@@pranshukrishna5105 what? The Valley and the Westside are the only areas that have parts that aren't complete third world shitholes. Maybe Pasadena. Name one other part of Los Angeles that isn't an absolute dump.
LA county officials are corrupt. Just because they share your party affiliation doesn’t mean they share your morals & values. Working with LA county has made me realize we need serious reform at that level for this city / county to improve.
“we” may be working like hell; but our much wealthier and much more powerful city dwellers are working even harder to stop and reverse our efforts. As they say, vote with your ballot, vote with you wallet. It will take a miracle to even begin fixing LA’s housing and transit problems.
@@pbcash7788 It’s the voters who are voting for those policies that deeply hurt the city. Politicians being corrupted or not doesn’t change the grand scheme of the system if the voters of the city keep voting for bad policies
@@fredfeng5716most voters havent even been voting though. most americans dont pay attention to local politics. and the one’s that are chosen are swayed by donations, or motivated by elevating their status
I worked on the metro green line which was initially designed to go straight to LAX in the early 90s but to the dismay of the engineers and planners this was sabotaged by special interests using the flimsiest of "technical" arguments so the green line approaches lax then makes a sudden left turn and drops one off at a bus a mile away!
9:31 Upzoning high density neighborhoods near transit sounds great, until you realize that that in Los Angeles many rapid transit stations are surrounded by Single-Family zoned areas-- which LA City Council just voted "no" to upzoning (only 5 of the 15 council members voted "yes"). Both a UCLA study and the city's own controller's office says that refusing to upzone single-family zoned areas around transit will mean LA will not reach its state housing quota. We have to hope that the state will see this for what it is, an unserious attempt at complying with the state. It's insulting that in 2024 we still use the very same redlining maps that were drawn explicitly to segregate racial minorities from white neighborhoods. I can't believe we're still doing housing segregation.
Wait, they overruled the upzoning of transit corridors for these neighborhoods because they are already low density? Seriously...? If the city fails to meet its California Housing Element timeline for allowing new housing development, the "builder's remedy" clause will ultimately take effect, and they would lose any privileges to force zoning restrictions like this though.
@@ImBalance Yeah. LA City Planning presented a motion to upzone around transit but exclude existing single-family areas. The LA City Controller, Kenneth Mejia, wrote a letter saying that excluding single-family areas will not achieve LA's housing and transit goals. City council member Nithya Raman proposed an amendment to include single-family areas around transit in the upzoning. On Tuesday, December 10th, Nithya and 4 other city council members voted "yes" on the amendment, but the other 10 voted "no". After this vote failed, the original motion passed unanimously. The original motion did include significant upzoning in Downtown LA. Which is really good. But 74% of the city's land is still zoned single-family which is outrageous.
You don’t understand just how deep NIMBYism is in CA.. they are all lipstick liberals who shoot down any attempts at urbanization. They just want their home values high, and some social brownie points for hating Trump. That’s it. Those city counselors vote that way bc their constituents want them to. The 5 that voted in favor, are in districts with far more renters and way less SFHs.
there’s no shortage of housing in the city of los angeles. we have wealthy property owners, foreign owners and places like caltrans and blackrock owning housing yet allowing it to sit empty. we need legislation to HEAVILY FINE these entities for allowing perfectly usable housing to go to waste year after year. we do not need more ridiculous developments like those ‘european style’ freeway adjacent monstrosities!
Thank you for making this! LA is my adopted home while I complete my degree at UCLA and the level of ambition to add transit and housing that seems unmatched in most of the US made me fall in love with the city. While travelling back to London makes me miss the luxury of a fully finished system, attending community workshops about what the system might look like when I have kids is very exciting.
It's clear that if Los Angeles were to achieve its required housing goal it will have to incentivize homeowners to upgrade their single families to two family, three family, and four family houses. Plus they'll have to adopt Toronto's Avenues Plan which would incentivize construction of high density housing, office, and retail along its major arteries.
The latter is definitely possible given that there are some avenues like this already, such as Wilshire blvd. Not sure how we can handle the single family home neighborhoods, but there is still quite a lot of infill that can be done on major blvds/avenues. If all of the major streets and downtowns were filled to the brim with high density mixed use buildings, that would be a game changer that would make transit more viable, and is certainly possible. Unfortunately progress is just slow.
i dont get why they made single family housing accross america while it was a crisis going it makes no sense and then a big problem in nyc is that half of a apartment building will sit empty of single family units not up for sale or anything just vacant
Really good video! I think you may have over simplified a few things in the video but as an architecture student in LA I was impressed with the amount of info you packed in this short video. I'll be looking our for more of your content. 👍
While it is very true that the LA Metro has built a new transit expansion every 5-10 years since 1980, let's not forget that the Bay Area has built a new transit expansion every 3-7 years since the 1970s. Some of these expansions were split between BART, Muni, VTA, Caltrain, SMART and co. but it still amounts to more region-wide expansion than the LA area in the same amount of time. Not saying that LA"s transit expansion hasn't been impressive or that it shouldn't be celebrated on a national scale! But the entire state of California is equally commendable for building a ton of transit since the political tides in the state shifted away from car dependency in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Let's not forget that since 1972 all major California cities have built extensive metro and/or light rail systems (Muni, VTA, SacRT, MTS, and LA Metro). And all have drastically expanded bus transit as well. SF, Oakland, San Jose, Sacramento, San Diego, LA, Long Beach, Santa Monica all now have some kind of light rail or metro system and serviceable to excellent regional rail. It's not just LA that did this. The entire state did!
San Francisco is nothing to brag or even talk about. It's a declining banana republic and it's tiny in comparison to Los Angeles. Once the tech bros finish leaving, San Francisco is just Cleveland with nicer weather.
What are you talking about? Are you dreaming? As a non car driver living in LA for past 4 decades, LA transit expansion means car oriented transit systems, more big parking lots at each station n even BRT n park n ride. Funny, people complain about traffic congestion in WLA, the solution is to bui,d big free parking lots at each station . WLA real expensive even in LA standard. You need cars to get in n out of stations. My ex colleague lives in Coronoa. He wanted to walk to bus stop , to metrolink, blue line to Long Beach, bus to walk. Then he realized that it was faster to walk 5 miles than take bus. He drove. That's pretty much everywhere except Santa Monica. In Santa Monica, you didn't need cars before that you need car rail systems. I have not been tortured in other cities, but everyone wanted to learn from LA, that mean if you don't have cars, transit expansion does not help you.
@@commentorsilensor3734 the solution to traffic congestion is to not invite in 10-15 million, poor, uneducated, illegal immigrants and have the Democrats steal every penny that was meant for road expansion/maintenance.
@@commentorsilensor3734 What's a "non car driver" do you only drive semi trucks or something? I'm not sure I understood your comment, but I gather your point is that without a car, getting to many transit hubs is time consuming. And I agree. That's one of the reasons why mass transit is only one piece of the overall solution. Everytime I go to CDMX I am amazed at how quickly I can walk out and catch a combi, taxi, microbus, etc and be at the Metro station and then get off and do the same and literally be feet away from where I need to be. Los Angeles needs to increase and improve its smaller transit modes. We need more types of buses and more lines: small buses r vans that run through residential streets, medium ones that zigzag through neighborhoods, and larger ones that have dedicated lanes so that they run more efficiently, not to mention bikes, scooters, and heck, maybe even bici-taxis or tuctucs in separate lanes.
Very good video - I live about a half a mile from a Phoenix light rail stop in Tempe (which also now has a streetcar) and wow, lots of apartment complexes going up around various rail stops (especially in Mesa). Interesting to see what is going on Los Angeles, which used to have a great trolley system (great visual of this at the Union Station in downtown Los Angeles
He forgot how California doubled its population with illegal immigrants in the last 30 years and didn't add a single lane to a major highway anywhere. Government corruption and unsustainable, unchecked immigration is why the roads suck in California and more trains for crackheads to sleep in and use as a toilet all day won't fix anything.
I moved to LA as an adult from a region without public transit. It was daunting at first, but I LOOOOVE our Metro and show it off whenever family visits. They're big fans of the newer stops with themed decor.
crest 3d white strips, but other than that i dont see any other reason for this video to not have a million views already, wonderfully put together, and your voice is great and soothing for these voiceovers
Is LA working to convert stroads? In the South Bay Area, many apartment complexes have been built on El Camino Real, a state highway, despite studies indicating poor health effects from living near highways. In contrast, San Francisco has a significant number of apartments along streets with low traffic and a walkable network. It’s surprising that cities often zone apartments in less desirable areas, leading new residents to want to move to single-family homes to escape the chaos.
It's a bit weird to see a positive video on LA but nice to see! Hopefully the optimism shared in this video will come to pass. I really enjoy LA but it has a lot of problems.
Thank you for doing Los Angeles!! Tight editing and great narrative. Now... about the field camera and mic. Is this a phone? Bluetooth Lav? You might just need some tweaks like not backlighting and boosting your color. Any thoughts/goals there?
As native Angeleno our current metro and the scheduled extensions feel great but the county as whole is behind by a lot compared to New York. It would take at least 50 billion dollars to get the coverage that New York City and its Burroughs enjoy
4:30 Lol early 20th Century America was so short-sighted and idealistic about endless expansionism; there's even a bit of a charm to it (overlooking the blatant racism and enforced inefficiency in land use that has plagued America for a century now 😬).
LA is a daily reminder that the good 'ol days weren't so good. Although some of its nicest neighborhoods date back to the early 1900s, much more of the city & region that's noticeably rundown & unattractive in 2024 (& was never nice to begin with), & has been in a long-time economic slump, was built over 60-70 years ago. Both NIMBYism & YIMBYism should always keep that in mind. Same thing can also be said about other American cities like NYC (eg, tenements, the Bronx, etc) too, but it's more of a problem in LA.
Great vid. You should cover how these density projects in wealthier (even middle class) neighborhoods cause huge problems. Parking, severe loss of urban mature forestry, and water and utility issues just to name a few of the challenges.
Why did you omit Redlining in your discussion considering that segregation is the founding principle of FHA and a fundamental driver of zoning and NIMBYism? Appreciate this video and new subscriber to your channel.
after a decade of planning and thanks to my grannies and aunties prayers to the Virgen de Guadalupe, the LAX peoples mover will finally get going by 2025 maybe 2026 just in time for the FIFA World Cup...Gracias!
as a lifelong angeleno and avid urbanist, this video gave me so much hope for the city that I and so many of my lovely ppl call home!! Thank u!! (I think it would have been worth it to mention the racist motivations behind a lot of LA's zoning, but overall great job)
This town (like many) has layers of revolving transportation, commerical and housing priorities that will never be put to rest, most of this type of legislation for growth are simply jobs bills... no different than the homeless advocacy industrial complex that gets rich without any requirement to actually solve its stated purpose, or mandated Healthcare which requires you purchase insurance yet puts almost no demands of the providers to actually improve your health care, or have a publicly/corporate funded education system reguarded as one of the worst in the country. Further, water scarcity has not been solved... most water storage and capture systems are dilapidated and fall short of what was projected to be needed almost 100 years ago. The divisive political environment will never acheive a protracted timeline of consistent societal values that transcends generations where LA may just lead the pack in dressing up kneejerk ptojects as Civic priorities. There Is work and then there is progress--most of this stuff is just work to be replaced by tomorrow's definition of progress.
NIMBYs need to be structurally undermined, not just worked around the edges. There should be reciprocal intensification so that if neighbors on a street want to densify, they should be able to without needing city approval. Community planning meetings need to be changed to accommodate all sorts of residents (working class, renters, young, etc) and not just older retirees with the time to show up at meetings held during regular working hours.
My fear is that corruption & lack of upkeep / security destroys these projects. I work directly with LA county for my job & wow… they are completely incompetent, rude, aggressive, and even corrupt. I could see the transit becoming run down ASAP and filled with criminals. Hope I’m wrong, but that’s what happens to most CA public projects.
Got forced out by rising prices in socal I don’t know how renters expect to fight homeowners who seem to be able to decide all housing policies. LA unfairly pushes their housing problem on all other areas nearby because they won’t deal with the fact that they are not a suburban city anymore.
Los Angeles and the LA Basin really could have benefited from some forethought in it's development. The urban sprawl since the eliminatiion of the street car/rail system has made public transportation a nightmare
would love to see an alternate universe where the us never ripped out its trains and kept building them. i can’t even fathom how great of a country we’d have today
I believe aquifers were found outside the settlements and the water was brought in through canals and later pipes. The river mentioned in the video, together with a lot of the lakes in the middle of California, were later used for irrigation (and still therefore drained).
If you look at the bigger picture there's been a noticeable decline if you look at how our cities have transformed from beautiful, clean gems with stunning architecture and well-dressed people to decaying, troubled places, struggling with homelessness, addiction, and cold, lifeless steel-and-glass structures that drain the energy from everything around them. In addition, about 13% of U.S. adults use antidepressants, while around 19% engage in some form of illicit drug. I think we have fallen a long way. The only thing that has improved is the cash positions of the corporations who run this country.
wow that measure U supermajority really fucked us, the before and after graph of housing growth could not be more clear. i really enjoyed you laying out the entire legislative history of where we went wrong. it seems that if we only allow new growth in areas that already have apartments, we will lose the cool "dingbat" apartments LA is famous for, with their swoopy midcentury design details and palm-lined interior courtyards.
Great video! We need more of your content on the regular. I really do hope that Los Angeles Makes Itself Great Again, but not in the MAGA way some would hope. I am talking more about returning to the great railroading city it was, is and could still be... Every corridor where streetcars and regional rail ran? Should be restored. Then concentrate on building an express automated regional rail like the Montreal RER using Metrolink but driverless with services as frequent as every minute or two during rush hour. These station sites could and should become mini downtowns to each district and neighbourhood and also encourage high density mixed use development at each station site much like Vancouver. It's taking the best of each cities best practices and using them to make the city as great and as equitable as it should be for all. Especially since let's face it, it a metropolis built on stolen land that hasn't come to terms with that never mind its other nefarious choices... I.e. The Water Wars and the "Chinatown-era" drama of race and income based inequality that has never been rectified such as redlining areas and driving freeways through them which disturbingly still happened in my lifetime and I'm only 40..
A lot of redlined or freeway-stricken neighborhoods in older metro LA were never well developed to begin with. Areas like South Gate or Pacoima - or much of central LA - were thrown together in the early 1900s in the format of a shanty town.
As much as Los Angeles disgusts me I give them credit for being far more progressive than the San Francisco Bay Area where I live in pushing public transportation and housing projects into reality. Los Angeles will probably have a world-class train/tram/bus system within thirty years while the Bay Area will only show small improvements from its current mediocre state. As for housing, I have faith that Los Angeles can build enough in the end. Here in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, I have a lot of doubts.
Tesla will perfect ride sharing in 2025 , this will radically change the dynamics of transportation and real estate over the next 10 years. Operating a vehicle is extremely expensive so many will find that accessibility to an app that will give you a driverless Robotaxi at $1 a mile or less, more economical. When this form of transportation takes hold, it will dramatically reduce the number of vehicles on the road, according to the Stanford professor Tony Seba, resulting in lots of real estate, now designated to roads and parking, to become available.
All you need to do is watch all the Old Westerns movies, Charlie Chaplin movies where he deals with politics, and other movies like LA Confidential, Chinatown, Mulholland Falls, Don't Worry Darling and even Cat's Meow to know how corrupt and gangster LA has always been, being used as kind of a guinea pig of a place needed to be experimented on for constant change, short-lived ideas, Post-Modern Art and Lifestyles concepts, a place to sucker people into believing that the "American Dream of owning a house with a picket fence, a car and a dog" is attainable by "everyone" when, if you think about it carefully - how much space and distance do you need to fit in how many millions of people with the same house, car and dog all across the landscape before you've spread it out so far, it takes 2 hours to drive across town of all those houses into the suburbs and you've only gone 25 miles because all those cars all clog up the same roads, because, they all also have to go to the same places, all while the poor people gaze up the "palaces on the hill" of the rich and the celebrities who actually do live in those mega mansions in the hills LMAO
They need to make the public transport lines have ring routes and go every direction but also connect the lines. If they all meet in the downtown it will fail. Most people don’t commute to downtown so downtown oriented transit will fail
Downtown is pretty much finished with transit construction. Almost all new construction from now on is in areas far from downtown. In fact, two of the four Metro light rail lines currently operating do not go downtown (C and K do not go downtown; A and D do). Also, the G Line busway is entirely in the San Fernando Valley.
Outside of the Southeast Gateway Line and a few BRT concepts that Metro sometimes floats around, transit construction is pretty much done Downtown. Every now and then you’ll see the idea of a hypothetical third subway line from Venice to the San Gabriel valley, but as of now that’s unfunded AND unstudied, so it’s probably decades away.
After the way, the Hollywood Boulevard makeover got watered down. I’m giving up on Los Angeles. It’s a complete waste of time dealing with these people.
I predict that transit ridership in Los Angeles will barely increase after these trains get built, except for on the D line which will be faster than car traffic. I know many people who drive in LA who only take the subway when they are going to Hollywood Boulevard. That’s the type of people who will take the D line, but it’s only a few percent.
What urban planning? There is none in Los Angeles. It’s just a series of strip malls connected by highways with single family homes filling in the gaps. Not a real city. Source: I lived in four different parts of the “city” of angels.
What you are describing from 07:46 on is a centrally planned economy, socialism. That's why housing is expensive in California, politicians controlling what can be built, and where. They have this "system" for telling lower-level politicians what they need to plan for. This is basically the CCP's system. It's the opposite of a free market where landowners can do what they want.
Huh? The state requiring cities to allow property owners to build denser housing seems more like actually allowing property owners to build what they want on their own property. What a ridiculous comment!
@compdude100 It was government laws that prevented the building of denser housing to begin with. The government undoing its own damage is not a victory, it's a net loss.
Its nice to be positive but this piece is just cherry picking the good stuff and tying it all together to paint a pretty picture which is far from the complete reality of those of us who actually lived through all of it - its fine to be a fan of the trains AND YES its better than nothing BUT it hasnt made a great improvement on many of our lives
probably the most corrupted city in the country (if not the world). the city is beyond hope. there will have to be MAJOR unrest before things start to really change. i’m a native angeleno 😢
Personally I prefer single family homes over apartments. I feel like apartments should be a temporary living situation. I think living in a home (w/o HOA) with a yard is better for mental and physical health. Also, I’m not entirely convinced in how extreme the housing shortage is. And there seem to be a lot of empty buildings in downtown LA. I don’t think homelessness is a result of a shortage as much as it being a result of lack of money, opportunity and ambition, and the way prices have skyrocketed. And lastly, I’ve always felt that trolleys in a few areas would be better than buses, and could make a good attraction, but safety and efficiency would have to be addressed first
@PlanetizenHQ oh maybe it was just one of them? I believe it was a shot of trains. I didn't see any more, maybe it was already upscaled before you got it
Your History needs work. Never heard of a policy that explicitly condoned murder, rather than those such as buffalo hunting to cease migratory practices and remove a food source for Indians that did not consider the Federal Government a legitimate over them, therefore anathema to the Government’s claims of Sovereignty over the region and resources, as well as unpredictable, occasional outburst, behaviors relative to declared citizens. This is a very impromptu overview missing a lot of nuance critical to understanding early America, but the video's interpretation lacks the barest amount of legitimacy due to disrespect of historical faction.
The problem is Los Angeles is too packed. When i was a kid there was a thing calked rush hour. Now there is just traffic 24/7. Down town was cool till they built LA Live . You could go to down town in the 80s and after 6pm it was a ghost town. My mom worked at union station so I i saw what it looked like before they put housing in the parking lot. Not a one hipster was in the "art district". Then when they made it a sanctuary city it added hundreds of thosands of people. Should have made new cities in San Bernardino for all this crap Los Angeles was so beiutiful before what we call the Squish. What is laughable is they thick the average person is going to ride public transportation. Take a pole on that. Most people view public transportation as low class. I cant wait for the 2028 Olympics. It is going to be a disaster with the Mayor saying it is going to be a no-car Olympics in LA.😅🤣😂. Glad im close to retirement because im out soon because you all have F.U.B.A.R. this place.
0:18 There isn’t a “housing shortage” when you simply have constant demand. Demand to live in LA will never cease, they will never have “enough” supply. Look at NYC, Tokyo, etc.
Really good video! Just one small correction. Measure M, the ballot measure that passed in 2016, made Measure R have no expiration date either.
Well, if we're getting really technical, it set Measure M to increase to 1% at the sunset of Measure R.
@PlanetizenHQ True. However, by increasing to 1%, it makes it so that Measure R is effectively no sunset now as well.
PLEASE keep making videos. This was fantastic. It’s rare that content creators have this accurate understanding of housing & transportation.
Thank you Alex, very cool
(But also I have a lot of hope for LA)
why?, LA can be Amsterdam, but is Cleveland
Thanks for covering LA in a positive fashion because its a great city, and good job covering housing issues accurately
LA is great except for Valley region
@@pranshukrishna5105 what? The Valley and the Westside are the only areas that have parts that aren't complete third world shitholes. Maybe Pasadena. Name one other part of Los Angeles that isn't an absolute dump.
Praising failure is not a positive.
@@westside213 you sound like you’re scared to walk outside lol
Burbank is decently walkable, but that may be because it's small lol. Magnolia is great though.
This is very educational, thank you! I also appreciated your storytelling style and video editing :)
nice to see such a positive video about LA! there may be a lot wrong in our city, but we’re working like hell to make things right.
LA county officials are corrupt. Just because they share your party affiliation doesn’t mean they share your morals & values. Working with LA county has made me realize we need serious reform at that level for this city / county to improve.
“we” may be working like hell; but our much wealthier and much more powerful city dwellers are working even harder to stop and reverse our efforts. As they say, vote with your ballot, vote with you wallet. It will take a miracle to even begin fixing LA’s housing and transit problems.
@@pbcash7788 Political parties need to be abolished so politicians have to defend themselves instead of their party doing it for them.
@@pbcash7788 It’s the voters who are voting for those policies that deeply hurt the city. Politicians being corrupted or not doesn’t change the grand scheme of the system if the voters of the city keep voting for bad policies
@@fredfeng5716most voters havent even been voting though. most americans dont pay attention to local politics. and the one’s that are chosen are swayed by donations, or motivated by elevating their status
The fact that LAX Airport has ZERO rail connections is ridiculous!
@George-Aguilar
Not true. The Metro Gold Line runs through LAX.
I worked on the metro green line which was initially designed to go straight to LAX in the early 90s but to the dismay of the engineers and planners this was sabotaged by special interests using the flimsiest of "technical" arguments so the green line approaches lax then makes a sudden left turn and drops one off at a bus a mile away!
9:31 Upzoning high density neighborhoods near transit sounds great, until you realize that that in Los Angeles many rapid transit stations are surrounded by Single-Family zoned areas-- which LA City Council just voted "no" to upzoning (only 5 of the 15 council members voted "yes"). Both a UCLA study and the city's own controller's office says that refusing to upzone single-family zoned areas around transit will mean LA will not reach its state housing quota. We have to hope that the state will see this for what it is, an unserious attempt at complying with the state. It's insulting that in 2024 we still use the very same redlining maps that were drawn explicitly to segregate racial minorities from white neighborhoods. I can't believe we're still doing housing segregation.
Wait, they overruled the upzoning of transit corridors for these neighborhoods because they are already low density? Seriously...?
If the city fails to meet its California Housing Element timeline for allowing new housing development, the "builder's remedy" clause will ultimately take effect, and they would lose any privileges to force zoning restrictions like this though.
@@ImBalance Yeah. LA City Planning presented a motion to upzone around transit but exclude existing single-family areas. The LA City Controller, Kenneth Mejia, wrote a letter saying that excluding single-family areas will not achieve LA's housing and transit goals. City council member Nithya Raman proposed an amendment to include single-family areas around transit in the upzoning. On Tuesday, December 10th, Nithya and 4 other city council members voted "yes" on the amendment, but the other 10 voted "no". After this vote failed, the original motion passed unanimously.
The original motion did include significant upzoning in Downtown LA. Which is really good. But 74% of the city's land is still zoned single-family which is outrageous.
You don’t understand just how deep NIMBYism is in CA.. they are all lipstick liberals who shoot down any attempts at urbanization. They just want their home values high, and some social brownie points for hating Trump. That’s it. Those city counselors vote that way bc their constituents want them to. The 5 that voted in favor, are in districts with far more renters and way less SFHs.
@@mariusfacktor3597There is an increasing amount of TOD being developed along various LA Metro lines.
there’s no shortage of housing in the city of los angeles. we have wealthy property owners, foreign owners and places like caltrans and blackrock owning housing yet allowing it to sit empty. we need legislation to HEAVILY FINE these entities for allowing perfectly usable housing to go to waste year after year. we do not need more ridiculous developments like those ‘european style’ freeway adjacent monstrosities!
this guys enthusiasm is contagious
The disillusionment of youth.
@@socaljarhead7670 Or the preservation of his youth
Hi from Australia! I have been watching LA build out rapid transit for a couple decades and been very impressed. Keep up the good work!
It is not as impressive as melbourne
@@pranshukrishna5105 - From where LA came from, it's more impressive
Thank you for making this! LA is my adopted home while I complete my degree at UCLA and the level of ambition to add transit and housing that seems unmatched in most of the US made me fall in love with the city.
While travelling back to London makes me miss the luxury of a fully finished system, attending community workshops about what the system might look like when I have kids is very exciting.
It's clear that if Los Angeles were to achieve its required housing goal it will have to incentivize homeowners to upgrade their single families to two family, three family, and four family houses. Plus they'll have to adopt Toronto's Avenues Plan which would incentivize construction of high density housing, office, and retail along its major arteries.
The latter is definitely possible given that there are some avenues like this already, such as Wilshire blvd. Not sure how we can handle the single family home neighborhoods, but there is still quite a lot of infill that can be done on major blvds/avenues. If all of the major streets and downtowns were filled to the brim with high density mixed use buildings, that would be a game changer that would make transit more viable, and is certainly possible. Unfortunately progress is just slow.
i dont get why they made single family housing accross america while it was a crisis going it makes no sense and then a big problem in nyc is that half of a apartment building will sit empty of single family units not up for sale or anything just vacant
Man, what an incredible video!! As someone born and raised in LA, I’m excited for what’s to come in the upcoming years!
Fantastic video! The buerocratic black void is where the sausage is made, appreciate you getting into the details about the function of the MPO etc
5:26 LOL I love that you included someone running a stop signal
I appreciate bringing in the zoning issues that made transit & development patterns what became. Most videos gloss over that issue.
Really good video! I think you may have over simplified a few things in the video but as an architecture student in LA I was impressed with the amount of info you packed in this short video. I'll be looking our for more of your content. 👍
Great video. Very informative and well put together. It’s nice to hear some good news on the transit and housing fronts.
While it is very true that the LA Metro has built a new transit expansion every 5-10 years since 1980, let's not forget that the Bay Area has built a new transit expansion every 3-7 years since the 1970s. Some of these expansions were split between BART, Muni, VTA, Caltrain, SMART and co. but it still amounts to more region-wide expansion than the LA area in the same amount of time.
Not saying that LA"s transit expansion hasn't been impressive or that it shouldn't be celebrated on a national scale! But the entire state of California is equally commendable for building a ton of transit since the political tides in the state shifted away from car dependency in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Let's not forget that since 1972 all major California cities have built extensive metro and/or light rail systems (Muni, VTA, SacRT, MTS, and LA Metro). And all have drastically expanded bus transit as well. SF, Oakland, San Jose, Sacramento, San Diego, LA, Long Beach, Santa Monica all now have some kind of light rail or metro system and serviceable to excellent regional rail.
It's not just LA that did this. The entire state did!
San Francisco is nothing to brag or even talk about. It's a declining banana republic and it's tiny in comparison to Los Angeles. Once the tech bros finish leaving, San Francisco is just Cleveland with nicer weather.
What are you talking about? Are you dreaming?
As a non car driver living in LA for past 4 decades, LA transit expansion means car oriented transit systems, more big parking lots at each station n even BRT n park n ride. Funny, people complain about traffic congestion in WLA, the solution is to bui,d big free parking lots at each station . WLA real expensive even in LA standard.
You need cars to get in n out of stations. My ex colleague lives in Coronoa. He wanted to walk to bus stop , to metrolink, blue line to Long Beach, bus to walk. Then he realized that it was faster to walk 5 miles than take bus. He drove. That's pretty much everywhere except Santa Monica. In Santa Monica, you didn't need cars before that you need car rail systems.
I have not been tortured in other cities, but everyone wanted to learn from LA, that mean if you don't have cars, transit expansion does not help you.
@@commentorsilensor3734 the solution to traffic congestion is to not invite in 10-15 million, poor, uneducated, illegal immigrants and have the Democrats steal every penny that was meant for road expansion/maintenance.
@@westside213 Lol, SF's populations has been growing since 2021, bud. Cope harder! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@commentorsilensor3734 What's a "non car driver" do you only drive semi trucks or something? I'm not sure I understood your comment, but I gather your point is that without a car, getting to many transit hubs is time consuming. And I agree. That's one of the reasons why mass transit is only one piece of the overall solution. Everytime I go to CDMX I am amazed at how quickly I can walk out and catch a combi, taxi, microbus, etc and be at the Metro station and then get off and do the same and literally be feet away from where I need to be. Los Angeles needs to increase and improve its smaller transit modes. We need more types of buses and more lines: small buses r vans that run through residential streets, medium ones that zigzag through neighborhoods, and larger ones that have dedicated lanes so that they run more efficiently, not to mention bikes, scooters, and heck, maybe even bici-taxis or tuctucs in separate lanes.
Very good video - I live about a half a mile from a Phoenix light rail stop in Tempe (which also now has a streetcar) and wow, lots of apartment complexes going up around various rail stops (especially in Mesa). Interesting to see what is going on Los Angeles, which used to have a great trolley system (great visual of this at the Union Station in downtown Los Angeles
Great video and a ton of important history!
He forgot how California doubled its population with illegal immigrants in the last 30 years and didn't add a single lane to a major highway anywhere. Government corruption and unsustainable, unchecked immigration is why the roads suck in California and more trains for crackheads to sleep in and use as a toilet all day won't fix anything.
I moved to LA as an adult from a region without public transit. It was daunting at first, but I LOOOOVE our Metro and show it off whenever family visits. They're big fans of the newer stops with themed decor.
Wow! Nice to see you here Alex! I didn't know you worked for Planetizen.
crest 3d white strips, but other than that i dont see any other reason for this video to not have a million views already, wonderfully put together, and your voice is great and soothing for these voiceovers
if you adapted some more animations in your edition software this would be really wonderful
This gives me hope for our transportation system
This is a friendly and well put together video. Thank you.
Is LA working to convert stroads? In the South Bay Area, many apartment complexes have been built on El Camino Real, a state highway, despite studies indicating poor health effects from living near highways. In contrast, San Francisco has a significant number of apartments along streets with low traffic and a walkable network. It’s surprising that cities often zone apartments in less desirable areas, leading new residents to want to move to single-family homes to escape the chaos.
Super impressive and informative video. Keep them coming!
It's a bit weird to see a positive video on LA but nice to see! Hopefully the optimism shared in this video will come to pass. I really enjoy LA but it has a lot of problems.
Thanks for the history lesson. I understand the context now.
This is a great overview!
Thank you for doing Los Angeles!! Tight editing and great narrative. Now... about the field camera and mic. Is this a phone? Bluetooth Lav? You might just need some tweaks like not backlighting and boosting your color. Any thoughts/goals there?
This is a very informative video! ❤
As native Angeleno our current metro and the scheduled extensions feel great but the county as whole is behind by a lot compared to New York. It would take at least 50 billion dollars to get the coverage that New York City and its Burroughs enjoy
Incredible 😮❤
Hella positive news mate! Hope they can continue to build affordable housing
Man, great video. As a local this was insightful. New subscriber
Love my city.
What a well presented video!
Super interesting video.
This is a really great report! Reminds me of what Johnny Harris has been doing, but with its own unique vibe
We need more videos like this. Every one in their city, state, and county needs to know their history!
VERRY Impressive!!!🤩👍👍
4:30 Lol early 20th Century America was so short-sighted and idealistic about endless expansionism; there's even a bit of a charm to it (overlooking the blatant racism and enforced inefficiency in land use that has plagued America for a century now 😬).
Yeah everyone hates everyone there
LA is a daily reminder that the good 'ol days weren't so good. Although some of its nicest neighborhoods date back to the early 1900s, much more of the city & region that's noticeably rundown & unattractive in 2024 (& was never nice to begin with), & has been in a long-time economic slump, was built over 60-70 years ago. Both NIMBYism & YIMBYism should always keep that in mind. Same thing can also be said about other American cities like NYC (eg, tenements, the Bronx, etc) too, but it's more of a problem in LA.
Great vid. You should cover how these density projects in wealthier (even middle class) neighborhoods cause huge problems. Parking, severe loss of urban mature forestry, and water and utility issues just to name a few of the challenges.
Why did you omit Redlining in your discussion considering that segregation is the founding principle of FHA and a fundamental driver of zoning and NIMBYism? Appreciate this video and new subscriber to your channel.
Great video
We need more/remodeled fire stations to go along with this!
incredibly good video thanks
after a decade of planning and thanks to my grannies and aunties prayers to the Virgen de Guadalupe, the LAX peoples mover will finally get going by 2025 maybe 2026 just in time for the FIFA World Cup...Gracias!
as a lifelong angeleno and avid urbanist, this video gave me so much hope for the city that I and so many of my lovely ppl call home!! Thank u!!
(I think it would have been worth it to mention the racist motivations behind a lot of LA's zoning, but overall great job)
This town (like many) has layers of revolving transportation, commerical and housing priorities that will never be put to rest, most of this type of legislation for growth are simply jobs bills... no different than the homeless advocacy industrial complex that gets rich without any requirement to actually solve its stated purpose, or mandated Healthcare which requires you purchase insurance yet puts almost no demands of the providers to actually improve your health care, or have a publicly/corporate funded education system reguarded as one of the worst in the country. Further, water scarcity has not been solved... most water storage and capture systems are dilapidated and fall short of what was projected to be needed almost 100 years ago. The divisive political environment will never acheive a protracted timeline of consistent societal values that transcends generations where LA may just lead the pack in dressing up kneejerk ptojects as Civic priorities. There Is work and then there is progress--most of this stuff is just work to be replaced by tomorrow's definition of progress.
Great video!
NIMBYs need to be structurally undermined, not just worked around the edges. There should be reciprocal intensification so that if neighbors on a street want to densify, they should be able to without needing city approval. Community planning meetings need to be changed to accommodate all sorts of residents (working class, renters, young, etc) and not just older retirees with the time to show up at meetings held during regular working hours.
LA needs to be building at least 100k homes a year
My fear is that corruption & lack of upkeep / security destroys these projects. I work directly with LA county for my job & wow… they are completely incompetent, rude, aggressive, and even corrupt.
I could see the transit becoming run down ASAP and filled with criminals. Hope I’m wrong, but that’s what happens to most CA public projects.
Got forced out by rising prices in socal I don’t know how renters expect to fight homeowners who seem to be able to decide all housing policies. LA unfairly pushes their housing problem on all other areas nearby because they won’t deal with the fact that they are not a suburban city anymore.
Los Angeles and the LA Basin really could have benefited from some forethought in it's development. The urban sprawl since the eliminatiion of the street car/rail system has made public transportation a nightmare
i have hope for la but the realist in me is very suspicious of things actually getting done, and being useful
I'm genuinely surprised at the mention of the extermination of the Kish
iirc some kish tribes are still around
CA policies such as CEQA make it too hard to build outward or upward.
Transit costs to build per mile is 10x than other developed countries.
would love to see an alternate universe where the us never ripped out its trains and kept building them. i can’t even fathom how great of a country we’d have today
This is an awesome video! But LA built its way out of water scarcity? I missed that video
I believe aquifers were found outside the settlements and the water was brought in through canals and later pipes. The river mentioned in the video, together with a lot of the lakes in the middle of California, were later used for irrigation (and still therefore drained).
Yes, they built canals and reservoirs and stole the water from the Eastern Sierra. This goes back 100 years.
If you look at the bigger picture there's been a noticeable decline if you look at how our cities have transformed from beautiful, clean gems with stunning architecture and well-dressed people to decaying, troubled places, struggling with homelessness, addiction, and cold, lifeless steel-and-glass structures that drain the energy from everything around them. In addition, about 13% of U.S. adults use antidepressants, while around 19% engage in some form of illicit drug. I think we have fallen a long way. The only thing that has improved is the cash positions of the corporations who run this country.
25-12-2024.
Why the tone out, was there negative feedback regarding the 1970 vote or something??
TOPIC SUGGESTION... "STROADS" STREET ROADS... OR IN L.A. STREEWAYS
wow that measure U supermajority really fucked us, the before and after graph of housing growth could not be more clear. i really enjoyed you laying out the entire legislative history of where we went wrong. it seems that if we only allow new growth in areas that already have apartments, we will lose the cool "dingbat" apartments LA is famous for, with their swoopy midcentury design details and palm-lined interior courtyards.
L.A needs to turn all those parking lots into parking structures.
Great video! We need more of your content on the regular. I really do hope that Los Angeles Makes Itself Great Again, but not in the MAGA way some would hope. I am talking more about returning to the great railroading city it was, is and could still be... Every corridor where streetcars and regional rail ran? Should be restored. Then concentrate on building an express automated regional rail like the Montreal RER using Metrolink but driverless with services as frequent as every minute or two during rush hour. These station sites could and should become mini downtowns to each district and neighbourhood and also encourage high density mixed use development at each station site much like Vancouver. It's taking the best of each cities best practices and using them to make the city as great and as equitable as it should be for all. Especially since let's face it, it a metropolis built on stolen land that hasn't come to terms with that never mind its other nefarious choices... I.e. The Water Wars and the "Chinatown-era" drama of race and income based inequality that has never been rectified such as redlining areas and driving freeways through them which disturbingly still happened in my lifetime and I'm only 40..
A lot of redlined or freeway-stricken neighborhoods in older metro LA were never well developed to begin with. Areas like South Gate or Pacoima - or much of central LA - were thrown together in the early 1900s in the format of a shanty town.
Where’s the beach at??
West, always West.
@@jeffstromberg7880well, kind of.
La has been mismanaged since its inception. It’s part of the charm.
As much as Los Angeles disgusts me I give them credit for being far more progressive than the San Francisco Bay Area where I live in pushing public transportation and housing projects into reality. Los Angeles will probably have a world-class train/tram/bus system within thirty years while the Bay Area will only show small improvements from its current mediocre state. As for housing, I have faith that Los Angeles can build enough in the end. Here in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, I have a lot of doubts.
Tesla will perfect ride sharing in 2025 , this will radically change the dynamics of transportation and real estate over the next 10 years. Operating a vehicle is extremely expensive so many will find that accessibility to an app that will give you a driverless Robotaxi at $1 a mile or less, more economical. When this form of transportation takes hold, it will dramatically reduce the number of vehicles on the road, according to the Stanford professor Tony Seba, resulting in lots of real estate, now designated to roads and parking, to become available.
All you need to do is watch all the Old Westerns movies, Charlie Chaplin movies where he deals with politics, and other movies like LA Confidential, Chinatown, Mulholland Falls, Don't Worry Darling and even Cat's Meow to know how corrupt and gangster LA has always been, being used as kind of a guinea pig of a place needed to be experimented on for constant change, short-lived ideas, Post-Modern Art and Lifestyles concepts, a place to sucker people into believing that the "American Dream of owning a house with a picket fence, a car and a dog" is attainable by "everyone" when, if you think about it carefully - how much space and distance do you need to fit in how many millions of people with the same house, car and dog all across the landscape before you've spread it out so far, it takes 2 hours to drive across town of all those houses into the suburbs and you've only gone 25 miles because all those cars all clog up the same roads, because, they all also have to go to the same places, all while the poor people gaze up the "palaces on the hill" of the rich and the celebrities who actually do live in those mega mansions in the hills LMAO
They need to make the public transport lines have ring routes and go every direction but also connect the lines. If they all meet in the downtown it will fail. Most people don’t commute to downtown so downtown oriented transit will fail
Downtown is pretty much finished with transit construction. Almost all new construction from now on is in areas far from downtown. In fact, two of the four Metro light rail lines currently operating do not go downtown (C and K do not go downtown; A and D do). Also, the G Line busway is entirely in the San Fernando Valley.
Outside of the Southeast Gateway Line and a few BRT concepts that Metro sometimes floats around, transit construction is pretty much done Downtown.
Every now and then you’ll see the idea of a hypothetical third subway line from Venice to the San Gabriel valley, but as of now that’s unfunded AND unstudied, so it’s probably decades away.
Bro Los Angeles will build one soon
A Time Square called "Angel's Time Square" 😅😂
I sure hope the Brown Act is not being violated.
Thumbnail: something big is happening in LA...
Actual Video: but first, screw you and let me pad the runtime with a history lesson
After the way, the Hollywood Boulevard makeover got watered down. I’m giving up on Los Angeles. It’s a complete waste of time dealing with these people.
I predict that transit ridership in Los Angeles will barely increase after these trains get built, except for on the D line which will be faster than car traffic. I know many people who drive in LA who only take the subway when they are going to Hollywood Boulevard. That’s the type of people who will take the D line, but it’s only a few percent.
What urban planning? There is none in Los Angeles. It’s just a series of strip malls connected by highways with single family homes filling in the gaps. Not a real city. Source: I lived in four different parts of the “city” of angels.
doubtful about a good transit system
What you are describing from 07:46 on is a centrally planned economy, socialism.
That's why housing is expensive in California, politicians controlling what can be built, and where. They have this "system" for telling lower-level politicians what they need to plan for. This is basically the CCP's system.
It's the opposite of a free market where landowners can do what they want.
Huh? The state requiring cities to allow property owners to build denser housing seems more like actually allowing property owners to build what they want on their own property. What a ridiculous comment!
@compdude100
It was government laws that prevented the building of denser housing to begin with. The government undoing its own damage is not a victory, it's a net loss.
@@jeremyrainman what?!? How is it not a victory? That makes absolutely no sense.
Damn. Sorry man.
Heavy rail, you say??
Great content! You probably hear this all the time. You look so much like Greta Thunberg. You could be her twin. Shes awesome too!
Do you know Johnny ?
Its nice to be positive but this piece is just cherry picking the good stuff and tying it all together to paint a pretty picture which is far from the complete reality of those of us who actually lived through all of it - its fine to be a fan of the trains AND YES its better than nothing BUT it hasnt made a great improvement on many of our lives
Yeah people are leaving, thanx to politics
probably the most corrupted city in the country (if not the world). the city is beyond hope. there will have to be MAJOR unrest before things start to really change. i’m a native angeleno 😢
Hmm, so you acknowledge that the people are the problem...? Good on you sir.
The 21st centuries catches up to US America 😂
Personally I prefer single family homes over apartments. I feel like apartments should be a temporary living situation. I think living in a home (w/o HOA) with a yard is better for mental and physical health. Also, I’m not entirely convinced in how extreme the housing shortage is. And there seem to be a lot of empty buildings in downtown LA. I don’t think homelessness is a result of a shortage as much as it being a result of lack of money, opportunity and ambition, and the way prices have skyrocketed. And lastly, I’ve always felt that trolleys in a few areas would be better than buses, and could make a good attraction, but safety and efficiency would have to be addressed first
zoning laws benifit the Auto Industry walking and cycling can and will land in jail in America
Awesome video! Please stop using AI-upscaling, it adds weird details.
There is no AI upscaling used in this video. Which clip are you referring to?
@PlanetizenHQ oh maybe it was just one of them? I believe it was a shot of trains. I didn't see any more, maybe it was already upscaled before you got it
@@bmodoryx Do you have a timestamp?
@@PlanetizenHQ found a few (might be more, I'm lazy), I think they came from the same reel?
4:32, 5:10 & 5:27
Your History needs work. Never heard of a policy that explicitly condoned murder, rather than those such as buffalo hunting to cease migratory practices and remove a food source for Indians that did not consider the Federal Government a legitimate over them, therefore anathema to the Government’s claims of Sovereignty over the region and resources, as well as unpredictable, occasional outburst, behaviors relative to declared citizens. This is a very impromptu overview missing a lot of nuance critical to understanding early America, but the video's interpretation lacks the barest amount of legitimacy due to disrespect of historical faction.
The problem is Los Angeles is too packed. When i was a kid there was a thing calked rush hour. Now there is just traffic 24/7. Down town was cool till they built LA Live . You could go to down town in the 80s and after 6pm it was a ghost town. My mom worked at union station so I i saw what it looked like before they put housing in the parking lot. Not a one hipster was in the "art district".
Then when they made it a sanctuary city it added hundreds of thosands of people.
Should have made new cities in San Bernardino for all this crap Los Angeles was so beiutiful before what we call the Squish. What is laughable is they thick the average person is going to ride public transportation. Take a pole on that. Most people view public transportation as low class. I cant wait for the 2028 Olympics. It is going to be a disaster with the Mayor saying it is going to be a no-car Olympics in LA.😅🤣😂.
Glad im close to retirement because im out soon because you all have F.U.B.A.R. this place.
Our, "Planners" today are just as arrogant and foolish as those who brought us to this point, and every bit as blind to their own baffoonery.
0:18 There isn’t a “housing shortage” when you simply have constant demand. Demand to live in LA will never cease, they will never have “enough” supply. Look at NYC, Tokyo, etc.
LA is where urban planning goes to die
Queue Randy Newman!