
Reclaiming Urbanism After the L.A. Fires
While much has been reported about the tragic loss of single-family homes in the L.A. fires, both in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, there were also a significant number of commercial properties destroyed, including many small apartment buildings. According to Commercial Observer, 374 commercial properties in Pacific Palisades and Altadena valued at around $2 billion fall into this category. This includes 143 retail and 135 multifamily properties, as well as 49 office properties and 45 that were “unspecified.”
About 75% of the multifamily buildings destroyed or damaged by the fires contained 20 units or less. The general age of the buildings was 70 years old on average. Most of them were owned by individuals or local investors and might rightfully be labeled as “missing middle” housing, also known as workforce housing. This dispersed and finely grained ownership pattern poses both a challenge to the redevelopment of these fire-damaged areas, but also provides an opportunity.
The challenge is that any sort of comprehensive replanning or rethinking of a place becomes excruciatingly difficult when there are so many landowners, some of whom may not be interested in participating in the process or who maybe be unable to make decisions due to disputes among various members of ownership groups (a common issue). A typical suburban-style grocery-anchored shopping center from the 1980s that might appear to have one owner can have as many as five or more. That is why redevelopment of these centers in a manner variously referred to as “sprawl repair” or “suburban retrofit” can be so difficult to achieve.
The acknowledgement of this diffuse land ownership pattern—what might be thought of as “facts on the ground”—is key to any successful and transformative redevelopment. While fires destroy buildings and leave the ground beneath them fallow, they do not erase property lines or municipally owned rights-of-way. Architect Daniel Burnham, most famous for his 1909 plan of Chicago, learned this the hard way, when he created an ambitious plan for San Francisco in 1904 that went absolutely nowhere. However, after the earthquake and fire consumed the city in 1906, he raced back to the city with a plan in hand and said something to the effect of, “Hey, folks, I have the plan.” But despite inheriting what seemed to him to be a blank slate, in reality he encountered the nearly invisible parcel lines that divided the city into tiny bits that resisted rearrangement, because these parcels were owned by separate individuals. And so, for a second time, nothing came of his plan.

However, the opportunities in Pacific Palisades and Altadena start by acknowledging the facts on the ground, and then by going farther by asking some rather simple questions: Why can’t we put apartments above the rebuilt retail spaces? Why can’t some of the small apartment buildings provide opportunities for ground floor office, maker spaces, or retail?
As charming and beloved as the historic centers of Pacific Palisades and Altadena were, the opportunity to reconsider the single-use land use pattern of both locales stares us in the face. In the Palisades, some of the commercial space was organized in a car-centric pattern, with parking dominating the streetscape. So in the case of the Palisades, we might ask, why can’t the new construction be built to frame and embrace generously sized sidewalks and relegate parking to a less visible location? Clearly, rearranging these patterns in a more pedestrian-friendly mixed-use environment is an opportunity. It’s an example of Rahm Emanuel’s admonition to never let a serious crisis go to waste.
Applying that mantra to Los Angeles, Craig Fugate, former head of FEMA during the Obama administration, was recently quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, “This is your Hurricane Katrina. It will forever change the community.” At a personal level, as someone who, shortly after that storm, worked with several communities along the Mississippi coast (where the eye of the storm actually hit), I vividly remember the collective aspirations of some of the towns and cities along the coast to improve upon the places that they already loved. One of these, the charming town of Ocean Springs, turned the devastation into the opportunity to rebuild its coastline into a more beautiful beachfront park than had been there, one that greatly contributed to the town’s resiliency by providing additional protection from future storms.
Another example from San Francisco—one more recent than 1906, but also initiated by an earthquake—might offer additional encouragement for a smarter way forward: the redevelopment and revitalization of Hayes Valley, an area torn asunder by the construction of the Central Freeway in 1959, for which land was acquired via eminent domain and then again by the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 which leveled the freeway. After many fits and starts, the rubble of the freeway was eventually cleared, and the neighborhood was then redeveloped in two dimensions as before, except with the insertion of Octavia Boulevard occupying the land that the freeway had taken up. This artery is a tree-lined Parisian-style boulevard with walking path medians between the through-traffic and local-traffic lanes and tree-lined sidewalks that help improve safety for pedestrians.
However, beyond this alteration in infrastructure, what was also different resulted from the city’s adoption of the Market-Octavia Neighborhood Plan in 2007 to guide planning and public policies aimed at promoting market-rate and affordable housing and limiting displacement of longtime residents. It also prioritized a mix of uses and pedestrian-friendly streets, with generous sidewalks, and parking relegated to the back (or underneath). The results of this effort are well documented. Today, Hayes Valley is thriving, home to many small and locally owned shops, a dynamic art scene, public spaces, and a lot of new housing.
What this example suggests is that while land-ownership patterns and infrastructure tend to be fixed, zoning itself is mutable. Because of the small increment of property ownership characterizing both Palisades Village and Altadena, rezoning would allow for a delightfully more robust mix of uses and a finer grain of development than might be found in large lot efforts that are more the norm in redevelopment.
However, for the owners of small properties to take on the effort of rezoning their individual properties would be difficult and hardly be worth the incremental benefit they might receive, especially if they were the only ones trying to achieve such an urbane outcome. Clearly, for walkable and mixed-use neighborhood centers to emerge, more sweeping changes to the existing zoning in both areas is necessary.

A regulatory tool that is somewhat unique to California is what’s known as the Specific Plan (in recent years, this tool has also been authorized in Colorado). Acting as a bridge between a jurisdiction’s General Plan (or Comprehensive Plan, as it is known in many states) and more detailed zoning ordinances, it’s a tool that allows a rezoning across multiple properties under disparate ownership. Because it must be consistent with the goals of the General Plan, the rezoning must be understood as accomplishing the General Plan’s goals, and that is what makes it a compelling tool here with, in the case of the Palisades, one caveat. In that case, the proposed Specific Plan would need to be consistent with a document that is rather antiquated: namely, the City of L.A.’s General Plan. Thus, the latter would likely require amendment to bring the two documents into consistency with one another, but this is a surmountable obstacle that need not stand in the way of rebuilding these beloved neighborhood centers as imagined: thriving and walkable places, outfitted with offices, shops, and a wide variety of housing options.
The recent fires were a tragedy of historic proportions. Let’s not compound the tragedy by ignoring the opportunity to rebuild in a more pedestrian-oriented and livable manner.
Featured image via Redfin.