Category: Los Angeles

Spoke with my father this afternoon. For some reason my mother did not get on the phone as she usually does (trying not to make too much of this; at some point I said, “Mom must be busy.” My father replied, “She’s just puttering around in the kitchen.”). We talked about many things, but the starting point was Trump (of course). This led to discussion of national political coverage by newspapers and blogs (including a brief aside about Ralph Nader, whom my father politely damned as called, I believe, a “bright man”), which led to discussion of local political coverage by newspapers and blogs.

This led to my father pointing out how important it is to keep up with one’s town’s or city’s zoning changes. If you don’t, he said, you can wake up one morning living next to a gas station.

(In general, my father thinks that the internet age is not a time of more news/information. He thinks it is a time of more opinion and that there is much, much less actual information. In other words, many people share many opinions about just a very few things.)

So I did do some Google searches for Los Angeles zoning and two of the most interesting things I came up with, in terms of making sense of L.A.’s planning history and current state, were a post on re:code.la and an L.A. Times op-ed: “Zoned into Mediocrity: How the 1946 Code Keeps Los Angeles from Reaching Its Potential”; and “L.A. isn’t a suburb. We need to stop planning it like one.”

I also learned that the NII (Neighborhood Integrity Initiative) is a bad word. (In general, enterprises that use the word “Integrity” in their name are to be avoided. I am sure there are some notable exceptions, though.)

Meanwhile, I am trying to figure out how the L.A. Times covers local politics. It seems to be in a section called “L.A. Now,” which itself is nested under “Local.” There are two other sections that appear to be state-specific: “California” and “California Journal.” But if something in the “Politics” section (which appears to be about all politics) is about California or Los Angeles specifically, those articles will appear under “Local.”

I also see that you can subscribe to certain topics via email and have a list of news stories about those topics delivered directly to you. (I am horrified and embarrassed to see that one of these subscribable topics is “In the Loop,” “The best coverage of theme park rides and attractions.”) There does not seem to be a topic about Los Angeles politics. Wow.

Other links (mostly opinions) on L.A.’s zoning and city planning:
http://planning.lacounty.gov/luz
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-california-chatandselfie-rosenfeld-20150315-story.html
http://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/los-angeles/12341-can-the-cheap-perfume-of-approve-with-conditions-mask-the-stink-of-bad-planning
http://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/los-angeles/12179-angelinos-pay-a-steep-price-for-bad-city-planning
http://urbanla.weebly.com/history-of-planning.html
http://www.citylab.com/design/2012/04/unplanned-l-think-again/1731/
http://laist.com/2007/08/26/how_la_became_w.php

How did LA’s planning process become such a mess?

http://la.curbed.com/2008/3/21/10574968/a-brief-history