LOS ANGELES-They said it wouldn't be possible to get L.A. residents to leave their cars behind, but that's exactly what is trending for the region, according to the recent USC Gould School of Law “2013 Real Estate and Business Forum” held here recently. The forum dealt with a variety of CRE-related topics including investment, finance and development and featured a number of CRE professionals.
“Southern California is about to participate in a fairly sizeable national trend to move away from drivable suburban development to walkable urban development,” Prof. George Lefcoe of USC Gould School of Law tells GlobeSt.com. Lefcoe moderated a panel titled “Walkable Cities, Getting Parking Right and the Future of Mixed-Use Development” during the forum. “You see this in places like Old Town Pasadena and Larchmont, NY.”
Lefcoe says that Christopher Leinberger of the Brookings Institute is a panelist who had studied the impact of rail and light rail in cities like Washington, DC. “He discovered that basically well-educated people in their 20s who make a good income like urban places, and they want to be in spaces where they can walk to things,” says Lefcoe. “It turns out that this has had a huge transformation on how we shape our cities.”
Southern California currently has roughly 17 of these walkable urban spaces, but the number is predicted to increase to as high as 50 by the year 2030. “If you look at the rail line proposals, a lot of them run through these places,” says Lefcoe. “Chris looked at DC over the last couple of decades and saw that these mini centers increased hugely. There's a correlation between population and the number of these places.”
The panel also revealed that house values rise and are much higher per square foot in these walkable areas, which vary in look depending on where in the country one is located. As long as they can be reached by means other than a car—such as by rail, bike or walking—they are considered walkable.
Other panels during the forum revealed that the future of Southern California depends on walkable urban development, says Lefcoe. “If we're going to meet our air-quality goals, we need this development. We can't meet environmental standards if we don't make a bit of a shift from drivable to walkable.”
A quarter of Lefcoe's law students live in Downtown L.A., the site of a considerable amount of hotel and mixed-use development. “The population of Downtown is going to double, and the number of amenities is going to increase. Downtown is going to move all the way out to USC.”
The panel also discussed parking and the need to discontinue subsidizing parking through regulations. “If curb pricing is a bargain, people will drive themselves silly looking for a cheaper or free parking place, even if there's available parking for more money in a nearby parking garage,” says Lefcoe. “We should price curb parking so that you'll have some vacancies—it should be at 85% occupancy.”
Later in the morning, a breakout session titled “The Redevelopment Adventure that Never Ends: AB 1484” dealt with the aftermath of redevelopment agency dissolution, which began last year. The upshot of the session was that the Department of Finance is neither equipped or nor competent to handle redevelopment projects or real estate matters.
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Carrie Rossenfeld
Carrie Rossenfeld is a reporter for the San Diego and Orange County markets on GlobeSt.com and a contributor to Real Estate Forum. She was a trade-magazine and newsletter editor in New York City before moving to Southern California to become a freelance writer and editor for magazines, books and websites. Rossenfeld has written extensively on topics including commercial real estate, running a medical practice, intellectual-property licensing and giftware. She has edited books about profiting from real estate and has ghostwritten a book about starting a home-based business.
