Neighborhood Integrity Initiative rakes in $750K in three months
Of course these out-of-touch millionaires support the measure. All they really care about is how fast they can drive through the flats on their way from the studios to their hilltop gated enclaves.
You better move that sweet ass across the street as fast as you can, Abuelita. Leo’s had a long day, way too much blow, and those teenagers waiting at his palace in the hills are charging by the hour. Andale!
Metro wins grant to speed up Red, Purple Line service at Union Station
With 30trains per minute in both directsion, half of them red and half purple, you will have 15 per hour in both direction in Beverly hills. That will be a train every 2 minutes or so.
Just about every point you make is wrong. First of all, the most powerful voice in Hollywood are the rich white people living in the hills. They are able to stop development and, although, they are a disproportionately small percentage of the entire population of the neighborhood have much more MONEY and organization such that they influence the city council and planning commission. The other parts are renters who are not organized and have little influence. And secession requires the entire city to vote which is why it didn’t happen.
Next, Venice is rich and white. First, I live here and have seen the change. Second, LA times says Venice is 64% white and 21% Latino. If you know what you are talking about then you know before 2003, Venice was predominantly Latino. "The median yearly household income in 2008 dollars was $67,647, a high figure for Los Angeles. The percentage of households earning $125,000 was considered high for the city." Thus, both rich and white. And this District voted 91% Democrat in the last Congressional election so they are liberal too.
Lastly, the express position of the people wanting to secede is that they aren’t happy with their tax money going to other neighborhoods. I.e. they don’t want their money going to poor neighborhoods. And they are now taking an aggressive stance agains the homeless (per another Curbed article from two weeks ago).
You are 100%, flat out wrong. But I wouldn’t doubt that you would be in denial because you are one of the people I’m talking about.
I don’t really think the city of LA is doing a good enough job with Venice look at the boardwalk there compared to Santa Monica, there’s so much more crazies and crime going on. So what if Venice wants to fall off and form something like Beverly Hills by the beach, something like Palisades, the whole city is turning that way. Once Central LA starts putting in new buildings, building/fixing artifying all the parks and putting in galleries and fixes the LA River area, the same things going to happen there. Luckily public transit will improve and there’s also a good chance the more of these luxury buildings that go in all the older luxury buildings will have to lower their prices and it’s a win-win for everyone. If we could magically wave a wand and Manhattanify enough if the city, it would fix a lot of the issues we have and we wouldn’t have to deal with the same issues NYC has because Manhattan is an island and there’s plenty of space in LA.
Sure there won’t be a ghetto anymore (it will move) but people will be mixed together more and everything will be better, as long as we do it fast enough.
Maple Drive in Beverly Hills between SM Blvd and Sunset is beautiful when the trees are full and the light is filtering through. Also not bad in the fall when all the leaves are on the ground. Another would be Portuguese Bend in Palos Verdes.
sunset blvd going through Beverly Hills is always pretty even with the dead grass in the medians. also Mulholland is great because it’s such an iconic drive in LA with the views on both sides. any street lined with trees is also a thing to celebrate in this generally brown city – Mandeville Canyon is a nice example as are many streets in the BH flats south of sunset.
I’d rather have large houses with age and character (Los Feliz, Hancock Park, San Marino, Beverly Hills etc) than the overbloated, tacky, generic McMansions that have spread like cockroaches in South Orange County, and more recently, Arcadia.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Venice would be just fine if they incorporated. Indeed it is a relatively dense neighborhood, and the proximity to the beach alone ensures that property values remain high. I was more speaking to the Valley as far as that goes (I think LA would’ve ultimately benefitted if they had voted to split back in the early aughts… West LA and Hollywood, that would’ve been more painful.)
Regardless, Central LA is much more dense than Venice (3-4x in many neighborhoods) and is a lot bigger than just MacArthur Park. Think Downtown, Koreatown, Hollywood, USC, Silver Lake, Echo Park, Los Feliz, etc. A lot of these neighborhoods generate buku tax dollars for the City at large.
And for all the hubub about "Silicon Beach", Downtown LA is still thee 800lb gorilla of the regional economy. Venice Boardwalk or Abbot Kinney generate peanuts in economic output and tax base by comparison (especially when you normalize things to an acre-to-acre comparison.) Sure homes might sell for a lot more, but 20 homes on a low rise block can’t compete with 200 condos downtown. And retail rents downtown are some of the highest in the region (I read sometime back that Broadway shops rent for more per square foot than Rodeo Drive.)
Dense, walkable urbanism is the engine of urban development, pure and simple. Overall I think Venice does just fine in this department. Wasn’t really trying to knock them, I just think in general people tend to confuse where value is being generated in the region. Like I said above, I’d love to see more analysis of where tax dollars are actually going and coming from — I think it might surprise a lot of folks (especially those living in more sprawling neighborhoods, or up in the hills, who tend to have a false sense of entitlement when it comes to this stuff..)