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OBSOLESCENT LAND USES: Christmas Tree Auctions in pre-2010s Los Angeles ABOVE: The checkout booth at a Christmas tree auction in Hollywood. Photo by the author, 2002. As the final year of the decade comes to a close, I reflect upon the changes Los Angeles has undergone over the last ten years. Of course, I reflect upon all the same personal matters that many others do at the end of the year--and hopefully more often than that! However, my reflections as I have grown older have come from other angles as well, e.g. from the angle of an urban planner.
I did not know in 1999 or 2009 that I wanted to be an urban planner in Los Angeles, but I had a keen awareness of many aspects of urban geography. Reflecting on urbanity in Los Angeles just two decades ago is enough to make one feel like they witnessed a whole different era of this city. While the wave of development that has engulfed 2010s Los Angeles is not quite comparable to the real estate boom of the early 20th century or the post-World War II build-out, the 2010s-era development of Los Angeles has nonetheless been massive and unique. This decade-closing piece is about a form of land use that has become mostly obsolete in Los Angeles, an American tradition that in the last fifteen years or so has mostly disappeared into the yesteryears of Los Angeles history: live Christmas tree auctions. ___
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June 2020
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