We Love LA

Otis White's Urban Notebook at Governing.com (which, by the way, is
becoming my new favorite blog) recently had a post on the surprising
amount of residential density in Los Angeles, that alleged sprawl-mad
city everyone likes to beat up.

Full disclosure: though I have friends and family in LA, in many ways
I despise the place: hate the sports teams, hate the reliance on the
car, hate the triumph of image over substance. The city itself was a
rich and interesting story over the course of the 20th century, but no
one who lives there seems to care about it. Hate that, too.

And yet, Mayor Villaraigosa is doing some interesting things to
encourage continued population growth on the same amount of land, most
notably converting local eyesores into manageably high (i.e. three or
four stories) mixed-use projects.

For a nation that, for the most part, equates the American dream with
the unattached, 2500 square foot house in the suburbs, this is a
promising development (no pun intended). For though our country is
vast in land, not all of it is desirable by its inhabitants. The hot
places will draw even more and more people, and the population in
general is growing; the land, on the other hand, of course is not
growing.

Unless you count the sprawl of metropolitan areas further and further
away from their central cores. But this sprawl causes all sorts of
problems. Which is why Mayor Villaraigosa's aggressive actions to get
Angelinos comfortable with denser and denser living is so refreshing
and necessary. For it portends what all hot areas will have to do,
unless they want to either turn people away, make them mad, or give
into sprawl. Could it be that LA, of all places, could teach the rest
of us how to properly grow into this new century?