Nanny State Alert: Los Angeles trying to ban yards

LA Mayor Villaraigosa doesn't want you to have a backyard for kids and pets to play. He wants to have “smart growth” developments.

Via City Watch: 

The Mayor is aiming for “a wholesale revision of the regulations that guide [LA’s] build form,” the Mayor's planning chief, Michael LoGrande, told key city administrators on March 27.

Although the citizens of Southern California endure the consequences of shifting planning regulations daily, few realize that even Eli Broad could not have become a maniacal billionaire working with the kind of zoning regulations within the city and most other Southern California counties today.

Indeed, the State as well as the city of Los Angeles has all but abandoned the idea of promoting the development of stand-alone single-family housing, of yards front and back. Opting instead for “smart growth” developments that make for higher concentrations of people all throughout the State and especially here in Los Angeles throughout the past decade, State and civic leaders have demonstrated a preference for transit hub development and densely-packed mixed-use corridors, even in edge cities and collar counties.

And after ten years of contra-indicated results—with traffic congestion, for instance, worse than ever, even though population has barely climbed at all—Los Angeles’s political power brokers—including Mayor Villaraigosa, Eric Garcetti, and Controller Wendy Greuel—have never second-guessed themselves on their smart growth love affair, even as Los Angeles passed New York City in density earlier in the past decade and brought the Westside of Los Angeles to complete gridlock. Keep on reading...