No issue defines the challenges faced by Los Angeles, and indeed cities across North America, more than housing. Density; L.A. explores the complex issues surrounding the city’s density and growing housing crisis. Issues of environmental sustainability, affordable housing, quality of life, and demographic change have always put pressure on our built environments. In the case of Los Angeles, increased immigration and the rapid change in social and cultural composition of the city is changing culturally grounded spatial practices of the American suburb. Speakers address hotly debated proposals to up-zone the typical L.A., single-family detached house landscape that allows for additional density, increased allowance for use, and apartment buildings.
Los Angeles is a city in the midst of a rapid urban transformation that challenges its twentieth-century identity as a suburban paradise filled with consumptive diversions drenched in constant sunshine. It is a recognized irony that its scattered, civic form and space is the source of many of its key problems: pollution, automotive congestion, economic inequality, and social stress. Nonetheless, the relaxed urban personality of LA is identified, often by the same people who complain about the city’s woes, as its distinctive and desirable quality.
Between November 2016 and March 2017, two ballot initiatives, Prop JJJ and the Neighborhood Initiative Act, present to the voters of Los Angeles opposing options for future urban density. The battle between two urban visions for the second-largest city in the United States is emblematic of a larger worldwide discussion about the costs and benefits of urban and larger metropolitan density.
Issues of environmental sustainability, affordable housing, quality of life, and demographic change have always put transformative pressure on our built environments. In the case of Los Angeles, the last four decades have witnessed a growth in immigration and rapid change in the social and cultural makeup of a postwar, shared identity, built on Anglo-American, middle-class sprawl. A more recent influx of Hispanic and Asian populations to the exurban Los Angeles basin has brought changes in culturally grounded spatial practices. Independent of social background, the increased number of people living in the spread-out city has further increased ecologic degradation and, because of the diffuse nature of development, exacerbated economic inequity among increasingly isolated, resident groups.
In an effort to tackle the problem of the lack of affordable housing, as well as the corollary issues of traffic congestion and environmental quality, Prop JJJ, (sponsored by a coalition of labor unions, transit advocates, affordable housing proponents, and developers) addresses these issues by changing building and zoning regulations that, among many things, increase the urban density of Los Angeles. In socio-economic terms, the logic of Prop JJJ is that increased housing inventory, and resulting urban density, will result in decreased housing prices and a more affordable, equitable city. Coupled with improvements in mass transit, (also popular among LA residents), the argument for greater density translates as decreased automotive congestion and lower, regional pollution levels. Prop JJJ was passed by a 2 to 1 margin on November 8th, 2016.
The price paid to accomplish the principal aspirations of Prop JJJ is a striking change in the low-rise identity of Los Angeles. For many, this cost is too high and erodes exactly what is desirable and distinct about their city. The opponents of Prop JJJ also fear that the introduction of often subsidized, higher density, and lower-income housing developments will erode residential property values, much of its “suburban” character; low-slung houses in sylvan neighborhoods, now fifty to sixty years old. As a response to the threat posed by Prop JJJ, the grassroots Coalition to Preserve LA, successfully petitioned to put the “Neighborhood Integrity Act,” also known as “ Measure S,” before voters in March 2017. If successful, it will put the brakes on Prop JJJ by imposing a two-year moratorium on any construction that increases density; it also stops all changes to the current General Plan of Los Angeles.
The confrontation between supporters of Prop JJJ and The Neighborhood Integrity Act is representative of similar battles affecting many North American cities. It is a sharp example of a ubiquitous, far-reaching conflict between competing visions of America’s urban future. For better or worse, the popularity of the American suburb is being challenged by the reality of increased population and changing cultural values, driven in large part by a shift in demographics, often related economic inequity, and increased environmental stress.
Do we change our center cities to meet these challenges by designing socially equitable and ecologically sensible urban density, or do we adapt our very popular, arguably iconic, existing lower density environments in ways that are more environmentally friendly, economically accessible, and culturally adaptable? Is there a hybrid middle ground? This is the principal question of Symposia 3_Through Thick and Thin: Los Angeles, a series sponsored by Syracuse University’s School of Architecture.