Outside experts believe the City of Los Angeles is making a density mistake by selling downtown development rights.
The Los Angeles City Council will sell developers up to 9 million square feet of extra floor space for downtown condominiums and apartments without analyzing how the extra growth would affect traffic, sewers and other public services. City Council claims that the comprehensive plan addresses higher densities. One critic, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, chairwoman of UCLA's urban planning department contends, "There's no vision or larger plan about where to put high-density corridors, or what is going to be the impact of this density on traffic."
Los Angeles Planning Director Gail Goldberg says: "Part of this whole transfer of development rights is to generate money that can be reinvested into the downtown to make it a better living environment."
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