The proposed Bundy Village and Medical Park in West Los Angeles has spawned something of a protest movement based on the 20,000+ vehicle trips it would add to the Olympic/Bundy intersection at peak driving times.

The proposed Bundy Village at Olympic Blvd. could include 119,838 sf retail, 385 condos, 384,735 sf medical offices, and 3,395 parking spaces.

The massive mixed-use complex has been pitched–somewhat disingenuously–as “Smart Growth at its best” given its proximity to the future Expo line station (Phase II). But as Los Angeles City Planning Commissioner Michael Woo recently noted at a workshop held by Psomas in downtown LA, the developer Cerrell Associates plans 3,395 parking spaces–the minimum required under city zoning. In other words, no attempt is being made to incentivize future transit use by reducing the amount of parking to be provided on site.

At the February 11th Planning Commission hearing (case file here), Woo pitched an elegant solution: the creation of a Travel Demand Management (TDM) zone, in which the Bundy Village developer would be allowed to provide the full amount of requested parking, but users of the medical offices who drove to the site would be assessed an additional $3 parking fee, collected at the garage entrance, that would in turn be used to subsidize the cost of transit passes for other users who arrive to the complex via light rail or bus.

This arrangement would strike an interesting balance between the free market and government regulation. By sending a clear price signal to drivers (and at the same time rewarding transit users), it could conceivably reduce traffic impacts in the area. Neighborhood opponents may not be appeased, but compared to their demand for a radical “downsizing” of the overall project,  a TDM zone is the closest thing to an innovative planning idea that we are likely to hear out of this debate.

The recent rainstorms are a reminder of how quickly Southern California’s landscape can pivot from semi-arid to verdantly lush.

With so many development projects in L.A. either cancelled or indefinitely on hold, one cannot help but wonder about the massive potential of vacant lots as temporary sites for urban agriculture. A report last April by the Los Angeles Times documented the exceedingly long wait times – up to 4 years – for a plot in local community gardens.

Why can’t the mismatch between supply and demand be partially met through the transformation of individual parcels on a case by case basis, with the city helping to negotiate agreements with willing private landowners?

This property at 5th Ave/Rose in Venice, once envisioned for a mixed-use condo building,  lies fallow, bursting with green. Its conversion to a garden isn’t difficult to imagine.

This parcel at 5th/Rose Ave is one of many potential community gardens.

The upside to the landowner/developer would come primarily in the form of community goodwill (provided there was a clear understanding about the length of use and other conditions) from the creation of a new neighborhood amenity. In the case of residential projects, part of the garden could even be preserved and incorporated into the future development to meet on-site open space requirements for multifamily housing.

As a longtime admirer of Joel Kotkin’s iconoclastic thinking on urban issues, I am usually in agreement with his signature issue: the defense of American suburbia against attacks by environmentalists and policymakers who would like to promote a denser, transit-oriented way of life. Kotkin believes there has been no fundamental shift away from suburbs and back into cities, despite myriad media reports citing the trend. At worst, this narrative is driven by an ideological agenda; at best, it reflects a misreading of consumers’ unchanged preferences for single-family housing.

But in his latest article on newgeography.com, Kotkin has gone a step further to declare that the Democratic Party’s electoral defeat in the recent Massachusetts Senate race can be attributed to Obama’s “war against suburbia,” an aggressively pro-urban agenda that has in effect alienated a key bloc of “swing” voters living outside major cities.

The evidence for this so-called “war against suburbia”? A proposal to convert interstate highways to toll roads is one of many smoking guns, since in theory it would disproportionately impact suburbanites who drive more. Yet Kotkin also points out in the same breathe that suburbanites have shorter commutes to work than the average city dweller, due to the increasing dispersion of job centers, so it is unclear why they would be more affected by toll roads than anyone else.

As everyone knows, the real impetus behind toll road and congestion pricing proposals is a bankrupt Highway Trust Fund, not some imaginary war on suburbia. A policy that asks drivers to internalize the costs of road use deserves to be part of the political conversation. Of course, there is a double standard at work in Kotkin’s stance: massive federal subsidies for highway maintenance are somehow not “anti-urban,” whereas investments in mass transit are utterly “anti-suburban.”

Armed with a few original insights and talking points, Kotkin has built an enviable career as a nationally syndicated columnist. In this case, though, his tendency to apply the same insight to every situation results in a bit of an overreach.