Authors:Proussaloglou; Emmanuel Abstract: Since the passage of AB2299 in 2017, Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) production in California has grown significantly. Along with the goals of increasing supply of infill rental housing, targeting new housing units in single-family zoned neighborhoods, and improving affordability, AB2299 intended to create new opportunities primarily for smaller, younger, more diverse, and more innovative building firms. To evaluate this last goal, we conducted ten interviews with three categories of building firms in Los Angeles. We find that architects, contractors, and technology companies see ADUs differently, that there is significant interest in building ADUs but few inquiries turn into finished buildings, and that there are consensus policy proposals in the building industry to produce more. Furthermore, analyzing across interviewees we find that successful ADU builders utilize a production model predicated on standardizing construction elements and processes,partnering with select contractors... PubDate: Thu, 1 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Authors:Icev; Marko Abstract: On July 26, 1963, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake devastated the city of Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, one of the six Yugoslavian republics. This initiated a multilateral reconstruction effort that saw international experts lend support to local teams of architects and planners. The resulting plan (the Urban Plan Project, or UPP) focused on the development of neighborhood units, as well as the propagationof ample “open green spaces” to provide higher standards of living to the inhabitants. This paper draws a connection between the open spaces of Skopje andthe theories of Henri Lefebvre concerning concrete utopia and habitation, to show that beyond purely utilitarian reasons, the open spaces reflected a search for new socialist urbanities in Yugoslavia and allowed for architectural experimentation. The resulting plan reveals a model for planning and architectural practices as disaster relief, and illustrates a collaborative and self-managed working methodology, which makes it a... PubDate: Thu, 1 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Authors:Ng; Melody Abstract: This essay uses the lens of historical-structural analysis to examine how the history of municipal land use policies and urban agriculture in the U.S. informed the policy design of California’s Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones (“UAIZs”) and their resulting failure to increase land access and security for community food producers. It argues that UAIZs sit at the end of a long history of lot conversion programs that have been used for urban crisis management in the U.S. In this process, the essay examines the role that land insecurity has played in redevelopment and land commodification and financialization more broadly, how equitable urban agriculture requires both rearticulating the functions that community food production play in cities and reasserting the right not only to occupy but to manage land in a way that serves one’s community (land equity), and why practitioners and researchers need to reframe the questions they ask when designing food systems policies and research. PubDate: Thu, 1 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Authors:Ling; Shine Abstract: Pershing Square, located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, has transformed several times over its 150-year history. Its design iterations throughout time have mirrored the city’s own transformations, growth, and community’s self-image. I retrace the history of civic attempts to renovate Pershing Square, starting from the 1910s through to the present. By examining the events and battles over control of its design, I use Pershing Square as a lens for understanding larger trends in the practice of urban design, city planning, and politics in Los Angeles. In particular, I focus on the shifts in influence among various design professions, and I consider the tensions between the prevailing practice of urban design by this professional class and the growing imperative for public participation in public space design. I also examine how the most recent attempts to remake Pershing Square are emblematic of two paradigms in urban design: landscape urbanism and placemaking. PubDate: Thu, 1 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Authors:Chen; Jiaying Abstract: We have entered an era that David Harvey (1989) has coined “time-space compression,” which refers to the reduced production time and spatial barriers as a result of advanced capitalism. This phenomenon inaugurates the opacity in the urban — the concealed and asymmetrical power geometry, and the homogenization of cities. Porosity brought by Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis (1925) in their writingon Naples, on the other hand, depicts urban cities with interpenetration and heterogeneity, resisting any fixedness. Starting from personal memories in Shenzhen, China, this essay proposes that the city can be seen as an urban space where opacity and porosity coexist and mingle with one another, which dissolves the dichotomous rural-urban configuration in cities. In this sense, Shenzhen is fused with tensions between two forces: capitalist modernization and standardizedlandscapes that alienate and homogenize lives andexperiences; and porous cultures and everydayness inthe urban villages... PubDate: Thu, 1 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Authors:Scacco; Debra Abstract: Everything is a line. Every boundary, bridge, freeway and river. Yet these lines are not ours — they have been drawn for us, and they shape the policies that determine our lives. While the drawing of lines is inherently consequential, it is often difficult to isolate, identify or hold accountable their individual authors. The borders and policies dictated by these lines are the continuation of centuries-old colonial systems that keep white supremacist power structures firmly in place. PubDate: Mon, 16 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +000
Authors:Franklin Leggett; Eliza Jane Abstract: The ability to easily secure housing and pass it down to accumulate generational wealth is a luxury that white descendants have long enjoyed — yet it has all but escaped their Black counterparts. In an effort to acknowledge the challenges facing Black people, particularly Black women historically and to the present day, this essay provides an analysis through a Black feminist lens and serves as a piece of academic activism. Utilizing the methodology of Black Girl Cartography, concern is cited specifically for the ways in which Black women are situated in place and space. To that end, this essay focuses on housing as a theme and addresses the subtopics of neighborhood, substandard housing, housing instability, and housing affordability as interventions. PubDate: Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +000
Authors:Paterson; Shona Abstract: Extreme heat as a result of climate change is already being felt in Los Angeles and will only increase throughout the century. Not all residents of Los Angeles feel these effects equally. Shaded areas provide valuable relief from the heat, but the shade provided by street trees has historically been concentrated in certain communities and excluded from others. To create a just future in the face of climate change, all communities must have the resources to maintain habitable conditions, including shade trees. Establishing the number of trees required to build an equitable tree canopy for the city requires another scarce resource: water. This paper analyzes the amount of water and associated impacts required to establish an equitable tree canopy in Los Angeles through a lens of distributive justice. I conclude that, from a water standpoint, the benefits of increased tree canopy outweigh the energy, financial, and supply costs needed to achieve a more equitable tree canopy. PubDate: Thu, 12 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +000
Authors:Chesney; Peter Sebastian Abstract: A just future is within reach for UCLA’s Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. To achieve this end, the Playboy Mansion must be destroyed. This essay will present the Mansion’s history to explain why in terms of socio-sexual justice, then recommend how to execute demolition in order to avoid repeating the mistakes that have left Westwood’s residential space so misallocated. Neither private nor public agencies have the capacity to mark the Mansion for demolition without re-enclosing this property for the purposes of elites. Only the people themselves can destroy the Playboy Mansion in a way that will guarantee this land’s future uses as a common good. PubDate: Thu, 12 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +000
Authors:Valencia; Enrique Abstract: California Senate Bill 1000 (2016) requires that general plans include environmental justice strategies and policies that address the needs of Disadvantaged Communities (DACs). This article draws upon principles for engagement developed by environmental justice activists to explore Santa Ana’s 2014-2020 general plan update and understand whether SB1000 contributed to meaningful engagement in DACs. A review of planning documents and interviews with key informants reveals that the initial general plan framework was captured by NIMBYs and that the City was unable to pivot to meet SB1000 mandates. Moreover, the City resisted activist and State demands to halt general plan adoption amid COVID-19. Ultimately, in the case of Santa Ana, SB1000 has not led to meaningful engagement with disadvantaged communities. PubDate: Thu, 12 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +000
Authors:Ramirez; Andres F. Abstract: Though widely celebrated as a masterpiece, the Murphy Sculpture Garden raises important questions about the role of art in public space today. How do we define public art' When is it art, and what exactly makes it public' Growing scholarship in urban studies, fine art, historical preservation, and social sciences suggests that the paradigms for public art are shifting. While societal values and environmental circumstances change with time, many existing public artworks endure, unchanged and unchallenged, as if frozen in perpetuity. The Murphy Sculpture Garden cannot be experienced or understood as it was conceived almost 60 years ago. Using the sculpture garden as a case study, this article examines emerging theories, competing definitions, key paradigms, and ongoing tensions in the discourse of public art. PubDate: Thu, 12 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +000
Authors:Bella; Bethany Abstract: This essay seeks to identify “feminist cities” and intersectional feminist-informed planning practice as one framework to achieve climate justice in an urban planning context. Planning for a climate-changed future will require an intent focus on adaptability and a critical, intersectional feminist approach, both in our planning for climate impacts and our ability to adapt to new and changing urban problems. By centering climate-feminist solutions in our planning efforts, we can embrace transformational planning models and dare to imagine a future worth planning for. PubDate: Thu, 12 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +000
Authors:Liang; Lillian
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Ramirez, Emma
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Reyna, Edgar
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Zhang, Brenda Abstract: Planning for racially just futures requires reckoning with and unlearning practices of whiteness embedded within histories and theories of planning. Through archival and policy research, this historical-structural analysis identifies the El Segundo Chevron oil refinery as a center of racial capitalism and imperialism. The refinery’s formation in 1911 was not only enabled by racially exclusive policy, but also shaped the City of El Segundo through the consolidation of corporate political power at the local level. Sites of extraction, from Los Angeles to the Amazon, reveal historic and ongoing injustices, which built environment disciplines must confront in order to move forward in solidarity. PubDate: Thu, 12 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +000
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