February 22, 2010
Full-of-himself New York Times writer Thomas Friedman really hits the nail on the head with his recent column about global-warming skeptics. In case you’ve been buried in snow for the past week, you should know that several blowhard pundits - Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and plenty of Republican pols who should know better – took Washington’s blizzard as evidence that global warming is a hoax. That’s not just ignorant; it’s dangerous. So Friedman has a plan to counter the nonsense (some of which was encouraged by blunders in the climate-science camp).
“The climate science community should convene its top experts… and produce a simple 50-page report summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable, peer-reviewed footnotes.”
Friedman also urges replacing the term global warming with “global weirding,” to capture how climate change is producing the disturbing anomalies we’re seeing in Vancouver and the East Coast. And he gives one of the most practical arguments for taking action: renewable energy, energy efficiency and mass transit are insurance that will make us richer and more secure…. including by diminishing “the dollars that are sustaining the worst petro-dictators in the world who indirectly fund terrorists and the schools that nurture them.”
Of course, will any of these reasonable ideas prevent Limbaugh, etc. from seeing reason? Only when it’s a cold day in hell.
February 11, 2010
Timonthy Egan’s New York Times commentary, Slumburbia, is more than just a tour through a post-bubble housing development. Yes, the Lathrop, California project he visits has one in eight homes in foreclosure, with a spiking crime rate. And yes, the development appears to confirm Brookings Institution’s Christopher B. Leinberger’s 2008 prediction that the collapse of the new-home market could turn many of today’s McMansions into tenements. But Egan goes deeper than the bubble for the cause – and a possible cure – for foreclosure alley: “In California, the outlying cities themselves encouraged the boom, spurred by the state’s broken tax system. Hemmed in by property tax limitations, cities were compelled to increase revenue by the easiest route: expanding urban boundaries.”
Also, the most stable or recovering home markets – San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, San Diego – have the strictest development codes to curb sprawl, according to Egan. This is the reverse of what some suburban-development advocates (cough, cough, Joel Kotkin) warned about when they said coastal cities would price out the middle class and start to empty. Says Egan, “The developers’ favorite role models, the laissez faire free-for-alls – Las Vegas, the Phoenix metro area, South Florida, this valley – are the most troubled, the suburban slums.”
Strong land-use regulations, he seems to say, combined with a growing population and stabilization of prices, may help correct a “free market” in freefall.
February 1, 2010
The best party of the year also celebrated what’s best about Los Angeles. ULI Los Angeles’ inaugural LARC (Los Angeles Real Creativity) Awards dazzled a full house at 5900 Wilshire Blvd late last year with a high-concept awards experience that stimulated the mind and the senses. Even the pre-event wine-and-martini hour (with hors d’oeuvres by Wolfgang Puck) was artful and interactive, held across the street at Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “Urban Light” courtyard.
ULI Los Angeles just published some of the best event and party photos from LARC. And media coverage of the event was universally glowing… as in this article by Alissa Walker in Fast Company. The ULI LARC Awards will be presented annually to four recipients who, through their extraordinary vision and creative action, are helping to change our world (and our lives) as Angelenos, Americans and global citizens.
