Very few industries have such an iconic name and emblem as Hollywood.
The music industry doesn't. If I were to ask you to name the city, place, or thing most associated with music, I'd get different answers.
Fashion, too. Sports. Wine. No Hollywood.
Silicon Valley is a good comparison, but when you think of software, it's shifted to the Bay Area and other places. It's not the same magnitude of definitive.
Hollywood is truly the dictionary definition, gold standard, 1:1 moniker.
many culturally significant things are like that -- valueless aside from some mythos or story that provides the value from somewhere other than worldy presence.
The sign is trivial, but it symbolizes a lot of the same things that Hollywood itself has come to symbolize for many years.
'Going out to California to make it big' has been one of the slices of American Dream for a very long time. The Hollywood sign is one of the things that has become associated with that idea, among others; and that's ignoring the international impact that Hollywood has had on the world in the past, even if the strangehold on the worlds' cinema culture is no longer as tightly held, as you mention.
> Depends where you are in the world.
I'd argue that even elsewhere in the world, 'Hollywood' would be a likely answer from those asked, but few if any people in Mumbai, for example, will make a mention of Pinewood.
The oldest is the French film industry (Gaumont still exists & is the oldest studio still in operation), closely followed by the British film industry (notably Ealing Studios, still the oldest continuously working film facility too).
Hell, the earliest American film industry was in Brooklyn. Hollywood happened initially due to it fleeing to the west coast to avoid patents (ironically) and later the cheaper land.
Yeah I find it ironic that the biggest proponents of what’s now called “intellectual property” are based where are they based, because they escaped high patents costs.
So I lived abroad for multiple years in Thailand. Learned the language, had conversations with people who had never met a foreigner, traveled to numerous surrounding countries. I’ve been to Europe multiple times and stayed with local friends of mine and met their friends. All this not to mention the number of people from around the world I’ve met at hostels and through activities like scuba diving.
People are fucking obsessed with Hollywood. For some people it’s a singular cultural reference point they ascribe to the entire country. When my Thai students were looking into studying abroad, their first questions about a location were about whether it was within traveling distance of NYC or Hollywood. I’ve seen people meet an American who has never even been to California and then jokingly refer to them as “Mr. Hollywood over here!” (And yes, I know that they know all of America isn’t literally Hollywood).
Like, I can understand not liking the amount of American media hegemony that goes on in global culture, that totally makes sense. But it’s definitely a thing.
That is literally pronounced “boleevud”. Can you guess why?
"Bollywood" was invented & popularized in Bombay-based film trade journals in the 1960s & 1970s. It was an explicit reference *by the Indian film industry there to Hollywood. It was additionally a play on “Tollywood" for the Tollygunge-based cinema of West Bengal, which had been called that since the 30s.
I tend to think the same due to growing up in the area. It’s like a freeway sign to me. After giving the hundredth tourist from around the world directions to get there… I thought hmm, people really like this mere sign.
You'd probably get different answers for which city is associated with film, just like you'd get different answers for music. Lots of locations have risen up over the years, including Vancouver, and New York (which itself alone has about 1/3rd the productions of LA).
Lots of the major production companies have actually moved out of Hollywood itself, and are scattered around Los Angeles (and the broader US).
Hollywood as a term has evolved a bit to just mean anything associated with the USA film industry, including Netflix, which itself has very little to do with traditional "Hollywood" beyond using some studios in California.
"Hollywood" is a gold standard, like "the Rolls Royce of X" is a phrase - it has captured the brand of movies, but it's current state today like you say is very similar to Silicon Valley - a name mostly (and it's used in a similar way, 'Silicon Valley North' for Canada, 'Silicon Alley' for New York, 'Silicon Beach' for Los Angeles, etc.).
Edit: Just checked and the production volume ratio between LA and New York is similar to the # of unicorns ratio between Silicon Valley and the next highest city. Really interesting comparison, as Silicon Valley has spread to the greater bay area and Hollywood film production has spread to the greater LA area as well.
I agree, but generally if you were to ask to name 'some cities associated with film' it's reasonable to get multiple these days - if you had to choose only one you'd get Hollywood. I don't think that's very far removed from naming one city associated with tech (Silicon Valley) versus names a few cities associated with tech (which you can easily do, just the same).
Hollywood is also massive for the music industry though. It would be hard to find an artist over the past 100 years who didn't record a big track at a hollywood recording studio.
People need to remember the Hollywood sign was for a housing development at the edge of town in Los Angeles. That's how long it's been, and we've added almost no density, and eternal sprawl.
That sign doesn't seem like a very comfy home for people to live in, so no wonder it didn't do well as a housing development. That was a very bad design from an architect if they thought people were going to live there.
You’re assuming their kids don’t want the same things. My parents are off the “certain generation” and I am very happy with the zoning as it is. My peers share this mentality.
Millennials are entering the home buying market in large numbers now, and it turns out they want detached single family homes in quiet suburban neighborhoods, just like everyone else.
It is important to be very clear about this because the HN crowd seems to have a massive over-representation of people who like dense living arrangements: the vast majority of Americans want to live in a detached home that they own, and they want to transport themselves in cars that they own. They don't want to live in apartments, they don't want to rent, and they don't like mass transit. There are indeed some Americans who want to live in places like Manhattan, but they are a small minority. A large majority of the Americans who currently live in apartments only do so because they cannot afford a detached home.
People who like dense living spaces should visit some of the dense high rise areas in Manila. Enjoy the gridlock and queueing ten minutes for the elevator to your floor.
It's a strawman to compare detached suburban housing to the densest housing options on the planet. If you do that, it's only fair to compare it against cabins without utilities, off road and miles away from the nearest grocery. Very, very few of the "majority of Americans" want to live in that.
So, be honest and just compare suburban sprawl against, well, normal development where people can build town houses, duplexes, small apartment buildings, and of course small stores and restaurants. THAT is the density that the majority of people are talking about. Not high rises in ultra dense urban cores. I think more Americans than you think would like to be walking distance from a decent grocery store, bar, and breakfast place. I enjoy it!
It's important to be very clear: you're misrepresenting the options!
It's not a choice between suburbia and Manhattan. It's a choice between exclusionary, backwards suburban zoning (which is subsidized by denser development due to the increased cost of utilities for sprawling development), and literally any more sane option. Let people build duplexes, corner stores, local markets, and get rid of the cul de sacs. That's literally the core of the "density" people are talking about. Not Manhattan style high rises.
Saying that people (really any group, but millenials here) prefer suburbia because that's what you see them currently buying on the housing market, is ignoring the fact that the available housing stock probably doesn't match up to their preferences! Plenty of people are buying the "lesser of two evils" rather than their dream home. Plenty of people would choose something within walking distance of a decent park and grocery, if they had that option. But America, despite being built on the train and the pedestrian, has been rebuilt on the automobile and the cul-de-sac with single family home zoning. So people are buying what is available, even if it's not what they want.
If you doubt what I'm saying, check the prices of homes in prewar "streetcar suburbs" which are denser, but still have small yards, detached houses, and yet are near small commercial uses too. Plenty of people want to buy these and the prices have skyrocketed: it's illegal to build them now, so the supply is limited.
You seem to be arguing that people who want to buy (or at least live in) housing of type X should not have their ability to do entirely blocked by land use laws that make them illegal.
That makes logical sense yet in the same post you propose to “get rid of the cul-de-sacs” which is a type of land use that many people genuinely prefer, even if you don’t.
We can have both, can't we? Obviously I don't like cul-de-sacs personally, but nowhere in my comment did I suggest banning them. The phrase you quoted was just a turn of phrase as I described my preferred style of land use which is currently illegal in most zoning laws. Right now.
It's kind of funny that your reaction to my comment is "he wants to take away the cul-de-sac" when all I'm asking is if we can get zoning for a decent alternative. I'm not asking to replace all the suburbs with this style of zoning, but especially as you get to areas with high unmet housing demand, zoning needs to be reconsidered.
You did literally propose that we "let people...get rid of the cul de sacs." I don't think I was jumping to baseless conclusions while reading your words.
Right now, many adults in LA have to share a single family home with several other adults, living like college roommates, because otherwise they can’t afford rent.
Even just the european solution of mixing rowhouses and 3-5 story apartment buildings would fix that. In fact, it would significantly increase density and reduce cost, in turn reducing commute times for many people.
Even an apartment can be built well enough that you don't have to worry about sharing walls with neighbors. My neighbor is regularly watching movies at THX reference volume, and so am I, and neither of us can hear each others' audio.
With land value as high as it is in LA, it's worth spending money on improving the quality of construction, so people can share walls with their neighbors without any of the negatives usually associated with it.
We've added no density? The population of the city went from 500k to 4 million since that sign went up. Koreatown has over 50 thousand people living per square mile. Is there an imbalance between jobs and housing today? Yes, but to imply that no housing has been built since the 1920s or that the entire area is low density suburban sprawl is a whole lot of hyperbole. Here is the population density map for reference:
Your own reference seems to confirm OP's point that sprawl, not density, is what increased. Relatively few places in the greater LA area have properly dense housing projects, and you just have to look across LA from vantage points along either Mulholland drive or Rancho Palos Verdes to see for yourself.
Plenty of opportunity for high-rise and even more mid-rise projects, but nearly everything is low-rise. Thankfully it looks like recent zoning changes will throw nimbyism to the wolves, but op is entirely right in describing how LA is essentially the epitome of sprawl.
That’s because people want to live in low rise buildings.
The average person in California (and in the rest of the country) desires to live in a detached home that they own.
It is not wrong to want that.
However, it is definitely wrong to assume that high-rise apartments are “proper” density and that LA is doing it wrong. LA is the way the people live there want it to be. If you want high density and high-rise living, there are other cities that offer that.
The average person has no choice but to live in single-family homes. That doesn't mean they want that. Your solution of 'move somewhere else' is completely tone-deaf.
Furthermore, you completely ignored mid-rise housing, and the fact that it can be seamlessly mixed in with SFH without significantly changing the feel or character of the neighbourhood. Oh The Urbanity made a great YouTube video about this recently where they made a neutral comparison of different densities, from 0 to ultra-dense NYC skyscrapers.
Any solution that involves shared walls with neighbors is not desirable to the vast majority of Americans.
Anyone who wants to live in apartments can do so. Nobody is forced to live in single-family homes -- on the contrary, we work long and hard to afford the money to get into them because they are better than listening to our neighbors all the time.
Absent anything else, of course most people prefer to live in single-family homes (SFH). But that's not the question most people have to face in reality, because SFH have other trade-offs that that survey completely ignored, including:
- significantly higher cost (absent widespread R1 zoning, which drives the cost of apartments up),
- locations in the middle of desolate suburbia,
- dead neighbourhoods because almost no one lives there,
- very few nearby stores and restaurants,
- no or limited public transit because it costs far too much to run in sprawling suburbia,
- utter dependence on personal automobiles, and the complete lack of independence for children, young adults, and other non-driving members of society,
- the necessity of maintaining the grounds of your own personal park,
- poorly maintained or missing public infrastructure because everything is so spread out,
- having to endure endless traffic because of your 1hr commute to work,
and I could go on.
Given the above, if apartment living wasn't so heavily restricted by law, so many more people would choose to live in them rather than SFH. You only need to look at cities like Montreal or entire countries like the Netherlands to see that this is true.
In Montreal, housing is still cheap and most people live in multiplexes (walk-up two-to-four storey buildings with private front doors and small back yards) and live very close to where they work, but there are still a lot of different styles of SFH that people can choose to live in if they want, and many do. Again, look at the video I linked above for examples.
I love the constant description of suburbia as being desolate.
My suburban neighborhood is pretty typical and we have a vibrant community, including little free libraries, bike trails, conservation clubs, birdwatching orgs, garden clubs, needlecraft clubs, kids running lemonade stands, teens hustling to shovel driveways in the winter, a community pool, bake sales, plant sales, strawberry festivals, and more.
We even all banded together and got rid of a lot of the streetlights so now I live in a Bortle 3 (or VERY low Bortle 4) dark sky. And because I have a yard I have a huge-ass amateur radio antenna farm and a fire pit where people come over to chill out.
I raised three daughters here and they turned out fantastic, and spent their youth doing some real Stranger Things stuff without all of the upside-down bits.
If I want to feel hip and urbane I drive the 20 minutes to the train station and go into town, pay my $20 for a cocktail, see an overpriced show, and then retire to my awesome house.
I'm beginning to think that people who think suburbia is desolate are miserable shitheads who a: people don't want to be around, or b: don't want to be around other people.
> - significantly higher cost (absent widespread R1 zoning, which drives the cost of apartments up),
Also significantly higher return on investment. Homeowners build equity, renters don't. Houses increase in value faster than owned condos/apartments/townhouses.
> - locations in the middle of desolate suburbia,
It's not desolate. We have everything -- parks, stores, restaurants, schools, nearby downtown areas...
> - dead neighbourhoods because almost no one lives there,
Not dead at all. Plenty of kids playing all the time, people walking their dogs, etc.
> - very few nearby stores and restaurants,
Not true at all. There are hundreds of stores and restaurants where I live. They just aren't jammed between people's houses.
> - no or limited public transit because it costs far too much to run in sprawling suburbia,
Plenty of transit in my suburb.
> - utter dependence on personal automobiles, and the complete lack of independence for children, young adults, and other non-driving members of society,
Not true at all. People have ways to get around. Kids ride bikes. There are buses and trains not all that far away.
> - the necessity of maintaining the grounds of your own personal park,
It's not usually a big deal to maintain your yards. Most people seem to manage. Some hire gardeners, but many also take care of it themselves.
> - poorly maintained or missing public infrastructure because everything is so spread out,
All the infrastructure in most suburbs is fine. It's not like we all live in the 1800s or something. The roads are even paved!
> - having to endure endless traffic because of your 1hr commute to work,
A 1-hour commute is an outlier. It just is. The US average, last I checked, is something like 30 or 35 minutes.
That may be true in your specific case, but is most definitely not true in general (your house also probably costs $3 million).
Nonetheless, NONE of what you say justifies single family home MANDATES (as well as minimum parking mandates, minimum setbacks, maximum heights, etc.). Let people build what they want to, at the price they want to, and everyone will be happier. This is the United States we're talking about, supposedly the "land of the free"—why not make it actually true?
The restrictions exist because people want to ruin neighborhoods like mine. We made laws to prevent it.
For every sane YIMBY who wants to build livable density, there seems to also be an unhinged person who thinks everyone should be forced to live in tower blocks.
Many such people are in this thread. I used to think it was a strawman argument, but those people really do exist, they really want to take my home from me and turn my whole block into a high rise, and that’s not going to happen without a fight. That’s why the mandates exist.
The biggest obstacle the YIMBY crowd faces is the insane people in their own camp: The crazy utopian socialist weirdos who think it’s morally wrong to live in a house in a suburb and drive a car. Force those people out, denounce them, and you’ll see a lot of the opposition to new housing go away.
Not one person in this thread thinks everyone should be forced to live in high-rise buildings, or in any particular type of building, and no one made any such argument. I certainly wouldn't want to live in such a place. All people want is the freedom to choose the set of tradeoffs that suit them (because everything has a tradeoff), and the freedom to build what people actually want. Forcing people to live in one particular style of low-rise building is the status quo and is what you are proposing be forced upon everyone.
There's a big difference between high-rise and mid-rise, and all three can peacefully coexist. If you had watched the video I linked earlier you would have seen many examples of this. I will link it here again for convenience.
Population Density 101: A Visual Guide to Suburbs and Skyscrapers by Oh The Urbanity!: https://youtu.be/y3XoUBzfXps
I think that loads of people are fine with apartments because of the price/convenience/location. If you ask a young couple "would you rather pay $1500/month to be in an apartment or $3000/month to be in a SFH", you think everyone is choosing the latter?
Once they have kids, almost everyone who can afford it chooses a home in the quietest and safest neighborhood they can get into.
Apartments are fun when you are young and want to live downtown and enjoy the restaurants and the night life. When you get older and want your home to be a refuge and raise a family, apartments really suck.
Ok, but not everyone can afford it. When there's a dearth of apartments and you can't afford your own detached house, you're forced to share a house with other people.
People do not prefer sharing a house with roommates to having their own apartment.
Also the idea that people's preferences should be encoded into bans on certain housing types is completely absurd to begin with.
What policy did I advocate? I'm simply telling you how Americans prefer to live. It's a fact that many advocates of denser housing seem to ignore.
The suburbs got built because people wanted them! The zoning laws exist because the voters wanted them! It's a big mistake to think that most Americans secretly want denser housing arrangements and the zoning laws are preventing it.
More important than what we want is what we can afford. Additionally, the result of these zoning laws (artificial restrictions) is to increase homelessness. So commenting on an on about what people prefer is rather immaterial.
I understand that, but it turns out you still need a place to live in beforehand, even in that narrative.
and of course it is possible to have a refuge while being in shared housing. Like big apartments do get built! Not for everyone and like you said people want a nice refuge. But it’s possible to build large apartments with good insulation where people have their privacy, while simultaneously offering (for example) huge shared parks and close access to commerce or schools. every shared housing thing doesn’t turn into Manhattan.
What I remember most about living in a flat was my wife and I being able to walk to work and our son being able to walk to school. Didn't hear the neighbours and we had access to really nice private gardens.
There is nothing fundamentally sucky about apartments/flats.
Edit: Of course, a lot of flats/apartments suck - but then again so do many houses. If you have flats built with proper construction and sensibly planned then they can be very pleasant.
I think the problem here is you're taking a personal feeling (that you want to live in a big suburban house), projecting it over a population (suggesting everyone wants to live in a big suburban house) and swatting away any disagreements (where people say they don't necessarily want to live in a big suburban house) without really taking on board what they're saying. I don't think you can be convinced to change your mind, but you should recognise that the lifestyle you're describing is unsustainable at scale - huge chunks of continental Europe would be entirely paved over if we lived this way, or even if they were just at the density of somewhere like Houston or LA.
Re "apartments really suck" - I beg to differ. I live in a 1920s apartment block in an inner-city neighbourhood, it's 50m from a school where my neighbours kids walk every day (high school is further, but they'll take the trolley or tram), there's a cafe on the corner, a couple of local pubs on my street, and a supermarket 5 mins walk away. I don't hear neighbours through the walls, we have a shared garden with an apple tree and grape vines. I walk ~10 minutes to meet friends at my local cinema, and walk my dog in a handful of different parks which are between 5 and 15 minutes walk away. Can you please explain what part of any of this "sucks" because I am personally struggling to see it.
I suspect you'll suggest that my situation is exceptional (it's not, this describes most accommodation where I live) and counter that it's possible to make a bad apartment. But really it's possible to fuck up any kind of housing development - the UK has some spectacular examples of both shit tower blocks and shit single-family dwellings last century for starters. So the difference is that those single home developments also incur a pretty stiff cost to cities, society and the environment that you cannot handwave away unless you just want to say “well I don’t mind if the rest of the world sucks, as long as I get to have a big garden”
If these things weren't desirable you wouldn't see so much demand for homes in boston and nyc and chicago with attached walls. Its not an act of desperation to move into a 25 million dollar townhome in manhattan, considering 25 million just across the hudson or upstate or in long island would probably buy you a castle fit for the king of England.
If those mid-rise buildings have their own parking and residents there are not able to get resident street parking permits, I’d be quite prone to support it.
If the first of those is falsified, the mid-rise has a negative effect on the nearby properties. If the second is falsified, that negative effect is significantly amplified. Our part of the city of Cambridge has slightly less street sparking space than cars for the houses here. That’s made up for by about 2/3 of the houses having private driveways (which take one street spot for the curb cut, but often add 2-4 parking spots). Place even a 6-story mid-rise with no parking and 40 cars for its 8 cars worth of frontage and it creates chaos in a way that a triplex or SFR doesn’t.
If we built our cities in such a way that everyone didn't need a car, this wouldn't be a problem. Nonetheless, and quite ironically, off-street parking mandates are one of the main reasons that everyone does need a car. Eliminate those mandates, and you eliminate vast swathes of empty nothingland that are a huge hindrance to car-free living.
Furthermore, if there is no off-street parking and cities price on-street parking appropriately such that there are always a few empty spots, no one would move into the area with the expectation that they can park their car for free, and it wouldn't be a problem.
Off-street parking mandates sound like a good idea, but they're actually horrible for cities, and they're part of why most American cities are as sprawling and car-dependent as they are. City-planners of the 20th century thought the same as you and didn't consider the consequences, and now the trend is reversing: many cities and states are beginning to eliminate those mandates, but it's going to take quite a long time before the effects are felt.
There's a false choice presented here, about choosing to live in high rise/high density. Even NYC basically peters out to low rises just out of brooklyn!
The overall problem, though, is that these density restrictions cause a nasty spiral. People looking for work are asked to move to one of these cities where their bosses own these wonderful homes. They mostly have to rent. Rent is high. Supply is low, so it's hard to even find a place! Every single service that you might use, also has to pay rent. Not only do you have to put a significant portion of your paycheck to rent, but basically every restaurant has to charge a very heavy amount to this. Every corner store. Parking. Every minor service. Public spaces might barely exist, but forget having community spaces run by individuals, because commercial real estate got super expensive from this same cycle.
It's hard to overstate how real estate pressure makes _everything_ more costly. People have to work to live. If they want a good job, they _have_ to buy into the urban real estate tradeoff. There are ~no good rural jobs. It's pervasive.
If every part of living wasn't so financialised, if it was possible for public spaces to survive, if teachers could actually afford to live close to schools, this is a different story. And some cities manage this better, of course. But at one point decisions around parking minimums, height restrictions, endless ability of localities to object to building development, and other whining from people who would rather have their yard than replace that with a larger public park... it just makes it harder and harder to sustain urban living at all
It sounds like your problem is not really about housing at all. This is a rant against the entire society.
I used to think the NIMBYs were full of it -- they say their opponents wanted to force everyone into high-density living arrangements, everyone must live in a communist tower block dystopia, people's yards and green spaces would be taken from them, huge buildings would tower over neighborhoods and block out all the light, etc. I thought that was a pretty bad strawman representation of their opponents.
Now I realize that some people really do want those things, after seeing quite a lot of unreasonable people on HN and a few other places, who really do seem to believe the insane ideas the NIMBYs ascribe to them.
You wrote "But at one point decisions around parking minimums, height restrictions, endless ability of localities to object to building development, and other whining from people who would rather have their yard than replace that with a larger public park.."
Do you really think it's ok to build a public park right in someone's yard? Do you really, truly believe that our society should operate that way? Because if you do, the NIMBYs are right!
I'm not convinced you understood the comment you replied to, which doesn't suggest placing a public park in somebody's yard. It suggests that people are clinging to their yard when they could instead have a housing option which doesn't have a private dedicated yard, but does have a much larger and nicer public park nearby which serves that need for green space.
And honestly, if a person wants to make a little public park in their yard... I don't see what the issue is with that? But yeah, that's not what was suggested in the slightest.
This depends on your definition of a 'good job'. If this is about pay, yes, wages in the countryside are lower - but so are living costs. If I average over my contacts, people working rurally seem to be generally happier with their occupation, though.
> and other whining from people who would rather have their yard than replace that with a larger public park...
If I have the choice between my own yard, where I can park my barbecue grill, and a public park, which most likely will become a magnet for the homeless/drug user population, I know what I will choose.
People who believe public recreation infrastructure is the way to go ascribe an ideal to a public park that is rarely ever met - they live in a world where parks come right out of Edwardian England, with well-maintained flower beds and fences around them, where a park custodian closes the park at night[1]. The problem with that: That is incredibly expensive.
So parks are lucky if they get their grass cut regularly, and are relatively calm areas to sleep in at night. The problem now is that with homeless/drug user populations, the area becomes 'unsafe' for local residents, who will now avoid that park, at which point it loses all it's recreational value.
So ... why would I give up my own little yard, which I maintain, which is relatively safe, for a block-sized open sewer where it is only a matter of time for someone who ought to be in a mental hospital to shank me?
[1] ... and ironically, that type of park was not public either - it was private property often owned by the landlord, and you had to have a residents-only key to access many of those.
Many places have decent sized parks that are maintained and safe, and offer bbq pits or the like.
Perhaps not the US or many parts of the world. But like… I dunno, I was in Brisbane the other day and they had huge places with more amenities my back yard will ever have. It’s not the same as the best yard, but it’s better than most peoples yards.
In the suburb where I live, we have private backyards, and a couple of well-maintained parks within walking distance. There are also multiple grocery stores and restaurants within walking distance. I can be in two different downtown areas after a short drive, and I can get to San Francisco in under an hour.
I don't know where people get the idea that suburbs are nothing but houses for miles and miles. We really do have it all here. And the people who want dense housing don't want to live in my neighborhood -- they gravitate to the parts of the area with high rises.
Picking an australian city as a counter example for urban sprawl is a pretty weird take. I know, your example is specifically about parks but that's not a very good example of good and comfy parks in a dense city.
Roughly speaking, 25% of people prefer urban living, 50% prefer suburban living, and 25% prefer rural living. Urban living is currently expensive, because there is a massive shortage of urban housing. People didn't build enough of it in the 20th century for a number of reasons.
All other things being equal, urban living should be cheaper than suburban living, because urban areas need less infrastructure for each resident. Every city where urban living continues to be expensive should build high-density mid-rise areas until that's no longer the case. High-rises rarely make sense outside central locations, as they are expensive to build.
If this were the case, we'd see it in the zoning with a lot of parcels being underbuilt for what they are zoned for, since low density is preferred over high density. Instead, the city is developed to upwards of 90% of its zoned capacity. Its gotten to the point where no more units can be built, the zoning has to change in order to make it possible to permit more units. The high prices are all because the job growth in the area has outpaced new housing unit construction, which cannot accelerate to meet demand for housing by labor due to present day zoning.
How are they zoned? Probably for suburban subdivisions and not for highrises. You can find new suburban subdivisions in LA too if you go all the way out into san bernardino or riverside county, and in those cases too its because these areas recently changed zoning from agriculture to low density residential development, and builders are building to the limits of what the land is zoned for. Apartments are so popular that developers often try to get variances to zoning for their projects, to add even more units than what the lot is zoned for. If there wasn't demand for that a developer would not bother.
If everyone wants to live in low rise buildings, why does the government ban building higher density buildings using zoning? If it’s so undesirable, nobody would move in so developers would have no incentive to build.
It’s not wrong to want your neighborhood to never change.
However I would argue that it is wrong to assume that every city currently has the “proper” density. Why was it ok for your house to be built but not for your neighbor to, say, redevelop their SFH into 3 town homes?
> The average person in California (and in the rest of the country) desires to live in a detached home that they own.
And then you put them inches away from one another, lined up in perfect rows!
I don't get it, looking on (mainly through TV/film) from the UK, what makes detached houses desirable is almost entirely lacking from North American streets, they frequently seem to look like a terrace that's been chopped up. Is it perhaps because timber framing makes noise more of a problem in terraces/semis; so that becomes the prime motivator for detached?
Nope, it's not a technical reason. Zoning laws typically prevent you from building structures near the edge of your lot in the suburbs. They also mandate excessive amounts of space to store automobiles, and absurd setbacks from the street.
I think it comes down to development cost. A lot of suburbs are developed by a single housing developer, and they essentially have a "theme" with similar styles and just a few floor plans to choose from. So some suburbs end up looking very cookie cutter. They also do things like clear all the old trees out prior to developing the land, which is cheaper and easier, but can create a very desolate environment to live in.
There are plenty of suburbs that aren't this way though, especially older ones.
> That’s because people want to live in low rise buildings.
> The average person in California (and in the rest of the country) desires to live in a detached home that they own.
Then why is it necessary for LA and other localities to make it literally illegal to build denser housing? After all, if detached single family homes are what people want, then surely simple supply and demand will lead to that being what's predominantly built, right?
(Spoiler: Single family homes aren't what everyone wants. Plenty of people want other types of housing. People pushing these zoning rules aren't doing it because _they_ want single family homes - they're doing it because they want control over what type of home is available to others.)
Yes, greater LA area also has a lot of what people like to call “sprawl”, but it’s a big place and has many different neighborhoods. You also don’t need high rises for density - Paris is not all that tall, but at 53k people per square mile, it’s denser on average than NYC…
NYC is a whole city of five boroughs with different densities, Hollywood and K-town are neighborhoods. Manhattan which is what most think of as NYC is 70k+/sqmi
Well, Queens is about 75% cemeteries by land use. (Population figures don't include dead people, I assume.)
Kidding, but there is more land for industrial and commercial use in Queens that isn't residential. Including two airports and three sizable sports facilities. Brooklyn by contrast has almost no interruptions to the edge-to-edge residential street grid.
And then even after all the non-residential space being eaten up, more than half of Queens (the parts after the subway ends) is single family suburban homes akin to Long Island or Staten Island. Really throws the population density off for the city, throws the density off even for Queens itself -- the western part near manhattan is dense, especially compared to most of LA.
Instead of dismissing with derogatory terms, you should try to actually get to know these. You’d realize that Santa Monica is very different from West Hollywood, which is also different from Hollywood, K-town, etc.
Even in the valleys, Sherman Oaks is very different from Agoura. OC would take years to really get to know as well.
When you look at areal/satellite imagery, Santa Barbara to San Diego is basically connected by different towns and neighborhoods, with very little breaks. Yet, no one will say that it’s all the same or somehow homogeneous. The scale in itself is breathtaking from the plane.
Sprawl isn't a derogatory term, it's a descriptive one. Likewise just because enclaves have a unique character and governance doesn't mean they're not the outcome of sprawl. Please don't find yourself so easily offended.
(I've got almost three years of experience in the LA area largely in a box comprised of Encino, Venice, DTLA, and Burbank, if it adds any credibility to the point. Certainly not a lifetime resident but enough to have my way memorized pretty much everywhere and know why my favorite little place is Sawtelle. Everything in that box is unique, but nevertheless... it's still sprawl)
If you look up the term “infamous”, you’ll quickly see it’s not a positive one. Neither is urban sprawl. Factual terms can have positive, neutral or negative connotations. The ones used happen to be negative.
If you are still in LA, try exploring more than your commute and routine life afford. You’ll be surprised. While not as much Victorian-era architecture has survived as in say San Francisco, there are many interesting pockets to see and neighborhoods to understand. Many generations of immigrants left their marks, with neighborhoods passing from one group to the next, yet their traces remain (such as ethnically specific churches/houses of worship or other long-lived institutions).
And if it’s not for you in the end, that’s great too - not everyone enjoys every part of the world. Explore and find what you like best.
Have you ever lived in a major city outside of LA? To not offend you, important things happen there, but it's not a large city globally (San Francisco is also an example of somewhere not that big but important)
Many people, mainly misanthropes, won’t be happy until everyone lives in a soulless box in the sky and eat crickets for dinner after a day of standing on a crowded train. Every apartment block will at least come with a suicide room.
If you consider just the original borders of the city from 1850 today, that sliver would probably be one of the densest cities in California with the most transit access per capita, and you'd be somewhere in this thread talking about how LA is doing it right.
That being said, at least the sprawl in a lot of LA county is basically done thanks to geography, bounded by ocean or protected mountains. Only one way to go now: up.
They're not saying "LA sucks" they're just saying that LA as a whole is low-density. Koreatown has ~130k inhabitants, Hollywood has less than 100k - these are two, small but relatively-dense areas in a city with a population in the millions, whose density works out at ~8.5k/sq mile.
I lived in one of those hanging apartments depicted in the postcards, up there in Beachwood Canyon, for a period during the 80's and early 90's .. in my particular place, it was old and decrepit and run down, but the 'developer' had sauced up one of the upper levels sufficient to a working kids needs .. I will always remember the peril I felt, looking up at the slowly reclining detaining wall, earthquake memories borne in its cracks, and wondering why the heck someone would do this.
The answer is in the dreams that everyone had, in that house, over the decades. Those hills are a pretty haunted lot. Something about the tension of the Earth, in my opinion, that can be felt if you listen long enough ..
As someone who's visited, this is a confusing comment to me.
I think of that as being the entire point of the city. It's a deliberate contrast to places like NYC, Tokyo, London.
A place where you can have a big old lot, a store that's half empty, a car collection. Cause there's so much land kicking about. Too bad it became expensive anyway, I guess.
That movie was always strange to me as a person who watched it in kindergarten. It was in my memory peak cinema, with an amazing tie in of reusable cups from the best restaurant chain (Pizza Hut)that lived in my house for years later and I drank out of regularly. As a kid I loved pretending to be able to fly around the sky.
But I've never met anyone in my generation that has ever seen it and even people older than me barely remember it existing.
I’m from your generation and my only memory of the film was a lot of talking and very little action. Have you seen it as an adult? Curious how it holds up.
Wikipedia’s page is interesting, apparently its got a cult following now.
I was about 13 when it came out. Watching some clips recently, it’s exactly as I remember it. I can confirm that it feels slow to start. I think most movies used to take a good 15 minutes to get going. These days they’re very out-of-the-gate.
I’m one of the cult followers I guess. It’s a shame to me that it never got a sequel. It’s fun pulp fiction in the style of Indiana Jones.
James Hornet’s score alone is worth the ride — still used as a primary temp track for figuring out the edits of new movies.
Effects are the best practical work has to offer.
Timothy Dalton as Errol Flynn with an Aryan secret is phenomenal, having the most fun of his career. Jennifer Connelly is a full on movie star hitting her stride. Alan Arkin at his peak grumpy old man stage. And Billy Campbell deserved a better career.
And the story is pure old fashioned American underdog finds a unique advantage and uses it to take on the bad guys to save the girl. It’s damn near perfect tbh.
Rocketeer is among the finest action adventure movies ever made, and deserves to be hailed much more widely than it currently is.
The reason it is not is simple bad luck: out of all the movies it could have opened against, it managed to open against the single film that (at that time) could outdo it in its own action-adventure game, the defining work of the genre: Raiders of the Lost Ark.
You’re absolutely right — I got my inventive, genre-redefining blockbusters mixed up. Instead of Raiders I should have said Terminator 2, which Rocketeer did compete with. James Cameron remains a defining figure in that space.
I am stung by the correction because it’s nice to imagine oneself infallible, but I appreciate it nonetheless.
Oh man. That brings back memories. I adored The Rocketeer as a little kid. I had an NES game based on the movie, too, but I think I remember it being too hard for me.
I've had some business in Los Angeles over the years - not much, but I got there off and on. Depending on the airport you're flying into, depending on the landing approach your plane takes, and depending on what side of the plane you're seated on, the sign can come into view and it is quite large in the distance. I don't think I ever got over the thrill of seeing it - it is just so iconic - I really don't have the words to describe it.
In GTA Online, you can reliably win the "Open your parachute closest to the ground" challenge by jumping off the top of one of the letters of the Vinewood sign and immediately opening your chute as soon as you have left the platform at the top of the letter.
If anyone hasn't watched the documentary 'Cadillac Desert' on the importance of water in the history and development of the United States Southwest, then I would highly recommend putting it on.
It was in a bad shape when Hugh Heffner moved to LA, he started a campaign to get it restored IIRC. He did a lot civil rights and ending segregation too. The southern TV stations objected to him showing black entertainers and talking to them in his TV show, he stood by his values. And he gave a voice to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in Playboy. Source: the documentary about him on Amazon Prime, highly recommended.
It’s 12 parts and honestly could have easily been 10 if not less but it’s always worth exploring the duality of the man. No denying his social progressivism but he definitely wasn’t all shining light and I’m suspicious of anything that paints him as if he were.
His social progressiveness might have been more about wanting to get rid of morality laws in general, because they were getting in the way of his business expansion, than a genuine belief in those causes. Probably a mix of the two, even if he started out pushing for business reasons, getting involved in any cause gives one an opportunity to hear that group's point of view and a chance to become sympathetic to it. Either way, it ended being good for his fame and fortune.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 255 ms ] threadThe music industry doesn't. If I were to ask you to name the city, place, or thing most associated with music, I'd get different answers.
Fashion, too. Sports. Wine. No Hollywood.
Silicon Valley is a good comparison, but when you think of software, it's shifted to the Bay Area and other places. It's not the same magnitude of definitive.
Hollywood is truly the dictionary definition, gold standard, 1:1 moniker.
many culturally significant things are like that -- valueless aside from some mythos or story that provides the value from somewhere other than worldy presence.
The sign is trivial, but it symbolizes a lot of the same things that Hollywood itself has come to symbolize for many years.
'Going out to California to make it big' has been one of the slices of American Dream for a very long time. The Hollywood sign is one of the things that has become associated with that idea, among others; and that's ignoring the international impact that Hollywood has had on the world in the past, even if the strangehold on the worlds' cinema culture is no longer as tightly held, as you mention.
> Depends where you are in the world.
I'd argue that even elsewhere in the world, 'Hollywood' would be a likely answer from those asked, but few if any people in Mumbai, for example, will make a mention of Pinewood.
I bet that people around the world know about Hollywood and the top actors just like they know Coke everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_industry
The oldest is the French film industry (Gaumont still exists & is the oldest studio still in operation), closely followed by the British film industry (notably Ealing Studios, still the oldest continuously working film facility too).
Hell, the earliest American film industry was in Brooklyn. Hollywood happened initially due to it fleeing to the west coast to avoid patents (ironically) and later the cheaper land.
Especially since you are setting a very low bar here: merely having heard of Hollywood.
Don’t confuse what you might wish for with reality.
So I lived abroad for multiple years in Thailand. Learned the language, had conversations with people who had never met a foreigner, traveled to numerous surrounding countries. I’ve been to Europe multiple times and stayed with local friends of mine and met their friends. All this not to mention the number of people from around the world I’ve met at hostels and through activities like scuba diving.
People are fucking obsessed with Hollywood. For some people it’s a singular cultural reference point they ascribe to the entire country. When my Thai students were looking into studying abroad, their first questions about a location were about whether it was within traveling distance of NYC or Hollywood. I’ve seen people meet an American who has never even been to California and then jokingly refer to them as “Mr. Hollywood over here!” (And yes, I know that they know all of America isn’t literally Hollywood).
Like, I can understand not liking the amount of American media hegemony that goes on in global culture, that totally makes sense. But it’s definitely a thing.
Because… nobody ever heard of Hollywood?
In India, it's referred to as "बॉलीवुड".
"Bollywood" was invented & popularized in Bombay-based film trade journals in the 1960s & 1970s. It was an explicit reference *by the Indian film industry there to Hollywood. It was additionally a play on “Tollywood" for the Tollygunge-based cinema of West Bengal, which had been called that since the 30s.
I tend to think the same due to growing up in the area. It’s like a freeway sign to me. After giving the hundredth tourist from around the world directions to get there… I thought hmm, people really like this mere sign.
Lots of the major production companies have actually moved out of Hollywood itself, and are scattered around Los Angeles (and the broader US).
Hollywood as a term has evolved a bit to just mean anything associated with the USA film industry, including Netflix, which itself has very little to do with traditional "Hollywood" beyond using some studios in California.
"Hollywood" is a gold standard, like "the Rolls Royce of X" is a phrase - it has captured the brand of movies, but it's current state today like you say is very similar to Silicon Valley - a name mostly (and it's used in a similar way, 'Silicon Valley North' for Canada, 'Silicon Alley' for New York, 'Silicon Beach' for Los Angeles, etc.).
Edit: Just checked and the production volume ratio between LA and New York is similar to the # of unicorns ratio between Silicon Valley and the next highest city. Really interesting comparison, as Silicon Valley has spread to the greater bay area and Hollywood film production has spread to the greater LA area as well.
It is important to be very clear about this because the HN crowd seems to have a massive over-representation of people who like dense living arrangements: the vast majority of Americans want to live in a detached home that they own, and they want to transport themselves in cars that they own. They don't want to live in apartments, they don't want to rent, and they don't like mass transit. There are indeed some Americans who want to live in places like Manhattan, but they are a small minority. A large majority of the Americans who currently live in apartments only do so because they cannot afford a detached home.
So, be honest and just compare suburban sprawl against, well, normal development where people can build town houses, duplexes, small apartment buildings, and of course small stores and restaurants. THAT is the density that the majority of people are talking about. Not high rises in ultra dense urban cores. I think more Americans than you think would like to be walking distance from a decent grocery store, bar, and breakfast place. I enjoy it!
It's not a choice between suburbia and Manhattan. It's a choice between exclusionary, backwards suburban zoning (which is subsidized by denser development due to the increased cost of utilities for sprawling development), and literally any more sane option. Let people build duplexes, corner stores, local markets, and get rid of the cul de sacs. That's literally the core of the "density" people are talking about. Not Manhattan style high rises.
Saying that people (really any group, but millenials here) prefer suburbia because that's what you see them currently buying on the housing market, is ignoring the fact that the available housing stock probably doesn't match up to their preferences! Plenty of people are buying the "lesser of two evils" rather than their dream home. Plenty of people would choose something within walking distance of a decent park and grocery, if they had that option. But America, despite being built on the train and the pedestrian, has been rebuilt on the automobile and the cul-de-sac with single family home zoning. So people are buying what is available, even if it's not what they want.
If you doubt what I'm saying, check the prices of homes in prewar "streetcar suburbs" which are denser, but still have small yards, detached houses, and yet are near small commercial uses too. Plenty of people want to buy these and the prices have skyrocketed: it's illegal to build them now, so the supply is limited.
That makes logical sense yet in the same post you propose to “get rid of the cul-de-sacs” which is a type of land use that many people genuinely prefer, even if you don’t.
It's kind of funny that your reaction to my comment is "he wants to take away the cul-de-sac" when all I'm asking is if we can get zoning for a decent alternative. I'm not asking to replace all the suburbs with this style of zoning, but especially as you get to areas with high unmet housing demand, zoning needs to be reconsidered.
Even just the european solution of mixing rowhouses and 3-5 story apartment buildings would fix that. In fact, it would significantly increase density and reduce cost, in turn reducing commute times for many people.
Even an apartment can be built well enough that you don't have to worry about sharing walls with neighbors. My neighbor is regularly watching movies at THX reference volume, and so am I, and neither of us can hear each others' audio.
With land value as high as it is in LA, it's worth spending money on improving the quality of construction, so people can share walls with their neighbors without any of the negatives usually associated with it.
It’s not uncommon to read a comment so detached from economic reality but this is today’s winner. In fact causing the problem it intends to solve.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/LACounty...
Plenty of opportunity for high-rise and even more mid-rise projects, but nearly everything is low-rise. Thankfully it looks like recent zoning changes will throw nimbyism to the wolves, but op is entirely right in describing how LA is essentially the epitome of sprawl.
The average person in California (and in the rest of the country) desires to live in a detached home that they own.
It is not wrong to want that.
However, it is definitely wrong to assume that high-rise apartments are “proper” density and that LA is doing it wrong. LA is the way the people live there want it to be. If you want high density and high-rise living, there are other cities that offer that.
Furthermore, you completely ignored mid-rise housing, and the fact that it can be seamlessly mixed in with SFH without significantly changing the feel or character of the neighbourhood. Oh The Urbanity made a great YouTube video about this recently where they made a neutral comparison of different densities, from 0 to ultra-dense NYC skyscrapers.
https://youtu.be/y3XoUBzfXps
Anyone who wants to live in apartments can do so. Nobody is forced to live in single-family homes -- on the contrary, we work long and hard to afford the money to get into them because they are better than listening to our neighbors all the time.
- significantly higher cost (absent widespread R1 zoning, which drives the cost of apartments up),
- locations in the middle of desolate suburbia,
- dead neighbourhoods because almost no one lives there,
- very few nearby stores and restaurants,
- no or limited public transit because it costs far too much to run in sprawling suburbia,
- utter dependence on personal automobiles, and the complete lack of independence for children, young adults, and other non-driving members of society,
- the necessity of maintaining the grounds of your own personal park,
- poorly maintained or missing public infrastructure because everything is so spread out,
- having to endure endless traffic because of your 1hr commute to work,
and I could go on.
Given the above, if apartment living wasn't so heavily restricted by law, so many more people would choose to live in them rather than SFH. You only need to look at cities like Montreal or entire countries like the Netherlands to see that this is true.
In Montreal, housing is still cheap and most people live in multiplexes (walk-up two-to-four storey buildings with private front doors and small back yards) and live very close to where they work, but there are still a lot of different styles of SFH that people can choose to live in if they want, and many do. Again, look at the video I linked above for examples.
I love the constant description of suburbia as being desolate.
My suburban neighborhood is pretty typical and we have a vibrant community, including little free libraries, bike trails, conservation clubs, birdwatching orgs, garden clubs, needlecraft clubs, kids running lemonade stands, teens hustling to shovel driveways in the winter, a community pool, bake sales, plant sales, strawberry festivals, and more.
We even all banded together and got rid of a lot of the streetlights so now I live in a Bortle 3 (or VERY low Bortle 4) dark sky. And because I have a yard I have a huge-ass amateur radio antenna farm and a fire pit where people come over to chill out.
I raised three daughters here and they turned out fantastic, and spent their youth doing some real Stranger Things stuff without all of the upside-down bits.
If I want to feel hip and urbane I drive the 20 minutes to the train station and go into town, pay my $20 for a cocktail, see an overpriced show, and then retire to my awesome house.
I'm beginning to think that people who think suburbia is desolate are miserable shitheads who a: people don't want to be around, or b: don't want to be around other people.
Also significantly higher return on investment. Homeowners build equity, renters don't. Houses increase in value faster than owned condos/apartments/townhouses.
> - locations in the middle of desolate suburbia,
It's not desolate. We have everything -- parks, stores, restaurants, schools, nearby downtown areas...
> - dead neighbourhoods because almost no one lives there,
Not dead at all. Plenty of kids playing all the time, people walking their dogs, etc.
> - very few nearby stores and restaurants,
Not true at all. There are hundreds of stores and restaurants where I live. They just aren't jammed between people's houses.
> - no or limited public transit because it costs far too much to run in sprawling suburbia,
Plenty of transit in my suburb.
> - utter dependence on personal automobiles, and the complete lack of independence for children, young adults, and other non-driving members of society,
Not true at all. People have ways to get around. Kids ride bikes. There are buses and trains not all that far away.
> - the necessity of maintaining the grounds of your own personal park,
It's not usually a big deal to maintain your yards. Most people seem to manage. Some hire gardeners, but many also take care of it themselves.
> - poorly maintained or missing public infrastructure because everything is so spread out,
All the infrastructure in most suburbs is fine. It's not like we all live in the 1800s or something. The roads are even paved!
> - having to endure endless traffic because of your 1hr commute to work,
A 1-hour commute is an outlier. It just is. The US average, last I checked, is something like 30 or 35 minutes.
Nonetheless, NONE of what you say justifies single family home MANDATES (as well as minimum parking mandates, minimum setbacks, maximum heights, etc.). Let people build what they want to, at the price they want to, and everyone will be happier. This is the United States we're talking about, supposedly the "land of the free"—why not make it actually true?
The restrictions exist because people want to ruin neighborhoods like mine. We made laws to prevent it.
For every sane YIMBY who wants to build livable density, there seems to also be an unhinged person who thinks everyone should be forced to live in tower blocks.
Many such people are in this thread. I used to think it was a strawman argument, but those people really do exist, they really want to take my home from me and turn my whole block into a high rise, and that’s not going to happen without a fight. That’s why the mandates exist.
The biggest obstacle the YIMBY crowd faces is the insane people in their own camp: The crazy utopian socialist weirdos who think it’s morally wrong to live in a house in a suburb and drive a car. Force those people out, denounce them, and you’ll see a lot of the opposition to new housing go away.
There's a big difference between high-rise and mid-rise, and all three can peacefully coexist. If you had watched the video I linked earlier you would have seen many examples of this. I will link it here again for convenience.
Population Density 101: A Visual Guide to Suburbs and Skyscrapers by Oh The Urbanity!: https://youtu.be/y3XoUBzfXps
Apartments are fun when you are young and want to live downtown and enjoy the restaurants and the night life. When you get older and want your home to be a refuge and raise a family, apartments really suck.
People do not prefer sharing a house with roommates to having their own apartment.
Also the idea that people's preferences should be encoded into bans on certain housing types is completely absurd to begin with.
Also please see the price increases in single family homes also historically outpacing inflation in major metros.
Build more of something, and dare I say it, maybe let's let the market decide what and where.
And there your argument falls apart; vast majority can’t afford it. Policy you advocate has caused a housing shortage.
The suburbs got built because people wanted them! The zoning laws exist because the voters wanted them! It's a big mistake to think that most Americans secretly want denser housing arrangements and the zoning laws are preventing it.
and of course it is possible to have a refuge while being in shared housing. Like big apartments do get built! Not for everyone and like you said people want a nice refuge. But it’s possible to build large apartments with good insulation where people have their privacy, while simultaneously offering (for example) huge shared parks and close access to commerce or schools. every shared housing thing doesn’t turn into Manhattan.
What I remember most about living in a flat was my wife and I being able to walk to work and our son being able to walk to school. Didn't hear the neighbours and we had access to really nice private gardens.
There is nothing fundamentally sucky about apartments/flats.
Edit: Of course, a lot of flats/apartments suck - but then again so do many houses. If you have flats built with proper construction and sensibly planned then they can be very pleasant.
Re "apartments really suck" - I beg to differ. I live in a 1920s apartment block in an inner-city neighbourhood, it's 50m from a school where my neighbours kids walk every day (high school is further, but they'll take the trolley or tram), there's a cafe on the corner, a couple of local pubs on my street, and a supermarket 5 mins walk away. I don't hear neighbours through the walls, we have a shared garden with an apple tree and grape vines. I walk ~10 minutes to meet friends at my local cinema, and walk my dog in a handful of different parks which are between 5 and 15 minutes walk away. Can you please explain what part of any of this "sucks" because I am personally struggling to see it.
I suspect you'll suggest that my situation is exceptional (it's not, this describes most accommodation where I live) and counter that it's possible to make a bad apartment. But really it's possible to fuck up any kind of housing development - the UK has some spectacular examples of both shit tower blocks and shit single-family dwellings last century for starters. So the difference is that those single home developments also incur a pretty stiff cost to cities, society and the environment that you cannot handwave away unless you just want to say “well I don’t mind if the rest of the world sucks, as long as I get to have a big garden”
If the first of those is falsified, the mid-rise has a negative effect on the nearby properties. If the second is falsified, that negative effect is significantly amplified. Our part of the city of Cambridge has slightly less street sparking space than cars for the houses here. That’s made up for by about 2/3 of the houses having private driveways (which take one street spot for the curb cut, but often add 2-4 parking spots). Place even a 6-story mid-rise with no parking and 40 cars for its 8 cars worth of frontage and it creates chaos in a way that a triplex or SFR doesn’t.
Furthermore, if there is no off-street parking and cities price on-street parking appropriately such that there are always a few empty spots, no one would move into the area with the expectation that they can park their car for free, and it wouldn't be a problem.
Off-street parking mandates sound like a good idea, but they're actually horrible for cities, and they're part of why most American cities are as sprawling and car-dependent as they are. City-planners of the 20th century thought the same as you and didn't consider the consequences, and now the trend is reversing: many cities and states are beginning to eliminate those mandates, but it's going to take quite a long time before the effects are felt.
The overall problem, though, is that these density restrictions cause a nasty spiral. People looking for work are asked to move to one of these cities where their bosses own these wonderful homes. They mostly have to rent. Rent is high. Supply is low, so it's hard to even find a place! Every single service that you might use, also has to pay rent. Not only do you have to put a significant portion of your paycheck to rent, but basically every restaurant has to charge a very heavy amount to this. Every corner store. Parking. Every minor service. Public spaces might barely exist, but forget having community spaces run by individuals, because commercial real estate got super expensive from this same cycle.
It's hard to overstate how real estate pressure makes _everything_ more costly. People have to work to live. If they want a good job, they _have_ to buy into the urban real estate tradeoff. There are ~no good rural jobs. It's pervasive.
If every part of living wasn't so financialised, if it was possible for public spaces to survive, if teachers could actually afford to live close to schools, this is a different story. And some cities manage this better, of course. But at one point decisions around parking minimums, height restrictions, endless ability of localities to object to building development, and other whining from people who would rather have their yard than replace that with a larger public park... it just makes it harder and harder to sustain urban living at all
I used to think the NIMBYs were full of it -- they say their opponents wanted to force everyone into high-density living arrangements, everyone must live in a communist tower block dystopia, people's yards and green spaces would be taken from them, huge buildings would tower over neighborhoods and block out all the light, etc. I thought that was a pretty bad strawman representation of their opponents.
Now I realize that some people really do want those things, after seeing quite a lot of unreasonable people on HN and a few other places, who really do seem to believe the insane ideas the NIMBYs ascribe to them.
You wrote "But at one point decisions around parking minimums, height restrictions, endless ability of localities to object to building development, and other whining from people who would rather have their yard than replace that with a larger public park.."
Do you really think it's ok to build a public park right in someone's yard? Do you really, truly believe that our society should operate that way? Because if you do, the NIMBYs are right!
And honestly, if a person wants to make a little public park in their yard... I don't see what the issue is with that? But yeah, that's not what was suggested in the slightest.
This depends on your definition of a 'good job'. If this is about pay, yes, wages in the countryside are lower - but so are living costs. If I average over my contacts, people working rurally seem to be generally happier with their occupation, though.
> and other whining from people who would rather have their yard than replace that with a larger public park...
If I have the choice between my own yard, where I can park my barbecue grill, and a public park, which most likely will become a magnet for the homeless/drug user population, I know what I will choose.
People who believe public recreation infrastructure is the way to go ascribe an ideal to a public park that is rarely ever met - they live in a world where parks come right out of Edwardian England, with well-maintained flower beds and fences around them, where a park custodian closes the park at night[1]. The problem with that: That is incredibly expensive.
So parks are lucky if they get their grass cut regularly, and are relatively calm areas to sleep in at night. The problem now is that with homeless/drug user populations, the area becomes 'unsafe' for local residents, who will now avoid that park, at which point it loses all it's recreational value.
So ... why would I give up my own little yard, which I maintain, which is relatively safe, for a block-sized open sewer where it is only a matter of time for someone who ought to be in a mental hospital to shank me?
[1] ... and ironically, that type of park was not public either - it was private property often owned by the landlord, and you had to have a residents-only key to access many of those.
Perhaps not the US or many parts of the world. But like… I dunno, I was in Brisbane the other day and they had huge places with more amenities my back yard will ever have. It’s not the same as the best yard, but it’s better than most peoples yards.
I don't know where people get the idea that suburbs are nothing but houses for miles and miles. We really do have it all here. And the people who want dense housing don't want to live in my neighborhood -- they gravitate to the parts of the area with high rises.
Roughly speaking, 25% of people prefer urban living, 50% prefer suburban living, and 25% prefer rural living. Urban living is currently expensive, because there is a massive shortage of urban housing. People didn't build enough of it in the 20th century for a number of reasons.
All other things being equal, urban living should be cheaper than suburban living, because urban areas need less infrastructure for each resident. Every city where urban living continues to be expensive should build high-density mid-rise areas until that's no longer the case. High-rises rarely make sense outside central locations, as they are expensive to build.
https://la.curbed.com/2015/4/8/9972362/everything-wrong-with...
It’s not wrong to want your neighborhood to never change.
However I would argue that it is wrong to assume that every city currently has the “proper” density. Why was it ok for your house to be built but not for your neighbor to, say, redevelop their SFH into 3 town homes?
And then you put them inches away from one another, lined up in perfect rows!
I don't get it, looking on (mainly through TV/film) from the UK, what makes detached houses desirable is almost entirely lacking from North American streets, they frequently seem to look like a terrace that's been chopped up. Is it perhaps because timber framing makes noise more of a problem in terraces/semis; so that becomes the prime motivator for detached?
There are plenty of suburbs that aren't this way though, especially older ones.
> The average person in California (and in the rest of the country) desires to live in a detached home that they own.
Then why is it necessary for LA and other localities to make it literally illegal to build denser housing? After all, if detached single family homes are what people want, then surely simple supply and demand will lead to that being what's predominantly built, right?
(Spoiler: Single family homes aren't what everyone wants. Plenty of people want other types of housing. People pushing these zoning rules aren't doing it because _they_ want single family homes - they're doing it because they want control over what type of home is available to others.)
Hollywood density: 22,193 people per square mile
Koreatown density: 42,611 people per square mile
Source: https://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/population/density/ne...
Yes, greater LA area also has a lot of what people like to call “sprawl”, but it’s a big place and has many different neighborhoods. You also don’t need high rises for density - Paris is not all that tall, but at 53k people per square mile, it’s denser on average than NYC…
In addition to the obvious Staten Island, apparently Queens "only" has 22,125! I always thought it would be close to Brooklyn etc.
Kidding, but there is more land for industrial and commercial use in Queens that isn't residential. Including two airports and three sizable sports facilities. Brooklyn by contrast has almost no interruptions to the edge-to-edge residential street grid.
That's called sprawl.
Even in the valleys, Sherman Oaks is very different from Agoura. OC would take years to really get to know as well.
When you look at areal/satellite imagery, Santa Barbara to San Diego is basically connected by different towns and neighborhoods, with very little breaks. Yet, no one will say that it’s all the same or somehow homogeneous. The scale in itself is breathtaking from the plane.
Instead of dismissing an objective truth as derogatory, you should get to know the word.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl
Los Angeles is the most infamous example, and you can look at its evolution here: https://la.curbed.com/2014/4/3/10121264/los-angeles-sprawl-h...
Sprawl isn't a derogatory term, it's a descriptive one. Likewise just because enclaves have a unique character and governance doesn't mean they're not the outcome of sprawl. Please don't find yourself so easily offended.
(I've got almost three years of experience in the LA area largely in a box comprised of Encino, Venice, DTLA, and Burbank, if it adds any credibility to the point. Certainly not a lifetime resident but enough to have my way memorized pretty much everywhere and know why my favorite little place is Sawtelle. Everything in that box is unique, but nevertheless... it's still sprawl)
Hope this helps.
If you are still in LA, try exploring more than your commute and routine life afford. You’ll be surprised. While not as much Victorian-era architecture has survived as in say San Francisco, there are many interesting pockets to see and neighborhoods to understand. Many generations of immigrants left their marks, with neighborhoods passing from one group to the next, yet their traces remain (such as ethnically specific churches/houses of worship or other long-lived institutions).
And if it’s not for you in the end, that’s great too - not everyone enjoys every part of the world. Explore and find what you like best.
Goodnight.
That being said, at least the sprawl in a lot of LA county is basically done thanks to geography, bounded by ocean or protected mountains. Only one way to go now: up.
The answer is in the dreams that everyone had, in that house, over the decades. Those hills are a pretty haunted lot. Something about the tension of the Earth, in my opinion, that can be felt if you listen long enough ..
I think of that as being the entire point of the city. It's a deliberate contrast to places like NYC, Tokyo, London.
A place where you can have a big old lot, a store that's half empty, a car collection. Cause there's so much land kicking about. Too bad it became expensive anyway, I guess.
That probably pins me to a particular generation.
But I've never met anyone in my generation that has ever seen it and even people older than me barely remember it existing.
Wikipedia’s page is interesting, apparently its got a cult following now.
I’m one of the cult followers I guess. It’s a shame to me that it never got a sequel. It’s fun pulp fiction in the style of Indiana Jones.
James Hornet’s score alone is worth the ride — still used as a primary temp track for figuring out the edits of new movies.
Effects are the best practical work has to offer.
Timothy Dalton as Errol Flynn with an Aryan secret is phenomenal, having the most fun of his career. Jennifer Connelly is a full on movie star hitting her stride. Alan Arkin at his peak grumpy old man stage. And Billy Campbell deserved a better career.
And the story is pure old fashioned American underdog finds a unique advantage and uses it to take on the bad guys to save the girl. It’s damn near perfect tbh.
Detail: https://www.artcenter.edu/gallery/detail/569d6e434d9b6f9a563...
I emailed him a while back, and he told me the original artwork wasn't in his possession, and he had no idea where it was...
The reason it is not is simple bad luck: out of all the movies it could have opened against, it managed to open against the single film that (at that time) could outdo it in its own action-adventure game, the defining work of the genre: Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Even Rocketeer couldn’t overcome that.
>The (Rocketeer) opened #4 behind Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, City Slickers and Dying Young
I am stung by the correction because it’s nice to imagine oneself infallible, but I appreciate it nonetheless.
So the right side of the plane can always catch a glimpse of the sign, but the left side coming from anywhere north-ish will have a closer view.
If you're coming from south or east you won't make that turn and left side won't see it at all.
[1] - https://www.thejournal.ie/hollywood-sign-wicklow-3867190-Feb...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR2BSGQt2DU
It’s 12 parts and honestly could have easily been 10 if not less but it’s always worth exploring the duality of the man. No denying his social progressivism but he definitely wasn’t all shining light and I’m suspicious of anything that paints him as if he were.