The obvious next step here is to do LA county, since so much sits outside the city limits.
Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
61–70 of 189 posts
Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
#62It'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.
To be fair NYC has taken the opposite approach and rents are extremely high there as well
NYC zoning is less limiting than LA, but still extremely limiting.
Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
#63It'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.
To be fair NYC has taken the opposite approach and rents are extremely high there as well
NYC has had so much downzoning too. The icon of the city, the Empire State Building, now has a floor area ratio about double what’s permitted in that district. Many historical buildings, just like ESB, simply could not have been built today under current zoning regulation.
The city’s original 1916 zoning regulation permitted a hypothetical maximum population of 55 million; after WWII the new zoning regulations essentially limited hypothetical maximum population to a little more than 10 million if everything is fully developed. Recent initiatives like City of Yes did too little to reverse the trend.
Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
#64Having moved to LA this february, the sprawl is really something I had no true appreciation for until I moved here for real, and tried to run errands across town. It's a gigantic, beautiful, complicated place.
It's a bunch of cats (mid-sized, and generally mid all-around, cities) fighting under a blanket. The history of the place is a reaction against New York, where the city is dense and had a bunch of super tall buildings. LA, as a region, said "well we don't want that and enacted a bunch of building codes to hamstring any single city in the region from potentially being a successful, mature urban center.
Pretty infuriating to visit Barcelona recently and see that there was a perfect example of good urban planning sitting right there for decades that LA could've simply copied. In the long run this region is simply incapable of maintaining its infrastructure with its tax base, even today you can see it starting to collapse.
Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The density at least means you don't have to really run across town for much and can stay within a certain radius for most all your needs and wants. I mean look at the density of costcos alone. Many other metros might have 1 or 2 for the entire area. Then again a lot of other metros you basically can drive end to end in 25 miles.
I'm confused. LA doesn't strike me as dense. How dense can you get with huge areas of single family homes?
8200/sqmi on average. Even the single family home areas punch above their weight compared to the rest of the country because lots are mostly only 50ft wide and most all build-able land is put to some sort of use already.
Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
#66hey I feel like we should work together on something. I maintain https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/landrecordsus/us-parcel-laye... and https://landstats.com.
Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
That is close to the average rate of inflation, though. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
They go up much more than 2% in literally every other state, California is the cheapest place to own property for >10 years.
You can argue against property taxes entirely, but Prop 13 definitely means that families, businesses, and all property owners work very hard to never sell, never reassess, and never change their tax rate.
Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
#69Is this actually representing homeless encampments?
Re: Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
#70Los 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.
> worked really well, especially for folks without much money
That's probably part of the reason they got rid of them. You still see that argument used against transit: "it will bring _____ to our part of town".