It’s Green-Uo Time. Valley Village after the first rain of the season; Jan. 2018. The luchtschaap here, the sky and light-scape, sky on a massive scale, is as magnificent to me as the Dutch North Sea coast, the Old New Jersey Shore, or the soft Canaletto light of Venice, CA. 

The cities with their suburban districts that I I know best,  L.A., New York,, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Amsterdam, London, Edinburgh, maintain and preserve fine neighborhoods where views are protected, and treated as serious amenities. These districts inevitably benefit, in terms of real estate value, from treating the commons as common.

The contrast between those streets in my neighborhood where trees and green growth and orange trees prevail, and the streets where nature appears to have been obliterated, and the luchtschaap given over to concrete and walls, are  a pattern repeated throughout Valley Village. Different development patterns and styles over several decades, may reflect the attraction of different types of residents at different times, or different crime rate distributions. There are harsh, gritty streets in Valley Village, though the housing stock and fertile soil is all the same. I would love to know more about why particular areas remain idyllic, and other adjacent areas look like bombed-out urban nighmares in transition to a sterile condo-rific Future-shock.