City planners in Los Angeles are shocked to discover that people moving into downtown apartments are unwilling to give up their cars and live the way many Manhattanites and San Franciscans do — using the expensive subway, bus system, and taxi cabs for their daily transportation.

And now local officials, who just a few years ago stopped requiring developers to build parking spaces in most loft buildings, are scrambling to accommodate automobiles — and their owners — downtown.

In the past few years, many of the beautiful older buildings in downtown LA have been converted into loft units and apartments, attracting 24,000 people to downtown. However, no downtown supermarkets exist, and other shopping for daily needs is pretty anemic, too. Moreover, to really live in LA, you have to be able to get to places like LAX, Santa Monica, Pasadena, and many, many other dispersed locations. Riding the bus would take hours a day.

Los Angeles is a wonderful city with a style all its own. It is not Manhattan and it is not San Francisco, the two cities to which Angelinos of a certain disposition always compare their town. The billion—dollar—per—mile Los Angeles subway (full of publicly—funded art) was constructed principally to assuage the inferiority complex of these people, since it doesn't really go anywhere that would help it alleviate the serious traffic problems of the metropolis. It does prvide a certain urban ambience and allows the film industry convenient location shooting, though. 

Thomas Lifson   12 27 04