British designer Paul Smith was recently interviewed by Monocle on Design about his recent collaboration with BMW and Mini. If you like Mini cars, you’ll probably like the episode. But he also raises two interesting points about his business and about how he approaches design.… Read More
This is a chart from Abundant Housing LA (a YIMBY group), via City Observatory, showing the relationship between median household income and single-family zoning across the 88 cities that make up L.A. County. On average, about 80% of the land in the County is zoned… Read More
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” -Warren Buffet According to the Wall Street Journal, there is a real estate trend underway in Los Angeles: Celebrity plastic surgeons are piling into the business of building over-the-top spec homes. (Spec means that they… Read More
For years, the data has been clear. Many Americans are moving from expensive cities, like Los Angeles, to less expensive metropolitan areas like Dallas-Fort Worth. But Wendell Cox’s recent article over at New Geography is a good reminder that these data sets can be limited.… Read More
I came across the above photo this morning. If you can’t see it, click here. It’s a photo of the Koblick House in Los Angeles designed by Richard Neutra and Gregory Ain for art professor Harry Koblick. Built into the hills of Silver Lake in… Read More
The city of Los Angeles has taken an interesting approach to accessory dwelling units (what we generally call laneway or garden suites here in Toronto). In an effort to streamline the approvals process and bolster the supply of housing in the city, they’ve gone out… Read More
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles’ retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city’s worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All… Read More
Airbnb’s IPO documents recently went public. Not surprisingly, their business as a travel company has been heavily impacted by COVID-19. Last year, the platform saw 326.9 million nights and experiences booked, with 251.1 million being booked in the first nine months of 2019. This year,… Read More
These days, everybody seems to be talking about the 15-minute city — Bloomberg, Treehugger, the Financial Times, as well as countless others. While not a new concept, it is a moniker that is easier for most people to digest. COVID-19 has also created the right… Read More
Richard Voith and Jing Liu of Philadelphia-based Econsult, along with a bunch of other smart coauthors, have just published a working paper looking at the effects of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) on home prices. More specifically, they looked at the impact that LIHTC-financed… Read More
