Now that our City Council has reformed the old zoning ordinance into a new, more opaque document, it is moving on to the adoption of a specific plan for our
"If you want creativity, cut one zero from your budget; if you want sustainability, cut two zeros." —Jaime Lerner, Brazilian architect, mayor & governor
Santa Monica's
Santa Monica residents are being squeezed by two related realities: 1) increasing property values affordable only to a small minority, and 2) a lack of low-cost housing caused by the
Adaptive re-use. Re-purposing. Remodeling. Addition. Re-habilitating. Restoring. All these phrases are terms that describe breathing new life into older buildings. Some developers and building industry professionals talk of buildings as
The City Council is getting ready to approve a controversial new Zoning Code. Many would describe the currently proposed code as incentivizing development instead of managing it for a more
As a community, we have spent more than six years establishing goals and objectives in defining the LUCE, a new general plan for our city. Then we set out to
Last week the Planning Commission voted to keep the two Activity Centers on Wilshire Boulevard as proposed in the LUCE. This decision was contrary to their own Staff Report that
" ... long, lonely corridors .... and pedestrian danger zones" — this is how the Chamber of Commerce president, Laurel Rosen, described our City's boulevards in a recent column in
Santa Monica is fortunate to have grown up as a city with a unique housing identity — a setting that symbolized gracious apartment living in the land of orange blossoms and
A multitude of regulations, ordinances, laws, boards, commissions, etc. define, affect, and impact the work that architects and clients do designing and planning buildings, and public spaces.
A complex web
