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Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)

lax-skyline.parcelscope.net

51–60 of 189 posts

Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)

#51
post #8

I noticed most of the tall buildings are sixties to eighties. Some more info about that here. https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/artbound/a-brief-history-of-l...

Thank you! Great link!

And here is one that is just fun to watch because of Huell Howser --

Tallest Building | Visiting with Huell Howser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ziEDhCPjOQ

Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)

#52
Los Angeles had the largest public transportation network in the United States until we paved over it[1]. We had over 1,300 miles! You could've gone from Huntington Beach to Downtown and all the way up to Burbank. You can see many of the maps of Los Angeles at the public library[2]. I don't live there anymore, love that place though.

[1] - https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-la/from-rail-to-roads-an...

[2] - https://www.lapl.org/research-guides/maps/maps-los-angeles

Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)

#53

Wow this is inspiring. I would love to see a very similar visualization for Stockholm, Sweden. I think there is a beauty in seeing a summarized history of expansion, and in reality I can't help but think this is a very fast population boom. One I am sure most metro areas would struggle with. Makes a lot of criticism of LA planning in hindsight feel very unfair.

LA county has about the same population as Sweden.

Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)

#54
post #27
post #19

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 part of a very popular song from the 70s by Joni Mitchell called "Big Yellow Taxi".

Counting Crows did a cover in 2002.

Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)

#55
post #52

Los Angeles had the largest public transportation network in the United States until we paved over it[1]. We had over 1,300 miles! You could've gone from Huntington Beach to Downtown and all the way up to Burbank. You can see many of the maps of Los Angeles at the public library[2]. I don't live there anymore, love that place though. [1] - https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-la/from-rail-to-roads-an... [2] - https://…

My mom (who is 97) has a vivid memory of seeing FDR in 1935 -- the whole extended family took the the Red Car from Compton to downtown to see his motorcade. She remembered the electric trams worked really well, especially for folks without much money.

Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)

#59
post #56

This is super cool. Seems to be quite laggy for me though, when the timeline reached 2026 and stopped, buildings still kept popping in for the next 30 seconds.

Yep, that was my misconfiguration of the CloudFlare cache. Hopefully fixed now.

Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)

#60
post #32

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.

And don’t forget prop 13, there’s negative incentive for property to change hands and develop.

Do you own your home? Here in Ca? You know that property tax is 1.4ish % and goes up by 2% a year, pretty much no matter what?

On a 1.5M house, that's starting at 17K a year and each year it goes up 2%, so it compounds.

That's 17k a year Just to stay in your own home.

People who don't pay property taxes here in ca, act like prop 13 means zero property taxes

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