Earlier this year, California joined Oregon to become the second state to pass policy that would allow additional housing density in single-family neighborhoods. Set to take effect on January 1, 2022, Senate Bill 9 requires that communities across California allow duplexes -- and in some cases four units if they sever their lot -- in most low-rise neighborhoods.

This is similar to what Toronto is looking at doing, though the details seem to be different. But as I mentioned before, sometimes you can have the broader permissions in place and yet very little building actually takes place because of other land use restrictions or market factors.

People in California seem to get this dynamic, because the Los Angeles Times just reported that some/many cities in California are now looking at local policies that would mitigate the effects of Senate Bill 9. In other words, they're looking at policies that would make it harder to build the housing that this new law was hoping to unlock.

Land use planning is a funny thing.

I am absolutely obsessed with the below video by Drew Ganyer called Neon Rooftops of LA. If you can’t see the embedded video, click here.

[vimeo 158929583 w=640 h=360]

The story is that Gayner was playing around with his new drone at a friend’s apartment next to “The Embassy” sign. This peaked his interest and so he went searching for more of these signs. This brought him to PublicArtInLA.com, which provides a comprehensive list of “buildings with historic neon signs” in the Los Angeles area.

And so a movie was born.

I’ll end with the below snippet from the opening paragraph of Public Art In LA. I don’t know about you, but I love these signs. I think they really do give rise to the magic of the night.

“Sometimes, urban renewal can be as simple as the relighting of a neon sign on Wilshire, Hollywood or Sunset boulevard, lights that recover the past and point to an equally bright urban future. Remnants of a lost Los Angeles, city of the mind, remembered and yearned for, the neon lights of L.A.–celestial fires of another sort, green, gold, ruby red, electric blue–guide us down the Wilshire corridor, up through Hollywood and out along Sunset Boulevard west. If Paris is the City of Lights, L.A. is the City of Neon, possessed of a comparable (yet antithetical) beauty and capable as well, like all great cities, of giving rise in the magic of the night to hungers of body, mind and spirit.” (Kevin Starr, “Landscape Electric; A program that renews the city’s urban spirit by relighting Philip Marlowe’s neon L.A.” Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1999.