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When the legislature was deliberating on Senate Bill 10 in 2021, then Los Angeles City Council Member Paul Koretz predicted that it would “target” towns large and small, allow 14-unit projects “in almost all neighborhoods with no hearings,” and “ unique towns, villages and cities from doing their own planning.” It was often discussed in the same breath as its stablemate, SB 9, which effectively banned single-unit zoning in much of the state.

If you're waiting for a bus and you observe a sky-blue perforated protrusion that looks like an oversized fly swatter attached to a pole, you're unlikely to be overwhelmed with aesthetic rapture. But, you probably won't think much of it either. If that same fly swatter is the result of a six-figure design effort, a range of academic studies, global fact-finding trips, and--not least--a sidewalk press conference at which you are instructed to gaze upon said protrusion with reverence, you might feel differently. The protrusion in question is the latest attempt by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to make the pedestrian realm attractive, in a city where, lamentably, walking is still a second-class activity and transit ridership disproportionately consists of low-income, non-white, and female riders. It is a miniature bus shelter for the city's Dash circulator buses (not to be confused with LA Metro's regional public transit system), designed to provide transit information, cast light at night, and throw shade during the day. Cringingly named "La Sombrita" (rough translation: “little hat”), the shelter was inspired in part by studies of women's experiences with public transportation in Los Angeles, conducted by researchers at UCLA, and designed by Los Angeles-based design and architecture firm Kounkuey Design Initiative in collaboration with "countless community partners and members." It's part of a larger "Gender Equity Action Plan." As you can imagine, the results of the research were not heartening. Women often feel unsafe, especially at night. (I'm sure many men and nonbinary poeple do too.) And, Los Angeles famously lacks street trees -- especially in lower-income neighborhoods. I'm not sure we need a university study to recognize that transit riders appreciate shade in the daytime and light in the nighttime. Be that as it may, we could all use a little light and shade. On that count, La Sombrita emphasizes the - ita . La Sombrita casts just enough (perforated) shadow to protect exactly one person -- and that's if the sun and the person are in perfect alignment. Transit information is printed on the pole too, though it’s reportedly too high for someone in a wheelchair to comfortably read. Its solar-powered light points at odd angles after dark. Behold: La Sombrita For such a workaday piece of street furniture, La Sombrita promises some lofty goals: Improve comfort, safety, and the travel experience for women Deliver a quick installation project Cost a fraction of a bus shelter Can be affixed to existing bus signs with no new permits required Responds to community needs and moves the needle on shade and light at bus stops today while we simultaneously work on more systemic solutions. Usher in many other "design and policy solutions that will help make transportation more equitable for all Angelenos" The problem here is not La Sombrita's goals, which are reasonable, or even its design, which is underwhelming but inoffensive. The problem is the press conference itself. Were it deployed quietly, La Sombrita would probably elicit responses ranging from shrugs, to mild appreciation, to quiet snark by design enthusiasts. A few test cases could have been installed, and designers could have elicited feedback and updated future editions accordingly. Unfortunately for LA DOT and Kounkuey, reactions on Twitter the day of its unveiling were instant--and they threw far more shade than that bus shelter ever will. Some choice critiques, quoted from Twitter posts and replies: The only equity this design promotes is evenly distributed heatstroke. This is the kind of thing that makes public advocacy for better walkability, transit, etc., just… that much harder. Did y'all forget trees are a thing? I am begging America to do one thing transit-related like a normal country Did it really take "countless" contributions to make it possible this lamp-post with a tiny shader attached? It’s f--king terrible you should be ashamed To really sum it up: An expensive sub-optimal solution only needed due to existing regulatory codes conflicting with a city’s own goals, done by consultants, disguised as “equity” and ending with a ribbon-cutting media event (Mind you, these comments are from people who generally support public transit.) La Sombrita sheds light on a host of problems related to design in the public realm. First, it proves that collaboration does not necessarily lead to admirable design. Second, and more poignantly, its publicity set impossibly high expectations and invited exactly the sort of scrutiny that an unassuming piece of street furniture does not warrant. Every designer, and every marketer, should know the story of the Segway. As journalist Dan Kois impressively reported in a 2021 story in Slate, the Segway did not become a punchline because of lousy design or technology. To the contrary, it worked largely as advertised. Its failure derived from hype. Inventor Dean Kaman and his PR team promised world-changing, revolutionary, mind-blowing, toe-curling technology that would put all previous technologies to shame. With predictions like that, the best the Segway could have done was to meet expectations. Even worse, the publicity negated organic discovery, and the word-of-mouth reputation that would have followed. No one had the chance to "discover" the Segway; it was overexposed from the start, instantly as uncool as a pair of Dockers. Kounkuey defended itself, tweeting, "Typical bus shelters often cost $50k or more and require coordination among 8 departments. La Sombrita (in its most expensive, prototype form) costs approximately 15% of the price of a typical bus shelter and can be installed in 30 minutes or less." Fair enough. But Kounkuey's big mistake was that it didn't protest the insanity of needing eight city departments to sign off on a piece of street furniture. It doesn’t matter how imaginative their designers are. If they're not just as creative about reforming the regulatory scheme, then all the renderings, prototypes, and workarounds in the world don't matter. As for the design itself, it has its logic. La Sombrita is small because it's designed to slide over existing street-sign poles, so the city doesn't have to dig holes, pour foundations, or pull new permits. It can fit on sidewalks that aren't big enough to accommodate larger benches or shelters. It's recognizable enough, and the light is surely better than nothing. It improves Los Angeles's (often hideous) streetscape, if only marginally. Try to spot the bus shelter in this photo. Had LADOT quietly deployed Las Sombritas in strategic locations and let transit users discover them on their own terms, I can't see anyone complaining about them (much). Instead, the department succumbed to the pressures of social media. Plenty of pieces of design aren't Instagram-worthy. That doesn't mean they're not functional. For all the research the design team did, they forgot one thing: the weary, overheated bus rider waiting on a blazing summer afternoon in Watts probably doesn't care how many "likes" her bus shelter has. The problems La Sombrita attempts to solve are only going to get more dire, in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Its proximate goals (shade, light, information, branding) remain worthy, and the broader values it purports to represent (social equity, gender equity, sustainability, safety) are crucial. Global warming, caused by climate change, and heat islands, caused by asphalt and thinning urban forests, will only make them more crucial. The world's cities will need more, albeit better, Sombritas. That's why this flap is worthwhile and why the publicity serves a roundabout purpose. Cities and public agencies need to know that people are watching -- and willing to call them out. The next team of designers to come along will know that they can't get away with mediocrity and can’t gaslight stakeholders into thinking a flimsy, if well-meaning, intervention is going to save the planet. That's social media at its best. Among all of our near-apocalyptic problems, let's just hope we don't have to find out how useful La Sombrita against a plague of locusts. Images courtesy of the L.A. Department of Transportation, via Twitter ( here and here ).

Historically, transit-oriented development has always posed a chicken-or-egg problem, at least at its onset. Should development follow transit infrastructure, or vice-versa?

It’s an understatement to say that housing bills have been popular in Sacramento over the past few years, with dozens passed and chaptered by eager lawmakers and governors. Not a few exhausted municipal planners have hoped that the pace would slow down. But that’s not happening yet.

The depths of the covid pandemic inspired dire proclamations about the “death of cities,” and downtown areas were Exhibit A.

This weekend, the conference of the California Chapter of the American Planning Association returns to the Central Valley for the first time since 1975.

California Forever dropped from the sky two weeks ago, like a lost chapter from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. It promised a utopia of low-carbon emissions, a jobs-housing balance, rowhouses (!), light rail, human-scale density, and, most marvelously, diversity social equity. Exquisitely, it created fans and detractors in seemingly equal numbers. Most observers, though, probably fell in the middle, able to imagine best- and worst-case scenarios with equal vividness. Naturally, many people’s fantasies are others' nightmares. And, after a flourish of a week or so, California Forever has receded into the fog. If it revisits us, it will likely do so in the form of lobbying, ballot measures, environmental impact reports, and lawsuits until the end of our days. So far, California Forever--the name of which sounds more like that of a cemetery than a metropolis--offers more of a lesson in public relations than in planning. In the span of a week, coverage of California Forever went from a scoop in the San Francisco Chronicle to multi-article coverage in The New York Times , The Hill, The Guardian --and everything in between. I can't imagine a story related to urban planning that would get more, and swifter, coverage than this one did. Howard Jarvis would have to rise from the dead and insist on the repeal of Proposition 13. Clovis would have to invade Fresno. A whale would have to eat San Diego. Beverly Hills would have to build affordable housing. That's how big it was. The developer, Flannery Associates LLC, had been operating in stealth mode for five years until the Chronicle uncovered what was going on. Flannery's most exquisite move was to immediately post a website -- so fully-formed that it must have been designed and written ahead of time, like an aging celebrity's obituary, long before the news leaked. Flannery (apparently named for a road bordering its original parcel) is thus both an enormity and a mystery at the same time. Planning news rarely "breaks." But, to Flannery Associates' credit -- whether the leak of their buying spree was accidental or calculated -- they gave us, perhaps unwittingly, a story that had it all: a "new city," a huge amount of (private) capital, a place (Solano County) that most people have never heard of, mild deception, and the audacity of the tech industry. The plan's most Calvino-eseque elements so far are the renderings on California Forever's website, if you can call them "renderings." In some ways, they hold tremendous appeal: pretty, well detailed buildings overlooking coves and arbors, dappled in the light of a wine country afternoon. And, yet, they are obviously the product of artificial intelligence--just a little too perfect, and a little too cliched. A recent post on SF Gate confirms as much. By now, Flannery has surely gotten calls from every New Urbanist architect in the country. A city on a hill. The reasons why it got so much attention are more pedestrian and more dispiriting. The attention we gave to a Utopian vision, seemingly inspired by equal parts Tuscany and Philadelphia, says more about the current state of our cities -- and the surrounding discourse -- than it does about Flannery. The vision for California Forever depends on not just empty land but also on blank pages. California Forever's zoning code has yet to be written. (Maybe it won't even have one.) It also doesn't have incumbent residents with entrenched interests. It doesn't have design guidelines. It doesn't have anxious politicians or overworked planning staffers. That's why they can dare to dream of something new, fresh, and attractive. Back in the real world, pretty much nothing is happening. Some of the biggest development stories center on what's not getting built. That high-rise in San Francisco. A new ballpark for the A's. The Concord Naval Weapons Station redevelopment. Anything smaller than Versailles and denser than Alaska on the San Francisco Peninsula. Home mortgage rates just hit 8%. Not exactly fodder for The New York Times. On many levels, the project is off-putting, perhaps terrifying. And yet, there's  useful lesson in California Forever's audacity. California Forever has a shared purpose: its investors have all spent a lot of money and they all want to make a lot of money. I give them credit for being, possibly, more than just capitalists. They seem to understand principles of good urbanism, and they seem to understand that California needs more housing. "Hey Dall-E, give me a perfect New Urbanist streetscape." That's more than we can say for some cities in this state. Too much of the planning innovation and new development in California are taking place under duress (see: Builder's Remedy ), with extreme reluctance (see: housing element updates), or in the face of recreational litigation (hello, Huntington Beach ). None of this amounts to a vision. None of this amounts to an enthusiastic, optimistic consensus about what the state and its cities might strive for. As ever, the California Dream feels passive -- something that we participate in purely because we're here, somewhere near the beach, under the sun -- rather than something we actively, collectively pursue. Sure, many new plans include progressive planning principles. But, they are usually buried deep in codes and general plan updates. They are often included to evade scrutiny of anti-development stakeholders. They lack exuberance. And the incrementalism is excruciating. We get a six-story podium building here; a dozen townhouses there. ADU's aplenty. If we're lucky, we end up with better cities by the time our grandkids graduate from college. This leisurely pace is what prompted developer Christopher Meany to unload on planners when I spoke to him about his Treasure Island project: "Planners have to stop focusing on planning and start focusing on getting things built." What this approach lacks is a vision -- a sense of enthusiasm or shared purpose. It's almost impossible to envision better cities in California because the new elements -- say, a well designed mixed-use building, or street furniture that might make a place walkable -- has to mingle with whatever outdated, Prop. 13-enabled ugliness is still hanging around. So, I can forgive anyone who gets excited about California Forever. It's tantalizing to think that, just this once, we could learn from our mistakes and build something truly enlightened--exorcise the ghosts of Burnham, Corbusier, and Moses once and for all. But what the world wants and what the world builds are often two different things. I am not suggesting that planners should pursue headlines. Doing so would be disingenuous and annoying. But we have to learn something from the flap over California Forever. However difficult planning in the real world may be, planners cannot cede an optimistic, excited vision of California's future to a venture capital fund. Even if he predated the California Environmental Quality Act, Italo Calvino probably knew how hard it is to build utopia. It's why he conjured up cities a few hundred words at a time, never claiming that they would exist anywhere other than in the collective imagination. Now that DALL-E can do Calvino's job for him, it's hard yet to tell whether California Forever believes his fantasies are within reach—or whether California Forever is blind to his cautionary tale. Perhaps it was, and is, both. Images courtesy of California Forever .

Recently, the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley hosted a conference about recent housing legislation that featured four legislators active in the area: Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks from the East Bay, Assemblymember David Alvarez of San Diego, and Senator Catherine Blakespear, who until recently has to grapple with intense no-growth politics as mayor of Encinitas. All but Wicks are former local government officials. The resulting conversation brought an interesting set of obervations from the four legislators. Here' s an edited version of the conversation, culled by CP&DR ’s Josh Stephens.

Atlantic Avenue, a four-to-six lane artery that forms the spine of Long Beach, runs from the waterfront due north for eight miles. It then carries on into the hinterlands of the Gateway Cities in south Los Angeles County. Though Long Beach is relatively dense — at roughly 9,300 residents per square mile — development along the majority of Atlantic Ave. and the city’s other major boulevards rarely rises above one story.

Among the 200-odd housing-related laws that the California has enacted since 2015, many – if not most -- were designed to increase density in one way or another. Some laws encourage housing units where now there are only big boxes and offices. Some encourage developers to build higher in exchange for housing lower-income residents. Others literally put new housing in people's backyards, by way of accessory dwelling units. The entire RHNA process is, essentially, an exercise in densification. To an extent, this is the YIMBY dream writ large. At last this weekend's annual Journalists Forum at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy , David Garcia, policy director for the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation, had the burden of summarizing all these laws. But he was joined by, among other panelists, Patrick Condon , a Vancouver-based planner and professor who predicted, provocatively, these laws may simply lead to more expensive housing. For at least as long as the YIMBY movement has been around -- calling for, broadly speaking, as much upzoning in as many places as possible -- Condon has questioned the orthodoxy of density. Condon has lived in Vancouver long enough to see high rise condo and apartment buildings rise on a peninsula--which includes its central business district--like the redwood trees that covered it a century ago. Vancouver also encourages duplexes, fourplexes, "lane houses" and other forms of suburban upzoning. Since 1970, Vancouver's population has increased by more than 50%, from around 420,000 to nearly 665,000; thanks in part to pro-density zoning, its number of housing units has doubled, according to Condon's numbers. Its density is over 14,000 persons per square mile--fourth highest in North America. And what happened to its housing prices? They are, according to Condon, among the highest in North America, with the average house costing 24 times the average annual salary. So Condon cautions that increased density does essentially nothing for housing costs. "Land prices absorbed all the benefit of that new supply," said Condon. "Because the capacity of those parcels was increased in terms of the financial return on it, it's reflected in this tremendous rise in land value." To explain: If upzoning, say, doubles the number of units allowed on a given piece of land, the seller will calculate the upzoned value and raise the asking price accordingly, thus sticking it to the buyer, who must, as a matter of necessity, pass on the added cost to residents. In Vancouver, Condon says 40% of the rent or price -- at whatever density -- goes right into the land. Anybody who's been involved in a transaction involving a piece of newly upzoned land will understand this. It's the reason, why, say, prices for a tract of modest homes near my home in West Los Angeles shot up after the adoption of the city's TOC ordinance. Enticed by the possibility of density bonuses, developers were willing to accept inflated prices in order to build a multi-hundred unit building. On a micro-scale, there's no doubt that the potential to build an ADU or duplex in place of an existing single-unit home can raise the price buyers are willing to pay (a phenomenon I personally felt in a recent, unsuccessful, quest to buy a house in Los Angeles). Condon insisted that, absent a policy mechanism to moderate land prices--such as, perhaps, a Henry George-style land value tax -- this pattern is almost inevitable. He suggested that the only way to ensure that upzoning does not raise housing costs is to require aggressive inclusionary provisions so that the cost of below-market-rate units substantially counteract, on average, those of "luxury units." He pointed to none other than Cambridge's recently adopted 100% inclusionary requirement. (He did not, though, explain how these projects would pencil out, though he might argue that land sellers would have to settle for less and, thereby, enable developers to break even.) As Condon repeated several times, his argument spells bad news for anyone, especially YIMBYs, who hopes that upzoning will reduce housing costs. To his credit, though, Condon is not nearly as much of a curmudgeon as certain venerable density scolds who favor Valencia over Vancouver. Emphasizing that "adding density is a good thing," Condon acknowledged that density may embody other, nontrivial benefits that outweigh--or at least offset--whatever its costs might be. He cited reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, increases in transit ridership, and diversity of housing types. What, then, does all of this mean for California and it's 5 bazillion new housing laws? At a glance, it doesn't bode well. California's coastal cities, at least, share a lot in common with Vancouver. And yet, there's reason to believe that, even if Condon is right about Vancouver, he may yet be wrong about California. Most obviously, Condon's argument is arguably a straw man. Many YIMBYs would acknowledge that increased density is not necessarily intended to lower housing costs. YIMBYs might be satisfied if the density simply reduces the rate at which housing costs increase. That's where Condon's analysis is incomplete: might Vancouver's costs be even higher in the absence of upzoning? Is it possible that Vancouver did not upzone enough? Or, is it possible that British Columbia did not upzone enough? Whatever Vancouver has done, its housing market still exists alongside those of Burnaby, North Vancouver, and even Victoria. As the Terner Center's Garcia pointed out, jurisdictional inconsistencies in California have often kept housing supply constrained and costs high. Even if Emeryville or Oakland says "build, baby, build," its new units do next to nothing to counteract the reticence of Lafayette, Walnut Creek, and all of Marin County. "Oakland is pulling its weight, but suburbs prop up housing costs," said Garcia. Rather than focus growth on one small peninsula, as the upzoning in Vancouver has done, most of California's new upzoning laws apply statewide. Notwithstanding cities that complain about (and sometimes sue over) Sacramento's incursion on their sacred right to self-determination, if every housing-constrained region and jurisdiction in the state has to upzone, then we might actually get an economy of scale, and we might actually meet aggregate demand. Of course, the demand for deed-restricted affordable housing will always outstrip the market's ability to supply it. This is where Condon's admonishment really comes into play. Roughly speaking, most cities' RHNA numbers require zoning for roughly equal amounts of market-rate and affordable housing. But, of course, there are no laws, incentives, or funding programs -- locally or statewide -- that approach the 100% density bonus in Cambridge that Condon touts. Whether you’re Cambridge or Canada or anyplace in between, urban economics will always involve combinations of alchemy, soothsaying, and dead reckoning. We can’t predict the future, and we can’t control for every variable. Whether Condon is right, wrong, or somewhere in between, his analysis is crucial for at least one reason: it compels us to define our goals and acknowledge that reaching some goals may be at cross-purposes with reaching others. Then again, given the number of new housing policies in California, it’s hard to keep track of all the goals. And, maybe that’s the point. If this goes well, California might just stumble its way into affordability and abundance. And, really, we’re going to have to. At those prices, we can’t all move to Canada.

If your city could give birth to something, what would it be? Would it be rock music? Free love? The tech economy? The United Nations? Or the Chalupa? I spoke a few weeks ago at the Housing Symposium of the Orange County Realtors Association in Newport Beach--an enviable city, and a stone's throw from Taco Bell's headquarters. My role was to explain how planning plays into the state's housing mess. At one point, I was discussing the legislature's scorched-earth policy towards housing-hesitant cities and assured the audience that, while exclusionary single-family zoning would no longer be tolerated in most places, "if some city in Orange County wants to become the next San Francisco, it can." Cue the guffaws. I clarified: if a city wants to become more dense -- at San Francisco levels or whatever -- Sacramento isn't going to stop them. My interviewer, speaking on behalf of the audience, nonetheless assured me, " no one wants to be San Francisco." Cool beans. Empirically, he may be right. It's possible that the ethos of Orange County is so dramatically opposed to that of San Francisco that emulation is unthinkable. Whether San Francisco embodies density, history, bridges, dirty hippies, progressivism, public transit, dysfunctional government, homelessness, or simply the right to ply the city sidewalks wearing nothing but a leather collar, Orange Countians may indeed want none of it.  Just for the sake of argument, let's say that some city in Orange County was inspired by my offhand vision. Maybe East Placentia, Garden Beach, or Mission Nuevo will lose its mind and decide to go all-in on Victorian rowhouses, zero-parking midrise apartment buildings, and duplexes as far as the eye can see. What does that give us? Fifteen square miles is about average for a city in Orange County. At San Francisco densities, that means 132,000 units for 270,000 people -- roughly three times as many units and four times as many people per square mile as the current countywide average. Our formerly staid suburb thus becomes the third-largest city and by far the densest city in the county. What might it get for that density? Possibly less than nothing. That sort of density at that scale hasn't been built in California--or anywhere in the United States--since the Coolidge administration. We could get 15 square miles of apartment buildings that look like Taco Bells. Or we could get some of the most inspired high-density architecture this side of the Roaring '20s. Who knows. In light of the state's housing crisis, and the manifest demand for housing anywhere within reach of a sea breeze. Folks who like their lawns and their privacy might shudder. But even the most hardcore fiscal conservatives behind the Orange Curtain may yet find something to like. Orange County's GDP in 2021 was a perfectly respectable $238 billion. It ranked ninth among counties nationwide. Guess who ranked 11th? San Francisco -- at less than one-third of OC's population. That's good for $200 billion total and $245,000 per capita, ranking second nationwide (to Manhattan). Not bad for a bunch of hippies. That's not to say that the city singlehandedly creates wealth. But it certainly attracts it. If wealth is your thing, you could do a lot worse than be San Francisco. Of course, not everyone in San Francisco is rich. And there's the rub. San Francisco's vistas, architecture, culture, cuisine, and economic fortitude have been overshadowed by reports of crime, homelessness, trash, vacancies, and the vaunted "doom loop." Sometimes, it seems like the only thing left intact in San Francisco is its political dysfunction. Many of these reports are exaggerated, of course, partly because it's easy, and even fun, to take jabs at whomever is on top. Hence, the chortles. But San Francisco's problems are partly of its own making. Many of them stem from its housing shortage, which is largely self-imposed. Had the market produced anywhere near the needed number of units, the city would have fewer people on the street, more residents to shop at stores and work in offices, and perhaps less of the intraurban tension that causes voters to favor tribalism over collaboration. A denser San Francisco would likely be not only wealthier but also far more livable for everyone. Even so, I get the concerns. San Francisco is already pretty darn dense. Meanwhile, though Orange County's density is fairly uniform; its 3,989 people per square mile does not rise to the level of what anyone would consider a major city. There's plenty of room for pretty much any housing type you could imagine. A denser Orange County -- or at least a portion of Orange County -- could reap all sorts of agglomeration benefits, as long as it had decent design, transportation infrastructure, and jobs (which is already has). The great irony is, if Orange County really wanted to distinguish itself from San Francisco, the best way to do so would be to build housing. The funny thing about the audience's dismissive attitude toward San Francisco is that real estate agents should, by professional necessity, be pro-housing and, therefore, be pro-density. And yet, they were skeptical of the very regulations that promote density. Case in point: The Regional Housing Needs Assessment process was referred to openly as "stupid"—despite the fact that it's designed to bring 123,000 new units to Orange County. Half of those are supposed to be market rate, which means 61,500 units that could potentially generate commissions. I would think that people who make money when, and only when, housing units change hands would salivate at the prospect of having all those new units to sell. I, for one, am going to keep my eye on East Placentia. When the upzoning happens, maybe I'll get my real estate license. And a Chalupa.

The frenzy of housing legislation adopted in recent years, designed to increase the zoned capacities of California, has had ironic consequences for many planning departments: a shortage of the very planners who are needed to implement those laws locally.