0:12

Hello! And welcome to the Urbanist Monocles

0:14

program. all about the built environment. I'm

0:16

your host and you talk today. We

0:18

put Los Angeles in the spotlight with

0:20

Monaco's man in L. A Chris Lord

0:22

Chris What the big ticket items front

0:24

of mine for Angelenos? Well for any

0:26

well versed Angelino exposed traffic remains a

0:28

major concern for anyone who lives in

0:30

that city. But I want to get

0:32

beyond that and talk about the first

0:34

year of Karen Bass is Mayor ship

0:36

and touch on one of the big

0:38

campaign promises when she came to City

0:40

Hall which was getting now. Infamous on

0:42

housed homeless crisis in the city under

0:44

control getting more people off the streets

0:46

and I want to talk through how

0:48

she's to them without and also and

0:50

hotter and drier climate city not all

0:52

coming up over the next thirty minutes

0:55

prior on the urbanist with me and

0:57

retook I make crystals. Well.

1:04

Chris, thank you for joining me for

1:06

two days. Upset! Now we want to

1:08

put the focus on allay and some

1:11

of the big urban challenges facing the

1:13

city. In your eyes, what you see

1:15

or the top issues for a Los

1:17

Angeles of all the cities in the

1:19

world, I think the homelessness and the

1:21

way that really snowballed over the pandemic

1:23

and became it was this you the

1:25

L A face for many years. But

1:27

I think during the pandemic it really

1:29

not only became a huge thing for

1:31

people who live there, but also got

1:33

a lot of attention internationally. It

1:35

points to some of the questions that I

1:37

think lots of American cities are grappling with

1:39

at the moment about football housing, but also

1:41

the kind of essence of it's urban design

1:43

and ultimately what that means of people who

1:46

are trying to get along in a city

1:48

that's getting more expensive, more difficult to find

1:50

a place to put yourself and as we're

1:52

going to talk about that is endlessly been

1:54

squeezed in terms of access to things as

1:56

simple as water as having a safe route

1:58

to work. Bespoke. recently a

2:00

reporter in the city covering homelessness, Anna

2:02

Scott. Let's hear from Anna first about

2:04

the situations it stands and how the

2:06

mayor and the community have been trying

2:09

to help. It is

2:11

very hard to overstay at

2:13

the scale of homelessness in Los

2:15

Angeles. If you have not been

2:18

here recently, let me try to

2:20

paint a picture. At this point

2:22

in time in LA County, there

2:24

are an estimated more than 75,000

2:27

people experiencing homelessness on any given

2:29

night, which is an extraordinary

2:31

number, of course, and also a much

2:34

higher number than we had even

2:36

just eight years ago when the

2:39

number was closer to about 44,000.

2:41

So there's been this huge increase

2:43

just within the last decade, and

2:46

it's a very, very visible crisis because

2:48

unlike some other cities, namely

2:50

New York City, Los Angeles doesn't have

2:52

a huge shelter system. So

2:56

what this looks like is tents

2:58

along sidewalks, encampments in

3:00

just about every park you could

3:02

go to, people camped under freeway

3:05

overpasses. It's hard to find a

3:07

neighborhood that's untouched by this crisis. Parent

3:09

Bess's first year as mayor has resulted

3:12

in a lot of investment

3:14

in building out LA's temporary shelter

3:16

system and a lot of focus on

3:18

moving people off the streets because again, that

3:21

is the really extraordinary thing about LA's homeless

3:23

crisis compared to some other places around the

3:25

country that also deal with this issue is

3:27

that there's just an enormous number of people

3:29

unsheltered in LA on the streets. So

3:32

Karen Bess came into office making big

3:34

promises to move tens of thousands of

3:36

people indoors. She says that

3:39

she has in fact fulfilled those

3:41

promises, that she has moved more

3:43

than 20,000 people inside since

3:45

taking office. However, that

3:47

includes people who

3:50

went into temporary shelter for some short period

3:52

of time and then went back to the

3:54

streets. Also, mostly

3:56

that is people who went into temporary shelter, not

3:58

people who went into. permanent housing. And

4:00

I think sometimes those things get conflated when

4:03

we talk about these numbers and these promises. And

4:05

it's a very important distinction. Now, any

4:08

mayor of Los Angeles or probably

4:10

any city is not going to

4:12

solve homelessness in a year, or

4:14

really even four years. This is

4:17

a problem that requires

4:19

cooperation and is related

4:21

to policies at the county level at the

4:23

state level and at the federal level. But

4:25

there hasn't been a ton of focus on

4:27

this issue. And a lot of movement around

4:30

this issue and Karen Bass's first year in

4:32

terms of just the focus on getting people

4:34

off the streets first and foremost. This

4:36

is, you know, the dominant political issue

4:38

and even community issue you could say

4:40

in Los Angeles, it's just something that touches

4:43

everybody's lives. It definitely was

4:45

the main issue in the mayoral

4:47

race when Karen Bass eventually won.

4:49

It's something that a lot of people are focused

4:51

on. And with that, you've seen a lot of new

4:53

activism popping up, there is a number of mutual aid

4:56

groups that have formed in Los Angeles in recent

4:58

years that do street level things

5:00

like going out and feeding people even

5:02

trying to connect them to services and

5:05

trying to fill in some of the

5:07

gaps in our overtaxed and very spotty

5:09

system. And you certainly see a lot of

5:11

people showing up to public meetings, city council

5:13

meetings, you know, every time there's something significant

5:15

related to homelessness on a ballot and

5:17

a lot of activism around just

5:20

housing issues and affordable housing in general.

5:23

And the lack of affordable housing here

5:25

in LA is really the fundamental root

5:27

cause of this crisis. So absolutely,

5:29

there's been a lot of community level

5:31

activity on this in addition to

5:34

big policy shifts. It's

5:36

a year since LA elected a new

5:38

mayor, Karen Bass. How

5:40

has her mare ship changed the city so

5:42

far, do you think? So when she came

5:44

to power, the first thing that she did

5:47

was declare a state of emergency in Los

5:49

Angeles. And I remember when that happened, she

5:51

really came out to the city and said,

5:53

things are not good. And I think in

5:55

LA mayoral history, that's quite a bold statement.

5:57

Typically mayors come to power there and they

6:00

on that kind of feel-good LA

6:02

spirit. She actually came out and said, there is

6:04

a major problem here. Now,

6:06

has she completely changed the situation? The

6:08

answer is, of course, no. If you

6:10

drive around LA, you will still see

6:12

those entrenched encampments, those signs of people,

6:14

frankly, who've slipped through the net, through

6:16

the limited net within California, of sort

6:18

of such support and welfare and so

6:20

on, and who have found themselves living

6:22

on the streets. However,

6:24

she has, you know, she announced in December last

6:27

year 22,000 people took off the streets,

6:30

and you do feel it. I remember when I first

6:32

moved to LA two years ago, the

6:35

problem was so profound. In all

6:37

those famous places, Venice Beach, Hollywood,

6:39

downtown LA, Culver City, all these

6:41

places that are so entrenched as

6:43

part of the narrative of LA's

6:46

cultural exports and everything, and yet

6:48

you would drive around and you

6:50

would have beautiful big houses right

6:52

next to large and entrenched encampments.

6:54

Now, they have reduced, and she

6:56

has put in certain measures in

6:59

place that provide for some long-term solutions,

7:01

but there's a long, long way to go, I

7:03

would say. And just tell me, when

7:05

they use these numbers, because these numbers are often

7:07

a little bit confusing, so that's taking that number

7:09

of people off the street, but have

7:11

as many people suddenly arrived as well, because that's

7:13

the strange thing about Los Angeles. It's warm, if

7:15

you're homeless and in a state that's cold, you're

7:17

drawn to the coast, you're drawn to California, are

7:19

the numbers down in total by that amount, or

7:21

is that the number of people who think that

7:23

they've actually taken off the street? The key thing

7:25

to understand about the numbers as well is it

7:27

might be taken off the street, but for how

7:29

long? And I think that's what isn't actually revealed

7:31

by the numbers there. Does it put people into

7:33

a kind of halfway house situation of which there

7:35

are many? There was a process over the pandemic

7:37

of turning a lot of old hotels into temporary

7:39

housing for people, and actually that can slightly muddy

7:41

the numbers a little bit there. Are these people

7:44

who've gone into homes that they're going to be

7:46

able to live in for the next three years

7:48

and get a job and get their foot on

7:50

the ground? However, while that sounds critical, I do

7:52

think there is an element here to say that

7:54

the city has done... I mean, she did a

7:56

very interesting program when she came in, which was

7:58

called Inside Safe, and it was a... about finding

8:00

those long-term solutions. And I

8:02

think what's been impressive is that the

8:04

thinking behind that hasn't just come down

8:07

to, which are very important,

8:09

but voluntary organizations, charity organizations, and so

8:11

on, it's about actual urbanism changes, so

8:13

zoning so that you can do certain

8:15

things like tiny homes, as they

8:17

get called, which are very small, but make them

8:19

actually much more habitable, use spaces that have been

8:22

forgotten between dwellings, which is one of the things

8:24

that have been brought in in her time, allowing

8:26

architects and so on to create houses

8:28

in places that basically weren't zoned for

8:31

that, and to do it with

8:33

an emergency mindset, with thinking that there is funding

8:35

available, because we need to do this very quickly.

8:37

But to your point, the numbers continue to grow.

8:40

People find themselves moving onto the streets. They find

8:42

themselves in that situation within LA itself, and also

8:44

people from around California and around the US migrate

8:46

instead, because they know that there is also a

8:48

process of getting people off the streets there, so

8:51

they see some kind of route. But I think

8:53

that despite all that, Andrew, I do think that

8:55

those numbers, we have to take some strength in

8:57

those numbers, and I know that there are other

9:00

cities around America that have a homelessness

9:02

problem, believe it or not, that are now looking

9:04

at what Karambas has done in the first year,

9:06

and I think really the state of emergency was

9:08

the one that clinched it. How do you create

9:10

funding and emergency zoning actions very,

9:12

very quickly to get over a crisis, and

9:14

that's what she's done. And we have

9:16

to make clear that this is an issue, which is also

9:18

complicated by the fact that there are strands

9:20

of people who are homeless, who it's not only

9:22

to do with urban poverty, but it's to do

9:24

with mental health issues, it's to do with drug

9:26

issues. So we have to make clear it is

9:28

a very complicated issue, and it's not just about

9:31

finding beds to put people in. But

9:33

contributing to homelessness is the housing crisis

9:35

in LA, and the lack

9:38

of affordable housing. Now, you recently

9:40

visited Gluck Plus Architects, and

9:42

spoke to the firm's founder, Peter Gluck. Tell us

9:45

what you saw. So by his own

9:47

admission, Peter Gluck says that he

9:49

does lots of affordable housing, and that this

9:51

specific thing that I saw, he said this

9:53

is unaffordable housing. This is a project that

9:55

he did in the Hollywood Hills, Overlooking

9:57

Los Angeles, for his son, who...

10:00

Is dead claimed some director and

10:02

producer Will Glock who same cities

10:04

Paris with benefits he created a

10:06

home for him. Beautiful is is

10:08

taking cues from the case these

10:10

houses of the mid century and

10:12

piece makes no bones about fact

10:14

that this is a very illustrious

10:16

beautiful house and the is an

10:18

expensive house however there are within

10:20

the way that that house keynes

10:22

be certain principles the he has

10:24

applied in other places to create

10:26

large scale affordable housing projects pt

10:29

look as if. He was very tenured

10:31

octet with a lot Us history and a

10:33

veteran of working with cities to try and

10:35

address this affordable housing question. And in the

10:37

case about amazing house that he's bills and

10:40

so on, one is in scenario that this

10:42

was a piece of land that festival everybody's

10:44

had couldn't be built on because it was

10:46

a slope and secondly a sense he couldn't

10:49

be zoned, they couldn't find a way to

10:51

get over the zone it's they couldn't find

10:53

a way to build into the landscape in

10:55

a way that wasn't gonna be an eyesore.

10:58

They ultimately found that there was. So

11:00

many barriers to it and he makes a

11:02

point throughout his career of trying to overcome

11:05

those boundaries to the affordable housing projects. Outs

11:07

in the cases of probably one of his

11:09

most standout projects and he's done his in

11:11

Aspen, Colorado where he sense to use a

11:14

bit of land that the salsa people said

11:16

you couldn't build on and you couldn't do

11:18

in a way that didn't more the area

11:20

by boat in, lots of space for lots

11:22

of people to live it's and he found

11:25

certain ways of building into the landscapes, building

11:27

into an existing property. Working with the local.

11:30

Council to it since he changed the zoning

11:32

rules that he had more space to build.

11:34

Also more bang for the book of an

11:36

affordable housing project. But I think the

11:38

most important thing that Peter Jones is the

11:41

ceasing sit. There are ways architects can

11:43

keep costs down, deliver affordable housing. And that's

11:45

not even about the design. That's not even

11:47

about the materials. It's actually about how

11:49

you sink as an architect and what you

11:52

have at your disposal. Studio this? like

11:54

nibbling at the problem. You think

11:56

a little bite here in law by their

11:58

and couple of bites over here. You

12:00

just have to. Make lots of

12:02

little savings and little but in order

12:04

to do that. You. Have to

12:06

really understand the process of building. And

12:09

there's no archetypes learning that. There's.

12:12

No place for young archetypes to

12:14

find out about construction. Month

12:16

young architects ask me what what they should

12:18

do next or with this is doing it

12:20

out of school I must. The time I

12:22

tell them that they need to do is

12:24

go to work for a contractor, spend time

12:26

on the job, watch how things actually get

12:29

put together. So. That she had

12:31

thera better ways put things together. Cheaper

12:33

ways for thing see other. More.

12:35

Beautiful voice put things together. But.

12:38

Without that impulse, without that contact

12:40

with the nuts and bolts. The

12:42

kind of real. Modern.

12:45

Crafts of building with modern techniques that

12:47

was needed and there's just no place

12:49

for it to happen. To

12:51

stress in his is very

12:54

complicated and says evolving quickly.

12:56

Architects have absences themselves from

12:58

the construction process so they

13:00

think in simple minded terms

13:02

when in fact the construction

13:04

world is pretty sophisticated. Very

13:06

sophisticated since become a worldwide

13:08

market place so the architects

13:11

have to understand construction that

13:13

understand the way things are

13:15

built. The. Kinds of tools and

13:17

the kinds of mechanisms that are used

13:19

in today's world. And there is no

13:21

place for archetypes to. Gain.

13:23

That knowledge. They're. Making the

13:25

manuals for people to build the buildings

13:28

that they design and yet they don't

13:30

know how things are put together. so

13:32

their manuals are silly is due to

13:34

make a manual for a computer program.

13:36

for example, no one ever listen. A

13:39

manual for computer programming just kind of

13:41

pack away and figures out. And

13:44

that sort of the way construction

13:46

has become, which is ridiculous. Sort.

13:48

of thing to say with pt look as

13:51

that you know from the beginning he's always

13:53

had his own contracts and nice always have

13:55

thought control have been able to build which

13:57

is meant that you can keep costs down

13:59

and also still design, still realize

14:01

his vision of what this should look and

14:03

feel like. He went on to tell me

14:05

a bit about how developers and the public

14:07

can have a role themselves in combating the

14:10

housing crisis. I think it's just a market.

14:12

And if the population wants and

14:15

needs affordable housing, then they have

14:17

to provide the funds for it.

14:19

Funny thing happened to us recently that in the

14:22

past when you go to the city or the

14:24

town and ask for approval to

14:26

do a project, if we would say we

14:28

want 50 units here or we want 100

14:30

units here, the community

14:33

would say, no, you can only

14:35

have 25. So it was a battle over

14:37

it. And then about three

14:39

or four years ago, we went to the same

14:42

process and they said, no,

14:44

we want more. So instead

14:47

of beating us down, they realized that

14:49

on the same site, you've

14:51

already paid for the land. None of this is brain

14:53

surgery. You're better off making

14:55

more units. It's going to cost less per

14:57

unit. And therefore more people

14:59

are going to have a place to live.

15:02

It's pretty straightforward. The fear

15:04

around building is very strange. I

15:06

think that people don't like change

15:09

and it's happening quickly. So

15:11

I think we're going to have more

15:13

conflict over these issues. Now

15:16

moving on to the issue on all

15:18

Angelino's lips, traffic. Now, before I get

15:20

your thoughts, Chris, we spoke recently to

15:22

James Sanders, who's the author of Renewing

15:24

the Dream, which looks at the changing

15:27

state of transportation in LA to get

15:29

a temperature read on traffic in the

15:31

city and how it got there. LA

15:34

is in a state of transition right now. Automobile

15:37

use continues to be the primary form

15:39

of transportation in the city as it

15:41

has been for 60 years

15:43

or more. The traffic on

15:45

the freeways continues to worsen.

15:48

There was a slight dip, very slight

15:50

during the pandemic, but it almost immediately

15:52

came back to pre-pandemic levels. And

15:55

as remained there or increased, the problem being,

15:57

of course, that there's no way to build

16:00

new freeways, environmental

16:02

considerations and other considerations simply

16:05

forbid construction of new

16:07

freeways. So, new traffic insofar as it

16:09

comes on in the form of vehicular

16:11

traffic has to sit and exist on

16:14

the existing freeway system whose

16:16

inadequacies have been evident for about 30 or

16:18

40 years. Los Angeles has

16:20

gone through several important phases. People think

16:22

of it as the quintessential city of

16:25

freeways and tract houses and

16:27

that's not untrue after World War II.

16:30

It became the model really and

16:32

created the model, you might say,

16:34

of the modern freeway and suburban

16:36

development system. But it had

16:39

a whole pre-life. Before

16:41

1945, it was already a huge

16:43

city by the time of World War II. Before

16:46

1945, it was developed without freeways

16:48

with boulevards and on

16:50

those boulevards traveled streetcars, an immense streetcar

16:53

system, the largest in the world in

16:55

fact. New systems, the yellow

16:57

car and the red car, yellow car being

16:59

more an urban downtown based system

17:01

but the red car going to

17:03

the extent of the modern metropolitan

17:05

region all the way out north

17:07

and south and east. That

17:11

incredible system sort of led to the development

17:13

of the Los Angeles that in many ways

17:15

that we knew on top of which was

17:18

built this enormous freeway system in

17:20

the 1950s, 1960s, 70s and on. That

17:24

in turn is now being not

17:26

exactly replaced but supplemented by

17:29

newer forms of movement that have

17:31

been sort of superimposed on that. So there

17:33

have been really in a way three phases

17:35

of its growth. The transportation

17:38

system is evolving and in the

17:40

book that we recently published with

17:42

Rizzoli that we created with the

17:44

architecture from Woods Bagot, we explore

17:46

a number of ways in which

17:49

transportation is evolving in Los Angeles in

17:51

all kinds of ways so

17:53

that you have everything from micromobility which means

17:56

e-bikes and e-scooters which is the way a

17:58

lot of people are getting around. in

18:00

places like Santa Monica, for example, for

18:02

their short trips, no longer taking a

18:04

car, to of course the rise of

18:06

services like Uber and Lyft, which

18:09

use cars, but which, among other

18:11

things, don't require parking. So

18:13

that has an enormous kind of

18:15

corollary impact on the shape

18:18

of Los Angeles and land use

18:20

in Los Angeles. And of course,

18:22

the Metro system has continued to

18:24

evolve. It's moving toward further growth

18:26

toward the 2028 Olympics. The Metro

18:28

system isn't under the direct leadership

18:30

of Mayor Bass. It's a really

18:32

kind of a state and county

18:35

and city combination, but it is

18:37

expanding rapidly and becoming really the

18:39

largest rapid transit

18:41

growth in North

18:43

American cities since New York finished building its

18:46

subway system, more or less around the time

18:48

of World War II. Well,

18:50

Chris, what an extraordinary history of traffic in

18:52

the city and the notion it had

18:54

the largest street car system in the world. Now,

18:56

these are always complicated things to resolve in any

18:58

city. And you have a city when

19:00

I've been there with you and we've traveled around the expanse of

19:03

the city, the dependency on the car, even

19:06

when they've put in public transport, I guess there seems to

19:08

be a division between the haves and the have nots who

19:10

will use it. What's your take on what's happening and what

19:12

needs to happen? So I think you're

19:14

right, Andrew, that you can't separate LA from

19:16

the car. And this is one of the

19:19

things that I've learned over these two years.

19:21

I think that of course there is a

19:23

car culture there, but I think that culture

19:25

has become so inextricable from the city now.

19:28

And I think that for all the building

19:30

of public transport, for all these amazing lines

19:32

that as we speak, there are multiple lines

19:34

connecting Beverly Hills to UCLA coming online in

19:36

the next year ahead of the Olympics in

19:39

2028. It's a huge rollout. But I think

19:41

that there is a fundamental culture that cannot

19:43

be necessarily completely unpicked. And I think LA

19:46

has accepted that. I think it's accepted that the

19:48

highways and freeways that we just heard about are

19:50

always going to be part of that experience

19:53

of moving through the city. But

19:55

I think at the same time, what is also

19:57

happening there is two things. I think first there's

19:59

a... sense of crisis getting worse.

20:01

And that not sound too negative, but

20:04

I think that in the last 2023,

20:06

an 8% rise in fatalities on the

20:08

road. You've seen more and more people

20:10

experiencing extraordinary delays. I mean, I just

20:13

remember in the last 12 months when

20:15

the 10 freeway closed down. I mean,

20:17

it was almost like scenes from escape

20:19

from LA, you know, people completely snarled

20:22

up on the city. The city had a sense of

20:24

cry there with helicopters in the sky, and it's only

20:27

one freeway that's come to a close. So all these

20:29

arteries are getting clubbed up, more people move

20:31

into LA in the last few years and

20:33

sort of into LA County, especially into the

20:36

downtown and experiencing this kind of clog, if

20:38

you like, of urbanism that should have gone

20:40

on over the years. I think the history

20:42

of public transport there is

20:44

an extraordinary thing. I mean, you know, the

20:47

great legend or the great story that's told

20:49

about the demise of the streetcar in LA

20:51

was that it's often said that

20:53

the company that bought a lot of these

20:55

streetcars had so many interests in the automobile

20:57

industry, from people who really wanted to kind

20:59

of turn that city into the great experiment

21:01

of the automobile. And therefore, if you like,

21:03

kind of the streetcars were weeded

21:05

out. And I think that there is a

21:08

structure there that could be revived. But what

21:10

I'm very interested in, I think that's happening

21:12

there as well as this kind of growth

21:14

of public transport. And to that point about

21:17

the dangers of the streets there, you talk

21:19

to people and just to give you one

21:21

example, there's this group called crosswalk collectors who

21:23

are a group of kind of worried citizens

21:26

who were taken upon themselves to paint crosswalks

21:28

all over the city. So to try and

21:30

create some sense of a city

21:32

where the car isn't quite the dominant king

21:34

that it is now, where there are more

21:36

spaces for the public to cross. Now, of

21:38

course, they're so legal, what they're doing, they're

21:40

doing it on the cover of darkness, they're

21:42

concerned citizens. What I think it shows you

21:45

is that within that city that is so

21:47

dominated by a car culture, there are more

21:49

and more voices who are saying there needs

21:51

to be some, not only other

21:53

options, but also the car brought to heel

21:55

a little bit, if you will, like not

21:57

completely running the way that the city grows

21:59

and develops. I was thinking in a city

22:01

like London you can have a medley of ways of getting

22:03

about you. Sometimes I walk to

22:05

work, sometimes I cycle, sometimes I have to admit

22:07

I do drive. I go on public transport, I

22:09

use every method of public transport. But when you

22:11

meet people who live in Los Angeles, they tend

22:13

to be a car person. I know you tried

22:15

bicycle, you've gone... I never

22:17

thought I'd be a car person, Andrew, right?

22:20

I've become a car person, yeah. Because of

22:22

security, because of late nights, distances travelled. In

22:24

the end, a car is still a key

22:26

attribute in the city. We started this conversation

22:29

and this programme about talking about homelessness and

22:31

some of the challenges that the city has had.

22:34

Not necessarily a consequence of that, but as part of

22:36

that, lots of people feel that the streets are not

22:38

as safe as they were. They don't feel, if

22:40

you like, they can go to the local metro station,

22:42

of which there are more and more of them growing

22:45

all the time. Then this is what comes

22:47

back to that car culture. There is an idea that that's

22:49

just not what you do in LA. But

22:51

I do believe that that is changing and I'm

22:53

afraid in the two years that I've been based

22:55

in the city, and I take those metros actually

22:57

quite frequently, certainly to get from Santa Monica to

22:59

downtown, a route that if you go by car at

23:01

nine in the morning or at five in the afternoon, can

23:03

take you as long as two hours or an hour and

23:06

a half. If you jump on the metro that's been developed,

23:08

you can be there in 25 minutes, 30

23:10

minutes. I think more and more that word

23:12

is getting out. People are getting out and

23:14

using these in increasing numbers, but I think

23:16

that there is still... There is

23:19

an entrenched idea about what is the experience

23:21

like of getting on these trains, how secure

23:23

am I going to feel? Again,

23:25

this comes back to, I think, to Carren Bath

23:27

and communicating that to people who live there. But

23:29

you don't unpick a car culture in 15

23:32

years. There is a process, I think, of trying

23:34

to add some of that medley of ways of

23:36

getting around that you're talking about, but it's not

23:38

as simple as just a few cycle lanes and

23:41

more metro lanes. The last big

23:43

issue I want to discuss is the

23:45

effect of climate change on the city,

23:47

namely water use and extreme heat. On

23:50

the topic of extreme heat, we learned

23:52

about something called the luxury effect in a

23:54

report that was published late last year.

23:57

We got its author, Deon Casera, to explore the future of the

23:59

city. Blaine What that means. A

24:01

Luxury First or a Luxury that

24:04

was first proposed in Two Thousand

24:06

and Three and A Citizen in

24:08

Phoenix, Arizona and it describes a

24:10

phenomenon of identifying higher plants diversity

24:13

in areas of the city with

24:15

higher income. And the luxury

24:17

impact has been identified since then in

24:19

cities all over the world and four

24:22

different facets of urban ecosystems including for

24:24

a cooler temperatures involve your parts of

24:26

the city higher in hobart diversity of

24:29

wealthy parts of the city as well

24:31

as higher ups and biomass both your

24:33

parts of the city. In. Los

24:36

Angeles a luxury five plays out

24:38

by the facts of all the

24:40

parts. the city are also parts

24:42

of the city that have core

24:44

temperatures and higher plane biomass still

24:46

muscle the first the City in

24:48

Los Angeles race and any Kilmer

24:50

also highly correlated and so minority

24:52

areas of the city are also

24:54

those which have higher temperatures and

24:56

which have lower plant bio mass

24:58

dan white areas of the city.

25:01

City. Council's cancer elites work to

25:03

decrease the inequity in the luxury

25:06

of thoughts and this is desirable

25:08

because the luxury fact in showing

25:10

this inequity blinds, temperature and green

25:13

is based on incomes. Also the

25:15

services provided by Greenest and citizen

25:18

also cooler temperatures and cities or

25:20

inequitably to services based on income

25:22

or race city hills since her

25:25

to mitigate this by increasing dream

25:27

this ends low income parts of

25:29

cities or behind minority. Areas of

25:32

cities are, however it's important to consider

25:34

that doing so may lead to so

25:36

hold equal gentrification driving a few but

25:38

the live in most parts of the

25:40

cities and it's not healthy and the

25:42

people that the green the cynicism. it's

25:44

help in the first place. So supportive.

25:46

Consider it as want to help the

25:48

people that have low greenness in high

25:50

temperatures and cities but if you green

25:52

areas too much than you might not

25:54

be helping them at all. Wrote.

25:56

most he uses also a big

25:59

problem chris What's the situation here? So

26:01

at the moment, LA imports about 60% of

26:04

all the water it uses. Barely mind, this is a city fringed

26:07

by the Pacific Ocean, Colorado River

26:09

increasingly drawn upon to provide water

26:11

for the city and other sources

26:13

as well. And in December,

26:16

the LA County Board of Supervisors, which

26:18

kind of administers the city, they came

26:20

up with this first ever proper water

26:22

use plan, which will allow the city

26:24

to essentially source 80% of its

26:26

water locally. Beyond all that, Andrew, I think just before

26:28

I came back to London, there was

26:30

the most incredible storms in LA. So

26:32

we had a week of relentless driving rain

26:34

where the place didn't really look like Los

26:37

Angeles anymore, the streets were flooded, the

26:39

palm trees didn't know what had hit them. And

26:42

of that water that fell onto the city, only

26:44

20% of it was

26:46

conserved for use down the line. Now,

26:49

bear in mind that the city has gone through one

26:51

of the worst droughts in its history prior to the

26:53

wet weather that we've seen in the last year or

26:55

so. There's going to come

26:58

a point when that drought returns, because what

27:00

happens currently is there are the huge storm channels, which

27:02

if you think of the film Grease,

27:04

where there's the famous race car scene where they race

27:06

through one of the storm channels in Los Angeles, what

27:09

happens is the water lands on the city, it runs into

27:11

the storm channels and gets flushed out to the Pacific Ocean.

27:14

That simply is just not sustainable in

27:16

a period where the rains have returned

27:18

and the city will, with a dry

27:21

year, will return to a state of

27:23

drought. So there needs to be,

27:25

there is a wake up happening here. What

27:28

I think is actually happening is it's partly about

27:30

building more reservoirs and getting more citizens

27:32

to capture water and to find ways

27:35

of bringing that back into the system.

27:38

And that's what essentially the water plant is doing.

27:40

But I think what is at the crux of this

27:43

change, I think this recognition that LA is

27:45

having right now is that

27:47

the city has to go from, if

27:49

you like, a change from its founding

27:51

principles, which was basically about, as we

27:53

heard earlier in the program, tract homes

27:55

and freeways. It has to get away

27:57

from this idea that everything is there.

28:00

just to provide for the huge real estate

28:02

options that were there. And that was really

28:04

what was in some respects what shaped so

28:06

much of the urbanism of LA, because those

28:08

storm towns were built to get water away

28:10

as quick as possible from the nice housing

28:12

estates. Now there needs to be a recognition,

28:14

and that is what this plan is about,

28:16

about keeping hold of that water and getting

28:18

more people to think about what

28:20

comes out of the tap and not a shoon

28:22

that's just plentiful. Well Chris, amazing to have you

28:24

on the show today. It's safe travels and you

28:26

do go back to the West Coast, and I

28:29

know we'll hear more from you about these issues

28:31

over the coming months too. And that's

28:33

all for this week's episode of The Urbanist.

28:35

You can subscribe to the show on

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all good podcast platforms to get new

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episodes every week, and you can also

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subscribe to Monocle Magazine for regular reports

28:45

on all things architecture and urbanism. Just

28:47

visit monocle.com. The Urbanist

28:49

is produced by Carlotta Abello and by

28:51

David Stevens, who also edits the show.

28:54

I'm Andrew Tuck, goodbye and thank you for listening.