Venice, CA is a very strange part of a very strange city - it’s pretending to be a casual hippie beach town, except everyone who lives there is either a millionaire, making a very poor financial decision, or literally homeless. It’s hard not to be a bit of a doomer about such places actually changing - as you said, they don’t really have to try to make the neighborhood desirable (barring some truly catastrophic climate change or the total collapse of the film industry). California succeeded spectacularly in enshrining nostalgia politics in culture and law, but will probably muddle through anyway.
It’ll be interesting to see how the new state-level land use reforms propagate to LA - to really adopt any kind of growth-oriented land use it’ll probably have to be forced by Sacramento. LA politics is an unholy fusion of NorCal eco-doomerism (we’re full, the last person who should have been allowed to move here was me) and nostalgia for a lost time in SoCal. We’ll see!
welcome to the left coast my friend. well written at first blush and a very nice review of Venice - my sister used to live in the Jim Morrison apartment house right on the boardwalk - I've seen it from good to bad - but it's never been this unstable. you've inspired me to post some musings of why we bitch and moan about living here but never leave - wtf?
A large part of the SoCal vibe is chill and relaxation. It gets even worse when you get to Hawaii. It's basically against the laws of thermodynamics for anything serious to happen in Hawaii.
The Supreme Court's ruling in Grants Pass vs. Johnson in June made it easier for communities to fine, ticket or arrest people for living unsheltered. From what I've been reading, Governor Newsom has been quick to take action on homeless encampments. It might be why you saw fewer of them than you expected during your stay. https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article290424039.html
I frequently complain about the over-emphasis by urbanists on scale and density. But scale and density still matter, and density matters more today than ever. So much of functional urban living depends on modern infrastructure and service systems, where the primary cost drivers are area served, and much less with how many people are served. For populous cities, high-quality public transportation is necessary to serve people traveling long distances within the city and the region. We expect that dense cities should provide high-quality transit service and that more people frequent them in dense cities. Thus my Seattle fandom. Seattle residents frequent their transit system and they are expanding that system while improving service. Seattle has an average population density of 7-8k/sm, which is not very dense. That's only a little denser than LA, but central LA is much denser than "central" Seattle. In short, Seattle overperforms its density and LA underperforms its density. Seattle succeeds on some important measures of urban policy. LA succeeds on weather and natural landscape.
Your Impressionism is commendable and I enjoy it. I’m glad you read Kaid’s piece which is a very good primer about all of the risks of using “urbanism” as a baseline without a little more context. You recall my comments on your Seattle piece. Here’s a Venice piece you might enjoy. https://resurgencejourney.substack.com/p/recasting-the-essence-of-a-place
I'll stump for Seattle briefly - it's beautiful, there's water everywhere, and ample opportunities to get outdoors. That's true for much of the west coast (minus the water and boating, maybe. they trade the lake for the surf). But also, outside of downtown, quite a few Seattle neighborhoods are really nice. You can walk, light rail, and bike around quite easily. There's nice downtowns in most neighborhoods.
I think all of the west coast cities have depressing, open drug use. But Seattle actually looks new and like a place that builds housing. I don't live there but I've always enjoyed visiting family there.
LA/SoCal on the other hand just feels too big to be cogent. If I were able to stay in one neighborhood or even city while being there I'm sure it would feel better. But in both LA and Seattle, I travel around to visit. In Seattle, whether by car or if the fates allow, by bus and light rail, those trips are pleasant. In LA those trips are always so much longer than expected.
I think you're onto something though about nice places not being as livable or affordable - I think it's causes are the very act of paying for the ncie place - for the nice view, the nice neighborhood, the nice weather. People who moved there a while back did so because they paid for a nice setting, and anything that changes that setting is as upsetting as saying "hey you live in a place with winter now" in their mind. They think, "that's just not part of the deal!" They can't control the climate and weather, other than by moving. But they can control the housing. And if the setting changes because of the unaffordability, than they move to Texas, Idaho, Arizona or Nevada.
The way I like to compare Seattle and LA: both places have similar oppressive regulatory environments, but people in Seattle actually follow the rules while people in LA will tolerate a certain amount of disorder and minor lawbreaking. This was a strong point in Seattle's favor 15-20 years ago when there were fewer rules and the homeless advocates were actually interested in trying to get people off the streets, but I think the average LA resident (if not the city government) has generally been better able to weather the worst excesses of the progressive movement since then.
(Full disclosure: LA is nice to visit, I still think Seattle is a better place to live if you actually have to work for a living.)
California. Land of the 6th largest economy, magnificent landscapes, and year-round outdoor weather.
Also the land of terrible zoning laws, NIMBY-ism, chronic under building of housing, insanely poor long term planning, and droughts.
The issues could be addressed, but the politics are steady-state, staid, and lacking in innovation.
After a lifetime living in the state, we finally bailed this year. Our kids (and their friends) are looking outside too.
California in the 60's, 70's, and 80's was quite something. The past 35 years have been downhill with a population boom that has led to severe overcrowding.
But the out-migration likely means the economy will suffer. Would be better if it had tried to accommodate that 35 years of population boom. Lots of people left the Midwest not because they wanted to, but because the jobs were in California. And often the jobs were there because there were people to serve there doing other jobs. Out-migration means a lot of jobs leave too.
It's been a long time since I've been to Seattle, but I have personally never seen homelessness like I saw in northern California and the Bay Area when I went in 2022. I live in Chicago. We have tent cities here. Nothing like I saw in California. But between when I was there and you were there the Supreme Court said that removing people by force from public areas is legal and California, from all accounts, has really ramped that up. So I think that is why it didn't seem as bad.
That said....I love LA. I fell in love with it the first time I went there and have loved it every time I've been back. If I were young and didn't know anything about either climate change or exactly how California gets its water I would head there in a hot minute. And that's the problem with California. Yes, they have a housing shortage. We all do. But ultimately they have too too too many people who want to live there because its so darn pretty. But It passed the point of real sustainability years ago.
I don't think California's problems are fixable in the long run. It's not that the state doesn't want to. They can't. I think they could erase every zoning law on their books and build for the next 10 years and not have enough housing for everyone. The government can't fix the home insurance problems because the wildfires arent going away and the mudslides are getting worse and you cant force private business to bankrupt themselves. The water resources are drying up and they aren't going to get a pipeline from Lake Michigan (long a proposed "solution" to the Colorado River problem). Ultimately cost, the thing that is driving so much of the homelessness will finally force people to leave. And that is probably a good thing in the end. As long as we can convince other places to actually build new housing.
I love LA and I love much of California. But it's all a very pretty, and I think collapsing, mirage.
I think I went off on a tangent 😊.
Also, I agree with your assessment of Seattle. I feel the same about Portland, OR as well.
I was in Seattle a month ago and we saw very much what Del saw and experienced. I was saddened as I spent some time there in the early 80’s and it much smaller but impressive nonetheless.
I think you're on to something about the reduced pressure to make a place with great fundamentals affordable and truly livable.
Venice, CA is a very strange part of a very strange city - it’s pretending to be a casual hippie beach town, except everyone who lives there is either a millionaire, making a very poor financial decision, or literally homeless. It’s hard not to be a bit of a doomer about such places actually changing - as you said, they don’t really have to try to make the neighborhood desirable (barring some truly catastrophic climate change or the total collapse of the film industry). California succeeded spectacularly in enshrining nostalgia politics in culture and law, but will probably muddle through anyway.
It’ll be interesting to see how the new state-level land use reforms propagate to LA - to really adopt any kind of growth-oriented land use it’ll probably have to be forced by Sacramento. LA politics is an unholy fusion of NorCal eco-doomerism (we’re full, the last person who should have been allowed to move here was me) and nostalgia for a lost time in SoCal. We’ll see!
welcome to the left coast my friend. well written at first blush and a very nice review of Venice - my sister used to live in the Jim Morrison apartment house right on the boardwalk - I've seen it from good to bad - but it's never been this unstable. you've inspired me to post some musings of why we bitch and moan about living here but never leave - wtf?
A large part of the SoCal vibe is chill and relaxation. It gets even worse when you get to Hawaii. It's basically against the laws of thermodynamics for anything serious to happen in Hawaii.
The Supreme Court's ruling in Grants Pass vs. Johnson in June made it easier for communities to fine, ticket or arrest people for living unsheltered. From what I've been reading, Governor Newsom has been quick to take action on homeless encampments. It might be why you saw fewer of them than you expected during your stay. https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article290424039.html
I frequently complain about the over-emphasis by urbanists on scale and density. But scale and density still matter, and density matters more today than ever. So much of functional urban living depends on modern infrastructure and service systems, where the primary cost drivers are area served, and much less with how many people are served. For populous cities, high-quality public transportation is necessary to serve people traveling long distances within the city and the region. We expect that dense cities should provide high-quality transit service and that more people frequent them in dense cities. Thus my Seattle fandom. Seattle residents frequent their transit system and they are expanding that system while improving service. Seattle has an average population density of 7-8k/sm, which is not very dense. That's only a little denser than LA, but central LA is much denser than "central" Seattle. In short, Seattle overperforms its density and LA underperforms its density. Seattle succeeds on some important measures of urban policy. LA succeeds on weather and natural landscape.
Your Impressionism is commendable and I enjoy it. I’m glad you read Kaid’s piece which is a very good primer about all of the risks of using “urbanism” as a baseline without a little more context. You recall my comments on your Seattle piece. Here’s a Venice piece you might enjoy. https://resurgencejourney.substack.com/p/recasting-the-essence-of-a-place
I'll stump for Seattle briefly - it's beautiful, there's water everywhere, and ample opportunities to get outdoors. That's true for much of the west coast (minus the water and boating, maybe. they trade the lake for the surf). But also, outside of downtown, quite a few Seattle neighborhoods are really nice. You can walk, light rail, and bike around quite easily. There's nice downtowns in most neighborhoods.
I think all of the west coast cities have depressing, open drug use. But Seattle actually looks new and like a place that builds housing. I don't live there but I've always enjoyed visiting family there.
LA/SoCal on the other hand just feels too big to be cogent. If I were able to stay in one neighborhood or even city while being there I'm sure it would feel better. But in both LA and Seattle, I travel around to visit. In Seattle, whether by car or if the fates allow, by bus and light rail, those trips are pleasant. In LA those trips are always so much longer than expected.
I think you're onto something though about nice places not being as livable or affordable - I think it's causes are the very act of paying for the ncie place - for the nice view, the nice neighborhood, the nice weather. People who moved there a while back did so because they paid for a nice setting, and anything that changes that setting is as upsetting as saying "hey you live in a place with winter now" in their mind. They think, "that's just not part of the deal!" They can't control the climate and weather, other than by moving. But they can control the housing. And if the setting changes because of the unaffordability, than they move to Texas, Idaho, Arizona or Nevada.
The way I like to compare Seattle and LA: both places have similar oppressive regulatory environments, but people in Seattle actually follow the rules while people in LA will tolerate a certain amount of disorder and minor lawbreaking. This was a strong point in Seattle's favor 15-20 years ago when there were fewer rules and the homeless advocates were actually interested in trying to get people off the streets, but I think the average LA resident (if not the city government) has generally been better able to weather the worst excesses of the progressive movement since then.
(Full disclosure: LA is nice to visit, I still think Seattle is a better place to live if you actually have to work for a living.)
California. Land of the 6th largest economy, magnificent landscapes, and year-round outdoor weather.
Also the land of terrible zoning laws, NIMBY-ism, chronic under building of housing, insanely poor long term planning, and droughts.
The issues could be addressed, but the politics are steady-state, staid, and lacking in innovation.
After a lifetime living in the state, we finally bailed this year. Our kids (and their friends) are looking outside too.
California in the 60's, 70's, and 80's was quite something. The past 35 years have been downhill with a population boom that has led to severe overcrowding.
Sounds like it’s self-correcting, then. I moved here in 2013 and my only real issue was handled by the Supreme Court ruling on Grants Pass v. Johnson.
Yeah maybe, but I wouldn't hold your breath.
I mean, most of those issues have to do with overcrowding, so if those issues drive net out-migration, it eases the overcrowding, no?
But the out-migration likely means the economy will suffer. Would be better if it had tried to accommodate that 35 years of population boom. Lots of people left the Midwest not because they wanted to, but because the jobs were in California. And often the jobs were there because there were people to serve there doing other jobs. Out-migration means a lot of jobs leave too.
It's been a long time since I've been to Seattle, but I have personally never seen homelessness like I saw in northern California and the Bay Area when I went in 2022. I live in Chicago. We have tent cities here. Nothing like I saw in California. But between when I was there and you were there the Supreme Court said that removing people by force from public areas is legal and California, from all accounts, has really ramped that up. So I think that is why it didn't seem as bad.
That said....I love LA. I fell in love with it the first time I went there and have loved it every time I've been back. If I were young and didn't know anything about either climate change or exactly how California gets its water I would head there in a hot minute. And that's the problem with California. Yes, they have a housing shortage. We all do. But ultimately they have too too too many people who want to live there because its so darn pretty. But It passed the point of real sustainability years ago.
I don't think California's problems are fixable in the long run. It's not that the state doesn't want to. They can't. I think they could erase every zoning law on their books and build for the next 10 years and not have enough housing for everyone. The government can't fix the home insurance problems because the wildfires arent going away and the mudslides are getting worse and you cant force private business to bankrupt themselves. The water resources are drying up and they aren't going to get a pipeline from Lake Michigan (long a proposed "solution" to the Colorado River problem). Ultimately cost, the thing that is driving so much of the homelessness will finally force people to leave. And that is probably a good thing in the end. As long as we can convince other places to actually build new housing.
I love LA and I love much of California. But it's all a very pretty, and I think collapsing, mirage.
I think I went off on a tangent 😊.
Also, I agree with your assessment of Seattle. I feel the same about Portland, OR as well.
I was in Seattle a month ago and we saw very much what Del saw and experienced. I was saddened as I spent some time there in the early 80’s and it much smaller but impressive nonetheless.