Sony: Fiscal Q1 Earnings Snapshot
The Tokyo-based company said it had profit of 27 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted to account for discontinued operations, were 30 cents per share.
The electronics and media company posted revenue of $18.15 billion in the period.
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Los Angeles Times
12 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
L.A. is under the gun to add housing units. The hard part? Where and how many
Los Angeles needs more affordable housing. When presented with the problem in the past, builders and developers were able to turn lima bean fields and orange groves into row after row of homes. But the vast swaths of open land on the city's fringes vanished decades ago. The California Department of Housing and Community Development has said that Los Angeles should add 456,643 new units by 2029 — a number that has generated controversy. To meet those demands, the city will have to create new ways of growing its inventory — strategies that will allow the city's established communities to welcome many more residents than they are able to accommodate now. The big questions are, as always: where, how and how much new housing should be built. The Times reached out to two sources with scenarios that challenge conventional thinking — two plans for the San Fernando Valley, which, half a century ago, provided the space for much of the city's growth. The first scenario proposes awakening a sleepy commercial corridor with low- and mid-rise apartments. The other focuses on 20 miles of vacant land — below electrical transmission lines that snake through the Valley. Like many L.A. suburbs, Reseda began as a small town center surrounded by fields. As the West San Fernando Valley developed after World War II, those fields filled with an expansive grid of single-family homes. Vestiges of Reseda's small-town beginning still survive in block after block of single-story businesses like the Traders pawnbroker and jewelry store at the intersection of Reseda Boulevard and Sherman Way. But snapshots of the future have begun to appear. A few blocks to the north, a five-story apartment building rises between a Thai restaurant and a used car lot. How many more of those would be needed for Reseda, or any similar community, to contribute its fair share of the state's Regional Housing Needs Allocation for the city of Los Angeles? The Times posed that question to Los Angeles-based policy think tank Pacific Urbanism, which has spent years examining the causes of and solutions for L.A.'s housing shortage. Its recent research created an equity scale to calculate targets for individual communities based on five factors: affordability, environmental quality, transit availability, past down-zoning and socioeconomics. In the modern era, housing construction across Los Angeles peaked twice, once before the Great Depression and then in a postwar boom. Reseda was a part of the postwar boom. Initially dominated by single-family homes, growth then shifted to medium-size apartment buildings. Construction of both types fell off precipitously by 1990, as anti-development sentiments gained ascendance. A tiny sliver representing accessory dwelling units has appeared in the last decade, part of a shift in housing topology that is just beginning. The Reseda-West Van Nuys community falls near the middle of the city's 34 community planning areas and will need 13,885 new housing units to meet its target. At one extreme, 14,000 single-family homes would meet the need. At the other it would take 1,400 100-unit buildings. The first is unfeasible — there isn't that much land — and the other, a new high-rise canyon, would be unpalatable. The Pacific Urbanism staff imagined a hybrid model that, they believe, would allow Reseda to achieve its goal with the least amount of community angst. The plan looks a lot like a return to the building patterns of the 1970s but with a few significant differences. Like then, more than half of the new units would be provided in large and medium-size apartment buildings. But in place of single-family home construction that was already dwindling, almost a quarter of the new units would come from new housing types that did not exist then — accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and the conversion of existing commercial space into housing. Above all, the pace of development would have to increase precipitously to reach the state's 2029 goal. The reimagined Reseda includes 37 buildings of 100 or more units, 73 medium-size buildings of 25 to 99 units and 484 duplex and small apartment buildings of up to 24 units. There would be 1,854 ADUs, including more than 1,000 that have already been built or permitted since 2020 and more than a thousand units in commercial conversions. A similar result could be achieved with a different mix of housing types. But Dario Rodman Alvarez, Pacific Urbanism president, says that his organization's hybrid scenario, based on building trends across the city, is the most feasible, if those trends persist. Some progress has been made. Since 2019, city law has given single-family homeowners a right to build second units on their property. A raft of recent state laws provides incentives to builders and homeowners such as increased density for affordable housing and up to four units on single-family lots. And Mayor Karen Bass' Executive Order 1 streamlined the approval of affordable projects. Those changes have helped, but don't 'get us anywhere close to what's needed to meet the target, much less in an equitable way where all communities contribute a fair share,' Alvarez said. According to his calculations, the current rate of construction in Reseda would have to increase 16-fold to meet the target by 2029. Pacific Urbanism proposes upgrading the zoning from medium- to high-density near the intersection of Reseda Boulevard and Sherman Way and creating medium-density zones to replace much of what is now single-family residences and small businesses. A review of the Reseda-West Van Nuys community plan, including the zoning, is underway and is in the consulting phase. It's expected to be complete in a year or two. Considering the fight that single-family communities generally put up to preserve the character of what has come to represent the 'American Dream' — and the single family home and yard —there's no guarantee those changes will be made. The state housing mandate requires the city only to create a pathway to the housing targets by adjusting zoning that is currently too restrictive. If you've spent time in the San Fernando Valley, it would be easy to view the overhead electrical transmission lines that stretch for more than 20 miles simply as essential wallpaper of modern living. The lines help ensure that 1.6 million households and businesses across the city can turn on the lights through a mostly uninterrupted band of 100- to 200-foot tall towers on a 150-foot wide strip of land. But what if that land, which travels through the heart of Northridge, Granada Hills, Mission Hills, Arleta and North Hollywood, could continue to power Los Angeles while also meeting the housing needs of tens of thousands of people? The idea is almost too simple: Put the transmission lines underground and homes on top. We wish such an innovative concept was ours. But it comes from Jingyi 'Jessy' Qiu, a Boston-based landscape designer who conceived of the idea while studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Design a few years ago. In Qiu's vision, the project reclaims dead space in the middle of bustling neighborhoods for the public good. Qiu calls the right of way beneath the power lines 'a land of opportunity to solve the housing problem in L.A.' The project ticks many of the boxes for what large, sustainable development in Los Angeles can be. It's climate-friendly. As the region becomes hotter and drier, taking down overhead power lines lowers the risk of sparking wildfires. And by building in established communities, new residents will be able to reduce their commutes for work and shopping, while existing residents will have new offices and stores nearby. There's a way to pay for it. At one point, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which owns the lines and the land underneath, told us it would cost roughly $100 million to put the lines underground. More recently, the public utility said it couldn't provide a price tag, and that, although possible, undergrounding transmission lines is rare, complex and expensive. An optimist would respond that revenue from the new development could cover much of, if not all, the cost, especially since the land itself would be free. It's a lot of housing. By Qiu's calculations, 23,000 homes could be built along the 20 miles. Qiu modeled the project through designing superblocks that could be repeated end to end throughout each community. Neighborhoods and topography along the route differ and so does the planned development. In North Hollywood, a denser mix of small apartments, mixed-use complexes and single-family homes with casitas fills the flatlands. In Granada Hills, lower densities fit in the highlands. In Northridge, student housing is prioritized near the state university. Today, people who live near the power lines complain of dust, litter and loitering, and worry about wires falling in high winds and storms. It's not that the right of way under the power lines now is unkempt. Many nursery businesses fill the land underneath. Landscaping is maintained. It's just that, as one neighbor put it, barren land attracts negative activity. Of all things, the right of way is dark at night. Besides housing, the development opens up space to the broader community. There's room for continued nursery operations while adding parks, courtyards and shared gardens. Qiu even proposes repurposing some existing transmission towers, especially in the hills, into platforms for bird-watching. One fear, of course, is adding this many new homes to an existing area could cause congestion. But the 20-mile stretch of homes ensures that traffic would be spread out. Superblocks could tie into the current road network and add parking while also providing long and unified bike and pedestrian infrastructure — not to mention the centralized open and community space — to neighborhoods lacking it now. A future Los Angeles that takes its housing and climate challenges seriously will have to look for opportunities to make better use of space. Fitting 23,000 new homes into the Valley by redeveloping a land now used for a relic hits that mark.
Los Angeles Times
12 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Should L.A. look to ‘sponge cities' to solve its flooding problem?
In 2019, when the Thai government announced plans to turn an abandoned tobacco factory in the nation's smoggy capital into a public park, Bangkok-based landscape architect Chatchanin Sung saw an opportunity to address another of the city's chronic problems: flooding. For Bangkok, a city of 11 million sitting on low-lying swampland, the management of its water has increasingly become a matter of survival. With the capital facing more frequent and extreme rainfall as well as rising sea levels due to climate change, experts have warned that entire swaths of the city may be underwater within the next few decades. Like Los Angeles, where intensifying droughts and floods have revealed limitations of conventional flood control systems like the L.A. River, Chatchanin felt that Bangkok's own stormwater infrastructure had reached its tipping point. Decades of rapid urban development have encased the city with impermeable concrete surfaces that hinder the natural drainage of water. As a result, the city's network of over 1,600 urban canals, which were once used for transporting goods and people but now primarily act as stormwater channels, are regularly overwhelmed. 'Because the canal water mixes with public sewage, the water quality is really bad,' Chatchanin said. 'The park project was an opportunity to absorb and clean this water.' To design the new space, a 102-acre expansion to the pre-existing Benjakitti Park, Chatchanin partnered with Kongjian Yu, a Beijing-based landscape architect who has long advocated what is known as a 'sponge city' model of urban water management. The idea is that, unlike 'gray' infrastructure, which is designed to flush water away as quickly as possible, cities like Bangkok can mitigate flood risk simply by making its surfaces more absorbent like a sponge, capturing stormwater before it can turn into runoff that pollutes streets and strains drainage systems. Their winning design, which was opened to the public three years ago, was realized in just 18 months and reflects the idea that such urban water management systems can also provide valuable aesthetic and recreational benefits to communities. Today, the former brownfield is a popular bird-watching spot. It features forested walkways alongside badminton and pickleball courts built in repurposed cigarette warehouses, all the while capturing and cleaning water. Fed by a nearby canal, a long system of wetlands containing thickets of aquatic plants removes pollutants from the water as it winds around the park's perimeter, releasing what's left into a large pond dotted with small islets. This, alongside the park's porous landscape and additional retention ponds, enable it to capture 23 million gallons of stormwater during Bangkok's rainiest months. The water that's entering permeable earth instead of being blocked by concrete is helping to replenish natural underground reservoirs that benefit humans and the environment. 'Last year we had really heavy rains,' Chatchanin said. 'The park also flooded but eventually absorbed it much more quickly.' She pointed to the pond, which no longer had the foul odor or the oily sheen of the canal despite being just a few steps away. Dragonflies buzzed overhead — a common sign, she noted, that the water is clean. Chatchanin acknowledged that one park alone can't fix Bangkok's water issues. But its modest success might, at the very least, encourage cities to rethink their relationship to water. 'People want fast answers,' Chatchanin said. 'But hiding the problem is no solution. You can't just raise your house on stilts, or flush out the water. It all comes back in the end.' The idea that cities need to adapt to — not outrun — their floods has been a lifelong preoccupation of Kongjian Yu, whose work with sponge cities has earned him the prestigious Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize and comparisons to Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York's Central Park. Yu traces its beginnings to a near-death experience he had as a child growing up in rural China. At the time just 10 years old, Yu had been playing on the banks of his village's river, which was more voluminous than usual due to heavy monsoon rains, when he suddenly found himself being swept away by the powerful currents. What saved him were the river's reeds and willows, which slowed the water and gave him a chance to pull himself out. 'My experience in these villages, my experience with the river and the creek, taught me how to live with nature,' he said. Later, Yu earned a landscape ecology degree from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and spent two years in Los Angeles working for SWA Group before returning to China in 1997. Dismayed that the rapidly modernizing country had lined its cities with concrete dams and channelized waterways, Yu began writing to local mayors, warning of the risks of this approach and advocating instead for 'rewilding natural water systems.' 'Sponge cities follow three principles: retain, slow down and embrace water,' Yu said. 'That means removing all unnecessary concrete and pavement.' At first, his ideas found few sympathetic ears. Some people, he recalled, sent letters to the Communist Party claiming he was 'a spy from the U.S. sent to demolish Chinese infrastructure.' But things changed in 2012, when severe flooding in Beijing destroyed thousands of homes and killed 79 people, some of whom were caught off-guard in the street. 'Every sort of paradigm shift, you need a crisis,' Yu said. 'People dying in the street — that was the critical point.' The floods prompted Chinese leader Xi Jinping to adopt Yu's sponge city philosophy as a national agenda in 2015. Since then, the government has pledged more than $28 billion to help fund over 33,000 sponge city projects in 90 cities, aiming to have them capture and reuse at least 70% of their rainwater by 2030. By 2020, over 40,000 sponge city projects were completed nationwide, contributing to around 3.8 trillion gallons of rainwater being recycled that year, according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. The ministry noted that this amount was equal to about one-fifth of China's annual urban water supply. Many, like Bangkok's Benjakitti Park, are wetlands designed to address urban flooding. Others, like a mangrove forest built on the banks of a river in the tropical southern city of Sanya on Hainan Island, act as a natural buffer against saltwater intrusion and coastal erosion from rising sea levels. 'The idea is to not build too close to the water in order to create a buffer zone,' Yu said. 'Instead of building a wall, we allow the water to come in.' This approach, said Yu, has made sponge city projects uncomplicated and low-cost compared with conventional solutions, deployable just about anywhere. Benjakitti Park, for example, cost $20 million and was built by the Thai army, which had little experience in environmental landscaping. Yu scribbled the design on a napkin during his flight to Bangkok to meet Chatchanin, keeping it simple enough to be achievable — at least in theory — with only a single excavator. Still, the program hasn't been without challenges. Wetlands are often breeding grounds for mosquitoes. And with local governments expected to foot up to 80% of the cost for their projects, much-needed investments from the private sector have been slow to materialize. Meanwhile, critics have pointed out that some of China's most touted sponge cities, like Zhengzhou in Henan province, have still experienced devastating floods. 'If a city can't handle a flood, that means it's not spongy enough,' Yu said. 'Ultimately, it's not about getting rid of every piece of concrete. It's about combining gray and green — upgrading the current model.' Since 2006, Singapore has been turning its own waterways and reservoirs into public parks that also absorb stormwater, an initiative known as the Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters (ABC Waters) Programme. In the Netherlands, a flood-prone country famous for mastering the art of keeping water out with techniques like land reclamation, the government has also experimented with a softer approach, strategically allowing its rivers to flood in certain areas in order to spare others. In L.A., too, there has been a growing awareness that the area's city's own impermeable flood control system, which discards billions of gallons of rainwater that might otherwise be stored and reused, is overdue for change. With around 490,000 acre-feet of stormwater available to be captured a year in an area that includes Long Beach and Anaheim, the L.A. area ranks first in the West in stormwater runoff potential and, 19th out of 2,645 urban areas nationwide, according to a Pacific Institute report last year. Among the efforts to make the city spongier — and therefore less dependent on imported water — is the Safe Clean Water Program, which L.A. County voters approved in 2018 as ballot Measure W. The program levies a property tax on impermeable surfaces to provide around $300 million a year in grants for municipal stormwater capture projects. The aim of the program is to capture 98 billion gallons annually. Experts have said that projects like this in the upper L.A. watershed could simultaneously help prevent flooding downstream. Yet officials have estimated that it will take decades to achieve this goal, and progress has been slow. Just 30 acres of green space were added to the county in its first three years, according to a report by Los Angeles Waterkeeper, a local watchdog. And although the program has recently begun to pick up pace, with around $1 billion allocated across 130 projects, Bruce Reznik, the group's executive director and a member of the Measure W scoring committee, pointed out there are a host of challenges not present in China's centralized model. Among them are scant federal support and the slow, costly bureaucratic processes involved with the program, such as cleaning up contaminated project sites and getting permits. He estimated that the projects the county needs will cost around $50 billion, 10 times what Measure W funding can provide over the next 20 years. 'In terms of expenses, that's a question a lot of us are asking: Why are these projects so expensive?' Reznik said. 'I get that there's inflation, but man, projects we thought were going to be $10 million are now $25 million. I think we've got to figure out ways that we can streamline some of this stuff.' Special correspondents Chalida Ekvitthayavechnukul and Xin-yun Wu contributed reporting from Bangkok and Taipei, respectively.
Chicago Tribune
42 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Today in Chicago History: Essanay Studios — briefly home to Charlie Chaplin — opens for movie production
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 10, according to the Tribune's archives. Is an important event missing from this date? Email us. Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago) 1907: Essanay Studios began its 10-year run of making movies in Chicago, featuring Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson and other box-office stars. The studio made 2,000 films. About 215 survive today. Lost 'Sherlock Holmes' film shot in Chicago from 1916 found in FranceFor 23 cold winter days in early 1915, Chaplin lived and worked in Chicago, where he made one of his short comedies for Essanay Studios, 'His New Job,' before fleeing for Essanay's operation in Niles, California. 1983: ChicagoFest was held for the last time. Among the acts at Soldier Field were the Charlie Daniels Band, Chicago, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Beach Boys. 1995: Sears officially moved its headquarters to Hoffman Estates. Nearly 5,000 employees would work at the suburban site. Sears headquarters had been in Chicago since Richard W. Sears moved his watch company there from North Redwood, Minnesota, in 1887. Sears timeline: Rise, fall and restructuring of a Chicago icon over 130 yearsDemolition of the vacant campus began in 2024. Dallas-based Compass Datacenters bought much of the 273-acre site at 3333 Beverly Road on the village's far western edge in 2023, and planned to construct five massive data centers, which house the IT components needed to run the internet. Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
