PropX inventing the next LA

lessons learned

edited by Dana Cuff, Roger Sherman, Mott Smith and Bianca Siegl

published by cityLAB at UCLA in conjunction with the Westside Urban Forum and the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate February, 2007 PropX

Eric Garcetti LA City Council President

sponsors Throughout its history, Los Angeles has been defined by a native courage that other cityLAB places lack. Cutting forward to today, we cityLAB is a thinktank on the emerging can see the importance of a project like American metropolis, based at the UCLA PropX in relation to our recent crisis of Department of Architecture and Urban confidence. In a city once defined by its Design. optimism, we feel a change in tone. Our www.citylab.aud.ucla.edu dinner-table conversations or the way we speak to our neighbors have begun to UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate reflect a feeling that we cannot really solve The UCLA Ziman Center is a joint the problems that this city faces. project of the UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA School of Law. At the same time, we can see a restored www.anderson.ucla.edu/ziman.xml capability of success in Los Angeles. We have more of the necessary ingredients Westside Urban Forum than almost any other city in the world. We The Westside Urban Forum is an avenue combine the wealth of the developed world for open debate among leading players with the growth rate of the developing from within the land use community of world. These two things together give us Los Angeles. the ability to think and to plan in a way that Garcetti welcoming PropX Summit participants, 9.22.06 www.westsideurbanforum.com we haven’t before.

I submit that we are suffering the effects of a failure of imagination. We have failed to imagine what can be, what will be and what we, commonly, can work upon together. We’ve tested slow-growth, we’ve tested no-growth, and we’ve tested low-growth. The traffic hasn’t gotten any better. The air hasn’t improved. Our quality of life is markedly worse. So now, let’s try a different thesis. Let’s re-imagine what we can do with creative regulation. Let’s use small-lot ordinances. Let’s use adaptive re-use. Let’s use the PropX proposals! Some of these projects will become legislation in this city, because we are crying out for exactly what they represent. And let us Publication: February, 2007; cityLAB, UCLA ask the question: Can we step up? Can we organizers Editors: Dana Cuff, Roger Sherman, Mott Smith imagine, can we plan, and most of all, can and Bianca Siegl we execute? Dana Cuff Graphic Design: Bianca Siegl and Andrea Boeck Director of cityLAB, Fellow of the Ziman Center, UCLA Special thanks to the Westside Urban Forum, the Ziman Center for Real Estate at UCLA, and to Roger Sherman Sarah Jane Lind for her generous support. Co-Director of cityLAB, Board Member of the Westside Urban Forum copyright: cityLAB, UCLA For copies of this publication: [email protected] Mott Smith President of the Westside Urban Forum organizers with winners of First Prize, Team YIMBY 1 PropX motives

jurors Los Angeles, along with many American cities, want to become homeowners in Los Angeles stands at the edge of the next wave of city can reasonably afford to do so. The five PropX Neil Denari building. The second-generation growth in proposals integrate policy, development, Principal this coming era will not be located on vacant and design with the goal of stimulating more professional advisors Neil M. Denari Architects sites, as in the past, but situated on property and better affordable housing without public Gail Goldberg previously occupied or currently in use. subsidy. The most convincing projects are Andrew Adelman, LA Dept. of With a number of extra-large projects in the replicable on numerous sites in the city, Director Building & Safety LA Dept. of City Planning making and many more small and medium- well-designed, and profitable. In addition, Charmaine Atherton, Bank of America sized projects underway across the basin, the the best PropX proposals accomplish related Jane Blumenfeld, LA Dept. of City Christopher Hawthorne question is how to best guide this development goals as they produce entry-level housing. Planning Architecture Critic so that LA becomes a better city as a result. They demonstrate multiple positive effects Jim Brock, Environmental Planning Los Angeles Times Grand, visionary planning has proven incapable on the quality of urban life: reduction in Associates of contending with the messiness of urban traffic congestion, more pedestrian-oriented John Chase, City of West Hollywood Harlan Lee growth, but adequate alternatives have yet to experiences, more usable open space, Robert De Forest, Phoenix Realty Founder + Chairman replace it. PropX is an experiment into better increased economic vitality, and the ability to Lee Homes Liz Falletta, USC School of Architecture/ ways to move our cities into the future. respond to neighborhood concerns. Developer Richard G. Little Andrew Garsten, Greater Echo Park Director The X in Proposition X stands for innovative The book in your hands is organized around Elysian Neighborhood Council Keston Institute for Infrastructure, regulation that will trigger the kind of design what was learned from all five PropX projects Ken Gill, LA Dept. of Building & USC and development that will make LA a leader and the conversation they generated. Those Safety in 21st century city-making. Two fundamental lessons, highlighted in magenta on the Maricela Gomez, Playa Vista Tibby Rothman assumptions underlie the PropX proposals in following pages, are our conclusions. The Matthew Haas, Bank of America Publisher the following pages. First, planning must be projects illustrate those lessons, but they can Steve Ikkanda, LA Dept. of Building & VenicePaper more agile—responsive, flexible, dynamic, and also stand on their own. Whether focusing Safety incremental, in contrast to utopian master on the wasted space of surface parking or Randy Johnson, Playa Vista planning models. Agile planning requires an the underutilized backyards in the suburbs, Tom Jones, Playa Vista emergent vision of the city. And second, to participants sought to infill new housing amid Brian Lane, Koning Eizenberg solve big urban problems design professionals old on a specific demonstration site. Moreover, Architecture must work in constructive collaboration. each solution could be applied to any number Jon Lonner, The Lee Group Homelessness, traffic, environmental of similar sites throughout Los Angeles. Julianne Maurseth, Sunland-Tujunga The teams did an excellent degradation, affordable housing—these Community job of creating very issues are not owned by any single discipline. PropX considers X in the mathematical sense Robin Mears, Sunland-Tujunga big ideas that are both Planning, architecture, policy, and real estate of an unknown, as in “let X equal some value.” Community pragmatic and possible. For development must be braided together in It stands for the idea that we must implement Simon Pastucha, LA Dept. of City me, this distinguishes PropX order to create necessarily innovative, viable creative planning ideas if we are to find new Planning from many competitions and solutions. ways to address the housing crisis in our city. Ruben Perez, LA Dept. of Building & exercises. As a policy The projects in the following pages have solved Safety maker, I always want to In the summer of 2006, over forty young for X. They suggest a range of approaches, David Reddy, R&D Architects find the best solutions to professionals working in five cross-disciplinary from tinkering with the planning process in Jim Ries, Craig Lawson & Associates problems, but sometimes teams were competitively selected to ways that might have tremendous implications Paul Rohrer, Munger, Tolles & Olson there are simple and elegant undertake the PropX experiment. They were for encouraging small housing developments, Alex Saunders, Phoenix Realty solutions that intelligent, guided by three dozen professional advisors to redesigning oversized boulevards so that Renata Simril, Forest City fresh eyes can see best. from across the Los Angeles building industry. high-density housing could be sited alongside Steve Soboroff, Playa Vista If we have open minds and The summer-long competition required teams them in the space created by removing median Dalila Sotelo, McCormack Baron are willing to move in to think creatively and pragmatically, at strips. But beyond the models of regulation Salazar new directions, the PropX both small and extra-large scales, seeking and site-specific projects, the PropX proposals Jay Stark, Phoenix Realty teams have shown us that we feasible outside-the-box solutions to one of outline a new form of planning—one that is Dale Thrush, Office of Councilmember can find entirely new, and LA’s greatest challenges: how to provide more more agile yet still guided by a vision of a Wendy Greuel perhaps better, approaches affordable, market-rate housing. better Los Angeles, one that is not undertaken Patrick Tooley, Tooley Interests to complex urban problems. by planners alone, but by all of us within the Lisa Trifiletti, Office of Councilmember Los Angeles is home to a widely acknowledged building industry thinking creatively about Jack Weiss -Jane Blumenfeld housing crisis, stemming from an undersupply our common goals of a more beautiful, more Richard Weinstein, UCLA Department of Citywide Planning Manager of moderately priced for-sale housing. affordable, more sustainable Los Angeles. Architecture LA Dept. of City Planning Statistics show that only 15% of those who - Dana Cuff 3 PropX proposals Each of the five teams took up the PropX challenge in a Excess LA specific proposal that could be replicated on numerous sites across the city. Here, team concepts are Los Angeles is a city of excess. This observation may seem to summarized, and their case study projects are contradict the commonly held notion that Los Angeles is located on the map of LA. These projects are running out of space. We suggest that the conditions needed to illustrated in the following pages. The color increase density in Los Angeles have always been present; it assigned each team below remains exists in the excess. consistent throughout this book. We propose to streamline the city by utilizing this waste and allowing Los Angeles to reach its fully planned potential. Unlike density YIMBY transfers in which buildable square footage is bought and sold, we propose that the difference between the actual parcel area and the Everyone agrees. Los Angeles required minimum area per dwelling unit be made available to increase is in the midst of a severe density on any parcel within a specified collection zone. housing crisis that serously pp 8, 9, 18, 19 threatens its economy and future. But where to put that new housing the city so desperately needs? YIMBY looks at the single family neighborhood―the site of SuperUSE greatest opposition to densification but also the To address growth pressures facing the greatest opportunity for new housing. city, Team SuperUSE created the Street Median Reclamation Program (SMRP), which The challenges are creating housing that reconfigures large swaths of otherwise incorporates those qualities residents of these underutilized land along transit corridors. neighborhoods value most while still generating Through integration of land use and the needed new units. But one must also tackle transportation patterns, the Program enables LA’s permitting and zoning regulations, designed increased density, improved housing for a time where land was limitless and individual affordability, and the creation of vibrant, projects created new neighborhoods. In the current mixed-use, linear villages. Corridors meeting LA, those sites no longer exist, and the future of established criteria may be reconfigured to fuse densification is the scattered, infill development and the underutilized land (e.g., medians and on-street accessory dwelling unit. YIMBY proposes small changes in current parking) into buildable parcels for development regulations and practices to achieve big results in these project independently or in combination with adjacent parcels. These types. areas will be rezoned as medium density mixed-use and will be subject to the development standards and design guidelines Shorter, more regular periods of permitting. Tweaking zoning codes to set forth in the Program ordinance. The Program is capable allow innovative design on small lots. It is these small, incremental changes of producing up to 1,425 dwelling units per mile of that will spark LA’s housing revolution. And it is revolution that is needed if LA roadway and over 60,000 units across the city that will is to house its ever-growing polulation. pp 10, 11, 20, 21 provide diverse, new infill housing opportunities. pp 16-19

CityCraft P.A.D. Los Angeles’ ubiquitous commercially zoned surface parking lots represent an excess of underuti- lized land. We propose to increase the supply of moderately affordable housing in the city by PAD (Points Allocated Development) makes for-sale housing in Los providing incentives for the construction of residential houing on these sites, while maintaining Angeles more affordable by increasing the potential supply of most or all of the existing uses. housing units and lowering the cost of development. Through a performative and incentive-based system, points are allocated Specifically, we propose the following: (1) By-right development of multi-family residential to projects based on distance from amenities, provision of a housing on any C-zoned parking lot; (2) a height limit on said development of 75 feet; (3) no mix of uses, general design criteria and community change in FAR, but a provision that FAR may be calculated using the square footage of the entire endorsement of benefits. Developers use points to parcel prior to any subsequent subdivision for use under the Parking Lot Redevelopment reduce parking, increase FAR, and modify other factors Ordinance; (4) no additional statutory parking requirement beyond that which is already on the that contribute to an individual project’s feasibility. The site. PAD system directs development to pacels with latent potential for densification and “pads” existing zoning As the costs of further outward expansion become too great, Los Angeles must look inward and through incremental increases. pp 22-25 reexamine old land use and development choices. Only repurposed land in the urban centers can provide the space for the next generation of inevitable growth. Fortunately, the city was built in such a sprawling manner that opportunities for creative infill abound. pp 12, 13, 26, 27

4 5 residential zoning must evolve

agile planning shifts the focus from project impacts to new forms of infrastructure

density is not enough

process: one size does not fit all

existing conditions offer radical solutions

new ideas must confront old boundaries

6 residential zoning must evolve The most inflexible region of Los Angeles, and the suburbs of all “This project provides American cities, is an interesting residentially zoned. opportunity to re- Transforming this utilize what, in effect, is going to zone of single family go to waste. It is a houses is necessary Project: Excess LA sustainable approach to achieve more to utilizing land intense land use, Excess LA explores underutilized because in essence and necessitates residential sites, where lot size you are violating one of the rules of politically sensitive almost allows additional units, thermodynamics—you’re solutions. but not quite. It collects that getting something for “excess density potential” to nothing.” add housing, block by block, without increasing the current -Rich Little PropX Juror allowable density. It massages the current zoning, rather than changing it.

interior urban edge ground-up (entire parcel)

exterior suburban interior front yard edge detached unit exterior (additional unit) suburban edge

grafted Adam Sinclair (attached addition) PAD team member Current residential zoning promotes a luxury model. For multifamily housing, limits to Valery Augustin the number of units that can be put in the Excess LA team member allowed building envelope (e.g., to satisfy on- Residential zoning must become more site parking requirements) have encouraged flexible. The crises facing Los Angeles—rapid developers to build large, expensive population growth, shifting job centers, condominium units or to not build at all traffic congestion and skyrocketing housing (because only luxury units will “pencil”). This costs, are exacerbated by current zoning laws luxury model is out of touch with the changing that essentially function solely to restrict tastes of Angelenos. People are willing to give change in the residential sector. The strategy up their cars, commutes, and parking spaces if of restricting change through increasingly they can walk to quality public transportation prescriptive zoning is flawed because changes and places to work/eat/play. A zoning model are often unpredictable and history has that is more friendly to density will present proven that cities that do not accommodate the option to choose smaller, less expensive change are doomed to fail. Residential units in the city. It will encourage better zoning codes must evolve in pace with the public transit, less traffic, and more healthy, unpredictable nature of the Los Angeles, the walkable communities. 21st Century metropolis. untapped potential realized potential

8 9 residential zoning must evolve

The rent from the ADU in the back I could never helps me pay my afford a place this mortgage. nice before. The rent is great!

“One of the most impressive things about this project was its critique of the current planning and zoning process. Despite this becoming a denser city, the single family house is still the essence of development. If that means making multi- family look like single-family, that could be a workable solution.” Project: YIMBY -Christopher Hawthorne PropX Juror This project transforms current R-1 zoning in order to permit habitable space on 1st accessory dwelling units, while floor for each unit still retaining parking and yards.

uninhabitable bldg structure in sideyard

several small projects are more acceptable than one big project

habitable space on 1st floor for each unit

mechanical lifts, two car stack

R-1 zones R-1.5 and R-2 zones

10 11 agile planning shifts the “In this project you had cultural paradigms shifting more than morphological focus from project paradigms. Quite frankly: impacts to new Will you give your car up?” Project: CityCraft -Neil Denari forms of infrastructure PropX Juror This project capitalizes on Thinking about the city’s future surface parking as underutilized without grand, visionary schemes infrastructure across LA, and means inventing new forms proposes to add a dense supply of infrastructure to serve as of housing above. the backbone for subsequent development. Along with transit systems and zoning codes, both traditional forms of infrastructure, we need ideas like parking lots and median strips that double as housing sites, and planning processes that vary by the scale of the project.

Jennifer Wolch Director USC Sustainable Cities Program Imagined differently, urban infrastructure of- systems could be introduced even in high-den- fers a multitude of unique opportunities. Exist- sity urban spaces. For example, there are 900 ing urban infrastructure typically involves lots miles of alleys in Los Angeles. If we instead of concrete and impermeable surfaces. If these converted these asphalt paths into permeable, paved spaces can be thought of as potential planted surfaces, we could weave a significant green infrastructure, we can see how green green matrix throughout the city.

infill housing over existing parking at 75 ft height 13 agile planning shifts the focus from project impacts to new forms of architecture

“There is a certain radical quality to this project in its willingness to challenge the dominant current condition visual landscape of Los Angeles.” artery (major class II) -Christopher Hawthorne -PropX Juror arteries similar to test site (divided major class II lined with commercial) lot line adjustment test site (Venice Blvd. between Genesee & San Vicente)

Project: SuperUSE new development On excessively wide streets across the city, the SuperUse team reclaims and batches together existing median PICO BLVD

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14 15 density is not enough

While increased density is necessary to building more affordable, market- development type A: brownstone rate housing, it is not a solution. Density does not stand alone, “We have to start a paradigm shift here but must be creatively in Los Angeles. distributed and Project: SuperUSE It’s going to designed. take beyond urban The SuperUse idea of adding planning. It’s linear housing along existing, going to take a extra-wide boulevards requires mentality shift and careful phasing and design of a marketing shift” the added density, in order - Tibby Rothman to address adjacencies to PropX Juror heavily trafficked streets, and to older, existing commercial uses. Prototypes of the paseo and the brownstone are two possible models.

John Chase David Freeland Urban Designer PAD team member City of West Hollywood The challenge of densifying the urban fabric development type B: paseo Los Angeles isn’t as dense as its going to of Los Angeles derives from the promise have to be in order for all the people that that formed the city itself, that each family are already here to have decent housing, let should have its own house on a generous plot alone housing for all of the people who will of land. It is both an issue of subdivision, be born or move here in coming years. Given parsing out each property to more families, Mixed Use Housing a city that already stretches from Indio to but also one of social practice requiring a

Ventura, the ecological and social cost of profound revaluing of living space in the Stairwell sprawl—of separating housing from work—and city. Essentially, it is growing a new urban Rooftop Garden Retail the ecological cost of paving over more condition out of a suburban ideal. The Tennis Courts Town Houses wildnerness and farmland, the central task for City, understood as a porous collection planners, architects, developers and elected of communities, holds great potential for Retail officials is how to fit more people into the spawning a new urbanity from within that is Valet Parking / Taxi Service same cityscape in a way that creates the most related neither to conventional center-edge Retail benefit for the most people. Many citizens cities or new sprawling megaburbs, but is fear change, believing that increased density instead constantly plugging its own holes in a Thru Way means less vegetation, less sunlight, more successive (what is next?) evolution towards unwanted building bulk, more traffic and a density. A planning strategy crafted in this VENICE BLVD. 1Way loss of familiar landmarks and institutions. Any environment must be responsive to existing solutions that accommodate density have to conditions while maintaining openness to new be both ingenious and politically acceptable, urban situations and housing typologies that or else they simply won’t happen. make density desirable.

16 17 density is not enough

1700 SQFT 524,787 “We will not be successful in densifying

892,137,900 SQFT this city if we don’t EDP Project: Excess LA increase the livability and the quality of life In this project, when “excess at the same time. Our density” is transferred, it is problem is not just reinserted in the residential density. It’s creating 5000 SQFT OR better neighborhoods and SURPLUS fabric in compatible ways more wonderful streets.” 892,137,900 SQFT 178,427 SURPLUS EDP in terms of massing and siting as the three test sites - Gail Goldberg demonstrate. PropX Juror

4. The funds generated 3. The developer purchases by the sale of the EDP EDP from the pool to be used units go directly to the locally for density increasing neighborhood council development. Test Site: Van Nuys where the funds are used Zone: R1-1 to pay for desired public No. of parcels: 22 improvements. Existing dwelling units: 22 Total square footage: 156,334 sf Specified square footage per zoning: 110,000 sf Excess density potential: 46,334 sf 2. EDP is placed Maximum dwelling units gained: 9 in pool and made Density increase: 41% available for Public improvement fund: $241,670 purchase.

Test Site: Cheviot Hills Zone: R1-1 No. of parcels: 48 5. The neighborhood is Existing dwelling units: 48 the beneficiary of both Total square footage: 337,930 sf increased density and Specified square footage per zoning: 240,000 sf much needed public 1. Excess Density Potential of Excess density potential: 97,930 sf improvements. the neighborhood is calculated. Maximum dwelling units gained: 20 Density increase: 41% Public improvement fund: $485,150 excess density transfer protocol for R-1 and R-2 zones

3. Payment is given directly to the owner 2. The developer purchases EDP Test Site: Arroyo Seco of the lot from which it was purchased. from specific lots to be used locally for density increasing Zone: RD2-1 development. No. of parcels: 43 Existing dwelling units: 130 Total square footage: 325,717 sf Specified square footage per zoning: 215,000 sf Excess density potential: 110,717 sf Maximum dwelling units gained: 55 1. Excess Density Potential of Density increase: 41% the neighborhood is calculated. Public improvement fund: $553,585

excess density transfer protocol for R-3 and higher zones

18 19 existing city proposed city process: one size review process review process does not fit all Some important barriers to more affordable housing lie in the planning process, which is particularly problematic for smaller developments. The scale of the process for review and approval of housing projects should match the scale of the projects themselves.

boosts IRR by as much as 6%, and saves estimated $20 per building square ft Project: YIMBY Small scale, infill housing can be encouraged by simplifying and redefining the city review process in order to substantially reduce the time to construction, which in turn yields significant financial benefits.

Michael Piper YIMBY team member Los Angeles was built with precisely the mentality that one size does fit all. It’s a well-known process that uses phrases such as ‘cookie cutter’ and ‘tract home’. Los Angeles’ building and zoning codes were designed to make this house-stamping process a piece of cake. Indeed the process worked so well that the codes and regulations that made it possible are still proudly in place today; the only problem is, the huge tracts aren’t. What is left, in scattered abundance, are infill parcels, an untapped real estate resource whose small scale and wide differentiation render them unfeasible for profit seeking YIMBY’s 5 steps to increasing developers. This is due in large part to our housing opportunities in LA: City’s building and zoning regulations that are 1. Size-based project reviews scripted for a tract development Los Angeles 2. Batch permit processing of old. To bring these small sites on to the 3. Neighborhood involvement development radar we’d do well to learn this 4. Regulation modifications simple lesson: Los Angeles needs regulations 5. Constituent-requested zoning that fit today’s infill development. changes

20 process: one size does not fit all

Mott Smith PropX Summit Chair and Immediate Past President, Westside Urban Forum The title of this section should come as no surprise, the door to far more affordable, modestly-scaled, but oddly enough the planning tools we use to shape and contextually-sensitive projects than we have existing cities like Los Angeles are nearly identical seen for years. to those we use in new towns like the Inland Empire P.A.D. [ parcel points ] public transit parcel is within 800 feet of a and Santa Clarita, as distinct as these places actually The PropX team YIMBY shows us how L.A.’s one-size- } points } major public transit stop or corridor with 15-minute head- are. By State law, California municipalities, whether fits-all entitlements process treats two-unit projects way old or new, produce General Plans that standardize almost the same as 2,000-unit projects, thus killing public facilities parcel is within 800 feet of a zoning designations. Then, when more granular modestly-scaled, moderately-priced projects that public school, library or city- owned parking opportunity detail is needed to address areas within a city, would otherwise be feasible to build. YIMBY proposes Specific Plans, Community Plans and Overlay Zones new small- and medium-sized entitlements processes commercial parcel is in or within 800 feet are drafted and implemented. to go along with the current large-sized one that of a commercially zoned parcel are right-sized for the projects they address. YIMBY In new growth communities, these tools seem to demonstrates how this simple change could increase greenspace parcel is within 800 feet of work just fine. Typically, one master developer the returns on such neighborhood-scaled projects public greenspace creates the zones that constrain future use of the so that countless new affordable units could be virgin land, then subdivides the land into parcels developed around L.A. without public subsidy. that it sells to builders who construct the houses. [ project points ] mixed use multiple use projects in com- mercial zones In these instances, master planning and zoning PAD shows us how our current, rigid menu of zoning succeed in producing a community with a consistent options fails to offer planners the tools necessary design use of three or more exterior finish materials appearance and tight land-use controls across to define an appropriate envelope for every multiple builders. parcel in a neighborhood. The result is that many open space along front yard projects—including ones community members and open space on 2 exterior By contrast, master planning and zoning typically planners consider appropriate—require some level facades fail to introduce such consistency of appearance of discretionary approval, rendering zoning less

community neighborhood council and use in existing urban areas without urban- relevant and moderately-priced projects harder to endorsement renewal-style land clearance. Monolithic zoning is finance. PAD’s solution provides a systematic way contributions to neighborhood council too blunt an instrument to control new growth and to blur the current hard lines between zones and simultaneously knit it skillfully into a more organic provide a predictable (i.e., non-discretionary) in-place context. Moreover, the sort of consistency means of increasing density close to transit that master planning and zoning create in new and other infrastructure, gradually tapering it Reward Benefit to Project Feasibility growth communities stands in stark opposition to off as you move further into residential Lower Parking • Lifts constraints on # of uunnits the vibrancy—the brilliant messiness—that defines neighborhoods. Requirements • Reduces need to build expensive subterranean the granular cities we love. As a result, the building parking professions are hungry for new tools that will The last generation of suburban land-use succeed in guiding growth while fostering this sort of professionals had the luxury of creating new Increased Building • Enables more saleable square feet, to offset costs natural emergence. communities on vacant sites with single developer- Envelope of construction owners. For these efforts, traditional master Expedited Entitlement • Less Carrying Cost of Land We are faced with the realization that urban planning and zoning were excellent tools. But as Process planning’s primary tools have worked against its the next generation of land-use professionals sets Flexibility •Allows a project to adapt to the individual most basic goals for the last half-century, and one out to lay the foundation of our city’s future, it contingencies and needs of a parcel whether those may be tempted to give up on planning entirely. must undoubtedly embrace new tools like those be nimby issues, site constraints, or the current Alternatively, and more hopefully, one could proposed by YIMBY and PAD—ones that respect the housing market. engage a lesson learned from PropX: By introducing complexity and emergent qualities of urban places. appropriate scale to the entitlements process and by The alternative is to wish away the natural, human building flexibility into land-use regulation, we open qualities of the places we love. PAD’s rewards enable the develpoer to profitably build housing units on sites which would not be redeveloped without PAD Project: P.A.D. This team invents a point system to incentivize projects that incorporate desired qualities like mixed-use, high- quality design, on parcels that have specific characteristics such as proximity to public transit or green space. 23 existing commercial zone redeveloped as mized use existing conditions offer P.A.D. radical solutions Urban solutions are homeopathic; that is, the answers to urban problems must be found within Project: P.A.D. (e) residential zone the DNA of the In response to the specific, existing context. Rather than conditions surrounding every site, imposing visionary, a rewards system is created that external plans, we pushes individual projects in a opt for emergent generally desired direction. This solutions, radical replaces “blanket zoning” with incrementalism, and an uneven yet tailored set of visionary ideas built development opportunities—a kind upon existing urban of topographic zoning. genetics.

Liz Falletta John Kenyon PropX Advisor CityCraft team member The Points Allocated Development (PAD) One of the most important lessons of planning proposal begins to create a market for good is that everything has a history. Things that design by crafting a system of points that seem intractable or permanent in our cities rewards conscientious design and development are, in reality, fleeting. The dominance of the decisions with greater development rights. surface parking lot in the urban form of Los This approach suggests other market-based Angeles is on the wane, doomed by ever- solutions that could balance the true value of increasing land prices. In the not-too-distant good design against the true costs of inferior future people will look at images of today’s methods. Turning the PAD proposal on its supermarkets and shopping centers and parcel-based point allocation: greenspace head, what if developers were required to marvel at the amount of real estate we use “buy down” from elevated expectations of just for cars. The task for planners today is to city design and development rather than “buy foresee this and other changes ahead and to up” from the lowest common denominator leverage the power of the market so that the currently described in planning and zoning results improve rather than degrade our city. codes? “Bad Design” credits, modeled after pollution credits, could be purchased to give a developer the right to do the minimum in terms design quality, more accurately reflecting the true cost of such a bare bones approach and the negative externalities it parcel-based point allocation: public facilities creates. As long as there were less credits than bad design potential, these credits could be traded from those who develop more cost effective quality design solutions to those who cannot afford to do so, thus encouraging good design by arbitraging bad.

24 parcel-based point allocation: public transit parcel-based point allocation: commercial existing conditions offer radical solutions

Acreage Number of Potentail Units

Parking 1,007 Total Acreage 5,419 Shopping Centers 1,667 Assumed % Developable 10% Offices 2,745 Assumed Density 30 du/acre

Total 5,419 Total 16,257 units

Project: CityCraft Here, existing surface parking lots that punctuate every street in LA are repurposed to become sites for radical housing proposals that increase density and utilize prefabricated construction modules. The team suggests starting with a city-owned lot as a demonstration project.

parking lot redevelopment ordinance • by-right multi-family development on any C-zoned parking lot

• 75 foot height limit

• no change in FAR, but FAR may be calculated using the square footage of the entire parcel, prior to subdivision

• no additional parking requirement beyond that which is already on the site

parking lots, shopping malls, and office properties 27 new ideas must confront John Chase old boundaries Urban Designer City of West Hollywood Process, policy, design, and development have A competition like PropX is about allow- generally kept their ing ingenuity to flourish, free for the own quarters, but this moment of political constraints. Each of must change. Innovative the teams had a different take on slip- solutions to intractable ping more population into the city fabric. problems will come CityCraft zeroed in on the heinous waste of from multi-disciplinary, space that surface parking lots constitute, collaborative, open- analyzing strategies that would allow to this ended investigation. land to be much more fully used. Excess LA took a more abstract approach, noting that most lots are bigger than the minimum and the “extra” square footage beyond the minimum in those lots could be added up and sprinkled around the neighborhood in order to permit more units. SuperUSE ingeniously found land where others might not have noticed there was such, namely wide streets with medians like Venice Bou- levard, and introduced greater density at a Experimental Collaborations members, a shifting hierarchy in which challenge the others to seek creative answers minimum cost. For the YIMBY team, small Rebecca Lyn Cooper the team representative from a particular to the problems posed by the contemporary is beautiful. They focused on the politi- cityLAB Research Associate discipline who had most to offer at a given urban environment, but also, and perhaps cal and contextual advantage that small, Contemporary urban planning has shifted moment was allowed to step in and guide the more importantly, this process of speculative scattered developments offer, proposing from the heroic to the pragmatic; from an process. Unlike more traditional professional experimentation allowed the teams to work incentives and improvements to existing obsession with the aesthetic perfection of relationships, with a defined hierarchy be- together to find concrete ways that even their zoning, process and regulations that affect the city plan imposed all at once on a tabula tween team members, this more fluid struc- most imaginative proposals could be seeded these projects. The brilliant thesis behind rasa, to an understanding of the city as a ture allowed the team to function effectively, into the planning and development process in the PAD team was devising a point system, living organism, experienced primarily from and most importantly allowed the projects to order to bring about positive change. based on a series of easily defensible social within the labyrinth of its streets. Alongside develop as a part of an ongoing conversation. beliefs and city building philosophy that this transition has come a corresponding Instead of being developed within the protec- deflects controversy and confusion from shift in the understanding of the image of tive enclosure of a particular set of disciplin- Adam Sinclair decision-making over individual projects the planner. The five teams assembled for ary practices before being passed on, these PAD Team Member and replaces it with sound policy making on this competition present an illuminating case projects were forced into tension between Boundaries are big in LA. Angelinos move a general basis. The point system is a way study of this shift and their struggle to col- disciplinary positions, a productive tension from the bubble of their house to the bubble to pump up the number and increase the laborate across a variety of disciplines. which allowed the teams to be simultaneously of their car to their bubble at work, safe breadth of policy objectives that an indi- more daring about their proposals while at the from having to come into contact with too vidual development serves. It rewards good The competition required that every team be same time grounding even the most startling many people different from themselves. It is projects by literally making more of them, multidisciplinary, including not only archi- choices in a realistic series of steps. striking to me whenever I visit other cities, something that is simply not possible in the tects and developers but also lawyers, urban how much more one naturally interacts with same way now. designers, and individuals trained in public Though it raised logistical challenges, this people of different races, ages, and socio- policy and business. It was left to the teams looseness of fit between disciplines allowed economic backgrounds when they have access to decide how precisely they would manage team members to constantly challenge each to quality public transportation, great public the efforts of individuals with divergent and others’ biases and expectations. The prom- spaces, and walkable communities. Times often competing ideas about the task in front ise of interdisciplinary work is that immer- have changed. People have changed. Angeli- of them. This was, in fact the first and in sion within a ‘foreign’ discipline can help nos are ready and willing to mix. Even Beverly many ways most difficult of the design tasks to unsettle standard practices and foster Hills now supports a subway system with faced by the teams during the competition. innovation by widening the range of choices stops in its neighborhood. It is time to break available to the design team. The more Angelinos out of their bubbles and let them The most successful collaborations main- successful teams made use of this process of interact. They might find that they actually tained a fluid equilibrium between team alienation, with each team member free to like each other.

28 29 If, Then the Rx of PropX link its cause-and-effect interconnections to time, in a non-uniform, uncontrollable ripple other factors. As such, each of the proposals effect—“radical incrementalism”. Roger Sherman is less about a specific outcome—unlike master Dana Cuff Co-Director, cityLAB plans, which try to shape the future toward a Rather than having to choose between, on Director, cityLAB Urban design and planning are practiced foregone conclusion—than it is a framework one hand, containing the future, and on the A standing-room-only crowd attended the today in an environment characterized by of behavior modification which engages the other, continuously revising the zoning code PropX Summit at UCLA in September of 2006 rapid change. Cultural, political and eco- forces of urban development through gaming. project by project, planning is best employed to hear Council President Eric Garcetti’s nomic circumstances fluctuate so much that Strategically conceived and tested incentives as a means by which to instigate and harness plea for expansive optimism as we plan by the time a plan is realized (if it is at all), and disincentives are employed as a means of change that is waiting to be unleashed. Rather LA’s future, and Planning Director Gail it is already obsolete; a mere election can loosely predicting and shaping the density-de- than being defensively positioned against a Goldberg’s call for innovative thinking. They radically alter the viability of a master plan. pendent, use-driven process of neighborhood feared unknown, PropX-style planning takes also came to actively engage the proposals Rather than assuming stability and explain- change. One of them, for instance (ExcessLA), advantage of the constructive role that change presented in this book. But the Summit was ing change, PropX argues that our plans need explores how a neighborhood’s willingness to can play in reinventing the city. Like any not the end of PropX. Instead, the propos- to assume change and explain stability. Only grant surplus development rights might be good player in a game that deals with prob- als have sparked ongoing conversations and those that harness rather constrain the highly exchanged for a community amenity (e.g. a ability, planners and architects alike need to brought about pilot projects that will have unpredictable evolution of the contemporary children’s playground, or pocket park). In an- be more opportunistic, tilting the odds through a real influence in Los Angeles. The PropX city will ultimately prove of long-term value. other (PAD), the desirability gradient of urban code as a form of “bait”—specific incentives or experiment produced specific proposals lots is fundamentally altered by encouraging deterrents that sow the seeds for a variety of for encouraging more affordable, well-de- These agile strategies, as Dana Cuff calls density around institutions and facilities that future development options in a non-prescrip- signed, market-rate housing. At the same them, hinge on their ability to operate at the would reciprocally benefit from the additional tive way. Like the children’s game of Chutes time, PropX generated broader remedies to cusp between control and disorganization. population. In both instances, a local change and Ladders, the best plan is less a template urban disorders in Los Angeles and beyond. PropX was conceived in order to explore is introduced anticipating that it might prolif- based upon past experience than a valve-like strategies by which the former, top-down erate across the larger city, one project at a diagram of countless possible choices. The six lessons learned from PropX deserve model might engage the tendencies of the restatement: latter, with the goal of producing new, unforeseeable urban futures. Heretofore, • Residential zoning must evolve. design professionals have tended to dichoto- • Agile planning shifts the focus from mize these two modalities of city-making, project impacts to new forms of precluding the exploration of looser, more infrastructure. synthetic, emergent planning approaches. As • Density is not enough. Mott Smith points out in this volume, most • Process: One size does not fit all. zoning ordinances are conceived with this • Existing conditions offer radical bias (so-called “form-based zoning” is merely solutions. the latest version), deploying a “one size fits • New ideas must confront old all” approach that fails to allow for the “bril- boundaries. liant messiness” that characterizes vibrant cities. These maxims comprise the more general medicine that PropX prescribes: aban- Cities, however, are not infinitely complex; don old forms of master planning; adopt their ability to adapt to change is related to dynamic, responsive, and collaborative simplified, self-enforced rules that already planning strategies in order to invent the effectively define a plan—albeit de facto. next Los Angeles. The proposals flesh out Like medical or scientific experiments (and in this prescription, to demonstrate that good many ways the city is not unlike an ongoing design, planning, and development together experiment), these protocols are sufficiently can devise original solutions to established— open as to be contingent upon the feedback/ even seemingly intractable—problems. outcome of each stage of implementation. Long before planning existed as a profession, We need not be utopians to believe that our these unofficial rules, or norms—“Retail will cities can grow more vibrant, more sustain- only survive on streets where there is suf- able, more beautiful, and more afford- ficient traffic”, or “There is an accrued ben- able. Radical incrementalism can replace efit to locating near others whose businesses visionary idealism. Nor do we need to rely complement, and even compete with, one’s solely on public subsidy or public policy to own.”—guided the world’s greatest cities as move development in a beneficial direction. they adapted to ever-changing economic or New infrastructure and flexible incentives social conditions. can seed ingenious opportunities for well- designed urban growth. To heal urban ills, In contrast to the planning profession’s char- these principles must begin to seep into the acteristic “command-and-control” approach, very pores of the land-use and building in- the PropX proposals begin by identifying a dustry, to transform city-making one project specific change-inducing factor, and then at a time. This is the Rx of PropX.

30 31 design teams

Gail Goldberg Director LA Dept. of City Planning CityCraft Olivia Chao The conversation generated by Will Cipes PropX has caused me to think N. Dubrenek about how it is in this city that we Amanda Gehrke can try new things. It is such a big John Kenyon city and as we talked about each Andy Ku of the proposals, we could imagine Kam Ky wonderful places where they could Jim Kumon work really well, but we thought Alissa Marquez of places where they might not Christine Safriet P.A.D. work as well. I think that’s the Model Builders: Ashley Atkinson challenge of Los Angeles: trying Lionel Lambourn Michael Fernandez to come up with things that fit Richard Yoo David Freeland everywhere. Jun H. Doe Sandra Goff Kentaro Yamada Sing-Yee Lucy Lin One of the issues that I Sung Jin Park would really like the Planning Adam Sinclair Department to think about is that Aaron Whelton because of the size of the city and superUSE Li Wu its diversity, it would seem that Eric Bono Modeling/Rendering: there are a lot of opportunities Christian Chaudhari Michael Macdonald for us to selectively try new Megan Cummings Test Site Model Design: ideas, to be more experimental, Pria Hidisyan 3rd year studios, Woodbury University to test things in pilot projects in Jeffrey Johnston Special Thanks: communities that might embrace Kevin Rodin John Southern the opportunity to try something Lauren Siniawer new. In each of the proposals, Jakub Tejchman I found the grains of potential Michael Vanderbeek pilot projects. And I would hope Joshua Williams YIMBY that all of us would embrace a Jerome Chou bit of experimentation in this Andrew Glazier city so that we are not following Jenifer Kaminsky all the time but really providing Michael Piper leadership and solutions. If we Excess LA Frank Ruchala, Jr. can figure out how to take the Valery Augustin Gordon Stott auto city of the country and turn it Mark Bittoni Kelly VanOteghem into a wonderful, livable, walkable Adina Ringler city, it can be a model for cities John Schafer throughout the world. Benjamin Saltsman Michael Leaveck

33 cityLAB University of California, Los Angeles Dept. of Architecture and Urban Design FIRST CLASS MAIL Box 951467 U.S. POSTAGE PAID Los Angeles, CA 90095-1467 [email protected] UCLA