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

131–140 of 163 posts

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

#131

Post by WD-42 »

rustywasm wrote: post #24
ericzawo wrote: post #12

Having 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.

One the experiences for me that never gets old is coming in to LAX (flight path East to West) and the sprawl just goes on forever. The other crazy thing that 60% of the population speak a language other than English at home. So I think it has one of the best options for cuisine in the world, because it's all there (somewhere!)

I think a not insignificant amount of it is literally just pavement too. Absurdly wide roads and parking lots everywhere. It’s a bit of a hellscape really.

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

#132

Post by epistasis »

golem14 wrote: post #76
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.

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

Dense, newer housing needs a lot less water. If Los Angeles had densified rather than sprawling into the Inland Empire, etc. overall water usage would be far lower.

As it is, water usage in Los Angeles has had flat water usage for decades, even as its population grew by over a million people.

By downzoning so much, Los Angeles got the worst of all worlds: higher water usage, unaffordable housing, and unbelievably bad traffic because everybody has to drive such massive distances to the job centers.

Downzoning is an environmental disaster compared to the alternative, like allowing factories to dump their pollution into rivers type of disaster.

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

#133

Post by epistasis »

oblio wrote: post #47
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

Nah, watch this if you have time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpK5HiCKfgU At least watch this money shot: https://youtu.be/kpK5HiCKfgU?si=YNQBxsn15NxGdQQ0&t=272 (wait for the video to reveal the construction years) As Max Fisher puts it: American cities have been frozen in amber.

This is such an amazing video. It collapses about three years of my casual research into housing down into just a few minutes. Thanks for sharing.

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

#134

Post by epistasis »

WD-42 wrote: post #129
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 was just down there and saw multiple massive development projects going on. Like huge new neighborhoods. Of course they aren’t in LA proper. But it seems like people that want to live in SoCal want the suburbs. You talk like LA is this artificially small place except that it’s more like a neighborhood in the middle of sprawl at an almost unimaginable scale. Not saying any of this is good. In fact it’s terrible. Per…

It only seems like that because every other type of housing is literally banned.

If apartments, even small buildings, were legal in LA, they'd be building them everywhere and they'd immediately fill up.

The Mayor, Karen Bass, accidentally screwed up and made affordable possible to build, as in allowing it to get through the gauntlet of approvals. This resulted in a massive amount of extremely costly affordable housing to get built, merely because the approval couldn't be stopped arbitrarily:

https://www.pacificresearch.org/la-mayor-slowly-dismantles-h...

Ift that sort of project approval was opened up to not only affordable housing, but also for-profit housing, there would be a massive shift in the type of new housing in the area.

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

#135

Post by blululu »

kristopolous wrote: post #34

This is more like the construction date of buildings that have survived. Some early neighborhoods (like palms) have been completely replaced building by building so they really appear as dark here when they weren't. It had a downtown in the 1890s but all those buildings are gone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palms,_Los_Angeles#/media/File... it's basically this data: https://portal.assessor.lacounty.gov/ through thi…

Yes. The description is quite misleading. The fact that it is simply an overlay of the current map is also misleading. Looking at the west side, it completely skips the canals period of Venice. Marina Del Rey evolved considerably into its current form. Ballona creek was only dammed in the 30s. Etc.

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

#137

Post by Schiendelman »

lokar wrote: post #121
Schiendelman wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t think you read my comment very carefully

What if I did?

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

#140

Post by 3RTB297 »

kristopolous wrote: post #34

This is more like the construction date of buildings that have survived. Some early neighborhoods (like palms) have been completely replaced building by building so they really appear as dark here when they weren't. It had a downtown in the 1890s but all those buildings are gone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palms,_Los_Angeles#/media/File... it's basically this data: https://portal.assessor.lacounty.gov/ through thi…

Also noticeable as the first buildings show up - each one isolated and miles from anyone else? Generally not how human habitation clusters up, even if it was all farms to start.
Post reply on HN