http://adamchristian.us Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:32:54 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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. [caption id="attachment_206" align="alignleft" width="573" caption="The proposed Bundy Village at Olympic Blvd. could include 119,838 sf retail, ... http://adamchristian.us/2010/02/17/breaking-the-impasse-at-bundy-village/ 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 ... http://adamchristian.us/2010/02/08/an-afterlife-for-la-development-projects/ 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 ... http://adamchristian.us/2010/02/03/joel-kotkins-imaginary-war-on-suburbia/ In Los Angeles, it is very easy for pedestrians to feel like second-class citizens. Granted, we have inherited an infrastructure expressly built for cars, but the enormous width of our streets is further exacerbated by poor crosswalk design and signal coordination. Case in point: this intersection in Brentwood, where San ... http://adamchristian.us/2009/12/21/a-tale-of-two-crosswalks/ In mid-June, when Curbed LA reported on a price chop at Dogtown Station, a 35-unit loft development at 700 Main Street in Venice, 17 units were still available. Today, that number has dropped to 12, an absorption rate of approximately one unit per month, which seems fairly typical for the ... http://adamchristian.us/2009/12/01/a-prius-with-your-loft-at-dogtown-station/ At the November meeting of SCAG’s newly-formed Steering Committee* on Regional Congestion Pricing, transportation firm HNTB outlined its preliminary research for a crowd of planners, businesspeople, and community advocates, mainly summarizing existing practices in other cities around the globe. Against the resistance of some local politicians and even its own ... http://adamchristian.us/2009/11/19/congestion-pricing-will-southern-californians-warm-up-to-hot-lanes/ Other New Urbanisms, a symposium held this past weekend at Sci-Arc in downtown Los Angeles, showcased one of the more interesting and perhaps utopic schemes to emerge from the recent  "New Infrastructure: Innovative Transit Solutions for LA" design competition. The Fletcher Studio, which won second place, proposed urban agricultural villages that ... http://adamchristian.us/2009/11/16/urban-freeway-farming/ Shopping centers in Southern California have become a pretty fascinating bellwether of contemporary trends in architecture and urbanism. Developer Rick Caruso’s The Grove, for instance, made a splash when it opened in 2000 by modeling itself after a traditional European village with a purely ornamental trolley line, in many ways ... http://adamchristian.us/2009/11/13/the-new-westfield-culver-city-off-target/ This past weekend I had the opportunity to see a fascinating photography exhibit at LACMA, New Topographics, the re-creation of a 1975 exhibit originally held at the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House. Misunderstood and critically underappreciated at the time, it documents seemingly banal subjects such as tract homes in ... http://adamchristian.us/2009/11/03/american-beauty-in-the-suburbs/ Solair Wilshire, a 22-story mixed-use development featuring 186 for-sale residential units and 50,000 square feet of retail space, is in many ways the embodiment of  "transit-oriented development" (TOD), currently in vogue among urban planners and developers alike. It literally towers about the MTA's Wilshire/Western Purple Line Station in Koreatown. The ... http://adamchristian.us/2009/10/06/la-tod-fiction/