The Daily News has an article today which discusses how developers see the Busway as a new opportunity for creating multi-family housing.

Bruce Ackerman, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, says that air rights above the parking lots adjoining the Busway would be suitable places to construct new residential units.

The article also says, “About 19,000 people move into the Valley each year, and new housing construction, be it for-sale or for-rent, is not keeping pace with demand.”

But must new development “fit in” with pre-existing monotony and sprawl? Is urbanism something to be avoided even as we inhabit a Valley of two million?

“Channel it so it doesn’t impinge on single-family areas,’ adds Daniel Blake, director of the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at California State University, Northridge.”

In my neighborhood near the intersection of Sepulveda and Victory, I am currently being “impinged” by trash, an abandoned gas station, three smelly Asian restaurants, speeding cars, homeless people, a residential treatment center, graffitti, a drug user’s motel, prostitution and shopping carts.

Civilized and architecturally thoughtful multi-family housing would be welcome along the bus route. God knows we have lived next door to more horrific things in the Valley.