Category: Environment

Agoura Hills Observer.

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Agoura CA, originally uploaded by photosfromto.

B&W Photo of Agoura, CA 1967: UCLA

A new blog about Agoura has just begun and the blogger, like me, is concerned about sprawl, lack of pedestrian amenities, super-sized McMansions, destruction of nature and the general indifference to the public sphere that characterizes fine living in Southern California.

Here are some of his quotes:

“For years Agoura Hills has been building right up against the mountains, one of the country’s few great urban sanctuaries, with little or no protest from city residents. I wonder where Ms. Mary Altmann of picturesque Malibou Lake was when the city allowed construction of the vast office complexes along swaths of Agoura South?”

“Thousand Oaks is a perfect example of the poor job modern American cities do in providing for their citizens. If you look at the well-kept, attractive areas of Thousand Oaks, they are almost exclusively well-kept as a result of private money.”

“Until the 1950’s, Agoura Hills was a small town, a waystop along El Camino Real, and it’s main street (an amenity every American city had until mid-century) could be found along what is now called Agoura Rd. Today, however, this strip is lackluster and divided from most of the city by the 101 freeway, a hodge podge mix of homes, a school, a small theater, a restaurant, and offices. The zone is rarely if ever used or visited by Agoura residents, especially since Agoura Rd. was widened to acommodate high-speed cars and thus make pedestrian traffic along the road risky. Today, in place of what was once our town’s quaint, pedestrian core, most Agoura Hills residents instead spend their time shopping in the run-down commercial centers sprawling out from the intersection of Kanan Rd. and Thousand Oaks Blvd, what I will call the City Center.”

Dummer.

Posted in Environment1 Comment

Photo: C.I.C.L.E.

What other comments can be added to this image? Here is one:
The Hummer is an atrocious monster that should be banned from the road.

One has to ask how some American patriots, knowing that our soldiers are dying to secure the oil fields of Iraq, can in good conscience, drive these gas guzzling vehicles. Oil is the only reason we stay in the Middle-East. As the polar ice melts, driving a Hummer (or any other S.U.V.) to the gym or soccer match is an ultimate act of selfishness and moral blindness.

Open Space.

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On Sepulveda, in Sherman Oaks, just north of the Galleria, land has been cleared for the future improvements to the 405/101 interchange. This is the plan to alleviate the horrendous bottleneck of traffic that makes commuting so torturous on the San Diego Freeway.

But passing by this open space I had a different thought, about how the Valley might have looked in 1945, when orange and walnut groves were destroyed to make room for houses. This field, I thought, would look mighty fine planted with hundreds of orange trees.

There was once a balance to life in California, between urban and rural, agriculture and urban density, that has been lost. The outskirts of the city do not exist anymore. We live in a bowl of sprawl that extends from the Pacific Ocean to Palm Springs and beyond.

Why not develop housing that utilizes and incorporates some agriculture in the design? Perhaps there is some tonic from the orange blossoms that might soothe the angry idiocy roaming the streets of Los Angeles? Van Nuys with lemon or walnut trees along VanOwen! Demolish the asphalt on Sherman Way, and create garden apartments around real edible gardens!

At CSUN, in Northridge, the campus wisely and with some historical knowledge, kept acres of old orange trees. The buildings and parking lots are there, but so is that little sliver of life, of citrus and sunshine, that makes California California.

Yawning Emptiness.

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Around the one year-old Metro Orange Line Busway in Van Nuys, there are still the industrial and light manufacturing businesses that located here when freight trains on the Southern Pacific line carried raw materials before the advent of interstate trucking.

The Orange Line now brings thousands of commuters through downtown Van Nuys and these riders disembark in an area with a Salvation Army store, a porno shop, an ice manufacturing company, auto painters, Big Valley Dodge and other one story buildings which close down at dusk. There is no street life, no places to sit down and buy a cup of coffee or read a book.

Imagine Van Nuys Boulevard, north of Oxnard redeveloped with apartments and residences above the street? This area would become a convenient and pleasant place to live since a car would not be a necessity. Residents would ride east and to go to Hollywood and downtown, or go west to attend Pierce College or shop in Woodland Hills. Some of the apartments would be geared towards seniors; others would have 4 or 5 bedrooms for large and extended families.

This is an excellent time for Los Angeles to devise and design a grand plan for Van Nuys Boulevard which would not only include residential buildings, but might also have decorative lampposts, trees, a center divider filled with plants (like on Ventura Blvd. in Studio City) and a very notable new LAPD headquarters to replace the dinosaur on the mall that nobody can find.

Ready for Electric Cars?

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Every ten years or so, during an oil price panic, it seems that the electric car comes back to promise a brave new future.

I happened to drive past these “Zapcars” on display at Venice and Abott Kinney yesterday afternoon. I stopped by to have a look. The cars are three wheeled and powered by batteries. They come in various colors and are priced at around $9,000.

These are being marketed for the “local” Venice Beach person who does local errands and works nearby. I’m not certain how many of these potential consumers exist or even if there is a factual, statistical number for how many people might want to drive these. They certainly don’t look like they would be suitable driving next to a 2 ton SUV on Ventura Boulevard or driving on the 405 at 2am.

Beyond the promise of electric cars (no air pollution, no money for Arab terrorists), what would the effect of a complete switchover to battery powered autos be? I can imagine that sprawl, which is a byproduct of the auto, would get even worse. The roads would still be insanely crowded in a nation of Zapcars.

But for one lovely, sunny afternoon in Venice Beach yesterday, the utopian ideal seemed real.

Villaraigosa to plant One Million Trees.

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Mayor Villaraigosa has announced a new program to plant one million new trees across Los Angeles according to the LA TImes.

“Los Angeles, the dirtiest big city in America, has the opportunity to be the greenest,” the mayor said, referring to reports that the city has the worst air quality in the nation.

Wearing a white T-shirt displaying the campaign’s slogan “Live for Today, Plant for Tomorrow,” the mayor thanked the several nonprofit and neighborhood groups that have promised to help with funding, planting or both.

He urged residents to participate by calling the city’s 311 information line or by signing on to the program’s website at http://www.milliontreesla.org

Neighborhoods with lush trees are usually the richest and most desirable: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Hancock Park. In the San Gabriel Valley, wealthy San Marino is covered with a canopy of green, but south of Huntington Drive, arid middle class Alhambra sits under sun and smog.

But trees do not purify the air, despite what some believe. All the plantings along our freeways have never made an iota of difference in cleansing the toxic effuse of vehicle emissions. But trees shield us from the sun and make living in the desert kinder.