31–40 of 187 posts
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.
Paradise? LA was a big giant horrible underdeveloped wasteland in Spanish/Mexican times which, at the time in 1849, had 1,600 residents. Most of them had a largely pastoral life and life was brutal there. LA under US rule is the prime example of what industrialized people can do to a place that lacked nearly everything of what it is at this moment: a world-class city. Objectively, if it had stayed under Mexican rule,…
It's amazing how little has changed in recent years in LA. The massive downzoning of the 1980s had its effect: prevent efficient land use, and channel money into the hands of landlords and homeowners from all newcomers. LA is a ridiculously unaffordable place to live, not because it's nice, but because of an artificial shortage of built space, due to a monopoly on the permission to build.
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This started as a data puzzle. There is a lot of public data but it's hosted by for-profit companies and the data models don't seem to be coherent (probably lots of good reasons for the data models being the way they are, so no criticism, and it's wonderful they are public.) So for LA City, they use Socrata (owned by Tyler Technologies -- NYSE: TYL) to host and publish open data. LA City also uses Esri's ArcGIS for g…
I’ve helped with a few other zoning visualization projects recently, similar workflow. The only similarity is that each city/jurisdiction makes its data available in a different way. It’s usually accessible but it does mean there’s a lot of work munging the data to a usable format.
Here’s one of the projects: https://github.com/kfarr/zoningviz
it's basically this data: https://portal.assessor.lacounty.gov/ through this portal https://data.lacity.org/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This started as a data puzzle. There is a lot of public data but it's hosted by for-profit companies and the data models don't seem to be coherent (probably lots of good reasons for the data models being the way they are, so no criticism, and it's wonderful they are public.) So for LA City, they use Socrata (owned by Tyler Technologies -- NYSE: TYL) to host and publish open data. LA City also uses Esri's ArcGIS for g…
It’s great! Agreed don’t feed the trolls. I’ve helped with a few other zoning visualization projects recently, similar workflow. The only similarity is that each city/jurisdiction makes its data available in a different way. It’s usually accessible but it does mean there’s a lot of work munging the data to a usable format. Here’s one of the projects: https://github.com/kfarr/zoningviz
The other thing I learned is that some of the data sets use a destructive insert, so unless someone is doing a data snapshot data elements can be lost. (The vendors charge extra time-series option.)
A complementary view of one point in time is the LA Noire video game's attempt to recreate a (condensed and simplified) 1940s LA environment, with 3D architecture, cars, and ongoing expansion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGPh2AcmG2A The storytelling atmosphere is somber film-noire-ish, but there's simultaneously a feeling of national prosperity and potential for many (with notable unjust exceptions), like I think…
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.
Paradise? LA was a big giant horrible underdeveloped wasteland in Spanish/Mexican times which, at the time in 1849, had 1,600 residents. Most of them had a largely pastoral life and life was brutal there. LA under US rule is the prime example of what industrialized people can do to a place that lacked nearly everything of what it is at this moment: a world-class city. Objectively, if it had stayed under Mexican rule,…
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.
Is there an alternative if 13 million people want to live somewhere?
Unfortunately, humans do not know restraint.
