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Its incredibly hard to find a starter home in Los Angeles, where the median house price is now around $1.2 million. But in a new project, the city is working with architects and developers to build prototypes of more affordable homes that make use of small vacant lots scattered throughout the city. L.A. has around 24,000 privately owned residential lots that are a quarter-acre or less and havent yet been developed. The city also owns this type of small vacant lot, and now plans to use up to a dozen of them to demonstrate new models for housing. Instead of single-family homes, each development will include multiple small units that make better use of a lot, while leaving room for outdoor space and ample light. We thought that there might be a way to unlock the lots the city owns, but also use that to actually spur private development on the many similar lots that are across the city, says Emmanuel Proussaloglou, codirector of CityLab-UCLA, a think tank based in UCLAs architecture department. 2BUY4 by Garrett Ricciardi Office. [Rendering: courtesy CityLab-UCLA] The group partnered with the city on a design competition called Small Lots, Big Impacts, focused on rethinking homeownership on urban infill lots. Twenty-one winning designs were announced today, along with another 20 projects that received special recognition. Architects looked at new ways to divide small lots. Shared Steps, a design from the California-based firms Word and s_sk, is an example of what CityLab calls stealth density. From the front, it looks like it could be a single-family home. But its actually nine units: three main buildings that each have a larger unit plus an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) and a junior accessory dwelling unit. The ADUs could be used as rentals for the larger units, help a family expand when they need more space, or be sold as homes of their own. The front yard, meanwhile connects to a pocket park for the neighborhood. 4X4X4 by Light and Air. [Rendering: courtesy CityLab-UCLA] A project called 4x4x4, from the Brooklyn-based firm Light and Air, uses a single 50-by-150-foot lot for four two-story houses. Each home has a ground-floor accessory dwelling unit. The homes, which are each around 1,600 square feet, fit together like Tetris blocks. The L-shaped plan has the ability to frame outdoor space, and also provide views in multiple directions, says Shane Neufeld, who leads Light and Air. There are courtyards on the ground floor. On the second floor, residents can walk out sliding doors to a balcony on the roof of each ADU. From the street, again, it looks like it might be a single-family home. California and local laws allow housing development by right, without the need for discretionary approval, as long as buildings meet certain zoning and design criteria and include some affordable housing. That means that neighbors shouldn’t be able to block the projects. Still, the buildings were designed to fit into existing neighborhoods, and appease neighbors as much as possible. Physically building some of the new designs could help create more support. “The whole point of what we’re doing here is to try to build a couple so that you can go and actually look at them and say, ‘That doesn’t look as scary as I thought it might,'” says Proussaloglou. “That’s the hope, at least.” Lotful by Studio One Eleven. [Rendering: courtesy CityLab-UCLA] A design called Lotful, from Long Beach-based Studio One Eleven, proposes six individually owned buildings that each have owner-occupied units and two ground-level ADUs. The rental income can help owners qualify for a mortgage. The design is also modular, using a standard size that can make it faster and potentially less expensive to build. It’s also easier to replicate. “If we create these modules, these could be used on different sites in different areas, so you actually could get economies of scale,” says Alan Pullman, a partner at Studio One Eleven. A design called Ladderblock, from L.A.-based West of West, proposes creating a community land trust to lower the cost of each home. One- and two-bedroom units are designed with flexibility, so owners can change their homes over time, if needed. By adding a partition wall, the spaces can be split further to create a rental or another unit to sell. A 41-unit design from the New York-based firm Only If is one example of building with future density in mind. (Buildings on larger streets near transit can be taller and include more units.) The terraced floors create outdoor space on several levels. On the ground floor, a potential parking lot is “reversible,” meaning that it could later be used to build another seven units. Living Together in the Plains of Id by Only If. [Rendering: CityLab-UCLA] In the past, small lots might have been used for single-family homes, or sometimes stayed vacant because development didn’t seem like it would pencil out. The competition aims to help clearly illustrate what else is possible. Echo Yards by Shin Shin [Rendering: CityLab-UCLA] The need to build more is acute: Under state law, the city is required to build more than 450,000 homes by 2029 to deal with the housing shortage, and it isn’t on track, with only around 17,000 new homes permitted last year. The devastating fires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena earlier this year, which destroyed thousands of homes, added even more to the challenge. In the next stage of the project, the Los Angeles Housing Department will choose development teams, including architects, contractors, and financial institutions, to build on specific city-owned lots in different neighborhoods. The city will be selling the lots, but will use the proceeds to help provide down-payment assistance for low-income buyers to live in the new developments. (The developments, which will be privately financed by the development teams, will target residents at various income levels.) The winning designs from the first stage won’t necessarily be built, though each team will have an opportunity to apply again with the designs they’ve created. Growing Together by Outpost Office [Rendering: courtesy CityLab-UCLA] UCLA also plans to share all of the submissions online, including proposals that didn’t win. “There are only going to be a handful of sites available in the next stage, so not all 356 ideas are going to get built,” says Proussaloglou. “But we’re hoping that people with private lots look to the database of architectural ingenuity from the Small Lots competition, and say, ‘okay, I love that submission. I want to work with that architect.'” The ideas could also be useful beyond L.A. “So many cities are struggling with a housing crisis of affordability and a lack of the kind of units that families want,” says Studio One Eleven’s Pullman. “I’m hoping that we can show, through this demonstration project, the ability to really think beyond the standard ways that we’ve been building cities, either single-family or large multifamily, into what everyone’s talking aboutthis missing middle. The ability to build family housing, but in a way that isn’t just the single-family house.”
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E-Commerce
“Gram-negative bacteria” pose a huge threat to public health. With deathly adaptability, these types of bacteria are able to develop resistance to many antibiotics and survive in a wide range of conditions. In particular, Acinetobacter baumannii, also known as CRAB, is one of clinical medicines most antibiotic resistant pathogens, killing hundreds in the U.S. every year with estimated mortality rates ranging from 26.0% to 55.7%. But a new antibiotic from Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche could change the future of how we treat Gram-negative bacteria. Roche announced on Monday that its antibiotic zosurabalpin will enter phase 3, late-stage human trials, by the end of this year or early next year. If successful, the drug will be the first new class of antibiotics targeting Gram-negative bacteria to be developed in over 50 years. What makes Gram-negative bacteria so hard to treat? Antibiotics treat illness by killing bacteria or suspending bacterial growth. But in order to access and attack crucial parts of the bacteria, most antibiotics must first pass through their outer membranes. However, Gram-negative bacteria are distinguished from other forms of bacteria because they are protected by a second outer membrane. These outer membranes are covered in protective molecules called lipopolysaccharides (LPS), which stabilize the membranes and create a barrier to most drugs and antibiotics. This resistance makes Gram-negative bacteria extremely tricky to treat, especially with patients who are already immunocompromised. It causes around a fifth of ICU infections, and most cases of ventilator-associated pneumonia, bloodstream infections related to catheters, and sepsis developed from the ICU. How does zosurabalpin help? Roche collaborated with Harvard researchers to develop a new way to stop Gram-negative bacteria. They found that the key was to inhibit the transportation of LPS molecules, the armor that creates the structure of the bacterias outer membrane. Zosurabalpin is able to destroy Gram-negative bacteria by jamming LPS molecules inside the bacteria, weakening its membrane. It is the first of its class of antibiotics, and the first new class of antibiotics for Gram-negative bacteria since 1968. This antibiotic is important, but it can also serve as a catalysis point for future innovation, said Michael Lobritz, global head of infectious diseases at Roche, to the Financial Times. There are very few [new classes of antibiotics] . . . that have been discovered in the last 15 years. So if you are able to launch a new one, we can build off that for decades to come. Basel-based Roche has a vast portfolio that includes treatments for cancer, severe eye diseases, and multiple sclerosis. The company reported sales of roughly $68.7 billion in 2024, marking growth of 7% over the previous year on a constant exchange rate basis.
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E-Commerce
David Hogg, the Parkland school shooting survivor turned Democratic activist and rainmaker, likes to say that the only good politician is a scared politician. His day job at Leaders We Deserve, the political action committee he co-founded straight out of Harvard in 2023 with veteran campaign manager Kevin Lata, is helping recruit and elect into office the next generation of young Democrats. But he spends just as much time antagonizing his partys leadership and hectoring them about doing some post-election soul-searching. Shortly after his successful run in February for one of five vice chair positions with the Democratic National Committee, Hogg announced that Leaders We Deserve would spend $20 million backing midterm primary challengers in safe Democratic districts represented by aging incumbents who, in his estimation, havent fought back hard enough against Donald Trump. He expected a backlash, and he got it. DNC chair Ken Martin demanded that he sign a neutrality pledge or step aside, but Hogg declined to do either. Meanwhile, one of the defeated candidates in the vice chair election filed a protest of the outcome, arguing that the results violated DNC rules regarding gender representation. Hogg believes that party leaders have seized on this procedural issue as a means of ousting him from his position, as punishment for his primary plans. It might work, toothe complaint remains under review, and a vote about whether to redo the vice chair election is scheduled for between June 9 and June 11. But even if they boot Hogg from the DNC, he says, hell just focus on his day job booting feckless incumbents from Congress. Hogg, who appeared on Fast Companys July 2024 cover for a story about his and Latas work getting Generation Z into politics, checked back in with us about the tempest hes triggered, and where Democrats should go from here. Fast Company: Given all thats transpired between you and the DNCs leadership, do you think youll be re-elected if it comes to it? David Hogg: Honestly, its anybody’s guess at this point. There’s people who don’t agree with what I’m doing with the primaries, but they also don’t think that we should have another election. And there’s people who think we should have another election, but agree with what Im doing. There’s so many different camps here. But just so I understand, is it your view that this complaint was mounted specifically to get rid of you? Or is the DNC leadership just latching onto this because it provides an opportunity to accelerate something they already wanted to do? Its certainly provided an opportunity. In order to remove me as an officer, one, I would need to be breaking a rule, and two, it would go through a committee and then it would require a two-thirds vote of the DNC membership. This gives them the opportunity to remove me with only a simple majority. I ask because the other DNC vice chair elected along with you, Malcolm Kenyatta, a state senator from Pennsylvania, who would ordinarily be a natural ally of yours, has criticized your response to this complaint and accused you of making it all about yourself. Have you spoken to him? Yes, we’ve discussed it a bit, and I’m not going to talk publicly about those conversations, but what I will say is that there’s disagreements that we have, obviously, but ultimately, I still maintain a high level of respect for Malcolm. I don’t take it personally. I see this as a strategic disagreement. What were your goals were in joining the DNC in the first place? And given whats transpired, do you still think you can achieve them? Hogg: Oh, we’re still going to achieve them no matter what happens. The reason I ran for the DNC was that I think we need to build a culture in our party of telling people what they need to hear for example, telling a former president that he should not run again. And if I do get removed, I think it only proves my point. I ran to play a role in making our party stronger. We can’t protect the status quo of a 26% approval rating. We’re losing voting share with nearly every single demographic, and its not a matter of our message. Its our messengers. But why the DNC specifically? Why this vice chair position? Because I believe in the party that we could be. And I didn’t want to continue being in a position where, for example, even after Id raised nearly $1 million for Vice President Harris when I was on her National Finance Committee, Id ask a question about what are we doing about young men and theyd say it was a ridiculous question. Like, why would we ever need to care about young men? This position forces people to listen to some of these real concerns. It was ridiculous because they thought Biden had young men sealed up? Or because young men dont vote?Hogg: To be honest with you, Devin, it’s because for a long time there’s been a taboo in the party of talking about young men, because we think empathy is a zero-sum game, so its to the detriment of young women. We’ve got to get out of that binary thinking. Caring about one doesn’t mean we inherently don’t care about the other. What should that message be? I’m not saying crank out a slogan on the spot, but how should Democrats be appealing to young men?Hogg: I’ll tell you what the message is not it’s not paying $20 million to figure out how to talk to young men. The message isn’t saying: Here is our plan for men. If we have a good plan for men, we don’t need to say out loud that it’s for men. For the past five months we keep hearing that elected Democrats are not fighting back hard enough. And while that may be true, it reminds me of what you were saying its easy to sit on the sidelines and say whats wrong. So what should Democrats be doing? Im not going to sit here and act like any single person, including myself, knows the full plan of how we fix this because, frankly, this is bigger than just the U.S. Every single developed country around the world has gender polarizationwhere young men are becoming more conservative and young women are becoming more liberal. This is not just a U.S. problem. Part of the answer is showing how we are rejuvenating ourselves and getting people elected to positions of leadership in Congress based off effectiveness and not this culture of seniority politics. One reason for some of the anxiety among Democrats could be that your criteria for challenging an incumbent feels a bit subjective. When you talk about people fighting back effectively against Trump, what does that look like right now? Prt of our strategy here is to not have a specific set of criteria, like, These are the three things that you need to do to be considered effective. Because the reality is nobody is meeting this moment as effectively as we need to. Certainly, some members are fighting back harder than others. There are members who are literally going to El Salvador, not just sitting on their hands and saying, We can’t do anything in the minority. We cant just hope that Donald Trump screws everything up so much that voters come begging back to us for any alternative. We dont want people to feel like theyre just voting for the less bad of two options. What we’re trying to do is light a fire under everybody’s ass in our party. And frankly, if that makes you uncomfortable, maybe you should question whether or not you should run. This reminds me of that op-ed James Carville wrote in The New York Times a couple months ago that Democrats should roll over and play dead and just let Trump screw everything up. About six weeks later, you were quoted in the Times saying more than anything it is, do you want to roll over and die or do you want to fight? I wondered if you were referring specifically to what Carville said? Yes, I was, but I think it goes beyond him, because that notion doesn’t just come out of nowhere. I think it comes out of the exhaustion that a lot of our leaders are feeling. And look, if you’re exhausted, that’s fine. Just don’t be in politics, because this is not a time for people to be exhausted. Another veteran Democrat, Philippe Reines, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton, recently told New York Magazine that we can’t be the party of pronouns and land acknowledgements. Look, I think it’s important that we maintain our values as a party and we not abandon any group for some perceived gain or political expediency. That’s not what Democrats do. I think we need to focus on the fact that in this election voters told us two things. They said the president is too old. And we said, No, he’s not. And they said prices are too high. And we said, No, they aren’tlook at these graphs. The broader issue we have is that people feel unheard by us, and they feel like we are not addressing a lot of the real issues that they’re facing on a day-to-day basis. You told the Times that Democrats continue to treat politics like a debate club and Republicans treat it like WrestleMania. Are you endorsing the WrestleMania approach or implying we need a third way? What I was actually getting at, more than anything, is: lets say you ask voters, if Democrats are an animal, what animal would they be? The most common answer is a turtle or a slug or something like that. Some kind of weak, vulnerable animal. Whereas for Republicans, it’s like a shark or a lion. People like to see a fight. And for us, were like, Oh, we can’t raise the minimum wage because the parliamentarian in Congress says that we can’t. Thats the type of shit that kills me. So you want Democrats to get in the ring a little bit more? I want us to get in the ring more. After Parkland, all these Democratic consultants came around and said, You can’t talk about banning the AR=-15. You can’t talk about taking on the NRA. It’s too unpopular, it’s too red of a state, all this stuff. If we listened to them, we wouldn’t have changed shit. Right now we have a real problem with cowardice in our party. Thats the resource we lack. It’s not cash, its courage.
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E-Commerce
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