Oh this is hilarious. It's like a Zuma Dogg "Dumb Growth" article but from the U.K.
Hey Villaraiahole and Garshady...looks like you shady clowns aren't fooling anyone in the world. They're even laughing at you in England, y'all. (YOU BIG DUMMIES! YOU'RE DESTROYING THE DNA OF THE CITY...AND THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS IT. YOU ARE GONNA BURN AT THE KARMA STAKE ON JUDGMENT DAY FOR YOUR ACTIONS!)
From The Economist
United States
Redesigning cities
Tackling the hydra
Mar 27th 2008 | LOS ANGELES
Its politicians are determined to turn Los Angeles into a normal city
Excerpts:Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles' mayor, turned up to declare it a model for future development. The event made the evening news. There can be few cities the size of Los Angeles where the prospect of a nine-storey office complex would cause such a fuss.
Los Angeles has long epitomised car-oriented sprawl. As early as 1946 the historian Carey McWilliams judged it “a collection of suburbs in search of a city”.
Last summer the city council changed zoning rules to allow tiny apartments to be built in and around downtown Los Angeles. On March 19th it rejected a plan to put 5,600 homes on the city's northern frontier, signalling that the metropolis must now grow up, not out. From next month developers will be allowed to build blocks of flats up to 35% bigger than previously, so long as they include some cheap housing.
Not without a fight
Six miles (10km) west of North Hollywood, a four-storey building is rising next to a car-wash on Ventura Boulevard. When finished, it will contain about 130 apartments and an underground car park. To an outsider it seems innocuous. To local residents, schooled by almost a century of strict zoning to believe that bedrooms must be separated from shops, it is anathema. Gerald Silver, a local homeowner, predicts epic traffic jams from this and similar developments nearby. He complains that, without consultation, the neighbourhood is being turned into a version of Manhattan. He is not alone.
“You're beginning to see a neighbourhood revolution,” says Zev Yaroslavsky, one of Los Angeles' shrewdest and most powerful politicians. He gives warning that outraged citizens may add an initiative to the ballot next year that would block dense housing projects, “smart” or not.At present few use Los Angeles' skeletal rail system—259,000 journeys are made each day, compared with 1.2m bus journeys—and the network is growing painfully slowly.
Near the office construction site a 14-storey block of flats (it seems enormous in the San Fernando Valley) has already appeared, and others will follow. The hope is that residents will both live and work there, or walk a few hundred yards to the local subway stop. But Cary Adams, a local resident, notes the developers are hedging their bets: two giant car parks are also scheduled for construction. This is, indeed, the genetic flaw in Los Angeles' new DNA.
The politicians and planners are gambling that, by arranging Angelenos in a more conventional pattern, they can change their behaviour. Perhaps it will work. But if they are wrong, an already crowded city will simply gum up.
Click here for full article
ZumaTimes.com
In case you are a reader from England,
Zuma Times is better than New York Times or L.A. Times
In case you are a reader from England,
Zuma Times is better than New York Times or L.A. Times
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