Finding room for more housing in West LA

If this Nordstrom department store at Westside Pavilion mall closes in 2017 to be relocated to an expanded Westfield Century City as planned, the location would be ideal for a mixed-use residential/commercial development. The site is a 5-6 minute walk from the future Westwood Expo Line station that will open in 2016. That station is surrounded by single family homes and the Nordstrom site is an opportunity to place additional housing near the station without affecting single family properties. Additionally, the homes behind the mall have long ago acclimated to the mass of this building so a similarly sized mixed-use project could face less resistance than if this building were not already here; provided that adequate separation between the building and the single family neighborhood is maintained. This would also be consistent with the zone changes being proposed by the City of LA.

Nordstrom on the corner of Pico Boulevard and Westwood. A mixed-use project would also be an opportunity to open up this corner and eliminate the fortress like appearance of the mall.

An easy six minute walk from Nordstrom to Westwood station.

Decent Urban Form

You might not like the color. You might not like the architecture and you might not like the chain stores, but this is a pretty good project. 

This commercial development on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles has a Ross Dress for Less, CVS Pharmacy, and several chain restaurants. Nothing to get too excited about and no "game changing" tenants. The positives of the project are its height and the placement of the building at the sidewalk and the fact that all the stores have entrances that face the street. I can take or leave the architecture. I'm sure there's lots to criticize, but at least the facade is broken up a little and it doesn't look like one massive building (which it is). You can imagine how different this project would look were it built in a traditional suburban style behind a sea of asphalt parking.

 

The entrance to the parking is aligned with the cross street so although it's not a real street it is placed in a location that drivers and pedestrians would expect cars to be entering and exiting.  

This is the project looking east. There are awnings and patio dining. My biggest complaint is the lack of shade trees.

The newsstand has succumbed.

In a previous post I noted the longevity of this newsstand in Westwood Village, but it looks like it has closed. Because as cool as it is, do people still buy magazines and PHONE CARDS in large enough numbers to sustain such an enterprise? If the employment and residential density in the area were significant enough there might be enough people to support a newsstand, yet even with the nearby condo and office towers as well as UCLA a few blocks away it couldn't survive. 

Does bad traffic make it safer for pedestrians?

People are still figuring out what these shark teeth mean even though the sign says this is where you yield to pedestrians.  There's an occasional sudden screeching stop when people realize there's a human being crossing the street, but the north bound traffic - this picture is taken facing north - tends to be respectful of pedestrians when they step into the crosswalk. My observation is that more than half of the cars coming south fail to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk in spite of the shark's teeth that are also on that side of the intersection. The city was recently taking tube counts at the intersection and I had hoped they would install a protected crosswalk. 

The times of day when there are many pedestrians at this intersection is also when traffic is the worst and the cars line up in a bumper to bumper parade. This is when it seems safest for pedestrians. It is when there is little traffic and few pedestrians when it's riskier to cross. What does this say about planning for pedestrian safety? Is there a way to create the level of pedestrian safety seen at the busiest times without artificially creating negative traffics impacts throughout the day? Given recent neighborhood opposition to bike lanes on this stretch of Westwood Boulevard I'm not sure what pedestrian improvements could get support.

Persian Square Possibilities

There is an intersection in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles that was designated "Persian Square" a few years ago. Immediately across the street is a 7-Eleven with a surface parking lot.  Wouldn't it be incredible if the very large Persian community got together to purchase that parcel and build a small park on it? A place for a statue, trees, and a water feature and some benches.  It could be a community asset rather than an eye sore. 

How can we make this underpass better?

This is Westwood Boulevard where Interstate 10 passes over. How can we make this less of a dead zone and more of a community asset? I know there's a movement to remove freeways and replace them with boulevards, but that's not a practical reality for this freeway right now. So we're stuck with underpasses like this one. Just beyond this image is tree-lined Westwood and it is about a five minute walk from the under construction Metro Expo Line.  Murals and lighting have been tried in other places, but what else could be done to mitigate the inhospitable nature of this place? I'm wondering if vertical elements that mimic the trees further up could be part of the solution. They did something like that where the 10 passes over Pico Boulevard. They could provide additional lighting at night and also function to create a buffer between pedestrians and traffic. Bright paint could help as well. Or perhaps a decorative signs announcing the entry to the neighborhood. I wasn't able to find anything beyond artistic lighting and murals online. Have people just accepted that freeway underpasses are ugly and there's not much to be done? Maybe my Google search skills are lacking. 

If you want to encourage people to walk...

It really doesn't take much. Sometimes it's as simple as keeping the sidewalks level and planting some trees.

Does tactical urbanism include showing up with with a trash bag and a bucket of water?

I can't possibly be the only one who notices this.  I do not understand why, if Metro is ignoring this mess, the adjacent businesses and property owners do not take it upon themselves to fix it. I've asked this question before. How does a person who cares go about fixing this? Does tactical urbanism include showing up with a trash bag and a bucket of water?

Does A Place Have To Be Tidy To Be Worth Caring About?

Or are places worth caring about better tended to because people care? The image below  is not the worst, but I'm using it as an example because it is in an area with many popular restaurants and other businesses. The waste running out of the dumpster and the overall unattractiveness of the street don't seem to be detrimental to businesses there.  I often wonder in these situations why the business owners don't take it upon themselves to keep things clean. I have similar questions about the sidewalks along Westwood Boulevard between Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire in Los Angeles. They seem to lack any attention to basic cleanliness and the trees have been trimmed down to shrubs, yet there are only  a handful of vacancies and there's plenty of foot traffic. I'm trying to figure out what I;'m missing. Could be as simple as the fact that the demand for the space and the overall economic vitality override the need for order and cleanliness. I suppose urbanism isn't necessarily tidy. In fact some would say it NEEDS to be a little messy.

Boulevard as wide as a freeway.

This is the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Westwood Boulevard.  This is what I have to cross to get to the closest grocery store. Ten lanes of traffic. Essentially a freeway with a traffic signal. (The route of the cancelled Beverly Hills Freeway. )

Many pedestrians cross this street with minimal problems every day. It's not the most pleasant experience because you feel very exposed in the middle of the vast intersection.  But there's strength in numbers so if you happen to be crossing one of the times of day when there are large numbers of people it really changes the experience.  There's no easy way to mitigate the massiveness of this boulevard, but on each of the corners there are gas stations,  a car wash, and a one story commercial building. Taller structures built to the corner might be the best way to reduce the feeling of exposure this intersection creates.  I can guess how the Homeowners' Owners Associations would respond to that. 

People Worth Caring About

This is a picture of one of many homeless encampments in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. This man was living here until recently, but the City (or whomever maintains the bus benches) removed the bench and I believe he's joined up with a woman who also lives on the sidewalk a few blocks down. It's incredible. They have toiletries, pots and pans, clothes, etc.  The majority of homeless people that I observe in my neighborhood seem to be mentally ill or addicted to drugs or alcohol.  For those people who can get clean or are homeless for other reasons there are often support services and transitional housing. The VA hospital is also nearby so vets who struggle with mental illness or addiction tend to congregate where services are provided for them. I'm hard pressed to agree that this is an urban design issue. We need to make room for services in our land use plans, but beyond that do planners play a role in the solution? This problem affects the livability of our cities, but we can't urban design our way around mental illness and addiction. Ignoring this problem undermines social order and detracts from the efforts to make our cities more livable.

 

Are we being humane by allowing mentally ill people to wander the streets dirty, hungry, and confused? Is it more humane to decide as a society that we need to take charge of the lives of the mentally ill and compel them to get help and even institutionalize them. There are civil liberty issues of course, but at what point does a mentally ill person pose enough of a threat that the state should step in to protect them and the public? Orange County, California recently voted to make use of a relatively new state law that allows for court-ordered treatment of mentally ill. This is forced treatment for the mentally I'll and is as much about protecting them as the rest of us. It's a good start in at least one part of SoCal. 

Another one bites the dust.

The house being demolished is a  2 bedroom,  1 bathroom home that sold late last year for $975,000.  It is not uncommon for this to happen.  Sometimes the houses that replace them are very modern like this one.   And sometimes they are oddly designed hodge-podge of styles and really only intended to max out the buildable area like this one. 

 

The blue house next door is indicative of the original character of the neighborhood. Does neighborhood character matter? Should new construction be required to match existing styles and building massing or should people be allowed to build as they choose within the limitations of the zoning?

Related

West LA

View of the Los Angeles Mormon temple from Bru's Counter at lunch today.

Narrow Sidewalks in Brentwood

 

 

This is the front of Brentwood Country Mart in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Very charming. It's unfortunate the sidewalk is so narrow and made even narrower by the placement of parking meters and potted plants. I assumed the sidewalks had once been more spacious and then narrowed for street widening, but the old photos I found show narrow sidewalks since the 1950s. It's unfortunate the sidewalks aren't more "pedestrian friendly," because most of the action is on the interior and would no doubt spill out onto this sidewalk if there was enough room. It's an odd couple of blocks. The buildings all sit right at the edge of the sidewalk as they should and the street is narrow; parking on both sides, and just one lane in each direction, but the sidewalks are very narrow. There's a center turn lane that might provide some room to work with as far as sidewalk widening but not enough to make it worth the investment. That being said, this has been a successful development and a successful neighborhood for nearly seven decades in spite of the the narrow sidewalks.  Apparently the ideal of wide sidewalks and street trees aren't always necessary.

Newsstand

This is a newsstand in Westwood Village near UCLA. It is a great urban amenity. The sort of thing that planners love to see in neighborhoods. It's been here for quite a while. I rarely see many people around it, but I suppose during the day the office workers on nearby Wilshire Boulevard might pop in. Maybe some of the students from UCLA, but that seems unlikely given the number of distractions that are provided for them on campus. 

Mini Shop

A very small shop in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. I couldn't tell if this is a remnant of a larger tenant space or if it was designed this way, but I thought it was the kind of place that makes a neighborhood feel unique and helps locals feel a sense of pride in the character of their neighborhood and make them feel that even in the sprawling city their neighborhood is a place worth caring about.

A Tale of Two Sidewalks

I posted the side by side pictures below on Facebook and asked my friends which neighborhood sidewalk seemed more appealing. The responses reminded me that the aesthetic ideal of an urbanist is not generally how people evaluate a place.  My friends preferred the image on the right which is in West LA, because the pavement is flat and seemed that it would be easier to walk on in (especially in heels). They also liked that the sidewalk on the right is wider and unobstructed and easier to maneuver. One even noted that there were no places for bad people to hide in the more open suburban sidewalk. I argued that the street on the left, which is located in Pittsburgh, was shaded and the narrowness slowed traffic and the cars provide a safety buffer for pedestrians - all the stuff we planners love to talk about - and they didn't buy it. I suppose you could improve the sidewalk on the left by paving it properly, but that wouldn't really get at the bigger issue which is that the the image on the right more closely reflects what most people are familiar with and is more suitable for their lifestyles so they can imagine themselves walking down that sidewalk whereas with the Pittsburgh sidewalk they have a difficult time seeing themselves in that environment.

Which of these neighborhoods is more appealing to you?

 

 

Free Parking!!

Then what?  Joyfully ride a bike through the meadow...at the mall?
 

Utility Lines

This picture was taken on a rainy day so if that affects how you feel about the picture imagine it is a bright sunny day. This is Sepulveda at Santa Monica Boulevard in West LA.  Should these power lines be placed underground? Would placing the utility lines underground make this area a place worth caring about? It's a relatively inhospitable place for for anything besides automobiles, but it might be a good place to start. Maybe replace each utility pole with a tree.

Random Seating

One of the things that they teach you in planning school is that seating in public spaces should be moveable. People should be free to drag a chair to the shade or to the sun or up to a table where friends are sitting. This fellow decided the Starbucks patio wasn't to his liking so me moved a chair to this sunnier, grassier location. (I've seen this fellow do this on more than one occaision.)  Does this feel awkward when you see it?  What if there were several other people doing the same thing? 

 

What if the trees were kept, the grass paved, and then many tables, chairs, and umbrellas were placed in the parkway? That seems more appropriately urban for this parkway along busy Westwood Boulevard in Los Angeles.