PLUM part 3 or more on McMansions

America's latest hare and hounds, Mansionization the campaign, square footage the quarry.

The space race, is it Jones'n, keeping up with the Jones', or subcortical sabotage? Or partly a response to increasing urban density, this hoarding of interior space?

Los Angeles, frequently billed as the swami of decentralization, continues to become more dense, now the 8th densest big city in America, leap-frogging Baltimore and Minneapolis. More pointedly, of the ten most populous U.S. cities, LA ranks fourth in persons per square mile, trailing only New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Concomitantly, the creation of valuable green space, open space, grand public space fails to keep pace (ergo the popularity of bogus public spaces like the Grove). Interiors have swollen to compensate for lost exterior space, a residential DMZ.

McMansions are frequently the end yield of teardowns. They are homes assembled from mass produced parts, with stock plans often used to reduce costs, an artless assemblage of borrowed signifiers, cheesy Mediterranean revival elements paired with colonial kitsch.

They are actually very useful for illustrating the importance of proportion, because they almost always get it wrong. Tiny windows appear even more diminutive, shrunken against sheer stucco face. Party-sized balconies jut into perpetual space, porches are reduced to open air broom closets.

The free world's 21st century version of ruinous 1950's-60's era urban renewal, destroying cohesiveness in the name of progress, like the terrible fabric discarding re-muddles that transform L.A.'s great early housing stock into the next blight.

Traffic Czar

I haven't an opinion on the mayor's plan to alter traffic patterns along Pico and Olympic. I have in the past however, jokingly lobbied for the pseudo position of Traffic Czar, dedicated to the research and consideration of traffic streamlining measures, coordinating the efforts of planning, engineering, and transit. How's that for a job description?

Fascinated by some of the traffic calming measures implemented by other cities, notably Berkeley (see images), I'd favor significantly more street closures along/perpendicular to major thoroughfares. Support among community groups would be high, in praise of the insulating value of the cul-de-sac.

Likely, I'd just funnel as much money as possible toward rail growth, abandoning any precept of build it/fill it freeway expansion projects.

I'd likely impose a commuter tax too, ala Philadelphia, and not a payroll expense tax. How about a tax on drive-thru's? I'd go tax crazy! The power is corrupting already! Seriously, I think the citizens of Los Angeles will pay for demonstrable capital improvements. It's easier to sell people stuff they can see and use.


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I will be open at 2241 and 1/2 W. 24th ST. tomorrow (Sunday, February 17th) from 1 - 4:30 pm. The property is located nearly one block East of Arlington, on the North side of the street.

Window Replacement Part 2

Q: What's the difference between window replacement and pornography?

A: One is a multi-billion dollar industry that exploits human weakness with the promise of increased performance and potency. The other sells sex.

Depressingly, conformity is generally hand-cuffed to mass production and "affordability". Manufacturing prowess marketed as progress, deus ex machina, all that jive talk.

Perhaps the Utopians hail the abduction of detail and variation as a democraticizing measure, the present ever-insufficient, hampered by the bogus romantic.

Still if it were about plain utility, the waxy, band aid muntins would take a hike, 'cause divided lights read "stylish".

But what a turn on! Dear neighbor, we've the same vinyl windows, hollow core doors, and granite counters. We've each infused our lawns with turf builder, bordered by identical plantings. Our carpet and wall color choices are similar and agreeably neutral. Were we any more similar, I might agree to carpool.

A funeral anyone, for art?

Gotham

Driving through through Koreatown, along 6th St. in particular, one nearly expects hard hat checkpoints. The bulky new, blots out the never before considered quaint, old. Steel frames emerging, Transformer-like, from parking lots, mere cracks in the pavement.

As one of my readers noted (under Those Dangerous White Suburbs comments), the United States has long held an anti-urban bias, freely associating the city (as opposed to the rural or suburb) with moral and social ruin (the impact of ever more intensive urbanization and immigrant tensions). This association may finally be kaput, steamrolled by the interest of builders, a full, mature generation of suburban expats, and an era of remarkable urban safety.

The 1950's status image of cookouts, huge, glistening slabs of meat, cocktails and a backyard putting green has been replaced by another developer led mirage: burghal immediacy, cosmopolita, laptops, a universe of sexy singles (albeit in office inappropriate clothing), and faux fro-yo, or what I call "cutsie commerce".

On cue, Los Angeles transformers herself from a collection of villages, from a pioneering city of neighborhoods, arguably the 20th century model, into the next overstuffed Gotham.

Money is the answer. The question being why promote new housing, so much new housing, as a social necessity? There's plenty of housing after all--cheap housing, in Detroit, St. Louis, and Baltimore (to name very few). While the employment market in those places may be less stout, and perhaps that's the role government should play (better incentivized federal enterprise zones, like the sort in the Gulf), in some places there aren't the jobs because there aren't the people.

This isn't Nimby-esqe gatekeeping, rather a question of asset management. Is Los Angeles losing herself, her essence, to subsidize the growth machine? Hoarding the financial frankfurter while Flint, Gary, and Buffalo starve?

The unimpinged, free flowing Los Angeles of Woody Allen's Annie Hall has been replaced, perhaps to the Manhattan mahatma's chagrin, by the new strata. Super-sized buildings and developments, schools, malls, single family dwellings, swell to fill available land and air space. Citizenry and the political elite brainwashedly champion the cause, and the steady accretion of downtown continues as convergent boundaries overwhelm. Neighborhood groups meet, fret, and hand-wring, hoping to install developer resistant measures, fingers in dykes.

Plum Part 2

There are several pathologies in the “how we live now” or "contemporary lifestyle" argument for teardowns and mansonification. The first is the typical American reflex to resist and resent any compromise or mitigations. Cons want a 6,000 square foot house, in a single family idyll, with ironclad property values, and total freedom of use and expression regardless of context.

Some are willing "to build green", as if that exonerates their resource intensive pursuit. A 6,000 square foot home can be made energy efficient in relation to other 6,000 square foot homes, but never in relation to 3,000 square foot homes, no matter the low perm housewraps, wabi sabi landscapes (in what little yard remains), and re-circulating systems. Still, it's a canard. Energy efficiency isn't the pursuit--except as gravitas--status and the stuff shuffle are.

The stuff shuffle.

Twenty years ago I worked as a furniture mover, for a small mom and pop operation in Oakland. My boss had clients he'd relocated five and six times, houses he'd visited over and over again. In the early 1980's he claimed the average property contained twice the volume (of possessions) as in 1950. A mere anecdote, yet the storage industry--unheard of thirty years ago, and once the provenance of moving companies--is now a $20 billion a year enterprise. Americans hoard so much crappola that it's consumed their attics, basements, garages, and now has to be stored off-site as well. For many, the solution is to build a bigger home, a much bigger home.

A bit of the added booty might be understood: telecommuting, cheaper garments that are easier to launder, more record keeping, the extra appliance. Still, the average new build in America is twice the size of its European equivalent and growing, despite declines in the average number of persons per household (now 2.5).

End Part 2

PLUM/Mansonification Part 1

I spent a hunk of a week ago Tuesday at City Hall, at the Planning & Land Use Management (PLUM) committee hearing. Amongst the agenda items was a proposal regarding Mansonification.

The turnout was impressive, the speakers impassioned. Both sides were represented, the negative effect on property values was proclaimed by all. Groups favoring lot coverage restrictions, touted the improved property value performance of HPOZ's and other neighborhoods with strict design guidelines (like Palos Verdes Estates). Opponents argued instead that property values are patently linked to unbridled redevelopment possibilities.

Cowardly, a study was requested concerning economic impacts. But how can such a thing be quantified? How do you calculate the value added by a massive re-do, and the corresponding value loss for the encumbered adjoining property?

Asked to report for the West Adams Heritage Asssociation Newsletter, I submitted the following:

The proposed ordinance meant to amend several provisions of the L.A. municipal code and reduce existing Floor Area Ratios (FAR), was shuttlecocked by council, after lengthy and divided--though largely favorable--public comment. An economic impact study was retiringly requested, as if subjunctive conditionals might be tabulated by abacus and forefinger, without regard for that ol' yellowing concern: quality of life. Regardless, the proposed code amendments were lamentably limited to R-1 lots (not otherwise located in Hillside Areas or the Coastal Zone), bupkis for the orphaned majority of West Adams. That's yiddish for beans, people.

Egads, try telling joe public they can't live in 4700 square feet, and they'll have to make do with a mere 2650. Not families of 10 mind you, but couples coveting a sub kitchen big enough to park a Winnebago in. Of course we wouldn't want to change "how we live now", particularly when we can afford a cleaning lady, gardener, pool boy, 12 burner Wolf range, 62 inch something or other, and relatively cheap energy.

The issue of space--or the supposed lack thereof--is a frequent justification by the teardown/McMansion adherents, and like most justifications, it is usually specious.
Sensitively scaled additions can be considered, a detached office or outbuilding constructed, basements can be expanded and sometimes attics, particularly in pre WWI buildings can be finished.

END PART 1

Those Dangerous White Suburbs

During a break in Sunday night's hectic WAHA Holiday tour, I conversed with a new area resident who moved, she explained, after her daughter left for college. The daughter, she confessed, disliked the parents new surroundings in Adams-Normandie, and preferred instead their previous home in Manhattan Beach, "where the schools are good and it's safe".
"It's safe here too", I added, perhaps showing a bit of the chip on my shoulder, and also eager to challenge the dominant ideology.

What I've wanted to add, for the longest time, probably inappropriately is, "safe unlike those places outside city centers. You know, the places with the mass-killings." Leaving Virginia Tech out, because college campus craziness is a category onto itself, and yesterday's dire news in Omaha, we're still left with the Amish classroom tragedy, Columbine, the Tacoma Mall, Wakefield, Red Lake High, the Honolulu Xerox repair manhunt, the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre, and others. None of which involved "negro stick-up men", Crips, Bloods, La eMe, or rap-star posses.

For a change, I don't mean to be flip or indifferent, this is about people losing their lives. As much as I prefer to prick the hegemon and serve a little 'come get yours whitey' comeuppance, when Christmas shoppers are gunned down in a mall, it's sad news. When a 24 year old black man is shot dead on a street corner--it's also sad news (even if he wasn't a pro-bowl safety), and it's no more natural or environmentally ordained.

In El Pueblo stories abound of terrified outsiders, begging off dinner invitations and asking for escorts to the driveway on account of a graffiti scrawl three blocks away, avoiding the 110 freeway lest car trouble require surface street interaction, and mistaking film shoot pyrotechnics for street gang warfare. Probably fueled by yellow media, some legitimate hardships, and big screen depictions like Keven Kline's near car-jacking in Lawrence Kasdan's bromidic Grand Canyon.

Maybe urbanites should instead play the biggety fool, asking prickly questions about retail outlets in Thousand Oaks, or assuming cover formations whilst visiting relatives in tiny New England hamlets. Maybe then America would really get serious about gun violence, and recognize the universal vulnerability it has wrought.

Halloween Night

After a short walkabout, my son and I hung with some Hobart homebodies, astonished anew by the zero conduct: costume-less teenagers (and young adults) ferried by (not-so) mini-vans and sport utilities, collecting candy as if part of some black market resale venture.

The city is plastered with obesity warnings, and yet we collect and distribute enough saccharine offal to bloat a nation of ballerinas.

"Nada de disfraz, nada de dulce", sometimes we chide the plainclothes opportunists, too lazy even to don a goofy sportcoat, or pair a jersey with cleats, bat, or hat.


The treemonster on Hollywood Boulevard has the right spirit, and he ain't in it for a polysorbate 60 sucker.



Of course, West Adamsers did Halloween in their own inimitable style: cardboard tombstones that advertised smoking related deaths, candy givers in vintage lace, eerie sound loops from '30's radio shows.

Trick or treating which appeared to fall off after 9/11 is all the rage again. Were parents concerned about terrorist tampering? Or did we just collectively become less intrepid? Into Iraq and into milkduds?

Partially inspired by neighbors who handout skeleton key chains, I'm going candyless next year, maybe gifting raisins or peanuts. I'll probably get egged.

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Sunday's Open: 2361 W. 20th St. 2 - 5 pm. One half block East of Arlington. One block South of Washington.

Barriers, Real & Imagined Part 1

The thoroughly acclaimed Western Heights Tour is past. Receipts are being totaled, home owners are catching up on lost zzz's, docents are resting their strained larynges. But an iota of controversy remains. A primary tour focus was to raise money for permanent, landscaped, traffic-calming features--full and partial street closures.

Such a thing wouldn't raise eyebrows in Brentwood, Bradbury, or Bixby Knolls, but in anti-establishment West Adams, anything that smacks of elitism or exclusion comes under instant fire (and rightly so, I say). Several West Adams area neighborhoods (most notably Victoria Park and LaFayette Square) have already closed off streets, mostly in an effort to abate non-resident cut-through traffic. The Victoria gates (like the Van Buren Place cul de sac) block the sidewalks as well. These are not gated communities, like Fremont Place or the late/great Chester Place, with sentry shacks and restricted pedestrian access; but for some they're discomfortingly similar.

Personally, I'm in favor of traffic-calming measures. Not just for Western Heights, but for all the Near West downtown neighborhoods, from the Crenshaw corridor East, and on beyond zebra.

West Adams was especially defiled by the 10 freeway*, saddled with five on/off ramps in a measly two-and-a-half mile span: Arlington, Western, Normandie, Vermont, Hoover. Residential streets like Arlington/Wilton and Normandie were resultingly tranformed into key North-South arteries (which resulted in additional malevolence). Residents ought to be able to consider compensatory measures.

To Be Continued....

*Nobody, but nobody got sucker-punched like Boyle Heights, bearer of the 5, 10, and 60 freeways.

Master Bedroom

Recently I completed the sale of 1522 S. Hobart Blvd, the magnificent Mission revival in Harvard Heights. Amongst its many fabulous features: a master bedroom (or master's bedroom, or, in the interest of non-discriminatory language,"owner's retreat") that conforms to today's standard--that is, large, multi-closeted, physically separate from the other bedrooms, and with a full bath attached. Such a thing, uncommon amongst my inventories of Pre War housing, seems increasingly desirable.

In the early 1800's the average American home was about 600 square feet, and children often slept 2 - 3 in a bed. Task separation dictated layout, as cooking and household tasks were divided, usually by a ground floor hall. An adjacent parlor, which sometimes doubled as the parent's bedroom, served as the space for dining and receiving guests.

Health-based concerns, but also just plain ol' affluence [insert five pages here on the connection between cultural values, morality, and consumer trends] contributed to the move to separate sleepers, and the trend continues still, with today's adult-focused sybaritic sensibility. Between 1970 - 2002 (according to the US census and the NAHB), the average household size decreased from 3.1 to 2.6 persons, yet the average new home size increased from 1,500 to 2,300 sq. ft. Privacy and separation are equated to status. Master suites today, multi-suites tomorrow.

"Where is the master?" impatient consumers would ask, whilst touring the grand Emard House (see earlier posts) on Oxford.
"The principal bedroom," I would answer, "is this one", showcasing the largest of the four second-floor bedrooms.
"But it hasn't an attached bath", they'd complain.
"Few did in 1904", I'd continue, "it wasn't then a consumer expectation. However, let me show the attic."

The attic, over 500 square feet, connected to a full bath. Most were satisfied, and most imagined the attic as owner's retreat. I was surprised really, because I prefer to sleep in the smallest rooms, so that I might spend my day in different, larger spaces. I also don't feel like banishing my kid to the houses' hinterlands.

I guess I'm in the minority. Again.

Inflation Infuriation

Do I think housing prices are inflated? I think a lot of things are inflated. I'm not well qualified to sling macro perspectives and geopolitical hash around; but, when I read about milk wars stemming the rise of inflation, I want to know whose tether is really getting yanked.

This core index stuff that strips out the so-called "volatile costs" like energy and food and housing, doesn't seem like a terribly relevant measure. I mean even if you're a latte drinker, with a two-year old, and a late night cookie habit, how much can you spend on the dairy? 35 bucks a month?! Who cares, the car ain't running on the white stuff, and the housing payment is still close to three bills.

Inflation running at 2 to 3 percent? Bah, I think it's probably closer to 8 or 9.
Shoot though, let's go make some milkshakes while we still afford 'em.