Los Angeles County
A Substantive Design Man: John Leighton Chase, 1953 – 2010
Submitted by jstephens on 17 August 2010 - 10:00amBy John Kaliski
John Chase, best known to many as urban designer for the City of West Hollywood for the past 14 years – even as he was recorder of all things architectural throughout Los Angeles – passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Friday, Aug. 13. Over the next few weeks and months I will be re-reading his many articles, essays, and books not only to keep alive his memory but to remind myself of his vivacious and educative voice, which was at once keen, enthusiastic, insightful, humorous, sardonic, always observant, attentive to his audience (whether it was a crowd or just an individual), and loving.
CEQA Alarm Bell Rang In Corrupt City Years Ago
Submitted by Paul Shigley on 11 August 2010 - 2:41pmIn early 2009, I wrote a story about the City of Bell’s plan to lease 15 acres it had recently purchased to Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad for use as a truck yard. An environmental organization had successfully sued to block the project because Bell did not complete an environmental review.
As you no doubt know, Bell has been in the news lately for gross levels of corruption at the elected and staff level. Now, the Los Angeles Times has revealed that Bell is unable to pay back a $35 million debt that was issued for the railroad truck yard project. Standard & Poor’s has placed Bell on a credit watch list.
A Strategy Session for Los Angeles
Submitted by jstephens on 5 August 2010 - 10:29amIf you are at all involved with urban planning in Los Angeles you were probably either in the audience or on the panel at last night's "The Future of the Los Angeles City Planning Department (and the City of Los Angeles)" event, sponsored by AIA, APA-L.A., ULI, and Cal Poly Pomona's College of Environmental Design. I suppose a third option is that you were stuck in traffic and couldn't make it.
Race to Corner Cleantech Market Has Begun
Submitted by jstephens on 3 August 2010 - 9:23pmToday marks the launch of the “Los Angeles Cleantech Corridor & Green District Competition,” an event sponsored by the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and The Architect’s Newspaper. This call-for-entries seeks submissions focusing on clean technology infrastructure improvements in the Cleantech Corridor, an industrial area just east of Downtown Los Angeles that straddles the Los Angeles River. This cluster-based strategy – spearheaded by Mayor Villaraigosa and the Community Redevelopment Agency – has experienced an impressive wave of attention over the summer, propelling it to the national stage and broadening support for LA’s case as the home of clean technologies.
Circumstantial Evidence Not Enough to Prove Blight
Submitted by jstephens on 28 July 2010 - 11:19amMere conclusions and assumptions do not amount to substantial evidence to support a finding of physical blight, an appellate court has ruled in upholding a challenge by the County of Los Angeles against the City of Glendora.
Bell: The Latest 'Suburb of Extraction'
Submitted by Bill Fulton on 27 July 2010 - 3:22pmMore than a decade ago, when I was writing my book The Reluctant Metropolis, I became so fascinated by the political changes in the so-called Hub Cities of southeast Los Angeles County that I wrote a chapter about them. Over time I came to love these towns – Huntington Park, Bell Gardens, Bell, Cudahy, Maywood – because they had a proud working-class history and an all-American optimism that had been renewed when their population shifted from mostly white to mostly Latino. There was both a modesty and a pride in these towns that seemed to me to represent all that was wonderful about the American spirit.
Modest Goals for New L.A. Planning Head
Submitted by jstephens on 26 July 2010 - 11:41amAt a press conference at City Hall this morning Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa introduced Michael LoGrande, his nominee to success Gail Goldberg as the city's planning director. At some moments the rhetoric of the mayor and fellow speakers -- including LoGrande, City Council Member Ed Reyes, and Planning Commissioner Bill Roschen, and affordable housing activist Jackie DuPont Walker -- sounded as if they were building the world's next great city.
Other times, their emphasis on customer service made the city sound more like a Nordstrom store than the writhing metropolis that it is.
Villaraigosa Names Michael LoGrande as L.A.'s Next Planning Director
Submitted by jstephens on 23 July 2010 - 10:10pmLos Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is reportedly set to announce his selection of Michael LoGrande as the city's next planning director. A 13-year veteran of the department, LoGrande currently serves as its chief zoning administrator. He replaces Gail Goldberg, who had served as planning director for four years before announcing her retirement three weeks ago.
LoGrande's path to the directorship contrasts with that of Goldberg, who arrived in 2005 to a department far different from the one she is leaving.
In Defense of RFK Learning Center
Submitted by jstephens on 22 July 2010 - 11:12pm
Some thoughts on the LA Times' Christopher Hawthorne’s rather brutal drubbing of the recently completed Robert F. Kennedy Education Center (three schools encompassing K-12) on the former site of the Ambassador Hotel near downtown Los Angeles.
San Fernando Valley Cities Join Forces
Submitted by jstephens on 9 July 2010 - 9:36pmWhen the San Fernando Valley portion of the City of Los Angeles attempted to form its own city in 2002, one of five names nominated for what would have been the nation’s sixth-largest city was “Camelot.” This for a region most famous for being the vapid home of Valley girls.
Although Measure F (CP&DR Insight Vol. 16 No. 10 Oct 2001) failed on both sides of the hills that separate the Valley from the rest of Los Angeles, nearly a decade later a far less grandiose, but perhaps more pragmatic, solution has emerged to give a unified voice to the Valley and some of its neighboring cities.