The Los Angeles '2 Percent Strategy'

25 September 2005 - 5:00am

It's ironic that Los Angeles -- a city 'maligned as traffic-choked and strip-malled' -- is emerging as a model for sustainable urban design by focusing development on just 2% of the city's land.

"It's ironic that Los Angeles, a city that's maligned as traffic-choked and strip-malled and pilloried as the poster city for smog and sprawl, is emerging as one of the country’s premier laboratories for sustainable planning and design. Under the pressures of growth, traffic, and shifting demographics, the metropolis is undergoing a metamorphosis, becoming denser and reorganizing itself around its many centers and transportation corridors.

... Here in Southern California, the place that practically invented sprawl, SCAG's 83-member Regional Council agreed upon what it calls the '2 Percent Strategy,' which directs all new development and population growth (an estimated six million more people by 2030) onto just 2 percent of the land."

Full Story: Designer Air
Source: LA Weekly, September 24, 2005
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Maybe we should blame Thomas Jefferson. He was the godfather of the urban sprawl racket in America.