May 29, 2025 Breaking News, Latest News, and Videos

SMa.r.t. Column: Planning The Real Future

In the 1970s, renowned USC architecture professor Ralph Knowles developed a method for planning and designing cities that would dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels, while retaining the qualities that people find most attractive and useful about cities: walking, biking, encountering people, using efficient public transportation.

The idea was to design and orient buildings to have the best exposure to the sun. This would provide light and heat when needed, and cooling shade at the appropriate times of the day. Applied to entire city blocks, the method ensured access to the sun by placing taller buildings in places that did not cast excessive shadows on other buildings. City blocks would have taller buildings along one side, and lower buildings on another. 

With Knowles’ method, courtyards and shared open spaces within each block  guarantee solar access to everyone. City blocks designed with this method–called the Solar Envelope–make sure that solar energy systems can access sunlight without the possibility of being shaded by future buildings nearby. Arranged this way, buildings and city blocks can provide healthy, human-scaled housing and commercial buildings, with heating and cooling costs reduced to near zero in our climate.

The challenge is that the Solar Envelope method, carefully attuned to strike a good balance between population density and access to sunlight, requires zoning and building code limits on how much development can occur on city blocks. Our stack-and-pack current zoning, in commercial and dense areas of the city, is designed to maximize the number of units built on each property without taking into account climatic considerations, such as solar access and shade. 

A visit to Lincoln Boulevard and adjacent streets in downtown Santa Monica provides excellent examples of projects designed for optimal short-term economic returns, with little concern for climate other than code-required energy-efficiency measures. And these are merely band-aids on a much larger ecological problem.

Our colleague Ron Goldman often reminds us of the need for a comprehensive master plan for our city. Planning officials point to the LUCE (Land Use and Circulation Element) as the overarching master plan for the city [link: https://tinyurl.com/mu3jkmer]. But the document only deals with a limited set of ideas, focusing on transportation, housing and economic considerations, and a limited subset of environmental goals, including solar. But the plan does not describe a comprehensive effort to combine these ideas into a single guiding document that includes the actual physical design of city blocks in response to climate concerns. It does not discuss the protection of solar energy systems and the provision of shade where needed; all effective means to help reduce the city’s energy requirements to almost nothing, in many cases. 

In a larger sense, the plan does not consider real, long-term environmental constraints that can affect every individual and family in the city. For example, on the topic of water, the LUCE calls for stormwater harvesting and recycling–laudable goals that have resulted in extremely successful efforts by the city in recent years, including planning for purifying sewer water as an additional source of potable water. But the plan does not envision a strategy when drought and development exceed the city’s ability to produce or recycle water in the required quantities. 

That possibility is now in sight. The city has a goal to be fully independent of the state’s water system, which supplies about a third of the city’s water needs and is under severe and increasing climate-change pressure. But a Public Works staff report to City Council last June suggested that the State’s new housing requirements would cause the city to fall short of that goal [link: https://tinyurl.com/2p862b4p]. A real, comprehensive master plan would plan for that eventuality, and start orienting the city toward a drier, hotter future with fewer resources. This would include guidelines for the design of buildings and courtyard-enabled city blocks similar to the methods developed by Professor Knowles.

One problem is that development has become a battleground in the city for competing interests. The result is a focus on short-term political triumphs at the expense of long-term planning that acknowledges the specific, real challenges posed by climate change constraints.

For years, even decades, Santa Monica has staked a claim to municipal leadership, in housing, transportation, even information –many of us remember a previous City Manager’s sonorous announcement that “we’re a data-driven city.”  Today’s reality is that the collapse of the foreign tourism industry, the retail apocalypse and the pandemic have paid put to many fantasies underpinning such claims to city leadership. If this is, in fact, a data-driven city, we must acknowledge the data that points toward ecological limits, even if it means doing away with some financial, technological and ideological illusions. 

The buffers against reality have been stripped away. With Earth Day this week,  it is time to focus on practical solutions to our very real, if rarely-admitted challenges. We can start by preparing a real, truly comprehensive master plan.

Daniel Jansenson, Architect, Building and Fire-Life Safety Commission, for S.M.art (Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow).

Thane Roberts, Architect, Robert H. Taylor AIA, Ron Goldman FAIA, Architect, Dan Jansenson, Architect, Building and Fire-Life Safety Commission, Samuel Tolkin Architect, Mario Fonda-Bonardi, AIA, Planning Commissioner, Marc Verville, CPA (inactive), Michael Jolly, AIR CRE.  For previous articles see www.santamonicaarch.wordpress.com/writings.

<>Related Posts

County Assessor Stresses Need For Fire-Affected Households to Update Addresses to Receive Relief Checks

May 28, 2025

May 28, 2025

Assessor’s Office Offers Automatic Tax Relief for Fire-Affected Homeowners Following the destruction caused by wildfires earlier this year, the Los...

SM.a.r.t Column: Why Santa Monica Might Need a Desalination Plant, and Maybe Even Nuclear Power

May 22, 2025

May 22, 2025

Santa Monica is known for its ocean views, sunny skies, and strong environmental values. But there’s a challenge on the...

Film Review: Final Destination: Bloodlines

May 22, 2025

May 22, 2025

FILM REVIEWFINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINESRated R110 MinutesReleased May 16th  This is the sixth entry in the Final Destination movie franchise that...

State Farm Seeks New Insurance Rate Hikes for California Homeowners and Renters

May 20, 2025

May 20, 2025

Insurer Aims to Raise Premiums by up to 52% for Some Policyholders by 2026 Just one week after receiving approval...

Historic ‘Parry Residence’ in Pacific Palisades Lists for $25M

May 19, 2025

May 19, 2025

It is one of the earliest homes constructed in the Huntington Palisades and was prominently featured in a 1930 issue...

10-Unit Venice Townhouse with Ocean Views Listed for $6M

May 19, 2025

May 19, 2025

Built in 1975, the 14,025-square-foot structure sits on a 7,971-square-foot corner lot  A 10-unit townhouse complex just steps from the...

Elon Musk’s Tesla Renews Santa Monica Lease for 82,000-Square-Foot Service Center

May 18, 2025

May 18, 2025

Tesla Keeps California Roots with Santa Monica Service Center Renewal Despite relocating its corporate headquarters to Texas, Tesla has reaffirmed...

SM.a.r.t Column: SMO (So Many Options) Part 3: “Pie in the Sky”

May 17, 2025

May 17, 2025

SMO: Fantasy, Fact, and the Fog of Wishful ThinkingBy someone who read the fine print Every few months, a headline...

City to Issue Solicitations for Affordable Housing Development at Bergamot Station Arts Center

May 12, 2025

May 12, 2025

Proposals for the Bergamot Station Arts Center must prioritize maximizing affordable housing units while also considering potential artist housing and...

Historic Lloyd Wright-Designed Palisades Home Hits Market at $12.9M

May 12, 2025

May 12, 2025

Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright, designed the estate for an Academy-winning composer A historic estate designed by architect...

Top Malibu Sale of 2025: Oceanfront Malibu Colony Home Sells for $26.8M

May 11, 2025

May 11, 2025

Old Hollywood-Era Home Sells After Over a Year on the Market Topping Malibu’s residential sales charts for the year, a...

(PHOTOS) Stevie Nicks’ Former Marina del Rey Condo Hits Market at $3.9M

May 6, 2025

May 6, 2025

The 2,091-square-foot condo occupies the second floor of a 1972-built structure and features sweeping ocean views A beachfront condominium in...

Santa Monica Could Require Large Buildings to Cut Emissions

May 5, 2025

May 5, 2025

A public meeting to discuss the proposal and gather community feedback is scheduled for May 8 Santa Monica is preparing...

Palisades Real Estate Market Faces Mounting Inventory, Falling Land Values Amid Rebuild

May 5, 2025

May 5, 2025

Price reductions are becoming more common, with weekly drops steadily increasing. Still, well-priced lots in desirable locations are finding buyers ...

Prices Spike in Brentwood, West Hollywood, and Santa Monica Amid Post-Fire Housing Rush

May 5, 2025

May 5, 2025

Displaced Families Are Reshaping Los Angeles’ Housing Market on the Westside Home sales and prices across Los Angeles surged in...