The third Los Angeles: Can it truly become a green, sustainable city?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/metropolis/2015/04/the_third_los_angeles_can_it_truly_become_a_green_sustainable_city.html

by cryptoz • 11 years ago

45 45 11 years ago

slate.com

mehrzad• 11 years ago

As a native and lover of LA (currently in NYC), I've been enjoying all the press we've been getting recently. But as I skim this article, I'm confused. LA has massive urban sprawl. LA County is very, very vast in area, and many people live 1-2 hours by car (without traffic) away from their work. How is public transportation going to get so good that this car-dependence will go away? I'm all for it, I hate cars. The subway system in New York is great, but not including metro areas, LA is quite a bit larger in area.

eclipxe3• 11 years ago

It won't, ever. And that's okay. LA County won't be served by an awesome network of public transit, but if investments continue into dense areas of LA City you should see market forces at work -> public transit availability driving higher density development, driving more desire for public transit.

You can't de-sprawl Southern California as a whole, but you can make the dense urban core more palatable.

Aloha• 11 years ago

The sprawl in the LA metro area was built on the back of the then largest interurban system in the world, the Pacific Electric. If you take a map and overlay it on the modern freeway system, there are large parallels. There are also parts of LA City that have (and not even recently acquired) density rivaling Manhattan.

The future of maintainable sprawl is workable wide ranging rail and bus options, rail for the distance, bus for the last mile.

avn21092• 11 years ago

> "You can't de-sprawl Southern California as a whole..."

Wait till the key parameters of our present socioeconomic order are perturbed. A lot of ducks have to line up in a row for suburbs to work at LA scale, and something tells me the party won't continue indefinitely.

sethhochberg• 11 years ago

I'm also currently in NYC, as a native of FL, and I've often considered moving to LA (but I work remote, so my commute isn't much of a concern).

Do you think there is something about LA, though, which makes people there more willing to drive those extreme distances for work, instead of just moving closer? I understand LA County to be a relatively loose collection of independent communities, anchored around the city.

I hear a 120 minute commute and I'm thinking almost like a Tampa -> Orlando commute, or a West Palm Beach -> Miami commute - which I know some people do, but its not nearly as "normal" in FL to make that kind of extreme drive, and I'm certain it isn't because Tampa somehow provides more and better opportunities than, say, Burbank on its own, or Long Beach on its own, does.

mmoche• 11 years ago

As a longtime (but not current) resident of Los Angeles, merely growing up in traffic very effectively desensitized me to the misery of long commute times. To the degree that the natives have factored in sunk time in the car, a lot of what you see is adaptation to circumstance.

Also, housing prices in LA preclude lots of folks from moving closer to work despite the commute pain. I'd expect that's the biggest reason. I had a history teacher in high school who commuted from Lancaster to the San Fernando Valley every day.

Interestingly, I find traffic in my present domicile of Boston unbearable, but regular trips back to LA don't inspire the same sort of feelings despite the average commute time and distance being longer while I am in California. I guess you just get used to conditions in a location and don't carry those expectations to different places.

jseliger• 11 years ago

which makes people there more willing to drive those extreme distances for work, instead of just moving closer

It's frequently very difficult. "Closer" may mean "way out of budget," and it's hard to build anything, anywhere in LA: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-o... . Large parts of it are single-family houses, which tend to be purchase-only, and that can make moving around prohibitively expensive. My Dad currently lives in Santa Monica, and building anything in Santa Monica is wildly hard. Even near the soon-to-be-completed light rail station I think the maximum height is 65 feet (!). It should be at least 450 feet. Santa Monica has had the same population since 1960: http://www01.smgov.net/business/demographics/2006population.... while the U.S. has more than doubled in size.

Many people probably also underestimate how bad commuting is: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back-... .

protomyth• 11 years ago

"How is public transportation going to get so good that this car-dependence will go away?"

Its too much money to rebuild LA for public transit, and given the next step in transportation is automated vehicles why buck the trend and just go with it. We talk a lot about how automated vehicles will change things for individuals or families, but what about public transportation departments? I get the feeling that swarms of automated vehicles will be cheaper than adding light rail.

waterlesscloud2• 11 years ago

The city is aware of that possibility, and it's at least a factor in their planning.

"How do you spend billions of dollars on fixed rail when we might not own cars in this city in a decade or a decade and a half? [...] A bus lane today may be a bus and an autonomous vehicle lane tomorrow." - LA Mayor Eric Garcetti

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-driverless-car-r...

akgerber• 11 years ago

The New York metro is also very, very vast in area, and many people also live 1-2 hours by car away from their work. If you're carfree in NYC, you probably just don't have Riverhead and Stamford and Allentown in mind as part of 'NYC', whereas you might well count the far end of Redlands and the San Fernando Valley and Orange County as part of 'LA'.

As LA's transit system evolves and new companies evolve and are re-sited, it's likely that more jobs will be sited at transit nodes instead of purely at freeway nodes. Beyond that, if the driverless taxi era comes to pass, people won't be stuck buying a car for many thousands and fighting tooth-and-nail for parking just because there's a need for a car trip twice a week.

cpprototypes2• 11 years ago

LA is working on greatly expanding rail. Denser development will slowly occur near the new stations to make walking to the station an option for some. However, LA will never have the density of NYC and so walking to a station will never become an option for most in LA.

But Uber/Lyft (especially Uberpool and Lyft Line) are potential solutions to this. I don't think they have the critical mass yet to be a true solution. But if they ever reach that point, it may become viable someday to commute to/from work by using only a mix of Uber/Lyft and rail. It's already possible today, but only for high income jobs. For this to have a big effect on LA transportation, it must become an option for middle class jobs.

It's possible that the critical mass of Uber/Lyft can only be achieved with self driving cars. Some think that self driving cars will mean the end of public transportation. But I think they will instead complement each other well. The roads are already at capacity. Self driving cars will help improve the efficiency, but traffic is like a gas, it simply fills to the new available space. It's why adding a new lane to a freeway usually doesn't help much. The main reason is that a single occupant in a vehicle that can seat 4 or more is fundamentally a very inefficient way to travel. Making the car self driving doesn't change this fact.

There is potential in the future for rail and cars in LA to work together to truly improve transportation. Uber/Lyft and self driving cars could solve the "last mile" issue of getting to/from stations. Rail can provide the high efficiency and density that freeways can never provide. I hope this is the future of LA transportation because I don't think cars alone or rail alone will be enough to truly solve the traffic issue.

istvan__2• 11 years ago

I just would like to contribute one picture of this threa. It is from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Pacific-E...

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspi...

I don't think that the politicians in charge changed that much since the 60s to let a green LA happen.

anthonyarroyo• 11 years ago

A wikipedia page whose neutrality is disputed?

istvan__2• 11 years ago

Yes, so any time you go there you can follow what is happening, eventually there will a consensus what happened according to Wikipedia and end of story. What do you think what is the real story of those pictures with the trams?

nathanaldensr2• 11 years ago

I think Los Angeles--and much of southern California--need to worry about preserving their water supply--especially the deep aquifers that take millenia to recharge--before worrying about anything else. They need to fix this problem now, because if they don't, southern California will become a wasteland. The rate those aquifers are being depleted by farms in the San Joaquin Valley is astounding; measurements have been taken showing subsidence of an inch a month in some places. It may already be too late for southern California, in all honesty. If I were living there, I would be finding a way to move out as soon as possible. Yes, the water crisis out there really is that bad.

Sorry I don't have any links handy, but my opinions are the result of spending two days a couple of weeks ago researching California's and India's water problems. I highly recommend doing some reading and watching some YouTube videos to educate yourselves on these issues.

malvosenior• 11 years ago

There are easier ways to deal with the drought than abandoning Los Angeles. For instance California could cut back its almond production:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...

From the article:

"California almonds use a stunning 1.1 trillion gallons of water each year, or enough for you to take a 10-minute shower each day for 86 million years (using a low-flow showerhead, of course)."

I think the answer is for California to embrace the fact that it's a post-agricultural society and refocus resources on its human capital rather than it's increasingly unproductive farmland.

beachstartup• 11 years ago

by now, i don't think there's a single person on the entire internet who doesn't know about the water needed by almonds.

cpprototypes2• 11 years ago

The rest of the nation's attitude to California's water problem is very short sighted. I don't think most people realize how much food is produced in California. If California agriculture goes down, the result will be high food price increases everywhere. Many just have a cavalier attitude of "the market will adjust". There are big issues with just assuming "the market will adjust"

1) There is a big lag time for some crops to grow. Something like corn is no problem. But apples or anything else grown from a tree? Or any other crop that requires years of growing before it's productive? It will be many years until the California output could be matched.

2) Other places like the Midwest have potential water issues too. For example, look at the history of the Ogallala Aquifer. If a greater strain is put on the aquifer, it's possible they will also have the same water shortages that California has now.

The California water crisis is a national issue, but the rest of the nation would rather just laugh at us. The western states should be discussing serious proposals to build more aqueducts or pipelines to divert water from water-rich states to California. Maybe the Federal government could help with financing desalination plants. But this kind of cooperation isn't happening. I'm worried that what will happen is everyone will continue to just laugh at us until they go to the grocery store one day. Then they will care, but by then it will be much too late.

sigzero• 11 years ago

No, we are not laughing. We are screaming because nothing was done sooner.

pekk• 11 years ago

It's a California issue. You can solve your own problem, and let other states solve their problems. It will not cause mass starvation. If you grow stuff (and export a lot of that stuff) it doesn't entitle you to federal resources or water from other states. The rest of the country can live with fewer almonds, and less hay shipped to China, and Southern California using xeriscaping as is appropriate for the desert. The only real loser there will be big farmers whose lifestyle is premised on converting communal resources into money that goes into their own pockets. Why do these special people deserve a special handout at the expense of everyone else?

eclipxe3• 11 years ago

Eh. Water scarcity has been a way of life for Southern California for quite a while now. I think the internet tends to magnify things (not downplaying how bad things are), but we've been through this before. Growing up in So Cal, every 5-7 years we would deal with a massive drought, fear, uncertainty, desalination, etc etc. Then a huge rainy season, floods, etc, rinse and repeat.

I think the recent drought is definitely worst than normal, but it is something that we will deal with and "moving out as soon as possible" isn't really an option.

nathanaldensr2• 11 years ago

The aqueducts that farmers are tapping into now take /millenia/ to recharge. This is not your standard couple-hundred-foot backyard well; these are /two-thousand foot wells/ dug to the lowest aqueducts just above the bedrock. Once they are tapped out, that water's gone for virtually ever. If the material in the aqueducts is clay, the clay will compact, removing its ability to hold water /forever/. Rainwater only replenishes the aqueducts nearest the surface, and even then, not at a necessarily rapid pace, especially if wells are tapping into those aqueducts.

shoo• 11 years ago

The LA `pLAn` mentions steps to reduce the urban heat island effect. One way to reduce heat in cities is to increase tree canopy cover.

Here is recent lesson from the city of Melbourne, Australia, regarding drought and tree cover:

* the city experienced a drought from 1999 - 2007 [1] * as a short-term measure to conserve water, a decision was made to stop watering the city's trees [2] * consequently, ~40% of the city's trees are dead, or are in decline. The council now expects that 27% of the trees will die in the next 10 years, and 44% of the trees will die in the next 20 years.

Melbourne city now is aiming to improve tree canopy cover from 22% to 40% by 2040 [3], as a means to reduce the city's temperature by 4 degrees C. There is also work to capture storm water run-off from the city to use for irrigation.

Note that this is only talking about Melbourne's city centre (0.12m residential population of 4.2m total) [4].

As an aside, outside of cities, there is a recent Nature Geoscience paper that links lethal tree water stress thresholds to long-term climate models, and forecasts tree deaths due to drought in the southwestern United States by ~2050, assuming the world follows a high-emissions business-as-usual scenario (RCP 8.5, i.e. uncontrolled emissions, which tracks reality to date) [5].

[1] https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Sustainability/AdaptingClim... [2] http://citiscope.org/story/2015/can-melbourne-lower-its-temp... [3] https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Sustainability/UrbanForest/... [4] https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/AboutMelbourne/Statistics/P... [5] http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo24...

6t6t6• 11 years ago

The streets of most cities in South Europe are covered by deciduous trees. IMHO, it is the best way to make the cities walkable in summer while not preventing the sun to warm the streets in winter. Also, cities with trees on the streets are beautiful.

Of course, that mean that the council has to spend money taking care of that trees.

bpyne4• 11 years ago

A question for the LA natives on here.

Last year at this time, I had the chance to visit LA for my first time. I stayed in a B&B in Los Feliz and spent a few days walking around it and Silver Lake. My first day I asked the B&B owner about walking to the reservoir because I read online that it's a gathering point for people in the area. The owner told me he had never walked there and recommended that I drive. At most, it was a 2-3 mile walk. Do people in LA really consider it incomprehensible to walk that distance?

ibejoeb• 11 years ago

Well, a lot of people are happy to walk, run, and hike, but they typically pick a destination to do those activities. Driving to the reservoir, Griffith Park, Runyon Canyon, is just the first step.

Also, it's pretty pleasant to walk around for a while at this time of the year. Do the same walk in the unrelenting sun of July and you might change opt to find a shady spot half way through.

bpyne4• 11 years ago

So they drive to a destination and then walk/run/hike as exercise?

I can understand LA having some periods of the year in which walking isn't pleasant. But, there can't be many.

maceo2• 11 years ago

Yea, 2-3 miles is a very long walk in LA. Walking from los feliz to the reservoir would be especially tedious since the most direct paths are on boring residential streets. No one would ever do that walk unless they 1) dont have a car 2) are looking to get exercise.

bpyne4• 11 years ago

For me, the residential streets were even pretty cool. There was some great graffiti art, lots of Mexican food available, etc. I found a good comic bookstore to get something for my daughter. Overall, it's a pretty nice walk.

skosuri• 11 years ago

I walk 2.5 miles everyday from UCLA to my place in West LA. That said, everyone looks at me weird.

CodeWriter232• 11 years ago

Next time I suggest hiking up Fern Dell to The Observatory. Much nicer, and also a big gathering venue. Then maybe hike back down to Home on Hillhurst for some serious grub.

I believe a 3-mile walk (about an hour), one way, is considered long in any city. The round trip takes about 1/4 of a standard work day. And in 90 degree heat...well, if you want to enjoy the walk around the reservoir, maybe your host was on the right track.

maceo2• 11 years ago

As a life-long LA resident, I say don't believe the hype. The article says that the centerpiece is the revitalization of the LA river. As far as I can tell, this isn't happening. Some bike paths were added along the river, which is nice, but that's far from what I'd call revitalization. The bike paths are still poorly lit, they still smell like shit, and they're not getting much use. There's a huge trainyard east of downtown (one of the coolest parts of the city, imo) called Piggyback Yard, which is owned by Union Pacific, who doesn't want to sell the land. It'd be hard for the city to do any significant revitalization of the river without turning the Piggyback Yard into a park that can provide flood control. Furthermore, the US Army corps of engineers controls the LA river, so the voters have no say in what happens here.

The metro extensions have been planned for decades, and there never seems to be much movement. Recently the blue line has been creeping steadily towards Santa Monica but I doubt this will have much of an impact on city life even if it does connect downtown LA to the westside beach communities. I used to encourage everyone to try taking the train, and I used to do it myself all the time, but I haven't hopped on the train at all in the last 12 months. The stations are too spread out, the paths of all the lines make little sense, the trains only come every 15-20 minutes, and a huge chunk of the city is totally cut off from the transit lines. As much as I don't like uber/lyft, they've made it much more enjoyable to live in LA.

Ciclavia is cool, but its just 1 day out of the year. LA is the worst city in the country to ride a bike. They claim to have more bike lines than any other city, but that's only on paper. Just because you paint a person riding a bike next to the gutter of a 2 lane street doesn't make it a bike lane. Yet that is exactly what the city has done in the name of adding bike friendly streets.

All of these projects are little more than photo-ops for city politicians.

gamblor956• 11 years ago

The LA river revitalization project is a decades-long project that just began 4 years ago. It's already made significant progress in restoring portions of the LA river (though no significant stretches near downtown).

The metro extensions are almost complete for the Expo and Gold lines. Initial preparations for the regional connector connecting the various lines underneath downtown (i.e., utility removal) began 2 years ago. Construction on the Airport Spur and a line connecting the Expo and Purple line (extension) has already begun. This time next year, construction will have begun on the next extension of the Gold line, heading for the eastmost reaches of LA County. (By the way...the Red and Purple lines run every 7 minutes during busy hours, the Blue and Expo lines run every 10. Only the Gold line runs every 12 minutes or less.

Civlavia is held multiple times a year. LA does have more bike lanes than any other city...but LA is also geographically one of the largest cities in the world, so the density of bike lanes is poor.

There is real change in LA, and they're definitely not photo ops.

Cloudy• 11 years ago

The Third Los Angeles is really about how the internet has allowed awareness of otherwise buried treasures of LA to be lost in the noise. The greater Los Angeles area is becoming somewhat what it was intended to be, with the hundreds of surrounding cities converging upon LA as a magnet. Whenever I've attended interesting events in LA, it's never just people from LA proper it's people who've hopped in a car and drove 40 miles to converge with a bunch of other people who've done the same.

This article seems to spin green development, but it's mostly just normal development and the rapid gentrification and rezoning of the old industrial & wholesale districts.

Animats• 11 years ago

I like the concrete river. Since there's little water most of the time, it looks better than muddy dirt. It's also useful for film production. It's there for heavy-rain emergencies, on the rare occasions that LA has to dispose of a lot of water all at once. Does that job fine.

CodeWriter232• 11 years ago

The real problem with their plan, it is heavy on developing the central city, and light on developing The Valley. But most of Los Angeles' tax revenue comes from The Valley. It has only been about 12 years since the last time The Valley threatened to secede. If this plan goes forward, they won't be threatening next time.

sologoub• 11 years ago

Much of the rail expansion is rather disappointing. For example in expo phase 2, closer you get to ocean the better spaced the stations are (closer together), but between Bundy and sepulveda, there are no stations and little sane way to go in between, yet Bundy station is less than a mile away from 26th st station.

To add insult to injury, I recently followed the much touted bike path that is supposed to connect to existing SM bike paths at 17th street, but the damned thing ends at Cloverfield with no way that I can tell of safely getting to 17th street or anywhere near a designated bike lane. And no, I do not consider it safe to try and ride on Olympic blvd without a protected lane...

The third Los Angeles: Can it truly become a green, sustainable city?

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