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Engaged Community Development.
One of the hallmarks of a well-designed community, I believe, is considering how to place buildings so they engage with the passerby and speak an architectural language of civic harmony. The vast majority of post-1970s Southern Calfornia housing does not. I think of those developer cul-de-sacs with three car wide garage door fronts, or those…
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Concepts for Clustered Housing and Park Near Orange Line. Part 2.
For many years, the car dealers of Van Nuys Boulevard rented the parking lots of Metro, in an obscene arrangement of prioritizing automobile storage over the needs of Angelenos who are ravenous for housing, parks and other uses of land which are not parking lots. The auto dealers’ cars are gone. But the parking lots,…
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Concepts for Clustered Houses Near Light Rail.
There are currently vast expanses of unused asphalt parking lots that run along the Metro Orange Line. One of the largest of these is near Sepulveda and Erwin. This area could be developed as a lovely, walkable, residential area. Instead of the hot sun beating down on asphalt, wouldn’t it be nice to see the…
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Khmerican.
Jimmy Chhiu is a Cambodian-American, born in Santa Rosa, CA. He now lives in a house he purchased in Van Nuys, perhaps the only person I know under 35 who bought a house in the San Fernando Valley without wealthy parents. I met him 15 years ago when he was a 20-year-old working at Trader…
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Detained: a new short story
Before he left LA for good, he made the rounds to see the old places. The apartments where he had lived, the beaches where he had swum, the houses where he had partied, the comedy clubs he had played.
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Gym Life 2025.
I didn’t go to the gym during the pandemic. I set up a backyard fitness area, some free weights, a weight bench. I went for daily walks, sometimes running or hiking. Then I returned to the gym after the “danger” had passed. I returned to a new world of fitness which resembled nothing of the…
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Here in Van Nuys 