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I really, really, need every think piece that talks about 'rebuilding LA' to look at an actual map of what was damaged by the fire before I hear their views on

I really, really, need every think piece that talks about 'rebuilding LA' to look at an actual map of what was damaged by the fire before I hear their views on urbanism and what Los Angeles needs. Yes, 23k acres burned in the Palisades fire, and 15k in the Eaton fire. Yes that's a lot of area compared to SF, Manhattan, etc. Most of that area is mountainside! There's not suddenly 50 square miles of open space in LA to remake in the image of some ideal. Of the portion of heavily burned land that was developed, quite a bit was also mountainside, or at least foothill. There's ~25 regular-ish blocks of the villages (backed up against foothill) that were destroyed, and some flat-ish area on Sunset Mesa, and the west side of Temescal Canyon, and a bit on Castellammare (but thankfully that wasn't as heavily impacted). But as the names implies, these are all mesa/ridge tops, bracketed by cliffs & canyons. The impacted parts of Altadena are a bit more regular, but very much sloping foothill backed up against their own mountainside. Moreover, both areas are somewhat peripheral, even for the city-without-a-center. The point being that these are not places one can casually lay out some expansive transit-oriented scheme that's going to solve housing problems for the city. They're topographically and geographically constrained, and need to be rebuilt in a way that's compatible with their constraints. To say nothing of the fact that these were people's homes, and are people's property, and they might have a say on how they would like to rebuild. There are some real challenges facing LA w.r.t. family-size rental/affordable housing stock, insurance in fire-prone areas, insurance generally depending on state policy, etc. I hope the civic and political energy leveled against barriers to rebuilding in Altadena and the Palisades can later be focused on ongoing transit expansion and associated higher-density development, infill, etc, in the parts of the city where those make sense. But to pretend that these fires present some great opportunity to 'remake' Los Angeles as a whole is a misunderstanding at best, reductive and insulting at worst. </rant>

ianburrell 2y ago
It seems to me that right solution is to upzone Altadena. Small apartment buildings work fine in dense suburbs. The other part is that if can’t upzone Palisades to upzone other areas instead. It makes sense to build denser close to transit than force it on rich areas in the hills.
- kristjansson 2y ago
  > upzone other areas instead Yes. This is what we're already doing around the transit we already have. I hope the camaraderie and community drives us to build more, faster. > upzone Altadena > upzone Palisades Why? Why is it imperative that we take this disaster as an opportunity to advance policy change in the affected areas specifically? Why should we build denser housing in areas that are clearly at risk for fire?
rayiner 2y ago
It was also just destroyed by fire so probably a bad idea to rebuild there.
- kristjansson 2y ago
  I was going to include a bit about that, but my comment was already kinda long. All the other reasons besides, the events of the last week should be an indication to the would-be urban planners that the __burn scar__ is perhaps not the best place to locate new high-density density development. That said I hope policy and prudence drive homeowners that rebuild SFH to include more fire-safety and fire-resistant features. Closed eaves, pool-fed sprinklers, automated shutters, (pains me to say) landscaping setbacks, ...
aimanbenbaha 2y ago
Thinking only flat areas are ripe for high-density urbanism is still a NIMBY mentality. Where I'm from there were much worse constraints yet the rate of growth by which cities are developed vastly outclasses the YIMBYest cities in the US let alone California. There should be respect to the families that lost their property. But it's not insulting to suggest that NIMBY development exarcebates disasters like this. Heck if land use was as productive as it should in America most of those families wouldn't have a good chunk of their wealth evaporates as a result of a natural disaster, and rebuilding would've been hella more faster and cheaper.
scoofy 2y ago
"You can't build dense buildings on a mountain side" What are you talking about?!? Downtown San Francisco has easily 4x the density of the area and it's built on mountains. Italy has dense villages on the sides of mountains all over the place. The idea that nobody can build density in 2025 because of some type of geological feature is just ridiculous, self-serving, nothing should change ever talk.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  None of SF's dense apartment buildings are on hills, there is a good reason for that. You could terrace them like they do in Chongqing, but even in HK they tend to build in valleys between mountains except for luxury condo housing (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Levels). Italy follows the same pattern as SF.
  - scoofy 2y ago
    That's just not true. Russian Hill has plenty of highrises that were built in the 1970s: https://maps.app.goo.gl/LukSfpMG5DnumTL79 https://maps.app.goo.gl/LukSfpMG5DnumTL79 The point isn't that LA should force the area to be highrises. The point is that it should be legal, in a housing crisis, to increase the density of one of the lowest density neighborhoods in LA, which is already an incredibly low density city. Literally just building row houses instead of SFH's would easily double the density. Three-unit row houses like in much of hilly SF would increase the density by 6x. The idea that we either need skyscrapers or SFH's is exactly the problem with our zoning laws. People should be able to build multi-unit when the demand is there.
- kristjansson 2y ago
  The point was that the headline numbers don't really represent the amount of existing development that was destroyed. There's been lots of comparisons of the area to e.g. Manhattan which I think drives some of these think-pieces that act like there's a city-sized blank-canvas area to rebuild. Could we have built on more of the burned-over mountainside? Maybe? I'm not sure SF is the right comparison though. Just the developed portion affected by the Palisades fire ranges from sea level to 450m elevation (over ~2.5mi straight-line distance); Temescal Peak is 650m. Most of developed peninsular SF is below 100m elevation. Its more like trying to densifiy Berkely or Pacifica or Carmel by building apartment buildings up their hills. Doable? Probably. But why go to the trouble? Why take the fire and seismic risk of building dense housing on a mountainside when LA is spoiled for space in the basin and valley?

ianburrell 2y ago

It seems to me that right solution is to upzone Altadena. Small apartment buildings work fine in dense suburbs. The other part is that if can’t upzone Palisades to upzone other areas instead. It makes sense to build denser close to transit than force it on rich areas in the hills.

kristjansson 2y ago
> upzone other areas instead Yes. This is what we're already doing around the transit we already have. I hope the camaraderie and community drives us to build more, faster. > upzone Altadena > upzone Palisades Why? Why is it imperative that we take this disaster as an opportunity to advance policy change in the affected areas specifically? Why should we build denser housing in areas that are clearly at risk for fire?

rayiner 2y ago

It was also just destroyed by fire so probably a bad idea to rebuild there.

kristjansson 2y ago
I was going to include a bit about that, but my comment was already kinda long. All the other reasons besides, the events of the last week should be an indication to the would-be urban planners that the __burn scar__ is perhaps not the best place to locate new high-density density development. That said I hope policy and prudence drive homeowners that rebuild SFH to include more fire-safety and fire-resistant features. Closed eaves, pool-fed sprinklers, automated shutters, (pains me to say) landscaping setbacks, ...

aimanbenbaha 2y ago

Thinking only flat areas are ripe for high-density urbanism is still a NIMBY mentality. Where I'm from there were much worse constraints yet the rate of growth by which cities are developed vastly outclasses the YIMBYest cities in the US let alone California. There should be respect to the families that lost their property. But it's not insulting to suggest that NIMBY development exarcebates disasters like this. Heck if land use was as productive as it should in America most of those families wouldn't have a good chunk of their wealth evaporates as a result of a natural disaster, and rebuilding would've been hella more faster and cheaper.

scoofy 2y ago

"You can't build dense buildings on a mountain side" What are you talking about?!? Downtown San Francisco has easily 4x the density of the area and it's built on mountains. Italy has dense villages on the sides of mountains all over the place. The idea that nobody can build density in 2025 because of some type of geological feature is just ridiculous, self-serving, nothing should change ever talk.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
None of SF's dense apartment buildings are on hills, there is a good reason for that. You could terrace them like they do in Chongqing, but even in HK they tend to build in valleys between mountains except for luxury condo housing (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Levels). Italy follows the same pattern as SF.
- scoofy 2y ago
  That's just not true. Russian Hill has plenty of highrises that were built in the 1970s: https://maps.app.goo.gl/LukSfpMG5DnumTL79 https://maps.app.goo.gl/LukSfpMG5DnumTL79 The point isn't that LA should force the area to be highrises. The point is that it should be legal, in a housing crisis, to increase the density of one of the lowest density neighborhoods in LA, which is already an incredibly low density city. Literally just building row houses instead of SFH's would easily double the density. Three-unit row houses like in much of hilly SF would increase the density by 6x. The idea that we either need skyscrapers or SFH's is exactly the problem with our zoning laws. People should be able to build multi-unit when the demand is there.
kristjansson 2y ago
The point was that the headline numbers don't really represent the amount of existing development that was destroyed. There's been lots of comparisons of the area to e.g. Manhattan which I think drives some of these think-pieces that act like there's a city-sized blank-canvas area to rebuild. Could we have built on more of the burned-over mountainside? Maybe? I'm not sure SF is the right comparison though. Just the developed portion affected by the Palisades fire ranges from sea level to 450m elevation (over ~2.5mi straight-line distance); Temescal Peak is 650m. Most of developed peninsular SF is below 100m elevation. Its more like trying to densifiy Berkely or Pacifica or Carmel by building apartment buildings up their hills. Doable? Probably. But why go to the trouble? Why take the fire and seismic risk of building dense housing on a mountainside when LA is spoiled for space in the basin and valley?