How to Imagine a Los Angeles Without Traffic

The City Has the Solutions to Congestion, Pollution, and Accidents—We Just Need to Use Them

For the last century, Los Angeles has been expanding its road space far beyond almost any major metropolitan area in history. We have built freeways and roads and parking lots and parking garages. The size of this investment would have been more than enough to create a highly effective urban transportation system.

Instead, Los Angeles is known as a world capital of traffic, a place of extreme mobility challenges and a pollution-choked smog-burger. Low-income communities bear much of the burden of our failures—in worse access to jobs and opportunities, more severe …

The State of Jefferson

Trucks shuffle in the slow lane.
Mt. Shasta’s a crazy white cone.
I drive as fast as I dare.
Car my shelter, my tiny house
of spiders’ nests and trash. …

Defend the Eastside

The 5, the 101, the 10
Suavecito for President
A funeral procession out of City Terrace
No ICE on the overpass
Just a shot on the countertop
Next to hot …

Why Building More Freeways Makes Traffic Worse, Not Better

To Ease L.A. Gridlock, We Need Improved Mass Transit and Smart Urban Planning

In 1865, British economist William Stanley Jevons wrote an influential essay entitled “The Coal Question.” Today his insights are interesting to me not as they relate to coal, but rather …

How California Created a Road Map for America’s Interstate System

Backed by Gov. Earl Warren, the Collier-Burns Gas Tax Became a Model for Funding Freeways

In June, Californians should be marking the 70th anniversary of the Collier-Burns Act. But you probably have never heard of it, even though Collier-Burns likely has an everyday impact on …

Coyotes Are Just Like Hipsters

They Come to the City for the Good Life, and They Eat Your Rats

Everyone in America has a coyote story. Or if you don’t, give it time. You will.

The tawny, golden-eyed, sharp-nosed wild dog of the American deserts is now our backyard …