West Coast has its own planning ideas

Joel Kotkin criticizes Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for re-imagining Los Angeles (Opinion, Dec. 13). Kotkin says that Angelenos want to live in a place more like Manhattan Beach than Manhattan. Kotkin is fixated on the wrong coast.

Manhattan Beach has a greater population density (8,607 people per square mile) than L.A. (7,877). Backyards (if any) are like postage stamps. Why does this density work? Because Manhattan Beach’s 19th century planners had Villaraigosa’s 21st century views.

I’m on a walk street where cars are banished to the rear, and my front “yard” is open to my neighbors. The city’s most valued spaces are its public, not private, ones. Villaraigosa’s vision truly looks west, not east.

BOB WOLFE

Manhattan Beach