A Design History of L.A.'S Dingbat Apartment Buildings (2021) | Hacker News Reader

A Design History of L.A.'S Dingbat Apartment Buildings (2021)

bloomberg.com

66 pointsjseliger40 comments

I've never heard these called "dingbats" even though I lived in such a building in Oakland many years ago. What I do know them as is "soft story" apartments, due to the likelihood of collapse of the living quarters over the car ports in an earthquake. (In my case, I lived in a unit that was not actually over a car port, but still would probably have suffered collateral damage.)

Seems odd the article did not mention it, here is one that does discuss dingbats and the earthquake risk they pose.

https://www.kcrw.com/news/articles/what-it-will-take-to-eart...

Edit: I see now TFA does mention soft story earthquake risk, I didn't see it beause of the web site delay in showing me the entire article.

"during earthquakes, there’s an unsettling amount of shaking, thanks to the soft-story carport construction. (That said, dingbats have seen a wave of recent retrofits with strengthened seismic codes). "

L.A. should really remove all parking requirements: https://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-.... Dingbats were mostly constructed before the '70s constrictions on housing development, including severe parking minimums.

LA is a big place, and includes suburbs. If they're gonna do that, they'll have to add more transit to these areas.

But for places with existing transit, yeah I agree.

Chicken and egg problem, less demand for transit and improving it if there's more people driving (and parking)

I grew up in LA and have visited many times since. The biggest change is from Uber/Lyft. You no longer need a DD or nearly as much parking, now that you can just pay someone to take you around. It's not as good as transit, but it's a good stopgap to solve the problem until there is a bunch of housing without parking and the need for transit increases.

FYI, Uber/Lyft are massively more expensive than owning your own vehicle or using public transit (3x-4x the cost) if you need to go places regularly. They are currently not a viable solution for lower income residents of most cities.

Of course not, you're paying for the driver's time. That's why I said it's a viable stopgap for some people, but hopefully enough people to drive demand for better transit.

Taxis (which is all uber/lyft is) are are useful for cases where you mostly do not need to own a vehicle, but once in a rare while need to go someplace that your other alternatives don't work for.

Rideshares (aka carpooling, not a separate paid-for service) for long distances, and bicycles for short distances are great ways to drastically increase mobility for cheap.

The only time you don't get a "viable solution for lower income residents of most cities" is when you try to place a residence stupidly far from work.

What a subjective thing to say so confidently. I didn’t pay for a car for years as it would have been more expensive to maintain and own a vehicle - but I guess you know my finances somehow

Well, there is a bus stop 5 blocks away under the I10 overpass, which has service nominally once an hour. Maps says that it will only take 5 hours to get to your job in Culver city. Good thing you don't need parking any more.

Already happened, for all of California: https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/politics/2023-new-law-cali...

> AB-2097 stops city and county governments across the state from implementing a minimum requirement for housing developments to provide parking, if those developments are within a half-mile of public transit.

Unfortunately the LA Metro has opted for an opt-in payment scheme (for "diversity and inclusion", or some such), which means the public transit is filled with freeloaders who at best take seats and provide no money back to the maintenance of the track, and at worst are actively aggressive towards other passengers.

LA Metro is not opt-in. Fares are mandatory, and the police can and do issue citations for fare evasion.

The only free fares are for K-12 students, whose fares are being subsidized by a combination of public and private sources.

Leaving it up to the cops discretion means they will be incentivized to enforce it against people who can pay but don't. This is what the signs say in San Diego. You CAN be asked to show your fare at any time. Meaning consequences for me but not for them. Except they don't have anything to lose so why bother? It's in their best interest to break the law and abuse the transit system for shelter, harassment, and committing more crime (spreading the heat == less chance of detection). I'll choose warming the globe any day over putting myself at risk of violence.

Can, perhaps. Do: not so much. Most stations don't even have turnstiles, instead preferring some occasional posts you are "suggested" to tap your card at. Those that do have turnstiles without fail have handicap-ready turnstiles, which look enough like a completely open walkway to pass all forms of "plausible deniability" - especially when you see everybody in the station lining up to go through them.

The only people I know who do pay are paying from company-provided passes. Everyone else is riding off them.

Same thing in San Diego. They spent billions on this advanced rail system with towering overpasses and platforms, but no turnstile to only allow paying customers. The result is it's a de facto homeless shelter. Immediately after it opened the neighborhood had a surge in vagrants. The only time I rode it I saw a violent assault. It's hard to not believe that the system is set up to increase crime. But if a paying passenger were to defend himself, they have cameras everywhere and would track you down immediately.

> It's hard to not believe that the system is set up to increase crime

or car ownership...

Most dingbats-style apts I see in California actually do use their parking space. Many of them use lots of curb parking around the location on top of that.

The one in the photo is probably one of the nicest looking "dingbats" in LA I've ever seen. Most of them don't look that charmingly kitschy or have paint anywhere near that fresh. The typical LA dingbat is a shade of gray brought on by road dust covering whitewash with no one to care enough to hose it down every now and then. While there are some that actually are well taken care of, the majority of are reminiscent of brutalist Soviet architecture; although much of said architecture somehow manages to be more appealing. They often look as if they were built way back when I Love Lucy was still being filmed and haven't seen much if any love since.

Though I just disparaged dingbats, I believe it's more of them that we actually need right now, albeit with some modern flare. Perhaps they don't even have to be true "dingbats", but simply smaller apartment complexes that are simultaneously affordable but not decrepit.

Unless I'm simply not seeing it, no meaningful number of such apartments are being built around LA. Practically every new development is luxury apartments with starting prices in the high $2000s, and it's almost irrelevant what neighborhood you look at. The amount of regulatory overhead for development in California, from the state down to the municipality, incentivizes developers to build luxury apartments because those have the best chance of at least breaking even after years of back and forth. Municipalities subsidize these developments because they supposedly raise the potential value of the area in general, bringing in residents with lots of spending money.

And we wonder why fewer young people are bothering to move out of mom and dad's home.

They're ugly trash, and they often go right up to the sidewalk as depicted in that picture. They are NOT what the city needs; although lies to the contrary drove the passage of corrupt legislation to allow developers to build 10 units where a single house stands... with no permits needed or local review or override possible.

Meanwhile, boarded-up Macy's stores, the dying malls they anchor, and the vast parking lots growing weeds around them stand empty. Those sites have already suffered the costs of density, with every tree cut down and the ground paved over. But politicians have targeted already-residental neighborhoods for destruction instead, against popular opinion.

L.A. is ugly and barren enough without more Kleenex boxes like these "dingbats" lining the streets. This never-ending hysteria about "the housing shortage" is an excuse for more graft perpetrated by politicians and the developers who own them. There's plenty of opportunity to build housing in L.A. without destroying single-family neighborhoods. But that just won't deliver the easy profits that building permit-free offers to developers, and to the corporations that are buying up entire neighborhoods.

Which is another problem the state is ignoring. As corporations buy entire tracts, already-difficult home ownership is going to become IMPOSSIBLE for future generations... denying them the greatest opportunity to build wealth throughout their lives. Corporations don't die and hand their houses down or turn them over to new families.

Disgusting scams all around.

Yeah they're pretty ugly IMO, but perhaps you missed my point that we can have "dingbats" without them actually being dingbats, if that makes any sense. I agree that the humongous cube with barren outer walls and carports under precarious-looking stilts isn't what we should want more of. There's just something not right about small to mid size apartment complexes becoming low-vacancy relics of the past in favor of "premium experiences" that can't be afforded by those starting out without relying on daddy for money. But that's the situation being created by incentives, which those with the most influence are turning a blind eye to.

Otherwise, I agree with what you said.

For sure, and I agree with you that it's possible. But replacing actual houses with tracts of these would be a sad, regressive mistake that's just not necessary. Replacing these with better ones, and even slightly taller ones, would be reasonable and useful.

> Unless I'm simply not seeing it, no meaningful number of such apartments are being built around LA.

FWIW many new developments in CA come with Inclusionary Zoning incentives or requirements which require a percentage of units to be at different affordability levels. But these requirements need to be carefully designed to not make the projects DOA and still aren't generating enough units to really make a difference yet.

Related 99% Invisible episode: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/99-vernacular-volume-...

Somewhat conceptually related from almost the same era, the Vancouver Special:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver_Special

Take a long, thin lot in a rapidly redeveloping inner city area, put a conventional home sideways onto the lot with scarce room to spare, change the entrance ways to suit, and bob's your uncle. Unlike the L.A. Dingbats, the Vancouver Specials usually had the parking overhang at the back, if at all.

I think another notable difference is that Vancouver Specials are nominally single family detached homes, but the design does lend itself to turning the main floor into a decently sized, above ground rental suite. All without requiring the kind of major renovations that cause city inspections.

Agreed, and a permutation of what you describe is the conversion of side-by-side duplex Vancouver Specials, particulary in Burnaby, into four-plexes by doing the same upstairs-downstairs split.

> known locally as dingbats.

I have never heard anyone call them that lol

People who know LA architecture & RE history do call them that ;)

Born and raised in Los Angeles, lived there for 40+ years, had family in Korea Town and lived in Hollywood off of Cahuenga. I'm very familiar with these structures, I've never heard them referred to as dingbats, ever.

Same. Never heard this term before, but the article showed the pink flamingo and I instantly understood what they were talking about.

The second I saw it, I knew it too, and then I immediately started getting anxiety about parking.

3rd generation LA native here - my family has never called them anything except dingbats as far back as I can remember. Plenty of other people I've talked to who are from LA used that term as well (or were familiar with it), so I don't think it's a regional LA thing either.

I have, but I’ve also met some LA natives that have never heard the term. It is a real thing, but it’s not universal for everybody.

In Australia these are known as six-pack flats.

https://assemblepapers.com.au/2019/07/16/six-pack-living-typ...

> > The six-pack is the unsung hero of Australia’s vernacular architecture. The humble walk-up apartment building, with that distinctive boxy, Lego look in red or cream brick, first started springing up in the 1930s around Australian suburbs – wealthy, poor and middling alike. The construction of six-packs reached its crescendo in the postwar period, when thousands of owners replaced the footprint of a detached house on a single lot with a long and thin two- and three-storey apartment building, always sans elevator.

> Jack Chen has carefully renovated a 33 sqm apartment in a modest walk-up block in Richmond, showing what a six-pack flat can do.

I used to live in one in North Hollywood after I moved out from my parent's house in 1997. They focus on the utilitarian aspect, but they often had courtyards and a pool.

The new standards for cheap living, the 5 over 1 apartments are more packed in and don't often have pools.

Really? Most of those 5/1s have an internal courtyard area with a pool it seems. A lot even have things like a full gym. Sometimes even guest parking.

Yep. I've lived in a few of these over the years and every single one had a courtyard/pool, grilling area, gym, and a guest parking section.

If you've been in these neighborhoods there is only one thing that matters, parking, and it's virtually non-existent.

Isn't there parking under the apartment?

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