Increase housing production and density and limit urban sprawl

Many of our most celebrated neighborhoods have buildings and a mix of land uses that would be impossible to re-create under today's zoning codes. Modern zoning rules largely promote single-family homes strictly separated from commercial districts and a transportation system centered on cars. Rethinking this type of zoning and targeting strategic growth in our developed areas will efficiently use our existing infrastructure. We will have new homes in urban areas that are well-connected to transit, jobs, and services. This type of growth reduces environmental impacts while creating a more sustainable economy.

Meanwhile, urban and exurban sprawl development, in which new large communities are built on the urban periphery or in even more distant outlying areas, can create significant air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as well as fire hazards, destroy our remaining natural and working lands, and threaten our traditionally rural towns. Large, new low-density areas generate more vehicle miles traveled as residents drive to essential services and require costly expansions of roads and utility infrastructure.

The County of Los Angeles will focus growth in existing communities by investing in infill housing, including “missing middle” options like duplexes, fourplexes, and small-scale multiunit buildings, and by working to protect agricultural and working lands from the threats of sprawl.