Reply To: Economic crisis and what it means for us

Where there is crisis, there is opportunity. I see this as a pivotal point in the future development of our nation. The way we have been using land for the last 50-75 years is obviously not working, economically or socially. I believe the nature of this type of reasoning stems from the way our educational system and culture teaches us to think quantitatively. We are a nation of consumers who will always have a perceived need (want) so long as there is a product being sold promising long life, happiness, wealth, success, and a two-car garage which embodies this desire to ultimately win. It’s just a slight stretch to say that if there was a more efficient working model of things we are already familiar with like the two-car garage, mass-transit line, and town center the percieved need would take on new form. I don’t think it’s beyond the bounds of pragmatic thinking to say if we’re all in a greement that strip malls are models of inefficiency in terms of fuel consumption, commercial viability, wastewater management, etc, not to mention human safety and sociocultural well-being why not offer the developer new models? I truly believe, from what I’ve seen in an office environment, that what holds us back from building New Urbanistic (one example) models is many engineers fear of taking the liabilty on of doing something out of the ordinary. Furthermore, there are only a handful of working examples of true New Urbanism and they haven’t been around long enough to validate their success (or failure). I think what you end up with, in Andrews case of the transit center, is half-cocked, timid approaches which started out with good intentions but got stripped to pieces by the fear of liability or political decision-making leaving a single transit hub, but neglecting to build the rest of the components to make it work socially and economically. I don’t want it to seem like New Urbanism is the answer, but it’s the most accessible for me (us). The point is that there is a sea of regulation, liability, and backwards thinking making it very difficult for the developer to justify investment in new project types. I know there is a perception that the developer want to build strip malls and parking lots surrounded by low density suburban housing, but I do’t think this is necessarily true and I think everyone would agree that the developer only care, ultimately, about getting a return on his/her investment. That said, if more efficient models of development could be shown to be not only marketable, but even economically savvy with the added bonus of doing something good for the environmnt and the human psyche I don’t see any reason the developer/investors would balk. It seems to simply be a matter of education and putting people in the drivers seat who know how to make these places. But first, we may need to slowly begin accepting that big parking lots are not necessarily good things in any sense, and the environment (neighborhood, city, park) we live in function well on an inherently subjective, human level, and should not be judged in quality solely based on how quickly the rainwater flows to the river from the parking lot or the number of landscaping islands we crammed into the parking lot. LA’s are in a particularly good position actually to help lead a new charge.