Los Angeles Downtown News

Planning has begun for a 400-acre plot of land near downtown Los Angeles, and expectations are high.

The CEO of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently told a crowd of L.A. city officials that increasing transit oriented development is high on his list of goals.

L.A.'s downtown Business Improvement District calls on local business people, property owners, and residents to get stepping in L.A.'s Fashion District, to evaluate the area's walkability. The BID has $1.6 million to make improvements by 2008.

An upcoming Los Angeles symposium will focus on greening the city's rooftops and overcoming the high implementation costs that have kept gardens off the roofs of skyscrapers.

You may not have heard of him, but Portland's Homer Williams is busily making big changes in Downtown Los Angeles.

Trying to find parking in Downtown Los Angeles is going from difficult to near-impossible as ever more surface lots are converted to housing. The Downtown News offers the first in a three-part series.

The number of skyscrapers to be built in each city hints at the complexities of different development patterns.

LA's planning department plans to hire 20 staffers to push through a backlog of new housing projects and help advance revitalization efforts for the Los Angeles River.

As real estate prices skyrocket, housing is appearing in fading industrial enclaves across the country. The two uses are not always the best fit.

Observers hope L.A.'s next planning director will elevate the importance of the department to be on par with the city's police department.

The LA Downtown News interviews the 94-year old legendary architectural photographer about his modest beginnings in Los Angeles.

Hardly anyone knows that the second largest city in the nation is seeking a new planning director.

The LA Downtown News interviews the director fo the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Eric Owen Moss, on how the school fits into its new location in Downtown L.A.

The developer of Downtown L.A.'s high profile Grand Avenue project releases early details about the mixed use plan.

'Pod thinking' results in planning that fails to look beyond the small community and encourages NIMBYism, BANANAs, and NIMTOOs.

'Sometimes the best incentive you can give is to get out of the way.' -- Con Howe, Los Angeles Planning director, reflecting on his strategy for spurring more housing Downtown.

Mercado La Paloma is an example of a successful program to stimulate small business ownership for dozens of mostly immigrant entrepreneurs.

Can Los Angeles learn from Chicago and New York about how to make the Los Angeles River a 'sparkling necklace of parks and mixed-use projects'?

New York native Sam Hall Kaplan sums up his "25 years writing about architecture and urban design in L.A. in a New York minute."

City planners are attempting to create a 2.4-mile artery through downtown Los Angeles linking the the Walt Disney Concert Hall to East L.A.