Re: Interesting op-ed piece focusing on L.A. Freeways

This is an interesting op-ed piece.

I agree to some extent with the Professor's reasoning but completely
disagree with his thesis that the only thing preventing Southern
California's traffic problems from being solved is a lack of
willingness to build more freeways.

Yes, at one time, freeways were a positive addition to the landscape of
Southern California -- for all of the reasons enumerated in the piece.
However, "sprawl" (as I define it, not as the Professor defines it) did
not yet exist.

Today, the public policy decision to construct more freeways takes
place in a much more complex decision-making environment than it did in
the 1940s and 50s. Back then, it was considered politcally acceptable
to drive freeways through lower-income areas populated by ethnic
minorities. It was normal to divide established neighborhoods on the
basis of racial identification for the purposes of elevating property
values. Concerns about the destruction of open space and viewsheds
weren't common among citizens.

All of these things have, thankfully, changed for the better. Today,
few Southern Californians would trade their precious remaining green
space or relatively quiet neighborhoods for the minor reduction in
traffic misery that might result from the construction of a few more
regional freeways.

As I posted on the other thread about the cost of solving the
transportation problems of the greater Los Angeles area, the only
realistic solution is to essentially replace the entire Southern
California region's existing single-family dominated residential
development pattern with a multiple-family dominated residential
development pattern.

And that will not happen overnight, but instead will require several
decades of organic, gradual redevelopment -- encouraged by government
policies.

It will also take a huge paradigm shift among those who live in the
more desirable, closer-in locations within Los Angeles itself and some
of its neighboring municipalities -- a shift away from the NIMBY-type
reflexive opposition to all new development and toward support for
densification and multi-family redevelopment (with the new stigma being
directed toward anybody proposing the construction of new SINGLE-family
subdivisions).

This is the ONLY realistic solution to traffic problems in the Southern
California urban region.

.

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