“Why L.A. Will Not Benefit from A New Stadium, and What The City Can Do About That” published on Sustainable Cities Collective, by Tony M. Chavira
Excerpt: “Instead of strolling past surrounding businesses on your way to and from L.A. Live, you drive right up to it, park in it, then leave it. And in the process, ignore the community around it, as though these businesses were not even there.”
“Vernon, Incorporated” published on FourStory, by Tony M. Chavira
Excerpt: “But Vernon never provided housing or communities. It was a fringe area that decided to lower its taxes and limit its population. All city resources went to maintaining the business friendly status quo and all tax money was seen as profit.”
“Why Rioters Destroy Their Own Neighborhoods” published on Sustainable Cities Collective, by Tony M. Chavira
Excerpt: “For how long can you let a neighborhood fall apart before it doesn’t seem worth repairing? How much less value can a community have before its residents are fine burning it down?”
“Classifying a Mixed-Use Interior” published in Urban Land Magazine, Nov-Dec 2009, by Tony Chavira
Excerpt: “Meant to provide a streamlined reference for what an area should do, zoning is essentially a mandate to use the interior space as the government has determined.”
“California’s High Speed Railway: The Pros and Cons” published on FourStory, by Tony M. Chavira
Excerpt: “There are serious practical implications for the implementation of something so visionary, but the most serious is that the budget will not be there for the grandiosity of its full vision.”
“Rendered Useless” published on FourStory, by Tony M. Chavira
Excerpt: “Instead of bothering with the limited scope of design and urbanism we currently see around us, we finally have the ability to escape fully into a world so fantastically probable that it may actually come to life.”
“The Smart Panopticon-opolis” published on Sustainable Cities Collective, by Tony M. Chavira
Excerpt: “Here’s the million dollar question: as smart growth and integrated, smartly-dense walking cities continue to spring up in the wake of the economic collapse, how comfortable will we all become with the idea of being under observation at all times by those around us?”
“The Once and Future Architect” published on FourStory, by Tony M. Chavira
Excerpt: “We must not let our current economic situation kill the creativity of an entire generation, and we must likewise help investors understand that all architects are artists at heart.”
“Why Don’t We Ever Have Enough Affordable Housing?” published on FourStory, by Tony M. Chavira
Excerpt: “Visit the website for just about any municipality in the United States, any large developer’s site, or the vast majority of urban advocacy sites, and you’ll find money, time or some other form of commitment to affordable housing included as either a PR piece or a formal mandate.”
“NIMBY Luddites in Urban Technospace” published on FourStory, by Tony Chavira
Excerpt: “Finding a place to put an airport or a jail is a near impossible task when someone living just down the road has the backing of an angry neighborhood development board. For this reason, Not In My BackYard-ers (NIMBYs) with their fervent anti-build position, famously dominate the national conversation regarding development.”
