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Oren Hadar

@futureis.la
424 followers 43 following 498 posts

LA has the best bones of any city in the world. It can become a true world capital if we only let it. I write at futureis.la

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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 28/09/2026
HLA requires ALL Mobility Plan elements to be installed when repaving, including for pedestrians. The complete street. It’s like a restaurant set menu. Nice for a special occasion. But if my family had to order an appetizer and dessert every time we went to Olive Garden, we'd go a lot less often.
Montage of three maps from the Mobility Plan showing Hollywood Boulevard is on the Bicycle Enhanced Network, the Transit Enhanced Network, and a Pedestrian Enhanced District.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 28/09/2026
But HLA defeats the workaround. It’s triggered by "any paving project or other modification" at least ⅛ mile long. The bike lane itself is a modification. And if a street is in a pedestrian district (2/3 of potential bike lanes in Central LA), that means fixing curb ramps - the ADA all over again.
Map of Central Los Angeles showing all streets with planned bike lanes in the Mobility Plan. Streets also in a pedestrian district are orange. Streets only planned for a bike lane are blue. 2/3 of the streets in the map are orange.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 28/09/2026
The workaround: Large Asphalt Repair (LAR), a long patch the city calls maintenance - no need to fix curb ramps. Put LAR under the bike lanes, leave the rest of the asphalt untouched, and install the bike lanes cheaply. I was outraged by these patches at first. Now I think they’re an important tool.
Google Street View image of Hollywood Boulevard with protected bike lanes and new asphalt under the lanes where the city installed large asphalt repair. An outdated curb ramp is circled in green at right.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 28/09/2026
The problem is costs stacked on costs. City Council required bike lanes to only be installed on good pavement. Repaving adds $1M/mile. The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) says when repaving, curb ramps have to be fixed. Another $600k/mile.
Flowchart showing the convoluted series of choices the city has to make when installing a bike lane.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 11/09/2026
The city's 2025 park needs assessment prioritized where new parks are needed most. My aha moment: of the 36 highest-need areas (colored squares), 30 overlap with SB 79 station areas (yellow circles). In LA, poor people get transit, and rich people get parks.
A map of Los Angeles overlaying the city's park needs assessment and SB 79 station areas. The map shows 36 colored squares representing the neighborhoods with the highest park needs, and 145 yellow circles representing the areas around the transit stations where SB 79 applies. 30 out of the 36 high-park-need neighborhoods overlap with SB 79 station areas.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 17/08/2026
The city is in a codependent relationship with drivers, sacrificing its own needs (protecting pedestrians’ lives) to avoid upsetting the other party. The codependency is literally killing us - Vision Zero launched in 2015 with a goal of zero traffic deaths by 2025. They doubled instead.
Chart titled annual number of pedestrians killed by vehicles. The number increases from 88 in 2015 to 170 in 2025.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 17/08/2026
Why is a crosswalk signal timed to coordinate with other lights? When we asked, an LADOT engineer said interrupting the free flow of traffic would cause drivers to run the crosswalk light and hit pedestrians. Translation: we have to design our crosswalk to avoid causing road rage.
Screenshot of an email that says "Ensuring progression and clearing entire platoons of vehicles through this corridor of closely-spaced signals during peak hours actually works to enhance safety for all users, including pedestrians.  When density of traffic is high, secondary issues such as vehicular collisions and drivers running through red lights can increase if platoons of vehicles are interrupted due to poor signal coordination."
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 30/07/2026
Excited to have been chosen for the Roots of Progress Institute’s Blog-Building Intensive Fellowship! I’m part of a group of 43 amazing bloggers from around the world who write about progressive policy in all kinds of different fields. rootsofprogress.org/fellows/#ore...
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 17/07/2026
A lot going on here, but it basically shows building permits issued in CA cities with IZ requirements. The vertical dotted lines show years when IZ was banned. Permits increased after the ban and plummeted after IZ was reinstated.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 15/07/2026
LA has a bias toward the private over the public. Our biggest foundation funds a private museum on a hill. Only 4 of 450 parks have been "adopted". School choice sends kids across the city instead of to their local school. There's no July 4th fireworks display that unites the city (pic: San Diego).
Fourth of July fireworks display in San Diego
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 15/07/2026
LA has many strengths. Civic culture is not one of them. New York united after 9/11. Boston rallied around "Boston Strong" after the marathon bombing. After the LA fires, folks in Altadena and the Palisades supported each other beautifully, but who gave us the big moments that united the whole city?
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 08/07/2026
New eldercare facility in LA (plus ground-floor snyagogue!), seven stories. maps.app.goo.gl/wXfkNvghYCg1... www.whereyoulivematters.org/find-a-commu...
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 07/07/2026
I think my second grader illustrated this document.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 29/06/2026
One simple trick to make your city family-friendly: housing affordability. Median Houston home price - $360k LA - $1M
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 26/06/2026
There are plenty more creative ways to speed up the E Line! What if Exposition Blvd. in front of USC was pedestrianized? What if Flower St. was only for buses and trains? What if we built a ton of curb extensions? And remember, freight trains in the 80's got higher priority than the E Line today!
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 26/06/2026
City Hall has tried several times to get LADOT and Metro to fix transit. It hasn't worked. But we moved the needle - after months of research, 450+ public comments, and meetings with electeds, we got City Council to direct LADOT and Metro to cut red light delays on light rail and BRT by 50% by 2028.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 26/06/2026
Red light delays also make the train unpredictable. This chart shows how long various trains actually took. The trip averages 47 minutes but can take up to 57. Giving the train more green lights would tighten this curve and give riders more certainty.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 26/06/2026
A report we got from Metro shows the stark east/west divide. East of Western, trains stop longer at red lights (red bars) than at stations (orange bars). West of Western, almost all intersections have railroad gates, and trains sail through.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 11/06/2026
It may look in the previous chart like submissions dropped because of the "building standards tightened" line, which was another set of revisions issued by the Mayor. But AHIP, which is ED 1's successor in CHIP, undid most of this tightening, and applications have not surged again. AHIP in orange:
A bar graph titled ED 1 and AHIP filings by quarter, showing the only a minimal number of AHIP filings in the last few quarters.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 11/06/2026
Also, let's put this one to bed: Mayor Bass didn't kill ED 1. It never applied to 99% of single-family neighborhoods, and applications kept increasing after the Mayor officially excluded single-family from ED 1.
Bar graph entitled ED 1 Filings By Quarter. The graph shows that filings kept increasing after Mayor Bass excluded single-family neighborhoods from the program.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 11/06/2026
ED 1 construction is just getting started because plan check takes sooooo looooong - an average of 21 months - and ED 1 is only 3 1/2 years old. Groundbreakings have been ramping up as buildings finish plan check, and many more should be breaking ground in the next couple years.
Bar graph titled ED 1 Building Permits Issued By Quarter. The graph shows a large increase in permits issued in the last several quarters.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 09/06/2026
Yeah, I'm still annoyed that they include density bonus projects. Here's the most accurate chart.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 01/06/2026
SCAG's draft map of where SB 79 applies is out, and it leaves out the stations on two train lines - Sepulveda Line and K Line northern extension. Lots of stops on the Westside and WeHo. SCAG contends those lines haven't finished CEQA so they don't count. SCAG is wrong.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 27/05/2026
Karen Bass didn't kill ED 1 by banning it from single-family areas - it barely applied there to begin with. She killed it with her second revision in July 2024, which added design standards and other restrictions driven by NIMBY pressure and LA's unrelenting desire to control how buildings look.
A line graph depicting ED 1 filings per quarter from 2022 to the present, with two line breaks indicating when Mayor Bass excluded single-family areas in Q2 of 2023, and when building standards were tightened in Q2 of 2024. The line rises steadily until the building standards were tightened and then falls dramatically after.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 14/05/2026
And the most controlling: in the yellow areas on the map (55% of Low Rise), only 10 apartments are allowed, which is going to really limit the number of feasible projects since these areas have high land costs. Red areas allow 16 - much more feasible. hellomynameisoren.github.io/SB-79-in-upz...
A map of where the Low Rise program applies in Los Angeles
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 10/05/2026
Requiring parking to be behind the building or underground really kneecaps LA's proposed Low Rise program. Digging is $$$. Including just four surface spaces on a typical lot reduces the size of the building by 42%! Most residential streets don't have alleys, so you need a driveway from the front.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 07/05/2026
TIL that LA owns 12 golf courses? That's a lot of land.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 06/05/2026
Is this a poison pill for LA's proposed Low Rise program (5-16 unit, 3-4 story buildings)? Parking has to be either underground or behind the building. Most of the lots where Low Rise applies are small, 5-6k sq ft. Feels like only zero-parking projects would work using this program - not great!
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 06/05/2026
In graph form:
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 05/05/2026
Staggering how much LA has let its infrastructure languish. This year departments got *half a billion dollars* less than they requested for infra projects. The number of projects requested keeps going up, and the number of projects funded is going down. h/t @jawshv.bsky.social
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 01/05/2026
South LA. The bit of red on the left is a small chunk of Westchester. The rest is exempt for now because it's mostly low-income.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 01/05/2026
Downtown and Northeast LA. Downtown is exempt because it already has good zoning, and almost all of NELA is in either a historic or fire zone.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 01/05/2026
The Valley. Tons of single-family neighborhoods here.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 01/05/2026
Hollywood, Mid-City, Koreatown. There would be a lot more red here if historic districts weren't exempted for now. The other exempt areas either are low-income or already have good zoning.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 01/05/2026
Now to the map: The Westside. Rancho Park is the clear winner. Also shoutout to Cheviot Hills and Westwood.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 01/05/2026
Is that...all there is? Here's a map of all the places (red) that are set to be upzoned to 3-4 stories in LA next month in response to SB 79. Less than 30,000 lots, mostly in the Valley. (We'll get more upzoning in 5 years.) Join me for a quick tour... hellomynameisoren.github.io/SB-79-in-upz...
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 21/04/2026
More significantly, they lowered the allowed height for 7-10 unit projects from 3 stories to 2. They did this in a sneaky way, by changing a table without noting it changed, even though they track changes in the rest of the document. Look at the right column on the before (left) and after (right).
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 16/04/2026
SB 9 is taking off in LA the way ADUs did 7 years before.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 01/04/2026
Lots of brick on new projects in Portland.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 26/03/2026
Uh, disabled people beg to differ?
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 10/03/2026
We now have three years of post-ULA permitting data to compare to pre-ULA, and...it's not good. Average annual building permits issued in LA City have fallen by 1/3 since the measure passed. If you think this is due to macro factors, look at the rest of the county and state - doing mostly fine.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 23/02/2026
👀 The insane correlation in LA between how long it takes to build an apartment building and how wealthy the neighborhood is. Left is from Soltas' paper, right is the Planning Dept.'s neighborhood map. Maybe we should make it easier to build in rich neighborhoods!
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 21/02/2026
And those rebranded programs did worse than their predecessors did in their first years. TOIA produced 30% of the homes TOC did in its first year, and AHIP produced 60% of ED 1. (Note: I ignored homes submitted using the state density bonus program - they should be counted separately from CHIP.)
A bar graph titled "Homes proposed in first year" with two columns representing two LA housing programs - the old TOC, which producedd 9909 it its first year, and the new TOIA, which produced just 2862.A bar graph titled "Homes proposed in first year" with two columns representing two LA housing programs - the old ED 1, which producedd 10306 it its first year, and the new AHIP, which produced just 6077.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 21/02/2026
Only 9,411 new homes were submitted through CHIP's four big programs in year 1. Way less than the state's expectation that LA build ~60k homes per year. Worse, 95% of homes were submitted through the two programs (TOIA and AHIP) that are basically update/rebrands of existing programs (TOC and ED 1).
A bar graph titled "Homes proposed in CHIP's first year" depicting the total homes proposed through CHIP's four programs. The columns are TOIA, which produced 2862 homes, AHIP, which produced 6077, Opportunity Corridors, which produced 472, and Corridor Transitions, which produced zero. There is also a Total column, which shows 9411 total homes proposed.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 21/01/2026
Wow - new market-rate apartment buildings in San Francisco created big gains for tenants in nearby existing apartments. Lowered their rent, prevented evictions, and reduced displacement. New affordable housing didn't have any of these local benefits! static1.squarespace.com/static/5c51b...
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 15/01/2026
*LA METRO* opposes SB 79 - the law that makes it possible for more people to use the transit Metro builds! They worry cities that don't like SB 79 will slow down their projects. Metro wants to exempt LA County from the law, or maybe even all of California except the Bay Area. Just totally unhinged.
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 07/01/2026
After three years of stalling by Heather Hutt, tonight Metro is finally starting outreach for bus lanes on La Brea from Olympic south to Coliseum. Bus lanes were installed on La Brea north of Olympic (Katy Yaroslavsky's district) in 2023. Meeting tonight 7pm on Zoom. Register at bit.ly/4qUBCk2
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 06/01/2026
They seem to have had that info in the working paper and then taken it out before publishing. Table A1 in the working paper had columns for market rate and social, but published A1 has only market rate. (Working paper on left, published on right)
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 05/01/2026
Protip: park your Cybertruck in a compact spot to make it look even bigger!
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Oren Hadar @futureis.la · 29/12/2025
That's not even the city's worst mistake on that project. They screwed up the curb extensions at Pico/Masselin so badly that the ramps met Pico several inches below street level. They debated between redoing them or *repaving Pico* to fix it. They redid the curb extensions for a total cost of $400k.
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