Downtown Los Angeles' residential population nearly tripled between 2000 and 2008.  There are now about 45,000 people who call Downtown home, including my wife and I, who recently celebrated the anniversary of our move to Downtown (or DTLA as it's become known among locals).  We are, in many ways, exactly what planners had in mind when they began to promote downtowns as residential neighborhoods. In Los Angeles, the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, enabling developers to convert older commercial buildings into apartments and lofts, is credited with sparking this movement. 

The Malibu Bay Company (MBC) owns the last undeveloped beach front parcel in Malibu, a 2.08-acre, 200-foot-wide parcel. In order to accommodate its proposed division into four parcels, MDC proposed an amendment to the Local Implementation Plan of Malibu's local coastal plan in order to create a new zoning district which would allow for lot widths of 45 feet, a decrease from the, then existing, standard of 80 feet.

The words "green" and "cargo containers" hardly seem to belong in the same sentence. Shipping is a dirty business. Particulate matter and greenhouse gases have long blackened the lungs of people who live near the ports, giving the area the lowest air quality rating in the region. One source of foul air is the port equipment, including the diesel-burning cranes and tow-trucks that move containers from ships to trucks.

The first article I ever wrote for CP&DR concerned the generationally decrepit state of Los Angeles' Westwood Village (see CP&DR Vol. 23, No. 6 June 2008). In the three years that have passed since then--despite my blistering expose (of one of the city's most open secrets)--it's only gotten worse. Storefronts are vacant. Bars are sad. Only the Trader Joe's seems to be making any money, and that's because, well, it's Trader Joe's.

By now, most CEQA practitioners have faced the problem of what to do when a project opponent submits the attorney general's 18-page list of potential greenhouse gas mitigation measures, when many of the measures in the list may not be appropriate for a particular project.  On June 30, 2011, the Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District held that the lead agency is not required to explain why each of the proposed measures is inappropriate for the project at issue. 

Early in her account of the development of San Fernando Valley, Laura R. Barraclough describes an 1880s-era photo that captures the wholesome spirit of what would become Los Angeles' great bedroom community: "Captioned 'Lankershim's best product,' [it] showed several hundred white children standing in a field, grinning at the camera." 

Jeff Spicoli and Moon Unit Zappa, they are not. 

Julius Shulman's most famous image-in which disaffected young women in cocktail dresses float above Los Angeles-marks the end of the American experiment as well as does any other gesture in arts and letters. The steel-and-glass jewelbox embodies the equal measures of disappointment and satisfaction that come with a destination reached. After all those decades of toiling across the frontier conclude at the Pacific, the American landscape is complete, its architecture is refined to its sparest elements. 

Sociologist Frederik Polak once said that "the future may well be decided by the images of the future with the greatest power to capture our imaginations and draw us to them, becoming self-fulfilling prophecies."  The organizers the Rethink/LA, an eponymous group consisting of some of the city's creative intelligentsia, seem to agree. The exhibit, on display through Sept. 4 at the Architecture+Design Museum,present bold visions of a future Los Angeles that should challenge the thinking and capture the imaginations of most Angelenos.

If you haven't heard, we're expecting a little traffic here in west Los Angeles this weekend. Actually, we're expecting it all over the city. No, wait. All over the county. 

Forget it. The entire state is going to be paralyzed. Now everybody freak out!

United by common complaints against a particularly loud, disruptive neighbor, the residents who live under the flight path of Los Angeles International Airport are a relatively cohesive bunch. The Second District Court of Appeals has ruled, however, that neighborhood cohesion goes only so far. 

According to the court's decision in City of Los Angeles v. Superior Court (2011), the city's voluntary program by which certain residents who live near the airport can sell their property to the city does not amount to a taking of adjacent properties.