LA's Playa Vista: New Urbanism Or Disaster?

Land use critic Jill Stewart compares Los Angeles' Playa Vista development to the disasterous Belmont school development site.

1 minute read

January 5, 2001, 12:00 PM PST

By Laura Kraft

New Times LA critic Jill Stewart calls the Playa Vista development in Los Angeles Belmont II: "It is an apt name for the problem-plagued nightmare on the Westside dubbed Playa Vista by the Wall Street investors and Beverly Hills billionaires who own the 1,070 acres of land more properly known as the Ballona Valley ... If granted the final go-ahead by the city council, it will be the largest construction project in the United States. More importantly, it will be the only plan I can find in current literature to erect a large, habitable community atop a thick plain of unstable ancient river silt, bisected by a just-discovered earthquake fault that cuts through layers of porous soil and gravel filled with just-discovered explosive methane gas apparently seeping from a deep, underground, abandoned oil field."

Thanks to Laura Krafft

FULL STORY: Belmont II

Thursday, January 4, 2001 in New Times-LA

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