CityLab Daily: Are Golf Courses the Answer to L.A.’s Housing Crisis?
Also today: History and gentrification clash in a Gilded Age resort, and lessons from life under Tokyo’s rail tracks.
Housing-starved Los Angeles maintains the largest municipal golf system in the U.S. Should some of that land be used for something else?
Teed off: Los Angeles has the largest municipal golf course system in the U.S. It also has an affordable housing crisis and a soaring homeless population. One local architect thinks some of those green space could be put to better use. Santa Monica-based designer Daniel Dunham has his eyes on the 200-acre Rancho Park Golf Course in West L.A., a transit-accessible site that he estimates could fit 15,000 homes for about 50,000 people. “It’s just such a huge use of land that I find it’s pretty inexcusable in dense urban areas,” he tells CityLab contributor Anthony DiMauro.
With golf fading in popularity, the idea to repurpose courses into housing isn’t new. But in many cities, such efforts often face community resistance. Local golfers responding to Dunham’s proposal say losing Rancho Park would price out less-affluent players and “remove a valuable social center." How much space does the game deserve? Today on CityLab: Golf Courses Emerge as a Fix for L.A.’s Affordable Housing Crisis