Why is that? And what are individuals, organizations, and government doing to improve Los Angeles communities? These were a few of the questions tackled at the downtown Los Angeles panel titled “How Do You Fix a ‘Bad’ Neighborhood?”

Zócalo editorial director Sara Catania, the event’s moderator, opened by asking Los Angeles City Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who represents South Los Angeles and grew up there, to explain why his family left the neighborhood.

Harris-Dawson explained that their move coincided with larger American trends—urban deindustrialization and the crack cocaine epidemic. “A place that was safe and was nurturing became completely unsafe, unstable, and downright destructive,” he recalled.

UC Irvine criminologist Charis E. Kubrin said her research has shown that large-scale structural changes in cities such as the ones Harris-Dawson mentioned shape local neighborhoods. “I’m interested in why crime clusters where it does, why it occurs where it does,” she said. “To understand that you have to know how neighborhoods are shaped by larger social forces.”

That holds true for St. John’s Well Child and Family Center/Harbor-UCLA Medical Center pediatrician Chris Mink. “You think one child, one doctor in one office,” she said. “I am one-on-one with the child, but everyone in the community is there with me.” An obese child may be living in poverty, for example, with food insecurity Mink explained. To combat that, she added, you need a grocery store where the family can buy good food, a parent with a job to buy that food, and a park that’s safe for the child to go out and play.

As president and chief operating officer of the Gang Reduction & Youth Development Foundation (the GRYD Foundation), Adrienne Newsom is trying to combat some of these issues through programs like the Summer Night Lights series. Summer Night Lights keeps the lights on at parks in neighborhoods dealing with gang-related violence and also creates events and programs (from sports and food to gardening) for the entire family after hours. The program, said Newsom, is about taking people who live in areas where it’s hot during the summer and who feel cooped up inside, and giving them the chance to come out with their families and enjoy themselves.

“How do you take an example like that where you see success with a program,” Catania asked Harris-Dawson, “And translate that into action on your end?

Harris-Dawson, who was involved in the beginnings of Summer Night Lights as a community organizer, said that it’s two-fold: People and organizations talking to neighborhood residents first, then doing things with the community. Summer Night Lights “created a platform for connection,” he said. “No one knows more than the people living in a block, or a neighborhood, what it takes to bring that place to the next level.” It’s not just poverty but disconnectedness, from both your neighbors and the police, he added, that causes crime.

Kubrin said that communities with less crime have a very close relationship with their police force. “There’s communication, there’s trust,” she said. It goes both ways, too, she explained. People feel they can go to the police if they have a problem. And “the police rely on the community members to help do their job.”

Harris-Dawson pointed to the LAPD’s Community Safety Partnership Program, which places officers in a specific neighborhood for a five-year period and evaluates them not on arrests, but on participating in community activities as a successful way of building such relationships. “Residents know police, and police know residents,” he said.

Resilience and grit have become buzzwords for talking about individuals who rise out of difficult circumstances, said Catania. “Can a community have resilience? Can a community have grit?”

Yes, said the panelists, but they can’t do it without having support from beyond their communities in fixing structural disadvantages and providing necessary resources. “You can have all the grit you want” in a struggling neighborhood, said Kubrin, but “you are from behind at the start.”

Harris-Dawson said that it has to start with creating “a situation where people’s basic needs can be met,” like having the time and money to cook healthy meals. Too often, we marvel at the rose that grows through the concrete. “I’m like, break up the concrete, there are a bunch of flowers under there,” he said.

So what can be done to transform a “bad” neighborhood?

“I think one thing would be to have some type of town forum, so to speak, where we can actually hear from residents what their perceptions are of their neighborhood and what they think are some of the solutions,” said Newsom. It’s more than that, however. “There needs to be a mindset change, too,” she said.

For Harris-Dawson, it comes down to kids. “Every child has to have their basic needs met. A caring adult in their life. Something meaningful to do. And someone to love,” he said. “I think if you do those things, almost every problem’s solved.”

Mink said that we know what a good neighborhood looks like: “It’s safe, loving, and nurtures growth for everybody,” she said. “There are so many things we need to do and we know how to do” to make those neighborhoods happen. “We just have to get people invested.”

That takes resources. “Where does that money come from?” asked Catania.

The money is there, the panelists agreed. Unfortunately, most of it is going into what Kubrin called “back-end criminal justice solutions” rather than “front-end prevention.” The state, she said, spends $60,000 per year to house a prisoner.

What, asked Harris-Dawson, would happen if you spent that money paying people decent salaries instead?

In the question-and-answer session, audience members asked for advice on dealing with problems in their communities, how the panelists tackle various challenges, and their takes on a few different programs.

“If an inner-city residential neighborhood had a pocket park within a quarter mile of every resident, how valuable would this investment be?” To put a pocket park in every six to eight blocks, he said, would take just 1.2 percent of L.A.’s annual budget.

“It would help with health and wellness and stress relief,” said Newsom.

However, Harris-Dawson cautioned against parks without programming. “The park is identified as one of the most dangerous places” in many neighborhoods in South Los Angeles. A football league in the street, run by adults, is more beneficial to the community than a park without the type of programs GRYD runs, he said.

Another audience member asked what she can do to educate her neighbors about resources available to them, and get the community connected, even as she feels unsafe on her neighborhood’s streets. “What’s the first step?”

“It’s one slice at a time,” said Mink. She works with many foster children who face a number of different obstacles. Her hospital has tried to deal with these obstacles individually: A fundraiser for buying pajamas first, then one to provide lunch in the summer, and finally to buy backpacks for the school year. “Just one slice of the pie at a time,” she said.

The post To Fix a “Bad” Neighborhood, Connect the Neighbors appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

California is a state of large things: A 1,100-mile coastline and giant mountain ranges and big roads, bigger cities, and the biggest vistas. In such a sprawling place, with so much disconnection, how much could people care about their own little neighborhoods?

Answer: An awful lot.

This is a state of neighborhoods. And Californians are very devoted to their own. We identify ourselves as residents of neighborhoods (and even intersections) more frequently than as residents of towns and cities. We sense our own health and prospects through the places where we live. While surveys show we are mostly satisfied with our communities and our lives, we also want more from our neighborhoods.

Much more.

Californians’ hunger for neighborhoods that offer more opportunity is demonstrated in an extensive “Advancing Wellness” poll of Californians from the California Wellness Foundation and the Field Research Corporation. That love, and that hunger, bind the 30-some stories, including this column, that comprise a Zócalo Inquiry on California and the health of its neighborhoods.

To consume national media, you might think America is an especially anxious and pessimistic country now. But in the Advancing Wellness poll, some 90 percent of Californians are at least somewhat satisfied with how things are going in their lives; 91 percent of us are at least somewhat hopeful about the future. And 83 percent of us reported our own health as good, very good or excellent; just 4 percent of Californians in the survey said they were in poor health.

Such hope and optimism begins at home. Majorities of us see our own communities as healthy places to live, where people of diverse backgrounds get along and where we can find the parks, schools, public safety, groceries, and race relations we want.

But the picture is far from golden, particularly if you’re light on gold.

It is not news that California, by some measures, is our most unequal state. We lead the country in billionaires and are home to America’s richest region (the Bay Area), but we also have the nation’s highest poverty rate (when we measure the value of public assistance and the cost of living).

These differences are most intimately and deeply felt at the neighborhood level. Californians worry that the problems of their neighborhoods will determine their own fates. If your neighborhood is polluted and you don’t know your neighbors, will you have health problems and be disconnected from the institutions—in education, in health, in the economy—that might change your circumstances? California can be harder than most places on the poor: Affordable neighborhoods can require long commutes, which take a toll on health, on family finances, on the time you can spend with your kids or your parents. Californians fear neighborhoods that add to these struggles, and long for neighborhoods that better connect them to the different parts of life.

Instead of talking about the abstraction of inequality, we should think about the divide between the neighborhoods that nurture us and the neighborhoods that hold us back. The wall between those neighborhoods is built on money. “Perhaps the survey’s overarching finding is the extent to which the evaluations that Californians give to their community … is related to income,” reads the Field narrative of the survey.

The biggest income-related differences in how Californians see neighborhoods involve gangs and police. Just 28 percent of upper income Californians say gangs and gun violence are part of daily life, in the poll; 56 percent of low-income Californians say that. While 35 percent of upper-income residents report distrust and hostility between communities and the police, 62 percent of low-income Californians do. Seventy-three percent of upper-income Californians describe their community as at least very good on being a safe place to live; among low-income Californians, that figure is only 40 percent.

The environment of one’s neighborhood—ranging from air and water pollution to the level of civic engagement—is also divided around income. Some 31 percent of upper-income Californians agreed at least in part with a statement that they were regularly exposed to garbage, waste or pesticides in the environment; 53 percent of low-income residents agreed. Eighty-eight percent of upper-income residents saw their neighborhoods as offering good or excellent access to parks or open spaces; 60 percent was the figure among lower-income respondents.

And while 65 percent of upper-income Californians who participated in the poll report that residents take an active interest in their communities; just 39 percent of lower-income residents report the same of their own neighborhoods. The stories in the Zócalo inquiry are about people struggling, alone and in groups, to defy this divide, to change the fate of their neighborhoods, and thus, themselves.

There is one ambition driving some of these efforts that does not get much attention, but it shows up in the survey as well: Californians desperately want their neighborhoods to help them find jobs.

Jobs have not typically been talked about as a neighborhood issue. Public conversation about jobs tends to link employment to the national, international, or larger regional economy, and to trends outside the control of your neighborhood, from technology to education to trade. In the digital age, conventional wisdom runs the other way—that place matters less to your economic life. But millions of Californians have become unhappily accustomed to long commutes—from the places where we live to the places where we work. “Can your neighborhood get you a job?” is a fresh question.

It’s question that, increasingly, Californians want answered.

For all their happiness with their own communities, Californians aren’t pleased with their neighborhoods when it comes to employment. Fewer than half of those in the survey—44 percent— rated their own community as a good or excellent place to get a good job; 52 percent offered a negative rating. And just 28 percent of Californians said their community was good at offering job opportunities for those who most need them, like at-risk youth or the many Californians now returning to the labor force after doing time in prison.

The relationship between neighborhoods and jobs has a snowball effect. Among the top threats to community health identified by Californians in the poll were extended unemployment by residents, employment in high-stress jobs, or people having to work multiple jobs.

While conversation about community health often centers around quality of life questions, Californians see community health as fundamentally economic. And they’re right. And if our state can find answers to their concerns, we’d also be building a more cohesive California with higher incomes, better and more affordable housing, more accessible education, and smarter treatment of chronic health problems, and stronger responses to climate change.

Of course, Californians don’t all want exactly the same things from their neighborhoods.

Other surveys and rankings of the most popular Californian places to live are striking for the variety of cultures, economies, geographies, and climates people prefer, in neighborhoods from Folsom to Poway.

But the Advancing Wellness data show a strong correlation between how people feel about their own health and the level of opportunities they see in their very own neighborhoods. We want a rich mix of offerings—from schools to parks and especially to jobs—and we want them close by.

These days, the biggest California dreams begin at home.

The post Californians Want Much More From Our Neighborhoods appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

South L.A. is both a remaining stronghold of African Americans in Los Angeles and a place where a new narrative of immigrant integration is unfolding. There, a process of building on the past—or ethnic sedimentation—has taken hold. As a result, South L.A. is now seeing the emergence of complex new identities rooted as much in a pride of place as they are in a sense of race. The area has become home to a new sort of Latino identity and a new sort of immigrant integration, both inflected by blackness.

Understanding these changes is important not just for South L.A. but for the country as a whole. Many other urban areas have been ravaged by unemployment, riven by immigration, and riddled by the rise of gangs and the hyper-criminalization of African Americans, especially, and Latinos. The kind of positive social innovation that’s happening in South L.A. as community organizations forge a Black-Latino unity could be instructive, with the lessons stretching beyond our majority-minority region and time, and touching on the future of the nation.

These conclusions come from research done by a team of colleagues and students at USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration in South L.A. over the past few years. We’ve observed public spaces, done detailed research in and on neighborhoods, and conducted interviews with 100 Latino residents and nearly 20 local civic leaders of all backgrounds. Our research team members are publishing the results in a new report, Roots|Raíces: Latino Engagement, Place Identities, and Shared Futures in South Los Angeles, combining our analysis with specific recommendations for South L.A.’s future.
 
 
Shifting Spaces: Demographic Change in South L.A.

If there is a constant in South L.A., it is change. Once farmland, the area became the paradigm for white industrial suburbs in the 1920s through the post-war period. Black L.A., always a presence, grew dramatically in the war years, particularly along Central Avenue. After racially restrictive housing covenants fell, the black community moved south and west. By 1970, South L.A.—stretching from Interstate 10 to the north, the Alameda Corridor to the east, Imperial Highway to the south, and Baldwin Hills to the west—was 80 percent African American.

But time—and demographics—didn’t stand still. In the 1980s, job loss from deindustrialization and a toxic combination of high crime and excess policing forced many African Americans to reconsider their futures in the area. The 1992 civil unrest gave another push and as the exodus stepped up, Latinos moved into the neighborhood. Many were immigrants driven from Latin America by economic crises and civil wars, lured to the U.S. by changing labor demands, and unable to secure housing in densely packed traditional entry neighborhoods like Pico-Union. With the immigration flow also becoming more female and family-based, the search was on for affordable housing, and the single-family homes of South L.A. made for a good fit.

Non-Hispanic Black population in South L.A. in 1970 (left) and 2010 (right).
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Geolytics Inc.

Latino population in South L.A. in 1970 (left) and 2010 (right).
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Geolytics Inc.

The ethnic inflows and outflows were not balanced: More Latinos moved in than blacks moved out, and South L.A. became more crowded. Single-family homes frequently became multi-generational affairs, and Latino homeownership rates rose from 22 percent in 1980 to 33 percent in 2009-2013, nearly closing the gap with black homeownership. Now the area that has long been the beating heart of Black Los Angeles—South L.A.—is nearly two-thirds Latino.

The uptick in home ownership—as well as a steady increase in the share of South L.A. immigrants with more than 20 years in the country—signals the process of sinking roots. By contrast, other measures of “integration” or rootedness have remained low, including English-language acquisition and civic engagement. Here is evidence of a rooted but disconnected population: In 2013, while 47 percent of immigrants in Los Angeles County were naturalized citizens, just 26 percent of immigrants in South L.A. had that status.
 
 
Latinos in South L.A.: Generational Experiences

The first generation of immigrants in the neighborhood has complex attitudes towards their neighbors. In our interviews, older Latinos sometimes spoke of racial suspicion or, more commonly, simply noted relationships with African Americans that were polite but not close. But the very same individuals would later wax poetic about the African-American neighbor who guided them through the homeownership process, the black cop who set their errant hijo on the right course, and co-workers with whom they have shared struggles and triumphs.

What is clearer is that younger Latinos who grew up in South L.A.—the children of the elders—had very different experiences. The second generation has shared their lives with African-American neighbors—as classmates, teammates, and first loves. Said one Latino interviewee about interaction with African Americans, “You know, we grew up in each other’s homes, and we grew up together. So to us, it’s a similarity. They’re our people.” Another interviewee put it this way: “You are more in tune with the African-American community, you’re more mixed in.”

Strikingly, both generations are especially proud of being from South L.A.; they celebrate the neighborhood’s resilience in the face of challenges and injustice. Both older and younger Latino residents express a high degree of satisfaction with their community, seeing it as a place where they can realize their own version of the American Dream. Residents do not ignore the difficulties of life in South L.A., including household incomes for both blacks and Latinos that are far below the overall county average, but the struggle to overcome creates a tie that binds.

While the younger generation may indeed be “mixed in,” that has not necessarily translated to the public square. Latinos are dramatically underrepresented in political, non-profit, and other civic leadership roles. This is partly a consequence of the ways in which a more immigrant and younger population limits voting power; while South L.A. is nearly two-thirds Latino, Latinos comprised only 28 percent of the area’s voters in during the 2014 general election.
 
 
Bridging Race: Interdependence and Institutions

Moving forward, our analysis suggests that South L.A. needs strategies of both independence and interdependence. Independence includes leadership training for Latinos and the encouragement of naturalization and voter registration to coincide with the fight for the broader immigration reform.
Interdependence means avoiding “Latino triumphalism,” in which changing demographics yields a sort of “winner takes all, it’s our turn” kind of politics. While it may be easier for Latinos in communities where nearly everyone is Latino to pay less heed to coalition politics, such an approach is problematic in mixed South L.A., where effectively challenging racism (and, in particular, pervasive anti-blackness) and economic disparities requires the support of the whole neighborhood.

Bringing together groups while navigating differences is hard work, but some civic institutions in South L.A. are succeeding. One common thread among those doing black-brown unity work is a commitment to community organizing that is intentionally multi-racial in spirit and approach.

Organizers and civic leaders alike are especially sensitive to the palpable sense that Black Los Angeles is slipping away. To counter this, some organizations deliberately structure themselves so that blacks and Latinos have equal weight (even though the underlying populations may be more one group than another); for example, parent groups tend to be overwhelmingly Latino unless organizers make deliberate efforts to involve black parents.

Understanding personal histories, sharing stories of migration, and celebrating the struggle for civil rights in South L.A. can be key first steps. Organizers believe that such patient work pays off; for example, Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) started a successful campaign for green jobs by first hosting a frank and far-reaching discussion on the evolution of black and brown communities in South L.A. Many organizations also find it critical to point explicitly to how pervasive racism is in our nation—how it is woven into the ways our institutions and policies are expressed in everyday life, and how this helps explain the exclusion of communities like South L.A.

Fortunately, there is much on which to build: organizations like Community Coalition (CoCo), CADRE, SCOPE, Community Development Technologies (CD Tech), and other multi-racial organizing institutions are turning out leaders who are imbued in this type of transformational civic leadership. CoCo is a particularly interesting example of leadership development and promotion: It was founded by Karen Bass and Sylvia Castillo—black-brown from the start—and recently President and CEO Marqueece Harris-Dawson, an African American who is now councilmember for District 8, has been succeeded by longtime organizer, Alberto Retana.
 
 
Facing Forward: Toward a Shared Future

There is more to do. South L.A. needs to step up civic engagement in general and Latino civic engagement in particular. This will require creating on-ramps to civic life for people with little history of participation, through activities like beautifying parks and staging community concerts. It also will require an emphasis on leadership: deepening Latino leadership for multi-racial coalitions, while strengthening black-Latino alliances, and enhancing capacity for existing black-led and other South L.A. organizations.

The public narrative also needs to change. South L.A. may be an area with many needs, but it is also a place with tremendous assets. New transit lines are bringing both greater mobility and needed economic development. New organizations are building ties between communities and ethnic groups long portrayed as at odds. New and creative strategies to realize the promise of South L.A. are emerging, with the most recent example being the successful multi-year, multi-sector, and multi-racial effort to secure the Promise Zone designation that will bring more federal resources to a large swath of South L.A.

Civic engagement of Latinos as a share of the total population in South L.A. and L.A. County. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Geolytics Inc.

There are threats ahead. Nearly all the civic leaders we spoke with are worried about gentrification, particularly as downtown development spills south. Fears of displacement are not just economic; Blacks and Latinos alike worry that the community and neighborhoods they have fought so hard to build will be erased. Resisting—or, more accurately, taking advantage of rather than being taken advantage by new economic investments—will be an opportunity for new cross-community engagement.

In the last few years, knocking around the Twittersphere has been an inspiring hashtag, #WeAreSouthLA. It is meant to evoke a sense of pride in a place of struggle; it is frequently connected to people fighting for living wages and better schools, and against police abuse and racial discrimination. And if you peruse the tag, you will notice a myriad of faces, ethnicities, and genders all sharing joy about being from an area others have written off.
It is this more nuanced and dynamic picture of South L.A.’s past, present, and future that we have sought to capture—one in which organizing and civic engagement allow residents to achieve not only their of their own piece of the American Dream, but also their shared goal of economically vibrant, socially inclusive, and environmentally healthy communities.

The post The South Los Angeles Future Will Be Shared appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Their relative obscurity is striking because the district itself isn’t popcorn—it’s lobster, in more ways than one. It is the district full of riches that out-of-towners indulge in on visits to Los Angeles, the places that define us to the rest of the world. And, when viewed on a map, it looks a lot like a lobster, too, with the irregular boundaries bestowed on it in 2011 by the Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission.

I lived in the 4th for nearly 20 years, just off Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, and only recently relocated to the 2nd District in a neighborhood just west of the 4th’s northeastern terminus in Toluca Lake. Whether or not you’re one of the 4th’s quarter-million residents, in advance of the March 3 election for the district’s new councilmember, it’s a good time to take a tour of the lobster—and what it tells us about L.A.’s past, present, and future.

The 4th’s right “claw” is the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Sherman Oaks, home of the Sherman Oaks Galleria, the mall made famous by Frank and Moon Unit Zappa’s “Valley Girl.” Head south of Ventura Boulevard (“The Boulevard”), and you’ll see stately homes that, while pricey, are a relative bargain compared to similarly sized homes back over the hill.

Connect back to the body of the lobster via Mulholland Drive, and you’re in Laurel Canyon, the bucolic hillside community that inspired many 1960s and 1970s musicians, from Jim Morrison to Joni Mitchell. The music continues as you go further east into the Cahuenga Pass, home to the legendary Hollywood Bowl, where everyone from President Franklin Roosevelt to Los Angeles’ own Mötley Crüe has graced the stage.

Northeast of The Bowl, right next to the Universal City Metro Red Line subway station entrance, is California Historical Marker No. 151. Not just any landmark, No. 151 marks the site of Campo de Cahuenga, where the 1847 Treaty of Cahuenga was signed, ending the armed conflict between the U.S. and Mexico—which led directly to California’s admission to the Union. In true Hollywood fashion, you won’t find the original adobe structure there, but a reasonable Mission Revival facsimile built in 1923.

Head up the hill—or take the Universal Studios shuttle—and you’ll be at one of the most well-known amusement parks in the country. Universal is technically in an unincorporated part of the county, where neither the 4th nor the city of Los Angeles has jurisdiction. But most tourists are very likely staying at either the Sheraton or the Hilton, both located within Los Angeles city limits—and in the sprawling lobster body of the 4th.

Just to the north is the San Fernando Valley’s Toluca Lake neighborhood, once home to Bob Hope (whose estate is up for sale for a cool $23 million). Today, it’s prized by entertainment industry professionals and New York transplants, lured by uncharacteristically large lots and proximity to three of the major movie studios: Warner Brothers, Universal, and Disney.

Move back south and east through the Hollywood Hills, and you’ll be in Beachwood Canyon with its near-perfect views of the iconic Hollywood Sign. Further east, and you hit the lobster tail: Griffith Park. More than five times the size of New York City’s Central Park, Griffith’s got three golf courses, hiking trails, pony rides, kiddie trains, softball and soccer fields, an off-leash dog park, the Autry National Center of the American West, the Travel Town Museum, the Los Angeles Zoo, a 1926 carousel, the Greek Theater, and Griffith Observatory.

South of the park lies the old Rancho Los Feliz, now the community of Los Feliz, home to spectacular Spanish Revival mansions, stately 1920s-era homes rich in red brick and period masonry, and Craftsman-style “bungalows” that at one time represented the idyllic California lifestyle. Los Feliz is also home to one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous residences, Ennis House. This section of the 4th also includes the western edge of Silver Lake, the once-bohemian community now a poster child for gentrification.

The left claw of the lobster includes the well-heeled, vote-rich neighborhoods of Hancock Park, Windsor Square, and Larchmont Village. Election precinct walkers have expressed fondness for these neighborhoods, because one hardly has to glance at a “walk sheet” to determine whether a house has a registered voter. Nearly all of them do. But some of these neighborhoods have a dark history: From the early- to mid-20th century, house deeds in Hancock Park had restrictive covenants (now illegal) that prohibited home sales to African-Americans, Jews, Latinos, and other “nonwhites.”

From the mayor’s official residence, Getty House, in Windsor Square, the claw extends south of 6th Street and to the west on Los Angeles’ main street, Wilshire Boulevard. This sliver of the 4th includes the low-slung Park Mile neighborhood named for the a natural underground stream abutting area homes, and stretches south to Olympic Boulevard.

Head further west on Wilshire, and you’re in Art Deco and Streamline Moderne paradise as you enter the Miracle Mile—one of Los Angeles’ early 20th century “suburbs” once lined with department stores, from Desmond’s to Orbach’s to the May Company at Wilshire and Fairfax. One of the world’s most visited prehistoric fossil sites is also here—The La Brea Tar Pits (which conveniently translates into English as “The The Tar Tar Pits”). The Tar Pits are still a living, breathing, geological wonder, where methane bubbles out of the tar pools at all hours. Some nearby homeowners just south of Wilshire experience miniature versions of said wonders in their front yards and sidewalks, despite attempts to thwart advancing geology with strategically placed planters.

Just north of the Tar Pits is the Park La Brea apartment complex—which at one time was one of Los Angeles’ tallest structures. Home to 11,000 residents, its vote-rich population—especially among its senior residents—will be highly prized by the 14 candidates. North and west of Park La Brea are two of Los Angeles’ most popular destinations as measured by tour bus volume, The Original Farmers Market and developer Rick Caruso’s Italianate outdoor mall masterpiece, with some of the best glasswork outside of Murano, The Grove.

Though an influx of stands that feature French bistro food and Singaporean noodles have spiced up the 81-year-old Farmers Market’s fare, it’s the old standbys like Bob’s Coffee and Donuts that embody the place. The Grove’s Vegas-style water features and piped in Sinatra and Dean Martin tunes add to the shopping-meets-entertainment atmosphere that keeps customers lingering … and spending. The Grove thinks big—big enough, in fact, that its Christmas tree is 20 feet taller than the one at the United States Capitol. And who says Angelenos don’t take public transportation? Thousands of visitors each year take the free in-house trolley (modeled after the Red Cars that once crisscrossed the entire L.A. region) from one end of The Grove to the other, with its rooftop deck seats highly coveted by some 6-year-old daughters I’ve known.

The 4th is also home to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)—which has attracted more visitors in recent years with the addition of two popular works of public art: Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass” and Chris Burden’s “Urban Light.” At any given sunset, you’ll find tourists snapping iPhone shots in front of, around, and behind the 340-ton boulder that is “Levitated Mass”; come weekends at dusk, you’ll more likely than not see wedding photo sessions, modeling shoots, and tourist snapshots in and around the orderly rows of streetlights that make up “Urban Light.”

Given all the peculiarities of boundaries in Los Angeles, it’s fitting that the 4th has been represented since 2001 by L.A.’s consummate cheerleader, Tom LaBonge, a walking encyclopedia of knowledge about the city’s borders and neighborhoods. The seventh son in a family of eight boys, LaBonge has so much boundless energy he gives coffee the jitters.

Ever wonder why Olympic Boulevard is where it is? As LaBonge once schooled an audience in City Council Chambers, it’s because it used to be 10th Street, renamed Olympic Boulevard in honor of the 1932 Olympics—the 10th Olympiad—held here in Los Angeles. Ever think about why the usually staid, predictable grid of city streets sometimes splits, changes angles, or takes strange twists and turns? It’s because, as LaBonge told me on one of his frenetic neighborhood bicycle rides, the city of Los Angeles expanded in piecemeal fashion as old Spanish ranchos were acquired and annexed. Those street-splits and angle changes line up perfectly with the rancho borders, and they are depicted as faint pink dotted lines on the old spiral-bound Thomas Bros. Maps that predated GPS and MapQuest.

The candidates now vying to represent the entire lobster on the City Council in the March 3 elections are understandably talking mostly about traffic and development—the biggest concerns of the 4th’=’s likely voters. But the candidates should also be pressed to explain how they would handle the special responsibility of becoming custodian to some of Los Angeles’ greatest treasures. As Angelenos, the 4th belongs to us all.

The post L.A.’s Finest Lobster Is Up for Grabs appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

One of us used to live in a neighborhood near the intersection of Westwood and Santa Monica boulevards that exemplifies the sort of development spawned by the streetcar. The boulevards are lined with commercial structures and surrounded by blocks of multi-family housing, where Leah lived as a UCLA graduate student. Slightly further away from the major streets are single-family homes.

Today, we think of the streetcar’s impact on Los Angeles as a matter purely for the past. As early as the late 1910s, Angelenos began abandoning streetcars for increasingly affordable cars. The very last streetcar tracks were pulled out of the ground in 1963.

But in a very profound way, the streetcar retains a hold over Los Angeles. In recent research, we found that places near now-extinct streetcar stops remain notably denser today.

As economists who study cities and local governments, we wanted to understand how cities evolve over the long run. The project was sparked in part by a conversation we had walking down Hollywood Boulevard with an architect friend who pointed out some still-visible influences of the streetcar. How much of a city’s development can be explained by market forces? And how much is due to the long reach of the past?

To answer these questions, we calculated the shortest distance to the now-extinct streetcar for each of Los Angeles County’s 2.3 million properties. We then assigned to each property the population density of its neighborhood, and sorted properties by their distance to the streetcar.

Now look at the figure below. Take the first 400 properties–those closest to the streetcar. For those 400 properties, we find the average population density and average distance to the streetcar. This is the left-most blue dot in the below picture. Each subsequent blue dot reports the average for the next 400 properties by proximity to the streetcar.

The 6,000 blue dots in the picture draw out the close relationship between current population density and distance to streetcar stops. Locations less than half a kilometer from the extinct streetcar are more than twice as population-dense as locations two kilometers from the extinct streetcar.

Does this density come from many people in each housing unit, or from having many units–apartments or houses–on a piece of land? The figures below–using the same analysis as the one above–show clearly that population density near streetcars comes from having many housing units on land, not from having more people per housing unit.

Using neighborhood-level Census data going back to 1940, we found that L.A. County is denser than it used to be, but that places near streetcars were denser then–and remain denser now.
You can see this in the figure below. The top line traces population density at 0.3 kilometers from streetcar routes between 1940 and 2010. In 1940, places very close to streetcar routes have somewhat more than 3,000 people per square kilometer; today these areas have just under 6,000 people per square kilometer. But the difference in population density between places very close to streetcar routes and those farther away (2.7 kilometers) has remained the same from 1940 to 2010–a difference of about 3,000 people per square kilometer.

Why, after almost 100 years and the addition of literally millions of people to the metro area, does the population density of neighborhoods still reflect the extinct century-old transportation system?

One explanation is that streetcars were built in particularly nice places–and that this niceness, and not the streetcar, caused and continues to cause the density. But when we used statistical techniques to correct for this, we found that things specific to where the streetcar was located, such as the distance to a major road, or the location of modern transit nodes, account for only about one-third of what you see in the pictures above.

An alternative explanation for the density near streetcars is lingering old structures. In this explanation, places near the streetcar are getting less dense, but it’s a slow process as new, smaller and shorter structures replace older, larger and taller ones. Figure 6 above hints that this isn’t likely to be the case, since everywhere gets denser over time. When we look directly at whether old or new buildings near the streetcar are constructed more densely, we find no difference.

This leaves two remaining potential culprits for the density at extinct streetcars: land use regulation and the self-reinforcing economic benefits of density, which economists call agglomeration.

Both of these explanations suggest that near the streetcar we should see more clustering of businesses or dense residential construction, and regulations that allow greater density. And this is just what we find. Places near the streetcar are roughly 45 percent more likely to be in non-residential use, and are 40 percent more likely to be zoned non-residential. For residential properties, the zoning of land near the streetcar allows 25 percent more units.

In fact, we found that the correlation between streetcars and density can be explained almost entirely by the correlation between streetcars and zoning. About half of the density near streetcars comes from properties near the streetcar having zoning designations that do not appear far from the streetcar, or vice versa. The rest of the difference between properties near and far from the streetcar comes from a different distribution of the same designations. For example, areas near and far from the streetcar may both be zoned for some multi-family residential units, but the area near the streetcar is zoned more heavily this way. In short, once we account for zoning, there is no difference in density between properties near and far from the streetcar.

Is this zoning pattern a relic of the past, too? Los Angeles had its first zone code in 1922, well after the streetcar’s heyday. Using the digitized 1922 zone map, we see that 1922 zoning allowed more construction at places near streetcars. This means that when zoning appeared, it codified what was already happening on the ground.

But we also learn that zoning has changed—about 30 percent of properties have a different zoning designation today than in 1922. Of those properties that did change, about two-thirds changed to a designation that permits less dense construction. However, all of these changes in zoning are uncorrelated with distance to the streetcar and therefore have no impact on the relative leniency of zoning near streetcar stops.

It’s hard to draw firm conclusions about what this tells us. Some economists view zoning as a requirement to build things people would not otherwise build in the absence of the regulation. Others argue that zoning is simply window dressing: the outcome of a political process in which cities yield to their constituents’ demands.

If zoning is a hard and fast rule, then it could cause density near streetcars. If zoning is, instead, just the outcome of political or economic maneuvering, then we care about the underlying politics or economics that drive the density we see. We can’t distinguish between these two explanations, and certainly the possibility remains that other forces are changing zoning.

So perhaps the real culprit behind zoning change and density is agglomeration, which economists use to explain, for example, why businesses continue to locate in Manhattan, even though the real estate is so expensive. Businesses could benefit from locating near other businesses, sharing customers or even parking lots. And when people move into apartment buildings near others, they can enjoy more coffee shops and restaurants.

But if agglomeration is causing density along old streetcar routes, it’s probably not the kind of creative-type agglomeration of which Richard Florida sings praises. Florida has championed a view of cities in which growth is created by a creative class, made up of highly educated workers, artists and bohemians, whose interactions spawn innovation. As far back as we can measure (1950), relatively lower income people live close to the extinct streetcar.

Although it’s tempting to think of the built city as a record of the past, we know that not all of the past gets preserved. The clear imprint of the old streetcar on today’s city tells us that regulation and economic forces worked together to ensure the past informs the present.

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“There’s so much beauty around us that we take for granted,” Valadez says.

Valadez’s life takes him all over Los Angeles—allowing him to take pictures of a drum circle in Venice Beach, an evangelical storefront church serving mostly Central American immigrants in East Hollywood, a late-night deli on Fairfax, and a crowd browsing art galleries on Main Street downtown.

The hardest part is developing a quick relationship with people so you can get close enough to take their picture, Valadez says. It helps that he’s had a chance to get to know an entire menagerie of Angelenos. “In Van Nuys, I grew up around knuckleheads who went to jail,” he says. “And now I’m in this world through KCRW where I live in Venice Beach and drink green juice.”

These photos, taken over the last three years, are a testament to quiet epiphanies and rollicking good times in our sprawling city. They are odes to the joy that can be hummed in the gritty heart of downtown and in front of the cold Pacific surf.

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Mayor Villaraigosa should move to the Village Green in the Baldwin Hills area—a true hidden gem in Los Angeles if there ever was one!

To begin with, it fits his only stated criterion: close to the airport (LAX). While we’re not right next to the airport (and all that noise and jet fuel), we are just a quick 15-minute drive away on a relatively traffic-free stretch of La Cienega Boulevard.

But make no mistake—the true pleasures of the Village Green start much closer to home. We are a secluded little oasis of more than 650 townhomes and apartments on 68 acres of open, green space, with 2,000 trees representing nearly every variety found in Southern California. We’re also a tightknit, diverse, cohesive community of people.

I’m certain that the mayor would enjoy his newfound freedom and leisure by spending his free time as many here do: walking or jogging around “the Green,” chatting with neighbors, and enjoying the sunshine and fresh ocean breezes that are funneled by the Baldwin Hills into our neighborhood. The mayor also could enjoy a variety of outdoor opportunities nearby: hiking in the beautiful 300-acre Kenneth Hahn Park, climbing the challenging staircase at the super-popular Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, running around the track at Rancho Cienega Park, and bicycling down to the beach on the Ballona Creek Path!

The mayor would be able to take advantage of the amazing new rail transit system he worked so hard to establish. We are walking distance from the La Brea Metro Rail Station, which directly connects us to downtown, Little Tokyo, Hollywood, the Valley, Long Beach, East Los Angeles, Culver City, Pasadena, and, soon, with the opening of new extensions currently under construction, Westwood, Santa Monica, Leimert Park, Westchester, and LAX. In a few years, the mayor would be able to walk out of his house, head down to the beach for some quiet time in the morning, review his notes on the ride downtown for an afternoon private equity board meeting on Bunker Hill, enjoy dinner and drinks with his old City Hall buddies at one of the new downtown hotspots, take in a Lakers game at Staples Center, and catch a red-eye out of LAX to the latest conference of world thought leaders, without ever getting into a car!

What a life!

The Village Green is very welcoming to newcomers. Many of us have been here for decades, but with a variety of types of units—some for rent and others for sale—there are always new people coming in, of every race and nationality, and from a variety of economic backgrounds. You would be hard-pressed to find someone in Los Angeles who wouldn’t feel right at home among our diverse and hospitable neighbors. Outside of our daily informal interactions, there are also dozens of organized social events throughout the year, including a twice-yearly jazz picnic, outings for seniors, Halloween festivals and Easter Egg hunts for the kids, and cocktail parties and outdoor movie nights for the swinging set.

Finally, as great as the Village Green already is, there’s so much that the mayor could do with his clout, connections, and charisma to make it even better. For one, the mayor is famous for his commitment to public education, and the schools around the Village Green are not what they should be. Our elementary school across the street—Baldwin Hills Elementary—scores well, but the campus has not had any physical improvements since it was built many years ago. It needs a major facelift and renovation; the mayor could lean on his friends and contacts at LAUSD and in the foundation world to make that happen. The local middle and high schools have more serious problems that could be addressed by bringing in a well-regarded charter school operator like KIPP or Green Dot—or by pushing through needed reforms at LAUSD and the state.

To the east of the Village Green are some neighborhoods that face major problems with gangs and disinvestment. Although the mayor’s gang intervention and community policing programs were successful in bringing about a drop in crime, and although existing retailers such as the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw Mall and the Ralph’s grocery store at Rodeo and La Brea have recently made major investments in upgrading their establishments, there are still several large vacant lots in the neighborhood—including the site of the old Santa Barbara Plaza—that are in desperate need of commercial redevelopment. The mayor could do wonders to push exciting new development projects forward on those sites, revitalizing the commercial heart of the Crenshaw/Baldwin Hills community and providing jobs for local youths.

The mayor is world-renowned for his commitment to the environment, and there are a number of significant local environmental issues that could use his attention. In the Baldwin Hills, there are hundreds of acres of open space slated for parkland—but right now those acres are a huge urban oil field, serving only as sources of local air, noise and water pollution and aesthetic blight. Mayor Villaraigosa can help change that and make our dreams of a greater Baldwin Hills Park a reality.

Village Green is already a wonderful place: a beautiful, green, tight-knit community close to the airport, the new rail lines, newly renovated shopping areas, and beautiful parks and open spaces. But with the Mayor as our new neighbor, we could realize our potential to be so much more!

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Mayor Villaraigosa, you just must consider Granada Hills in the northern San Fernando Valley as your new home.

Frankly, Granada Hills can boast what no other section of L.A. can: Granada Hills is in the same league as Disneyland. History confirms this point. When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was denied a visit to Disneyland in 1959, the place American officials sent him to tour instead was a modern American neighborhood in Granada Hills! You can look it up.

Now let’s consider the two biggest issues you struggled with as mayor: public safety and school reform.

Public safety, first. Look at the Los Angeles Police Department’s crime map. The Granada Hills area has many fewer of those troubling icons showing criminal activity than most parts of the city.

And you can bet we’ll stay safe, because the new Los Angeles County district attorney lives in the neighborhood.

As for education, Granada Hills Charter High School is annually competing in, and often winning, state and national academic decathlon awards.

While there have been no Charlie Sheen sightings around here that I’m aware of, your movie and TV friends like the place. There is always filming going on here. Jimmy Cagney even owned a ranch in the hills, although the only remembrances are a street named after him and a relatively new housing project named Aliso Canyon at Cagney Ranch.

Still, this place has been touched by Hollywood. Just ask E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial, who lifted his buddy, Elliott, and his friends on their bicycles off the ground while riding down White Oak Avenue in GH. Yes sir, Mr. Mayor, Granada Hills is a magical place.

However, I suppose it is only fair to warn you that a few rattlesnakes live in the hills up here. Of course, after a lifetime in politics, you’ll know how to handle them.

Come on up and check the place out.

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The post Come Live Here, Antonio! appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

So who will adopt him? Where real estate agents might see the mayor’s predicament as an opportunity for a commission, Zócalo saw it as an opportunity to help a mayor in need and to get Angelenos talking about their communities. We wanted to find out what people think makes their neighborhoods distinctive, why they love their corner of Los Angeles, and how they and their neighbors welcome newcomers.

Angelenos from across the city answered our call and made their best cases for why their L.A. communities should adopt Mayor Villaraigosa. People wrote to us from San Pedro to South L.A., Porter Ranch to Pico-Union, and from points in between. Our favorite entries, which we’re publishing today, touted the wildlife of Hollywood Oaks and the auto shops of Wilshire Vista; they waxed poetic on the big things happening downtown and proclaimed the hipness of Palms. They touted the history of Granada Hills, the rise of the South Carthay post office’s Yelp score, and the convenient commutes from North Hollywood. And we were impressed by some of the more offbeat suggestions: that the mayor forgo picking favorites among the neighborhoods of the City of L.A. and head instead to Culver City, or that he downsize and move into micro-housing.

But the winner, in the end, is Village Green, a historic planned community in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood that not only had two strong supporters among our entrants but also elicited the most compelling response we received, from longtime resident D. Malcolm Carson. We’re delighted to publish his piece and award him our 10 current favorite books on community—the finalists for the 2013 Zócalo Book Prize.

THE WINNER:

Village Green: L.A.’s Best-Kept Secret—and Close to LAX

Mayor Villaraigosa should move to the Village Green in the Baldwin Hills area—a true hidden gem in Los Angeles if there ever was one! To begin with, it fits his only stated criterion: close to the airport (LAX). While we’re not right next to the airport (and all that noise and jet fuel), we are just a quick 15-minute drive away on a relatively traffic-free stretch of La Cienega Boulevard. … (Read the full article)

THE FINALISTS:

Hollywood Oaks: My Neighborhood Has Brangelina

Granada Hills: I Basically Live In Disneyland

Wilshire Vista: Enjoy Great Food While We Fix Your Car

North Hollywood: Actually, We’re the Center Of the World

Neighborhood of the Future: Micro-House This Ex-Mayor

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Come Live Here, Antonio: Downtown, South Carthay, Palms, Village Green, Carlson Park

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