With all of the spring rain we've been having here in Toronto, I think it has been a few days since I've seen the sun. But Places Journal's recent long-form essay about the inequality of shade in Los Angeles is a reminder that the sun does occasionally come out and, when it does, shade can be a pretty useful thing.
Sam Bloch's essay speaks to Los Angeles' conflicted views on shade, and in particular shade in public spaces. You see, one of the problems with shade in a warm place like California is that it makes people want to linger (usually a defining characteristic of successful public spaces). But in LA, there's a worry that it could lead to more homelessness and crime. Trees create places to hide.
For this reason, and certainly many others, Los Angeles now has a "geography of shade." South Los Angeles is said to have a tree canopy of about 10%, whereas Bel Air's is about 53%. Shade has become a kind of luxury. As a point of comparison, the US national average is somewhere around 27%.
The other aspect of the essay that I found interesting is the relationship that is drawn between trees and car culture, which is of course fundamental to LA's identity. Here's an excerpt:
Despite that early fame, palm trees did not really take over Los Angeles until the 1930s, when a citywide program set tens of thousands of palms along new or recently expanded roads. They were the ideal tree for an automobile landscape. Hardy, cheap, and able to grow anywhere, palm trees are basically weeds. Their shallow roots curl up into a ball, so they can be plugged into small pavement cuts without entangling underground sewer and water mains or buckling sidewalks.
Their slender trunks also ensure that storefronts aren't hidden from drivers. In 1391 alone, the city planted some 25,000 palm trees. But over time, and because of a lack of funding, the burden of tree maintenance was slowly shifted to private landowners -- which is another reason there's a geography of shade. It reflects who had and has the means.
Photo by Viviana Rishe on Unsplash
Earlier this month it was announced that the on-demand electric scooter and bike startup, Lime, had closed a $310 million series D round. This values the 18-month old company at around $2.4 billion and brings its total raise to $867.1 million. For comparison, Bird -- its main competitor -- has raised around $400 million.
These numbers should tell you about the kind of growth that the "micromobility" startup is seeing. They are now in 15 countries and its riders have taken over 34 million trips. In the last 7 months alone, the company reports that it has seen a 5.5x increase in ridership. They are seen as an affordable last-mile solution. Supposedly 1/3 of its users report an income of less than $50,000 per year.
Lime entered the Canadian market last fall via Waterloo. They have yet to expand anywhere else, though I suspect we'll see them in Toronto this spring/summer. One of the barriers is that their scooters (with airless tires) aren't equipped to deal with snow, so they currently pack them up during the winter months.
This is in addition to the regulatory challenges they are facing in cities all around the world. But like Uber, I am sure there is a compromise to be had.
This week Elon Musk’s Boring Company ran a Tesla through its 1.14 mile-long test tunnel in Hawthorne, California. This was accomplished by using a set of tracking wheels that Elon said, “turns a car into a rail-guided train & back again.” Apparently it is safe up to 150 miles per hour. Here is a video from yesterday’s unveiling (click here if you can’t see it below):
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQn-D-i5lyM&w=560&h=315]
Some, or perhaps many, are skeptical of how this could work at scale in a dense urban environment. The company is imagining a world where every house or office building has one of these lifts (shown in the video) in their garage or basement. But there’s no question it is very cool and apparently this test tunnel only cost about $10 million per mile to dig. That’s progress in and of itself.
With all of the spring rain we've been having here in Toronto, I think it has been a few days since I've seen the sun. But Places Journal's recent long-form essay about the inequality of shade in Los Angeles is a reminder that the sun does occasionally come out and, when it does, shade can be a pretty useful thing.
Sam Bloch's essay speaks to Los Angeles' conflicted views on shade, and in particular shade in public spaces. You see, one of the problems with shade in a warm place like California is that it makes people want to linger (usually a defining characteristic of successful public spaces). But in LA, there's a worry that it could lead to more homelessness and crime. Trees create places to hide.
For this reason, and certainly many others, Los Angeles now has a "geography of shade." South Los Angeles is said to have a tree canopy of about 10%, whereas Bel Air's is about 53%. Shade has become a kind of luxury. As a point of comparison, the US national average is somewhere around 27%.
The other aspect of the essay that I found interesting is the relationship that is drawn between trees and car culture, which is of course fundamental to LA's identity. Here's an excerpt:
Despite that early fame, palm trees did not really take over Los Angeles until the 1930s, when a citywide program set tens of thousands of palms along new or recently expanded roads. They were the ideal tree for an automobile landscape. Hardy, cheap, and able to grow anywhere, palm trees are basically weeds. Their shallow roots curl up into a ball, so they can be plugged into small pavement cuts without entangling underground sewer and water mains or buckling sidewalks.
Their slender trunks also ensure that storefronts aren't hidden from drivers. In 1391 alone, the city planted some 25,000 palm trees. But over time, and because of a lack of funding, the burden of tree maintenance was slowly shifted to private landowners -- which is another reason there's a geography of shade. It reflects who had and has the means.
Photo by Viviana Rishe on Unsplash
Earlier this month it was announced that the on-demand electric scooter and bike startup, Lime, had closed a $310 million series D round. This values the 18-month old company at around $2.4 billion and brings its total raise to $867.1 million. For comparison, Bird -- its main competitor -- has raised around $400 million.
These numbers should tell you about the kind of growth that the "micromobility" startup is seeing. They are now in 15 countries and its riders have taken over 34 million trips. In the last 7 months alone, the company reports that it has seen a 5.5x increase in ridership. They are seen as an affordable last-mile solution. Supposedly 1/3 of its users report an income of less than $50,000 per year.
Lime entered the Canadian market last fall via Waterloo. They have yet to expand anywhere else, though I suspect we'll see them in Toronto this spring/summer. One of the barriers is that their scooters (with airless tires) aren't equipped to deal with snow, so they currently pack them up during the winter months.
This is in addition to the regulatory challenges they are facing in cities all around the world. But like Uber, I am sure there is a compromise to be had.
This week Elon Musk’s Boring Company ran a Tesla through its 1.14 mile-long test tunnel in Hawthorne, California. This was accomplished by using a set of tracking wheels that Elon said, “turns a car into a rail-guided train & back again.” Apparently it is safe up to 150 miles per hour. Here is a video from yesterday’s unveiling (click here if you can’t see it below):
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQn-D-i5lyM&w=560&h=315]
Some, or perhaps many, are skeptical of how this could work at scale in a dense urban environment. The company is imagining a world where every house or office building has one of these lifts (shown in the video) in their garage or basement. But there’s no question it is very cool and apparently this test tunnel only cost about $10 million per mile to dig. That’s progress in and of itself.
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