Mixed-Use Development Projects Could Change Life in the City

Re: “A New Mix For Urban Living,” Nov. 27:

A key reason “early models of mixed-use development proved to be no match for the allure of the single-family suburban home” in Southern California was the fact that zoning laws and the lending policies of banks and government discriminated against “the ... style of buildings [that] housed the middle-class and wealthy in New York and San Francisco.”

Eventually they ceased to be offered, so obviously “they had little status in Los Angeles.”

The mess that is Los Angeles today is largely the result of this social engineering catering to middle-class Midwestern utopian visions of “the clean community,” and of the types of architecture and urban planning that caused notions of efficient use of space and building communities to be discarded and ignored.

Finally, many are waking up and recognizing what went wrong.

The new mixed-use projects and the rise of “smart-growth” planning may be too little, too late, but they indicate clearly steps in the right direction after half a century of waste.

Unfortunately, lenders in California continue to discriminate against mixed-use projects despite all available evidence and reason in favor of “buildings that combine apartments with businesses.”

Banks will have to shed their attachment to the failed cult of the single-family suburban home if Los Angeles and vicinity are to recapture the livability the region enjoyed in the mid-20th century.

Michael Snider

Santa Monica