Builder's remedy, Garcetti Bikeway 'BLAST', and more

Los Angeles has officially been the country's second largest city since the 1990s. Unofficially, it also ranks as the city with the second most co-working spaces (so says Yardi) and the second best city for witches (according to Lawn Love).

Other interesting things hitting our inbox this week include a study from VTS which found that demand for L.A. office space was down 7.3 percent in September, making for a sixth straight month of decline. Overall, the study found that demand for offices in L.A. is down 51 percent from pre-pandemic levels.

On the other hand, Cushman & Wakefield's recent Life Sciences report gives a rosier outlook for L.A. - at least in that particular industry. While San Diego is typically regarded as Southern California's life sciences hub industry, the C&W report found that Los Angeles joined New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. as the major markets that are starting to take a bigger slice of the pie.

Here's what we're reading this week:

Culver City Abolishes Parking Requirements Citywide "Culver City appears to be L.A. County’s first citywide lifting of parking mandates. A few cities – Lancaster, Los Angeles, and Santa Monica – have removed parking requirements in specific areas, mainly downtowns." (Streetsblog LA)

From Menlo Park to Laguna Beach, Residents Turn to Ballot Box to Fight New California Housing Mandates "Californians opposed to new development in their neighborhoods have long had local elected leaders on their side. But their power to say no is waning. Faced with a massive housing shortage, state leaders over the past half-dozen years have approved a bevy of new laws to override opposition to new housing and have become more willing to take recalcitrant cities to court....So, residents in some California cities are firing back. From Menlo Park to Watsonville and Laguna Beach, they’re hoping to rely on another time-tested tradition: using the ballot box to restrict growth." (KQED)

Time Is Up For El Sereno ‘Reclaimers’ Who Occupied Caltrans Homes During COVID Lockdown"An agreement between the city of Los Angeles and unhoused and housing-insecure families living in Caltrans-owned homes in El Sereno is expiring after two years." (LAist)

Thousands of apartments may come to Santa Monica, other wealthy cities under little-known law "Beverly Hills, Huntington Beach, Malibu, Palm Springs, Pasadena and West Hollywood are among the 124 jurisdictions in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties where the builder’s remedy could be in play because their latest housing plan hasn’t been approved, the state Department of Housing and Community Development confirmed." (LA Times)

Pustilnikov strikes again with ‘builder’s remedy’ in Beverly Hills As if on cue, a developer is trying for a 16-story builder's remedy project in Beverly Hills (The Real Deal)

Roz Wyman, city’s youngest council member who helped bring Dodgers to L.A., dies at 92 "Rosalind Wyman, the youngest person ever elected to the Los Angeles City Council, at age 22 in 1953, was best known for keeping an unusual campaign promise — vowing to bring Major League Baseball to Los Angeles." (LA Times)

Mike Davis, ‘City of Quartz’ author who chronicled the forces that shaped L.A., dies "Davis, a writer whose work exposed L.A.'s social fractures and disquieted its most ardent boosters, and whose mark on the intellectual history of Southern California remains indelible, died Tuesday at his home in San Diego from complications related to esophageal cancer, according to his daughter and literary agent Róisín Davis. He was 76." (LA Times)

Garcetti Announces New ‘BLAST’ Bikeway Implementation Initiative "The mayor touted BLAST as implementing 24 bikeway projects by fiscal year end next July, long after the mayor leaves office in December." (Streetsblog LA)