community development

Feudal Future Podcast: The Truth Behind Affordable Housing

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 13:20:54 -0500

On this episode of Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Jill Stewart, organizational and political strategist, and Steve PonTell, a leading voice on community development, housing affordability and neighborhood transformation, to discuss the truth behind affordable housing.

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About our guests:

Jill Stewart was the Managing Editor at LA Weekly and laweekly.com. At LA Weekly, she oversaw a team of print and digital journalists who pursue the newspaper's brand of digital hyper-localism and analytical, print journalism. She also oversaw the newspaper's video team and video productions.

Steve PonTell is the Chief Executive Officer and President of National CORE. In 1996, Steve founded the La Jolla Institute, a California-based nonprofit think tank that advances a better understanding of the critical elements necessary for both communities and corporations to achieve sustainable economic competitiveness. He is a nationally recognized authority on community development and creating forward-thinking organizations to maximize evolving market environments. Steve has a Bachelor of Science from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo in City and Regional Planning and an EMBA from Claremont Graduate University’s Drucker School of Business.

About the hosts:

Joel Kotkin is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, Executive Director of the Urban Reform Institute, and an internationally-recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends. His most recent book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism is now available for order.

Marshall Toplansky is a widely published and award-winning marketing professional and successful entrepreneur. He co-founded KPMG’s data & analytics center of excellence and now teaches and consults corporations on their analytics strategies.

This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

Zooming Out on LA

Jerry Sullivan — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 13:27:05 -0500

There’s no longer any question that Los Angeles has arrived as a global city—if Hollywood’s reach doesn’t make the case then the Asian money behind its new skyline and preparations for a record-setting third Olympiad should.

The more apt question these days is which Los Angeles excites the world?

The Los Angeles of Rodeo Drive? Or the Huntington Gardens? Or Disneyland?

And there’s the rub—because none of those places is in the City of Los Angeles.

Rodeo Drive and the Huntington Gardens are both in the larger territory known as Los Angeles County. The former is famous as the high street of Beverly Hills, the latter a staid cultural preserve in San Marino.

Those two toney and independent towns are on opposite sides of LA County, which covers 4,000 square miles and includes 88 municipalities altogether.

You have to expand to the larger concept of Southern California to get to Disneyland, which is in Orange County, directly south of LA.

LA gets a lot of credit for its neighbors’ achievements, as well as its own—but the outsized image is a two-edged sword.

The latest report from the World Trade Center of Los Angeles provides some insights, giving data on foreign-owned businesses with operations in Southern California.

You might expect LA County to punch above its weight on foreign investment as the undisputed center of the sun-dappled landscape, with its population of 10 million approaching half of the region’s total. Among the assets likely to appeal to foreign investors at the practical and executive levels are the biggest airport in Southern California, twin seaports that are the busiest in the U.S., three research universities, 76 hospitals, numerous renowned museum and performance venues, nine professional sports teams, and 66 Consulates General.

Yet LA County looks to be just another option for foreign investment on Southern California’s expansive landscape.

There are nearly 12,000 foreign-owned firms in Southern California, and LA County is home to fewer than half of them.

The same goes for the 461,447 jobs at foreign-owned enterprises throughout the region–and for the $18.1 billion in annual wages they generate.

The numbers get worse for LA County when you consider investments coming from key overseas markets, including the UK, a leading trade partner of Southern California.

UK businesses combine to account for 76,000 jobs and $6.1 billion in annual payroll in Southern California, with about two-thirds of each total landing outside of City of Los Angeles or LA County.

A number of other top 10 sources of foreign investment in Southern California also index low for LA.

Los Angeles is a global magnet when viewed from afar.

But consider LA within its regional setting of Southern California and it’s about on par with a lot of other places that are miles away from Hollywood or the ports or a courtside seat to watch LeBron James perform for the world-famous Lakers basketball franchise.

The data on foreign-owned businesses and where they locate in Southern California serve to concentrate the mind on LA’s problem, which range from a federal corruption probe of City Hall to rampant encampments of rough sleepers and a municipal budget devastated by Covid-19 while feckless politicians fiddle.

Meanwhile, some of the best public schools are down in Orange County, there is world-class golf out in the Riverside County burg of Palm Springs, and you’ll find world-class resorts up in Santa Barbara County.

And you can check just about anywhere for better roads.

LA’s image is big.

But it seems foreign investors have learned that hype doesn’t fill potholes.

Jerry Sullivan is founder and chief columnist for SullivanSaysSoCal.com.

How To Develop Detroit

Rick Harrison — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 12:35:18 -0400

Detroit's downtown is gentrifying— or, to be more accurate, a very small portion of the 139 square miles that make up the city is doing so, as it becomes populated by a new generation of workers. But the city's vast, remaining area is mostly blighted. A massive effort has been made to remove substandard and neglected homes, creating large sections ripe for redevelopment. We believe that a model community for families could be built within that devastated area, and we've launched a kickstarter campaign to get development going. You can look at this idea in detail on our new video, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGOY_04k7Vw. A minimum land area of fifty acres would be a significant enough mass to provide a sustainable approach to growth. Here's what we would like to see:

At Rick Harrison Site Design Studio our redevelopment model is vastly different from existing models that either want to turn Detroit into farmland, or to place the existing population into high-rise projects. Both those approaches would need subsidies to be achieved. Our model takes a 'market focused' approach that is competitive with the cookie-cutter housing of the surrounding suburbs.

The plans we've developed at well over 900 sites during the past twenty-five years have averaged a 25 percent reduction of infrastructure, compared to conventional design. This reduction of street paving and utility mains has translated into increased green space per resident. For Detroit, our goal is to eliminate 60 percent or more of the existing infrastructure, and recapture the right-of-ways for residents. That will enable us to increase density while also increasing space.

We will start from scratch and design the main trails first. The street system will reduce both time and energy, compared with designs in the surrounding suburbs. All the homes will have interior floor plans and living spaces that coordinate with adjacent open spaces and views. And every home will have an energy savings HERS rating of 50 or better, so more of the resident funds can be used for better living, rather than going towards energy that escapes from a chimney. Elegant, meandering walkways will connect every home to the main trail system.

A half-century ago Detroit was America’s model city. Then, segregation and racial tensions led to the riots of 1967, which created a mass exodus to the suburbs. Those residents and businesses that could afford a new home on a large lot left the city. I began my planning career in 1968, designing those Detroit suburban subdivisions.

Let’s make Detroit a leader again by increasing living standards, connectivity, property values, tax base, open space, density, and safety while significantly decreasing construction costs, environmental impacts, energy usage, and the enormous infrastructure that currently plague the city. Detroit was once an inspiration for other cities. We'd like to make it an inspiration again.

Big things that were never built in Los Angeles

Kevin Roderick — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 11:14:24 -0500

One of my lesser historical obsessions has been the grandiose stuff that's been proposed for the Los Angeles area and never built. Things like the amusement park that Walt Disney proposed for Burbank before he put Anaheim on the map with Disneyland, or the assorted hotels, parks, monorails and highways that were given ink in the newspapers but either fell through or were never that real to begin with. I've written before about the sketch on my office wall from a 1913 Los Angeles Times front page envisioning a future downtown of skyscrapers, high-altitude auto bridges and curiously a waterfront. Imagine how different the city would be if, for instance, Valley promoters had gotten their way to plant the original LAX due west of the corner of Balboa and Roscoe. Or if the 1930 plan from Olmsted and Bartholomew for a chain of parks and playgrounds across the city had been accomplished.

Sam Lubell, the West Coast Editor of the Architect’s Newspaper, and Greg Goldin, the architecture critic at Los Angeles Magazine, have mined the landscape and found some real gems. Lloyd Wright's incredibly grand 1925 Civic Center for downtown (above.) Or the 1952 master plan for LAX by architects Pereira and Luckman. The plan is to use the research to mount an ambitious exhibition next spring at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum on Wilshire. They have launched a Kickstarter campaign to make it happen, and of course you can help.

Check out their cool video:

This piece first appeared at LA Observed.