Not that anyone cares, but I’d just like to give an example of why Los Angeles (actually in this case, Santa Monica) is hopelessly lost when it comes to urban planning. Check out the video below. Yes, those are beautiful full-growth Ficus trees being cut down (along the entire street, although only a few are shown in the video below) … to widen the street so traffic can flow, flow, flow (or so the sidewalks don’t crack, or so that shop signs can be better seen, or… whatever lame reason they need to justify themselves). Yes, L.A. and Santa Monica are that stupid… and the saddest thing is that people actually think this is a good thing.
Voters in California faced two competing ballot initiatives on June 3 that will impact both the government’s use of eminent domain (i.e. taking private land for some other purpose) and rent control (restricting the allowable rent for some units).
Proposition 98: essentially restricts any government act that restricts the use of private property, including the elimination of rent control. This is the most “private-sector” friendly of the two ballot initiatives, prohibiting all public “takings”. The measure does, however, include a provision that rent-controlled units in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Monica would still be set by current rent-control measures when tenants leave, so it doesn’t get rid of rent control entirely.
Proposition 99: restricts government from taking owner-occupied housing, but retains rent control. This is the most “public-sector” friendly of the two. One unclear impact: whether, for example, rent control would still apply to a rented duplex unit where the owner lives in one of the units, since imposing rent-control on this unit would constitute a “taking” on an owner-occupied unit.
I believe that Prop 99 goes too far and Prop 98 doesn’t go far enough. That said, I recommend NO on 98 and YES on 99. Proposition 99 goes too far because it effectively means that *any* public action constitutes a “taking” and thus requires public compensation. For example, any laws that restrict building height could be seen as a “taking”. Don’t get me wrong, there are serious flaws to our current zoning practices; zoning reform is something that we desperately need. But in effect, Prop 99 means that *all* efforts to plan for future growth could be viewed as a “taking”. It could either bankrupt cities (requiring compensation for any planning efforts) or simply eliminate planning altogether. For this reason, I recommend voting NO on 98.
Despite Prop 98’s flaws, it began with good intentions — that is, to prevent people from losing their homes and businesses because of eminent domain abuse. I’ve previously commented on one such abuse in Hollywood. The landmark Kelo v. New London case — which many planners applauded — was not a just outcome to those whose homes were taken and given to a private developer. So we should pass measures that prevent such abuses — not necessarily on property rights grounds, but on justice grounds. But, by extending the measure to include any public actions, Prop 98 becomes an ideological tool that would make it impossible to plan our cities at all. Prop 99, on the other hand, acknowledges the injustice of losing one’s own home to eminent domain abuse. Where it doesn’t go far enough is in protecting small businesses from losing their property, and thus, their livelihood, as was the case in the Hollywood case. So while it doesn’t go far enough, it begins to demarcate the limits of eminent domain, without doing harm, so we recommend voting YES on 99.
The above should not be taken as an endorsement of current rent control policies, however. I’m a strong advocate for affordable housing, and rent control does have a short-term role to play to prevent people from being displaced. But it is a stop-gas measure, at best. It is not a long-term solution to the problem of housing affordability. And while those of us who advocate for a more just society often see landlords as “anonymous greedy corporations”, the reality is, most landlords (at least in L.A.) are actually small businesses or owner-occupied homeowners who rent out a second duplex unit. So planners should not be lulled into believing that the clumsy tool we currently have (rent control) is the only, or even the best, means of achieving affordable housing. It is not.
Other measures — inclusionary zoning and a more robust Section 8 voucher program, in particular — are more effective, particularly in L.A. Why? In L.A., only units built before 1978 are controlled. Thus, older units — those in most need of repair — are rent-controlled in perpetuity. At a certain point, the costs of upkeep outweigh the income generated by the controlled rents. So many landlords let them fall into disrepair or redevelop it — tearing down the building in favor of new condos, which are market-rate (note that rent control does not protect tenants from the landlord removing the units from the rental market through demolition or condo-conversion). This, of course, has the opposite effect as intended (which is to ensure a supply a rent-controlled apartments). Moreover, rent control applies to the unit (not the tenant) without any controls over *who* gets the unit (i.e. whether they need affordable housing or not). Indeed, many who could afford market rents take rent-controlled units that should otherwise be available to those who cannot. So, rent control is a very clumsy tool to achieve what we want — a renewable supply of affordable housing for those who need it.
Inclusionary zoning is a better approach. Here, a dedicated portion (10-20% of units) of allnew projects of a certain size (say, more than 9 units) in all areas of the city are restricted to those earning less than 80% of median area income (moderate income), 50% (low-income), or 30% (very low income) for a set period of time (50 years). In exchange, developers get regulatory incentives (more units though not necessarily more bulk; reduced parking; faster approvals) to offset their additional costs of building affordable units (note: an 800-sf units costs about $250,000 to build, but can only be sold for about $100,000, thus developers lose $150,000 on each affordable unit). But it is very controversial, because most homeowners don’t want multi-family housing of any kind, let alone those with “poor people”, in their neighborhoods. Politicians to date have acquiesced to join the protests against inclusionary zoning (or density bonuses). Most planners are double-bound in that they support both affordable housing and bottom-up planning. So far, buttom-up planning has won.
Likewise, section 8 vouchers, unlike rent control, are tied to the person — if you can’t afford market rent, the voucher will make up the difference (up to certain limits). People have more choice (although we need better legislation to ensure landlords don’t discriminate against voucher holders). The point here is that planners should not think that rent control is the answer. We need it to protect mass displacement, and to at least preserve the limited supply we have, but more often than not, these units are pretty grim because of the built-in disincentives to make reinvestments in those properties.
So, while Prop 99 is the better start to curb eminent domain abuse, it should not be taken to mean support for rent control as the sum total of our affordable housing strategy. We still have work to do to ensure we have a supply of affordable housing for those who cannot afford market rents.
On occasion of it being Earth Day, I thought a post on urban planning was in order, specifically regarding policies in Los Angeles (one of the least sustainable cities I know). I’ve never understood why L.A. can’t accommodate both the car and build mass transit. It isn’t either/or, as most Angelinos like to believe. Some people want to drive, others prefer to take transit (providing it is reliable, safe, and clean). Why limit choice by forcing people to drive?
But here’s what most people in L.A. don’t understand: current L.A. parking regulations don’t reflect reality, even in L.A. New market condos require 2.25 parking spaces per unit (or, in some cases, 2.5 spaces or even 2.75 spaces in special districts), regardless of the size of the unit. That literally means that they expect every single household to have 2 cars and every other household to have someone over for dinner every other night (0.25 guest spaces). Since this doesn’t reflect reality, what we get are fewer housing units and a lot of expensive empty parking spaces in new buildings.
In most cases, parking requirements in L.A. — not density — is what limits how many units of housing can be built. You simply cannot park the required number of cars on the site, so you build fewer units than is allowed. In many cases, you can only build about 75% of the number of units allowed by zoning. We are literally choosing to house cars over people, because the more cars you house, the less housing units you get. What’s worse: because it costs so much money and space to build the required parking (and because they can’t get the number of units allowed on the site), developers are forced to build bigger units, which means there are few small (and thus more affordable) market-rate units available. That L.A. hasn’t met its housing demand in over a decade is one symptom of the problem (even now, with prices falling due to the mortgage meltdown, there still is more demand than supply).
But here’s the rub: if you look at the number of cars vs. the number of housing units in L.A., you find that on average, there are about 1.4 cars per unit (which is to say that about half of households have 1 car and half have 2 cars, and a few even have none!). Adding 0.25 guest spaces per unit and the actual number of spaces required per unit in L.A. is 1.65. Now, let’s be clear: 1.65 spaces per unit is a very high number. In New York City, by comparison, there are 1.7 million registered vehicles for 3.4 million housing units — a ratio of 0.50 per unit — 3.3 times fewer than the 1.65 required in L.A. So, indeed, L.A. is a driving city. But we need only 1.65, not 2.25.
Think about it, we could reduce the parking standard by over 25% — from 2.25 to 1.65 parking spaces per unit and still accommodate all the cars required in L.A.; this would allow us to build over 25% more housing units without even changing the density (since in many cases, as I said above, you can only build about 75% of the allowable units).
Now imagine if we required all projects throughout the city (over a certain size, let’s say 10+ units) to set aside 10% of the units as affordable. It’s a win-win for everyone. We accommodate cars at the ratio required for L.A. (1.65 spaces per unit), developers get over 15% more market units and we institute a mechanism to generate 10% affordable units for every new project in the city. All it takes is leadership.
How do you know when we’ve lost it? When you cut a $55 million program that helps mentally ill homeless people in order to preserve a $45 million tax break for people who buy yachts. Yes, you read that right. See for yourself. Un-f-ing-believable. Yes, that pisses me off.
Every now and then, I read an article that infuriates me so much that I have to challenge it. An article in this morning’s L.A. Times by Sharon Bernstein entitled “Southern California is becoming a tight fit” is such an article; sadly, it’s typical of what happens in L.A.
The article is a not-so-covered critique of Southern California’s shift towards more urban (and more sustainable) mode of living — a trend that Bernstein laments in her nostalgic loss of the good ol’ days when L.A. was a white, Protestant Eden (Bernstein notes that “the region’s history [was] as a haven for people who moved west to escape the cramped apartments of their metropolitan hometowns”). What’s the problem? To Bernstein and her NIMBY neighbor friends to whom she so frequently gives a voice, the problem is the usual suspects: “overcrowding” and of course, traffic. As Bernstein warns: “the shift has implications for infrastructure, congestion, schools and even the style of neighborhoods, as apartments encroach on single-family enclaves.” (Note: apartments aren’t encroaching on single-family areas, because R1 zoning precisely protects single-family houses from being replaced by multi-family apartments).
Bernstein proceeds to claim that “top planners say that if cities and counties are not careful about where they place these high-density projects, the development could overcrowd schools, burden water, sewer and power systems and make traffic worse.” Yet, apparently, she could find no reputable physical planners (from the city or reputable academics, not even the ubiquitous sprawl-lover Joel Kotkin…) to back up her claims, instead relying on the testimony of her Neighborhood Council and Homeowner Association friends (whose raison d’etre is to maintain the status quo) to substantiate her claims. To be fair, she does quote Mark Pisano (head of SCAG), but he more a bureaucrat than planner, as evidenced by his misinformed claims that the City has allowed development in areas without amenities (like public transportation); this is despite the fact virtually all of L.A.’s new high density development is occurring along the arterial boulevards and around transit stops. (And by the way, there are really only two ways to build transit: subsidize it until the density arrives or build the density that creates the demand for transit. And guess what? L.A. has tried the former and people don’t want to subsidize it, so we’re on to Plan B, build the density first).
“What we have is a city in crisis,” said Ellen Vukovich, a board member of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. “I don’t know how long the homeowners are going to be able to stem the tide.” (Note: the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association, SOHA, recently appealed on spurious grounds — and lost — a decision by City Planning for a mixed-use development along Ventura Boulevard, a project that had already been reduced from 118 to 88 units. Their mission, it seems, is to block all development on their ‘turf’. A casual search reveals SOHA has appealed numerous projects and often threatens litigation to gets its way. I hate to be the bearer of bad news by the Sherman Oaks “neighborhood” is home to 60,000 people, hardly “a village” as they like to believe).
And more: “We’re just trying very hard to preserve some semblance of human-scale life here,” said Barbara Burke, who is a vice president of the Studio City Neighborhood Council but who said she was speaking as a homeowner. “The congestion is huge.” (Note: the high limit along most of Ventura Boulevard — covered by L.A.’s “1VL” height district — is a whopping 45 feet i.e. 5 stories).
But the crux of the matter is revealed at the end of the article: “Vukovich, of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn., said plenty of people still want to live in quiet single-family neighborhoods and worry that their ability to do so will be reduced as more condos are built.”
Let me translate that for you: because a few rich white people don’t want to be inconvenienced by traffic congestion, they feel it is their right to deny less well-off people a roof over their head. And that’s what this really comes down to: the inconvenience of a few who scream loudly vs. whether or not the workers of this city have a roof over their head. Apparently, it is OK for rich people to hire Latinos for minimum wage, and have them take a bus for two hours from East L.A. (the only place they can afford, given that L.A. hasn’t met its annual housing demand for 15+ years) to the Westside and South Valley, as long as they go back to the “other” side at the end of the day. People like Vukovich and Burke want you to believe that we actually have a choice here — that we can simply choose to block housing and people will just go away. Unless we build a wall around L.A., you have two choices: to house the people that are here, or not. Apparently the problem isn’t really overcrowding — that’s precisely what the Vukovichs and Burkes of the world have already created by blocking housing — they are OK with it over there (East L.A.), they just don’t want multi-family housing on their turf, because, good golly, it might take them an extra two minutes to drive to Starbucks. Only in a city as decadent as L.A. could you get away with allowing the inconvenience of a few trump the housing need of many. And you know what’s the sad part? These people see themselves as progressive. Think again, people.
An article in the L.A. Times this morning tells us that Southern California is expected to grow from 19.5 million people in 2000 to 31.6 million in 2050. The article speaks to native South Landers fixation with traffic congestion. People here in SoCal believe that building more roads and widening or decking existing ones will “solve” the traffic problems. They are wrong. More roads = more cars = more traffic. Even building more mass transit (commuter rail, bus rapid transit, light rail, subways) won’t even begin to make a dent.
I would argue that dealing with traffic, at least initially, has nothing to do with transportation. In fact, give the narrow-minded transportation planners the chance (narrow-minded in that their singular goal is not to build great cities, but rather to simply move cars around), and we’ll make matters worse. It’s the land use pattern, stupid. The first step is to change the way we build. So much of Southern California was built upon the premise that everyone should have their 1/4-acre of paradise (complete with detached house, 2 cars and a pool), even if the state had to subsidize the infrastructure and negative impacts (to our health and the environment) to realize that goal.
An untested theory of segregating land use — in the name of “modernization” — was put into practice. So, we created separate zones for sleeping, for working, for making things, for playing, for shopping, etc. If you think about it, it’s a ridiculous theory. Obviously, if every individual has to drive from place to place, for free no less (and assuming they have the means to afford personal transportation), to do everything they need to do throughout the day, obviously the theory of unlimited mobility will quickly turn into the reality of immobility (congestion). And so it is today in Southern California. Indeed, Southern California has the dubious honor of being home to some of the most congested freeways in the U.S.
The first step is clear — throw away the failed theory that land uses should be segregated. To do so, we must first abandon the myth that cities are static things that never change. When people talk of “protecting” their neighborhood, they mean freezing it in time. Impossible. Cities are in constant flux, responding to social, economic and political forces. People needn’t fear change. Change isn’t bad if it brings better outcomes for everyone.
Contrary to popular belief, most traffic is actually generated by convenience trips, not work trips. Why should I have to drive to get a quart of milk? To drop off the kids? To pick up my dry-cleaning? To go for a walk in the park? And so on. So, the first thing we need to do is allow (but not mandate) mixes of uses in all development. Developers aren’t suicidal — they aren’t going to put in retail uses where there is no demand for it. It is a fallacy to think that good neighborhoods are made up of only single family detached houses.
Good neighborhoods have conveniences — corner stores, restaurants, coffee shops, banks, grocery stores, parks, libraries, etc. It ain’t convenient if you have to drive for such conveniences. Changing land use patterns to allow for good neighborhoods (as opposed to land-segregated neighborhoods) will require an attitude adjustment to be sure. People must recognize and reverse the racism and class-ism that currently motivates their efforts to deny lower- and middle-income people a right to housing (which is what happens when you prohibit multi-family housing across most of the landscape). Good neighborhoods have a range of housing options, from single family detached houses, townhouses, 5-to-6 story apartment buildings alike.
It all starts with housing. Affluent Southern Californians must acknowledge the massive housing shortage that is caused by the desire to “protect” their neighborhoods from multi-family housing. When housing is in such short supply, competition for the few units that are available becomes fierce. Prices soar. People then must seek lower-cost alternatives further away (and they are lower-cost because the public policy is to subsidize that form of development). And traffic problems accelerate. Taxpayers need to demand better return on investment — why should we pay for all the infrastructure (roads, sewers, schools, light standards, etc) for 4 households per acre when the same infrastructure could supply 80 households per acre? Is it any wonder that California municipalities are, by and large, bankrupt?
So what happens when you allow more compact, more mixed-use development? Initially, traffic gets worse before it gets better, because it takes time for all those conveniences to infill to the point where it is more convenient to walk to a corner store than to drive to the mini-mall. But as neighborhoods become rich mixes of uses, with a range of housing options for everyone, convenience trips decrease. And the conversation shifts from simply moving people around the city, to the things that really matter — how to improve our schools, keep our streets safe, make better communities. And with a 60% increase in population expected over the next 40 years or so, it’s time that Southern Californians change their thinking. If they don’t, they will suffer the consequences. And they will have no one to blame but themselves.
It is surely a sign of the times that we subsidize driving while at the same time our public transit systems are so starved for cash. North Americans believe that it is a god-given right to have free access to roads. It is not. It’s time for cities like Los Angeles and Toronto to have the political leadership to do the right thing, even if it is unpopular.
In Toronto, you pay for the greater convenience of having less congestion on the privately-run Highway 407 (to avoid the chronically congested 401). But while the 407 tolls are profit for a private company, tolls on public roads would be reinvested in the transportation system — a portion could be set aside into a fund that is reinvested (to build a pool of funds for the long-term), a portion could be set aside for immediate maintenance of the roads, a portion could be set aside for new capital public transit projects, and a portion could be set aside to pay for the impacts of highway use (smog, CO2, asthma treatment, etc). It’s good public policy.
Traditional opposition to road tolling comes from the right who see it as another tax grab by big government. But free-market proponents argue road tolls is an effective means of properly accounting for the true impact of their use. Many on the left also oppose road tolls because they believe that we’ll end up pricing the poor off of roads, so that highways will become the exclusive domain of the rich. Moreover, since housing on the urban periphery is typically lower than in the central city (at least in L.A. and T.O.), many lower-income households live relatively far out and have no choice but to drive (because there isn’t effective transit in the periphery). But part of the reason why housing on the periphery is cheaper is precisely because municipalities don’t have to pay for public transit infrastructure — transportation (in the form of highways) is paid for by higher levels of government, subsidized to the benefit of tract housing developers. And it isn’t just transportation that is subsidized. When you build at low densities, fewer households are using the same amount of other forms of infrastructure — sewers, schools, street lights, surface streets, and so on. While an acre of urban land might serve 80 units, peripheral housing might serve only 4 units (i.e. a house on a 1/4-acre lot = 4 dwellings per acre) — 20 times less. I’m not opposed to everyone having a single family detached house. But the cost of that pattern of development is not being paid by those who choose it. We could charge higher impact fees (which will be passed along to the consumer). But we can also charge directly for the use of road infrastructure.
We all pay for a certain amount of infrastructure (of all kinds) whether we use it or not — and we do so because we cannot provide it for ourselves as individuals more effectively. But this base level funding doesn’t cover all the costs. In the case of highways, who pays for the lost hours due to congestion? Who pays for pollution? and the associated health impacts? Right now, nobody (or, if anyone, the government, which again means the cost of low-density, auto-dependent development is being borne by everyone). I believe that if you use it, you should pay for it. Clearly, those who use L.A.’s Metro of the TTC in Toronto pay every time they step on board. Why shouldn’t we expect the same for highway users?
Unlike many public policies that are politically expedient, but poor on performance, road tolling delivers results, and can promote change. If it suddenly costs you something to use the highways, maybe you will need to partner up with a buddy and carpool. Maybe you’ll buy a more fuel efficient car to offset the toll costs. Maybe you will give public transit a try. If its not available, maybe you’ll demand it. And if you have the means, maybe you’ll decide that spending dollars of gas and tolls would be better spent on a higher mortgage (thus building equity instead) on a house that is closer to your work or more centrally located (where you can avoid highways and maybe even use transit). Do the math: if you drive 60 miles from home to work and back (120 miles per day), 22 days/month at 20 miles/gallon and $3.50/gallon, that’s $462 per month in gas. A $5 toll each way for 22 days adds another $220/month. That’s $682/month. How much more could you have spent on your house to live in more central (non-highway dependent) location? At 7% interest for a 30-year loan, that extra $682 translates into $100,000 in house value. Wouldn’t that be a better investment that burning through gas and toll charges every month?
Our taxes help pay for roads, transit and everything else. So the notion that “I’ve already paid for the roads with my taxes” (and thus should not have to pay a toll) is no more valid than a transit user saying “I’ve already paid for the system with my taxes” (and thus should not have to pay for a ticket). The cost of transportation isn’t free. It’s high time that cities like Los Angeles and Toronto recognize this and implement highway tolls.
Details about Harvard professor Robert Putnam’s (of Bowling Alone fame) mega-study on civic engagement are beginning to trickle out — and spun — by conservatives (for example, see John Lloyd’s piece in the Financial Times “Study paints bleak picture of ethnic diversity” and Steve Sailer’s subsequent article in the American Conservative entitled “Fragmented Future”). According to Lloyd and Sailer, the study concludes that diversity is bad for civic engagement — an indictment of multiculturalism and diversity, they say. Putnam himself has not come to that conclusion, and in fact, was angered by the way Lloyd spun his findings, calling the FT article “by two degrees of magnitude, the worst experience I have ever had with the media.” In particular, Lloyd and Sailer point to L.A. — as Lloyd says “Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, ‘the most diverse human habitation in human history.’” I’ve never been entirely sold on Putnam’s negative view that social capital is in decline. Certainly, small towns are more likely to know each other’s neighbors and lend a helping hand than in big cities, and yes, we are witnessing increased urbanization. But city folks have strong social networks too. But you need to look more closely at the neighborhood level — not all neighborhoods are the same; some are quite active, and some are not. In other cases, urban social networks span across geography to “communities of interest”.
I would disagree that L.A. has low social capital. In fact, some of the strongest citizen-led movements were born in L.A. — I’m thinking here of the Bus Riders Union, Justice 4 Janitors, and LANE (Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy). But that civic engagement was born out of a struggle for social justice — a desire to overcome what many saw as systemic oppression. Does this kind of civic action constitute social capital? I would say yes. Putnam’s conclusion illustrates what happens when you don’t think spatially. One of the more serious flaws of Putnam’s work is its lack of geographic specificity. It’s impossible to treat “Los Angeles” as a whole, because it exists as a series of radically different neighborhoods (some of which are separate municipalities). If you treat L.A. as a whole, you may well conclude that there is low civic engagement — that’s because L.A. is America’s most economically- (and ethnically-) segregated city. My sense is that there is low civic engagement in homogeneous communities because a) they are either so rich or b) they are so poor that neither have the time nor inclination to self-organize. My experience is that diverse neighborhoods in L.A., however, are well-organized and among the most socially active — sadly, the motivation of which, however is a struggle to overcome deep poverty.
So you might find low civic engagement in both the very rich Westside (except if you characterize NIMBYism as civic engagement!) and the very poor East L.A. The Westside (Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades) is almost entirely white, while East L.A. is almost entirely Latino. There is scant poverty on the Westside, but at least one-third of East LAers live in poverty. You can see this by comparing difference Zip Codes:
Not Diverse/White: 90210 (Beverly Hills) — 4.9% Latino, 1.3% Black, 4.8% Asian 90077 (Bel Air) — 4.0% Latino, 1.6% Black, 6.7% Asian 90049 (Brentwood) — 4.6% Latino, 1.2% Black, 6.8% Asian 90272 (Pacific Palisades) — 3.6% Latino, 0.8% Black, 4.5% Asian
Not Diverse/Latino: 90023 (East L.A) — 97.8% Latino, 0.4% Black, 0.7% Asian 90063 (East L.A.) — 96.8% Latino, 0.5% Black, 1.2% Asian 90022 (East L.A.) — 96.3% Latino, 0.5% Black, 0.7% Asian 90033 (East L.A.) — 92.3% Latino, 1.5% Black, 3.6% Asian
So, I wouldn’t expect a lot of civic engagement in these zip codes. Obviously, research would have to be conducted to study this, but it’s my sense that diverse areas have higher civic engagement (note: that doesn’t mean that diverse neighborhoods aren’t poor, however — many are; about the only non-poor L.A. areas are areas that are mostly white). Consider the following Zip codes:
Diverse/Mixed: 90012 (Chinatown) — 30.1% Latino, 16.8% Black, 31.9% Asian 90013 (Skid Row) — 26.0% Latino, 37.9% Black, 13.6% Asian 90014 (Fashion District) — 25.3% Latino, 28.6% Black, 26.7% Asian 90007 (Pico Union) — 58.2% Latino, 12.8% Black, 10.7% Asian
If Putnam’s unit of analysis was more geographically fine-tuned (rather than treating L.A. as a whole), I think you would reach a different, in fact, opposite conclusion — that diverse neighborhoods are, in fact, very socially active places (but unfortunately for L.A., what motivates social action is often the challenge of overcoming deep poverty). If diverse places are the place that are most socially active, it’s hard to make the argument that diversity is bad for civic engagement.
Republican California Governor today announced his plan to achieve universal healthcare in California. The plan would:
– require employers with 10 workers or more to buy insurance for their workers or pay a fee of 4% of their payroll into a program to help provide coverage for the uninsured.
– tax doctors 2% of their gross revenue and place a 4% tax on hospitals.
– ban insurers from refusing to offer coverage to some individuals because of their prior medical conditions.
– require insurers to spend at least 85% of their premium revenues on patient care, a move that would limit the amount companies spend on administrative costs and profits.
– provide insurance (through the state’s Health Families program) to children whose parents make less than three times the poverty level. That works out to about $60,000 for a family of four.
– require every Californian to have health insurance. As Schwartenegger said, “If you can’t afford it, the state will help you buy it,” he said, “but you must be insured.”
This is an ambitious plan to reform California’s healthcare system. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Stay tuned.
L.A. crime has fallen for the 5th straight year — down 4% over last year. In some gentrifying areas, such as Hollywood and Rampart Divisions, crime was down twice as much. In 2006, there was 464 homicides. By my calculations, in a city of 4,097,340 that’s a rate of 11.3 homicides per 100,000 population. By comparison, in 2005, Toronto had 78 homicides in a city of 2,481,494 for a rate of 3.1 per 100,000 population — 3.6 times less than L.A.
Here are some 2003 numbers for some U.S. cities (homicides per 100,000 population):
New Orleans — 57.7
Washington — 44.0
Baltimore — 41.9
Detroit — 39.4
Hartford — 35.9
Atlanta — 34.3
Oakland — 26.8
Philadelphia — 23.3
Buffalo — 21.9
Chicago — 20.6
Miami — 19.4
Milwaukee — 18.5
Dallas — 18.4
Kansas City — 18.4
Phoenix — 17.2
Houston — 13.6
Los Angeles — 13.4
Nashville — 13.0
Minneapolis — 12.1
Las Vegas — 11.9
Denver — 11.1
San Francisco — 8.9
New York — 7.4
Boston — 6.6
Seattle — 5.6
San Jose — 3.2
Honolulu — 1.7
Source here and here.
