The Knowledge Network

Vacant lots in Los Angeles are ubiquitous. It's a longtime fact that non-residents don't know: empty parcels of land are everywhere. There are numerous reasons for this. For one, tax laws assess property owners a low penalty for holding onto empty land. So these people tend to wait for surrounding real estate values to climb higher before trying to sell, but in so many cases, that doesn't happen. Another issue is that both LA city and LA county have very slow permitting processes, and slow environmental clearance approvals. Costs of permitting and cleanup are also very high, giving land owners no incentive to sell. Then there is the huge mass of bureaucratic red tape that surrounds every process in LA. A large parcel of empty land, on Western Avenue South and West 59th Street has been sitting idle for a very long time. A few years ago, a group wanted to put a community garden on the location, along with other resources that would benefit this lower-income neighborhood. But ...

There is a great piece in the current issues of Men's Health Magazine called, "Are you emotionally smarter than a 5-year-old?" An apt question in our post-pandemic world. Students in a K-8 school in Los Angeles are taught how to regulate their emotions, rather than simply riding the waves of feelings all day, every day. "That’s essential since the world, I’m reminded on my visit, is an emotionally dysregulated place. Emotion dysregulation, explains Marc Brackett, PhD, the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence , is a fancy way of saying you have trouble managing your feelings, and it usually results in reacting disproportionately to a situation. Emotion dysregulation is screaming at another driver who swooped into your parking spot. It’s the chef or the CEO who manages with bullying and intimidation. It’s the president of the United States hopping on social media to celebrate the death of a political rival, and it’s basically every minute of ...

In January, 2024, graffiti artists began converging on a trio of abandoned skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles, and tagging them up from top to bottom. Within a short period of time, most of the 36 floors of each structure in the Oceanwide Plaza development had been painted with large, ornate and colorful lettering, which started receiving worldwide attention. By early February, the Washington Post published a piece explaining what had happened , and why the marking up of the structures was so significant. I took a picture of the buildings each of the last two summers, in disbelief that they were still tagged up. This photo is from last month: These buildings are visible for many miles in each direction. Coming into downtown from any of the major freeways, drivers see different angles of the above. It is ugly, to say the very least. I don't know any city that has allowed such a thing, and especially for such a long time. Given that, is it any wonder that LA has seen a 50 percent in...