The Future of Housing in Los Angeles

Like most cities in the US today, Los Angeles doesn’t build enough housing to keep up with demand, a fact that has contributed to what is arguably the worst affordable housing crisis in the country. But given how built up the city already is–and given how complex, contentious, and expensive it is to build in Los Angeles–solving this problem will require creative thinking, especially when it comes to site selection, design, and implementation. Where can the city add more housing? Are there underutilized, outdated, or redundant property types that presently don’t support housing but could (for example, golf courses, gas stations, power line rights-of-way, etc.)? What kind of housing should it add? Who should have a say in what gets built, and whose housing needs should be prioritized? How can coalitions of designers, policymakers, activists, residents, and other actors use policy to facilitate the construction of high-quality, sustainable, and affordable housing without adding time and cost to a permitting and construction process that is already too lengthy (and costly)? How can new housing create co-benefits, and ensure that it doesn’t exacerbate inequality and displacement? These are some of the questions we’ll be asking in this interdisciplinary studio, which invites students in all departments to help housing advocates in Los Angeles address the city’s housing shortage by creatively identifying how Los Angeles can add hundreds of thousands of housing units and rethink housing in the process. Following a short, creative research assignment that asks students to survey housing typologies (both traditional and emerging), underutilized sites that don’t support housing but could, and pro- and anti-housing policies and stakeholder groups, students will work individually or in small teams to create a bold (but still plausible) proposition for an unconventional site in Los Angeles. While these propositions are expected to be site-specific, the scale of the city’s housing shortage (255,000 units, by one estimate) invites solutions that contain prototypical elements that could repeat and scale up. A field trip to Los Angeles is planned, during which we will hear from dozens of leading designers, developers, planners, policymakers, activists, and historians.