Gentrification and it's Discontents

As I noted in my last blog post, the world is swiftly changing from a previously rural/ suburban cheap energy form of living to a more urban expensive energy form of living. I don’t think it’s possible to comment on the morality of this change (we are simply changing one form of living for another) but how we respond to this change will define our immediate existence. At this moment in time, will our community invest in the lower-cost forms of transportation and save ourselves time and energy or will our community ignore the coming change and continue to do the things we’ve always done?

The Mid-Century City is ending, so far we’ve done a somewhat good job of responding to this change. Measure R was passed in 2008, the Street Car was passed in this past election and Measure J barely failed in this election (albeit, it failed with a 66% approval vote, this is more due to Proposition 13 Constitutional Requirements than voter apathy).  The one thing that hasn’t changed in the City is the reluctance of some residents to support higher density or mixed use development along transit lines.

Here’s a relevant article:

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2012/12/more_expo_development_hate_pols_attack_sepulveda_mixeduser.php

NIMBY-ism (Not In My Back Yard-ism) is a common critique of people who are rabidly anti-development. NIMBYs are the bane of developers, they are usually, but not exclusively, higher-status established property owners who live near sites of prospective development. In the case of the Expo Line, the Cheviot Hills HOA, Rancho Park HOA, and the Beverly Hills HOA have all sued the Expo Line stating that the Expo Line light rail did not adequately address traffic mediation in their Environmental Impact Report (the fact that the HOAs are suing an environmentally clean Light Rail’s EIR is ironic in itself). Their goals is to sue the Expo Line into oblivion, there’s no other reason for these law suits.     

There’s no way to measure NIMBY-ism. At times it feel random, the Gold Line in Pasadena (a similar wealthy inner-suburb) face little opposition from local home owners while the Expo Line is facing huge resistance. It’s also not something the wealthy have an exclusive hold upon, the residents of Inglewood successfully blocked a Walmart from buying the vacant Great Western Forum and building a new superstore (while Mass Transit and Walmart are about as related as Cats and Dogs, I think, the main take away is that both deals are ground up developments of under-utilized space).

Tracing the root cause of NIMBY-ism is incredibly difficult to identify, each issue is local, and hence, not given to polls or testing. From what I can tell the root causes of NIMBY-ism are twofold:

-Home Owners trying to protect property values by limited supply of higher density housing (condo buildings and multi-family apartments). This does not extend to development of additional Single Family Residences (your typical house).

-Residents trying to protect the ‘Character’ of a neighborhood.

Taken together both of these causes are insidious and point to a larger problem in our culture.

Due to our history, home owners tend to be older people. Often times, in Los Angeles, these people are first or second generation owners in a neighborhood. They managed to purchase their property when it was relatively cheap against what it costs today. Case in point, I’m a first generation owner in Downtown. My condo is a part of the first wave of residential properties that went to market. In 40 years, my property will be very expensive. But today, it’s cheap compared to the rest of the city. One way to keep your property value high or to maintain the ‘character’ of your neighborhood is to practice supply-side restrictions on new housing. No new houses, no new developments means that in an expanding market your property or development can be sold at a premium. This is insidious because it acts a market prohibitor against new buyers who tend to be 1. Young 2. Not white. I point you to Beverly Hills’ opposition to the westside Subway as a case in point, their opposition to the subway is tainted in racist and classist terms

Conversely,  this same is true of development in lower income areas. Their fear is gentrification, article in point:

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2012/12/la_has_approved_huge_the_village_at_usc_retaildorm_project.php

New development will bring in ‘upperly’ mobile white folk who will drive the poor from their rented homes (side note: this is a reason to promote home ownership for the poor, it allows everyone to benefit from gentrification from equity appreciation).

Opposition to development is not new, it will continue. I think it’ll be important to focus opposition on things that need opposing (walmarts) and promoting things that improve the city (light rail). In a democracy everyone can voice their opinion, right or wrong. The voters will have to choose the right course of action.

 

Urban Economics

On Tuesday, downtown residents voted to tax themselves to build a street car system. The street car will be funded by ‘up to’ a $80 MM property tax on all building owners within 3 blocks of the proposed track. In addition, the street car expects to receive Federal matching funds. All in all, people voted to tax themselves in a very, very narrow way (owners within 3 blocks, no one else will be taxed) for a street car that could potentially benefit a large portion of the downtown area (if not the city).

I thought the street car campaign was waged expertly, narrow tax range, identified goals, with a small system that is easily fundable. In addition, the system blends in with the existing subway system.

The success of the Street car vote made me think of how the city has changed in recent years. I’m a fan of mid-century design, but I am no fan of mid-century urban planning.

The 4-Level Interchange

The middle part of the 20^th century was dominated by the personal automobile. The success of the United States after the Second World War was the major catalyst for our post war economy. The United States remade the Capitalist world economy into an image of its own design; for example the Bretton Woods System of 1944 tied all international exchange rates to the US dollar (thus saving the US untold trillions in transactional costs and thus creating the dollar as the world’s reserve currency),  in addition (and what really set the stage for the dominance of the car) was that purchases of oil on international markets was done in dollars (the famous Petrodollar). When you set the rules for international trade, how can you lose?

The post-war city was built to cater to individuals living in distant suburbs who drive alone into the city for work. We were permitted to do this because of cheap energy, if energy had not been artificially cheapened by the terms of international trade and emerging economies of scope and scale the suburb would simply not exist.  

The end of communism was the first herald of the end of the suburb. The entry of an extra 2 billion people in the capitalist system was bound to experience shocks. And, that it did. The price of gas in the last 20 years has exploded:

This is due to the emerging economies competing for energy. Obviously, if costs increase it makes driving more expensive. Living far from work in a suburb is swiftly becoming economically impossible.

Comparative Population per Nation

25 years ago China, Russian, Eastern Europe, most of South America and the Middle East were involved in the Capitalist world system. Today, nearly every nation is Capitalist, and they are all in competition for the same energy.

Our societal costs have been increasing rapidly, the greatest solution to this problem is a total overhaul of the urban core.  We need more mixed-use building, better mass transportation, and changes to local zoning codes,  these are the changes that can make a more efficient city. We are living in an age of cheap energy, that age is coming to an end.

So what about the street car?

Well, in my personal opinion, the street car is a blow against the use of a car in the central city. Downtown Los Angeles was built before parking codes and zoning codes made it impossible to start a business without a dedicated parking lot. Most of Broadway (the street where the street car will go down) does not have any curb side parking, which is an anomaly in most of the post-war city. By replacing the car with a transportation system we move closer to a unified central core. A place where people can live, and work in the same area.

The personal car shortens distances to be travelled, but conversely, it also requires a huge amount of built space

Roads, parking lots, and freeways are all dead space that have no real economic impact besides to house cars. The street car in downtown moves cars off the street in favor the economic space of people and buildings. This, and how it was passed, is why it’s so critically important to the growth of the urban core. 



For the sake of comparison; see the historic map of the old Pacific Electric Railway. In the era before the personal car, Los Angeles had a railway system that stretched from Woodland Hills, to Pomona, to Long Beach. 

Case Study House #22

Jessica surprised me with a visit to Case Study House #22. It was one of the best surprise gifts ever given to me.

The 3 readers of this blog will recognize man of my own personal design ascetics in this house. A lot of my personal taste was derived from the Case Study Houses.

 The Case Study Houses were a series of houses that were designed in the 50's to the late 60's. They became the embodiment of Mid Century Modern in the Los Angeles Area. The houses were designed to be 1. easily replicable 2. built with 'off the shelf' materials 3. affordable. Measured by those 3 criteria, the Case Study Houses were failures (CSH #22 was 3 times the cost of the average house when it was built), none of these houses became replicated on any scale.

Case Study House #22 became famous through a series of photographs by Julius Shulman. In fact, CSH #22 became the most iconic house of Mid Century Los Angeles. Here are the pictures from our tour:

Thoughts:
These images don't do justice to the house. It really is a special and unique house. The family room (the image with Jessica sitting on the couch) is completely surrounded by glass and it over hangs a fairly steep cliff. The views are panoramic from every room in the house. At 1,500 sq feet, the house is not that large, but it feels much larger due to the glass walls (there is only one solid wall, the wall facing the street, otherwise the thing is all glass).

We spoke with one of the Stahls during the tour, he was mentioning all the repairs that he is going to do to the house in the up coming weeks (replacing the carpet, fixing the glass sliders, fixing the ambient heating element). It seems that the house needs a lot of attention. Also, Stahl said that the sun light chews apart the furniture and carpet. My place gets a ton of sunlight, I'm considering getting UV filter film to put on the windows just because of that.

As thanks to Jessica for the great trip, I took her to dinner at Musso and Franks in Hollywood.

New Work

Finally.

When I first got my condo, the main light fixture was a track lighting bar over the center kitchen island. I’ll attach a copy of the track lighting below. While, by all appearances, it should fit into my favored midcentury design, I could not stand to look at it. I made it a point that the light should be removed in a year’s time. Life got in the way from making that happen. But, last weekend I purchased a new light fixture and had the old one taken out.

I had to take the light bar down before the new one could be installed. The bar was bolted into the concrete ceiling, so in order to take down the bar I had to get on the island and use a ratchet wrench to unscrew the screws from the concrete. I made a point of not breaking any of the bars or screws (I’m going to try and resell the items on Craig’s list), they now sit in a very sad pile in the corner of my living room.

I had to hire someone to install the light. I’m missing a few items to actually be able to do it myself namely 1. A concrete drill and 2. A pipe bender tool. Since the power lines need to within a metal pipe, the bender thing is kinda important. Not to mention, that it is near impossible to drill into concrete with a normal drill and drill bit. The installation of the light fixture did not take much time.

This is what the light fixture looks like once it’s been fully installed.

Next up: the bathroom.