There is a housing crisis in Los Angeles, as well as a traffic and climate crisis. Across much of the city, 50% of storefronts are vacant — including Westwood Blvd. These problems beg for a comprehensive solution. One option is the Livable Community Initiative – a plan developed by activists in Larchmont Village to zone targeted commercial corridors with existing small retail to 3-5 stories of gentle density – human-scale, beautiful architecture above neighborhood serving retail. Imagine any of our historic main streets and villages – Westwood Village, Main Street and Abbot Kinney, Market St in Inglewood, NoHo Arts District, San Fernando Blvd in Burbank – with housing above the stores – creating small, affordable apartments for seniors, Gen Zers, people who don’t drive, and workers who are forced to spend 30% of their income on a car. 

The LCI could be a beautiful, enriching option that builds on the best parts of existing programs which are building desperately needed housing (like TOC), but often end up as big, bulky buildings with lots of parking, minimal affordability, and often terrible architecture (in the worst cases, we get the famous pink building – a podium of 3 floors of parking, a dead streetscape, and an eyesore of a building that turns neighbors against density and development – creating a vicious cycle in the city.)

But what if instead we could create streets with beautiful architecture – nourishing to the residents and the surrounding area? What if we intentionally designed our city? Cities all over the world pre-determine their architecture – it makes cities beautiful (Paris, Boston, Santa Barbara). What if neighborhoods were allowed to say “no” to terrible designs, because they have already said “yes” to beautiful pre-approved designs?