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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

>The massive downzoning of the 1980s...

To put numbers to this for those who aren't aware, LA was zoned for roughly 10 million people in the 1960s and by the 1980s it was zoned for roughly 4 million. It's part of the reason the city has had population growth slow to a crawl. It was decided some 40 plus years ago that LA should stay under 4 million people, so it has even til today. But the number of people who want to live in LA is constantly growing, so housing prices continue to rise and as a result lower income people are slowly but surely being pushed out of their homes and out of the city entirely.

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Same story in San Francisco of course, and the rest of the US pretty much aside from a few cities in recent years.

At least we have parking lots. Ah, so many parking lots

There's still Houston but that's it as far as I know.

That 10M is a theoretical back of the napkin number. The city would have had to make multiple major infrastructure improvements, including major public transportation improvements, as well as secure major new sources of water for that to occur. To even accommodate the current modern number of people, there had to be fairly aggressive public water conservation regulations and campaigns - which amazingly did keep the water consumption fairly static. But if you were to more than double the residents, it's really not clear where the water would come from.

Do humans without lawns consume that much water? Have you worked on something where this problem came up in some unexpected way? Yes pipes need to be updated if a lot of tall complexes are built, but is total water that much at all?

I asked Claude to do the math, and it claimed reducing alfalfa use (not all use, just alfalfa) by the Colorado river by 1% per 1 million people who move from a place not already supplied by it.

I think when it comes to water a really important mental model everyone needs to have is that a human without a lawn or pool uses really tiny amounts of water at scale directly.

> Do humans without lawns consume that much water?

Do you assume humans with a lawn consume more? My lawn only consumes what the sky gives it.

That’s great! You’re an outlier in the US still.

Any tips for how you planned your landscape to work this way? I’m slowly trying to convert mine but have already gotten burned by not matching plants to the right soil or sun exposure level and it’s taking longer to get right than I expected.

I just told the landscaper don't put any pesticides or herbicides and let nature do its thing. My landscaper just takes care of the front lawn, shrubs and the road verge and is cheap enough to pay for the twice month trim and clean up. My yard is a wild jungle where I do basic clean up and pull all the rag weed. I do want to plant a lot of native wild flowers at some point.

That infrastructure was still built, just out in the Inland Empire, at a far far higher cost per capita than if LA had stuck to its "theoretical back of the napkin number." (That's how zoning works, it's theoretical back of the napkin numbers that block buildings.)

Densification of existing land use is exceedingly cheap. People use far less water, fewer miles of sewer, fewer vehicle miles, fewer miles of wire and pipe, all while having access to a far greater set of amenities. That's what downzoning took away from everyone.

Yes, but I would hypothesize that in the Inland empire there was a net reduction of water use transforming agricultural acreage to suburban acreage. Water rights drives a lot of california development, anyone suggesting oh just divert water from x to y doesn't understand or is glossing over the massive fights historically and in coming up over water- as climate change has shrunk the historic supply

My impression of LA when I got there was that I would never live there, even in the nicest spots. Which confirms my intuition that the richest have no taste.

Also it’s an American city made for cars so it doesn’t help me to like it.

I've lived in LA on and off for over a decade cumulatively. If Woodland Hills, Tarzana, Burbank, North Hollywood count as "L.A." :)

I love the climate and nature there, besides the fires. Ocean, lakes, mountains, deserts, all within 1-3 hour drive.

It is a dehumanizing city to commute in, and is expensive, but it's the best one I have lived in (NYC, Brooklyn, NJ cities, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Miami) and I want to return when finances allow.

Interesting, I did not know that. Sure helped create the massive urban sprawl that LA is today, I mean it's basically one city all the way to San Bernardino, almost 100 km to the east.

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