Construction Maison

Every metropolitan area in the nation is racially segregated, and Los Angeles is no exception. We tolerate residential segregation because we’re convinced that it happened informally — because of personal choices and private discrimination. But what cemented our separate neighborhoods is something most of us have forgotten — government’s unconstitutional and systematic insistence on segregated housing in the mid-20th century, establishing patterns that persist to this day. The 2010 census data show that 60% of Los Angeles’s African Americans live in neighborhoods where few whites are present. The exposure of blacks to whites is as minimal as it is in Chicago or Newark; concentrated African American poverty is as common in L.A. as in New York or Pittsburgh. The New Deal created the nation’s first civilian public housing in the 1930s, segregated not only in the South, but nationwide. In his autobiography, the African American poet Langston Hughes recounted his adolescence in Worl...

We offer our predictions on communities that will rank among the city's most desirable in 2026. Plus a look at developers who are working to make those visions a reality. February 18, 2016 (page 7 of 7) 8 developers with insight who are rethinking our urban neighborhoods   BY DEBRA SMIT G reat neighborhoods — with ample green space , commerce and good housing stock — empower their residents to grow and prosper. Developers are key when it comes to weaving together the physical threads of a community, particularly in urban neighborhoods frayed by years of blight and decay. These are among the developers who are working to revitalize some of the city’s most challenged neighborhoods, striving to be restorers of streets in which to dwell. All have one eye, certainly, on the bottom line. Still, they are well aware of expectations that they give measured consideration to quality of life in the neighborhoods in which they build.   Wi...