Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

lax-skyline.parcelscope.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 188 posts

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

#111

Post by jedberg »

wdr1 wrote: post #81
golem14 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a completely unreasonable shortage of water for a much bigger city.

I've lived on the westside of LA for ~20 years, so one secret I like to let people in on: there's no water shortage. There's a literal ocean of it. I can see it right out my window. And all that it takes to turn seawater into potable freshwater is energy. We don't have a water problem. We have an energy problem. For all of LA County, it would take 500–750 MW each year to use seawater for all our freshwater needs. Or…

It's not only energy though. Desalination takes space, and you have to do something with the salt. Last I saw, to have enough DeSal capacity for all of California, you'd have to replace every beach with DeSal plants to have enough capacity, and then you'd still have a salt problem.

You could put the salt on boats and dump it back much further out in the ocean, but that too takes energy.

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

#112

Post by cobbzilla »

khazhoux wrote: post #80
davidw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

The trams went away because of cars and buses, not because of racism.

It can be both. Highways didn’t get built for poor folks, but did get built right through many of their neighborhoods.

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

#113

Post by anonymousiam »

andrewmutz wrote: post #96
bingohbangoh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people really think that if we revoked Prop 13 that other taxes would go down with the new money from property taxes? Or do we think that property taxes would go up while other taxes stay put? This feels like the argument at play when people criticize Prop 13. Not saying it’s good but California hasn’t ever cut taxes meaningfully and I’m not convinced raising property taxes would solve anything. California would s…

Multiple good things would happen without prop 13: People would move more instead of being locked in to a low effective property tax. The tax burden would be much fairer: instead of the police and schools being funded by newcomers, everyone would be contributing their fair share to fund the city, instead of the longest tenure residents mooching off the rest of us. Unproductive use of land would be discouraged. If a t…

Under Proposition 19, some people can still move without penalty, as long as they're over age 55, and move to a new property located in California.

https://www.ocassessor.gov/tax-saving-programs/savings-senio...

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

#114

Post by hackernud3s »

lwansbrough wrote: post #90
slg wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The massive downzoning of the 1980s... To put numbers to this for those who aren't aware, LA was zoned for roughly 10 million people in the 1960s and by the 1980s it was zoned for roughly 4 million. It's part of the reason the city has had population growth slow to a crawl. It was decided some 40 plus years ago that LA should stay under 4 million people, so it has even til today. But the number of people who want to…

Same story in San Francisco of course, and the rest of the US pretty much aside from a few cities in recent years.

There's still Houston but that's it as far as I know.

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

#115

Post by MarkusQ »

lokar wrote: post #105
stouset wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think the goal of Prop 13 is laudable, a few reforms would cut some of the biggest downsides: it should be be for primary residences, where the named owner is the primary resident. This would eliminate the tax break for commercial property, prevent it from being abused for second homes, and avoid the property trust shenanigans that have allowed some properties to change hands without a reset in the taxes paid…

I’m not sure why people are downvoting (without commenting), but I agree. The main selling point of prop13 was a real problem: rapidly increasing values were driving up taxes so fast that long time residents (of modest means) were being forced out. I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable to have some policy that attempts to protect people living in their primary residence from rapid tax increases they can’t afford.

That makes it sound like the increase was due to some inexorable natural force. California's per capita budget is over twice Arizona's, and they're running a huge deficit on top of that. If taxes are too high, cut taxes. If that means you need to cut spending, cut spending. But don't play "hey, let's tax the other guy!" games and expect that to work.

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

#116

Post by Schiendelman »

lokar wrote: post #105
stouset wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think the goal of Prop 13 is laudable, a few reforms would cut some of the biggest downsides: it should be be for primary residences, where the named owner is the primary resident. This would eliminate the tax break for commercial property, prevent it from being abused for second homes, and avoid the property trust shenanigans that have allowed some properties to change hands without a reset in the taxes paid…

I’m not sure why people are downvoting (without commenting), but I agree. The main selling point of prop13 was a real problem: rapidly increasing values were driving up taxes so fast that long time residents (of modest means) were being forced out. I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable to have some policy that attempts to protect people living in their primary residence from rapid tax increases they can’t afford.

So people were getting so wealthy that they couldn't pay the property tax on their wealth. Yes. The problem is, if you let them decide to tax other people instead of themselves for the spending they themselves approve, they will.

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

#117

Post by Schiendelman »

MarkusQ wrote: post #115
lokar wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure why people are downvoting (without commenting), but I agree. The main selling point of prop13 was a real problem: rapidly increasing values were driving up taxes so fast that long time residents (of modest means) were being forced out. I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable to have some policy that attempts to protect people living in their primary residence from rapid tax increases they can’t afford.

That makes it sound like the increase was due to some inexorable natural force. California's per capita budget is over twice Arizona's, and they're running a huge deficit on top of that. If taxes are too high, cut taxes. If that means you need to cut spending, cut spending. But don't play "hey, let's tax the other guy!" games and expect that to work.

A lot of this also comes down to prohibiting growth. In Seattle, every time we build a new building, everyone else's property tax payments decrease. High growth years lead to lower bills. The same would work in California, they just don't build much of anything because they've made it nearly impossible to.

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

#118

Post by Schiendelman »

MikeNotThePope wrote: post #75
epistasis wrote: post #28

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.

I have a dumb question. What is the eventual of efficient land use? Say we bulldoze a bunch of single family homes and get 10x as dense. Now we have 10x as many people per square kilometer. Is that an efficient use of land? Will there be someone saying at 10x population density that it's an inefficient use of space? If yes, what would they propose instead?

If you're really interested: as density increases, population growth decreases. High density places become a sink for populations from elsewhere. You end up reaching a regional equilibrium, where some of the lowest density places start emptying out entirely. Japan is a great example of this, small towns there disappear regularly, as Tokyo grows. Suburban life around Tokyo remains very stable as the center increases and edges decrease.

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

#119

Post by Schiendelman »

gradus_ad wrote: post #43
epistasis wrote: post #28

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.

To be fair NYC has taken the opposite approach and rents are extremely high there as well

By what measure are you saying they've taken the opposite approach? It seems to me their approach has been nearly identical, just a little less restrictive.

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

#120

Post by Schiendelman »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #91
gradus_ad wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair NYC has taken the opposite approach and rents are extremely high there as well

Everything has a gigantic depends* on it when it comes to RE. People want to find one reason why things are bad, but it is always a big bag of mixed things. When I was in Vancouver, people kept saying if we got rid of rent control, houses will be built, rent will come down. But houses are expensive to build, and they need to make money asap in the “exit economy”. They won’t come up easily, unless they make it cheap t…

It's simpler than you're implying. Vancouver, like most cities, has dramatically limited what land you can build on. More than half the city is restricted to nothing larger than individual houses.

Tokyo, similarly, has hit the limit of what they allow to be built under the highest density of their stepped national zoning levels.

Post reply on HN