Familiar? It’s the LA DWP Headquarters in Downtown. It’s also that building in Cobb and Mal’s Limbo world that keeps on appearing, except in the movie, they made it a lot taller.
I gotta write down what I think to organize my thoughts… I re-watched Inception, this time on IMAX with my roomie. And… got me thinking more… mostly about the plot, so go away if you haven’t seen it! But this is just mostly for me to organize my own thoughts.
This is the FAMIMA that they show in the movie. It’s fun to see your city in a movie.
So Inception was the best movie I have seen in a long time. Seriously, harnessing the power of your dreams? That’s awesome. And the DiCaprio + Watanabe combo? Nice. Now an urban planning point of view… (a naïve one from a young student, duh)… probably don’t read it if you haven’t seen the movie (you’re crazy if you haven’t seen it, btw).
Europe is considered to have more successful affordable housing programs - called social housing. This is a photo I took in London - how many of these people do you think live in social housing? Trick question! They’re all tourists.
What is workforce housing?
Affordable housing is normally for very low, low, or moderate income.
What about the people in the middle - those who cannot afford housing near their jobs, but have incomes that are too high to qualify for affordable housing?
Workforce housing is an increasing trend that defines these groups of people - they include teachers, public servants, police officers, etc.
This wild commercial is for Nissan Note, a car that gets 20 km/L. According to Google, that’s about 47 mpg. They are just repeating “high gas mileage” over and over.
Anyways, I was interested by the fact that they chose Heidi, the girl of the Alps as the image character for this car. I guess it makes sense - Heidi takes place in the Alps/Switzerland, and they have a really green image. They don’t even have to do anything green, and I think the rest of the world would still think it is a green, sustainable place. That really goes to show the power of image.
It’s interesting. A lot of car commercials are filmed here in Los Angeles, but just as a generic city… a place that makes any kind of car look attractive. A fun place to drive a car - not a sustainable place. I wonder when that will change.
At work, I have been working on sustainable initiatives on the local, regional and federal level. Specifically, we looked at SB 375 and the Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant issued jointly through HUD, DoT, and the EPA.
Both try to achieve the same thing - a coordinated regional plan that leads to better urban planning.
Commercial for Tokyo Metro, 2010 with Aragaki Yui.
My favorite city in the world is Tokyo, and the subway system is a reason why. It just works - it’s clean, efficient, timely, and the city is perfect for one - dense, polycentric (yet monocentric enough for a main train station hub). I look at Los Angeles and see so much emphasis on Transit Oriented Development (TOD), and just wonder, is this really enough to sustain a subway system?
