democratic Mayor Antonio Villareigosa has been quietly working with city and Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) experts on a 2007 plan to rezone hundreds of parcels within a half-mile of bus stops and train stations in several transit corridors for high-density, mixed-use ‘’urban villages,’’ focusing first on the $640 million Expo Line rail project being launched this month.
‘’The goal is to produce urban villages with high-quality development that would encourage pedestrian and transit-oriented design,’’ said the mayor’s transportation deputy Jaime De La Vega, confident it would boost area transit, currently used on a regular basis by just 5 percent of Los Angeles County residents. ...
“This sounds like a really ambitious agenda,” observed National Center for Metropolitan Transportation Research Director Genevieve Giuliano. “In some of these areas, there are going to be issues with existing neighbors that are not going to want high-rise development. This will really be challenging."
I’m guessing they won’t be trying to turn Malibu into an “urban village,” tho…
As we all know, Los Angeles is one of my *favorite* places of all time. (pause to get the bad taste out of my mouth).
But, they have to do something.
I don’t think this is it—it sounds like an enormous boondoggle to me, but since I was last here five years ago, traffic congestion has gone up two orders of magnitude; the bus system has completely deteriorated; the roads are in such bad shape I can’t even play a cd on the bus—or sometimes even read for the bumpiness of the roads. At the very least they need to get serious about public transit, which they aren’t at this point (they also have one of the most ineffectual, corrupt, and wasteful bureaucracies in the country managing the transit system here).
But the actual solution is going to involve actual infrastructure change in some way, because the techniques they use are developments of the solutions city planners found for the traffic problems of the eighteenth century, with no real, substantial evolution of the techniques or technology since. Our city infrastructure has grown up to accommodate 19th century solutions to 18th century problems.
Posted by on 11/21/06 at 09:38 AMI think Bill Patterson is right. It’s a quagmire. (I live next door in Orange County, and haven’t been to LA in a long time.)
Somehow, Mayor Tony doesn’t seem to realize that the #1 problem is really this:
“... Los Angeles Basin population growth from 16.7 to 23 million by 2030 ...”
... an increase of 6.3 million (38%) in 25 years ... Given the current state of immigration, I think that target number is way low.
Maybe he figures that L.A. and San Diego will come together and merge by that time.
Posted by ZZMike on 11/21/06 at 01:48 PMChalk up another one for not acting like you’re serious about what you’re doing. And political discourse that will not allow anything real to be addressed. This is the most wealthy and powerful city that has ever been in human existence—and they can’t run a bus line. . .
Posted by on 11/21/06 at 04:40 PM
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