Since taking office last year, Villaraigosa has spoken often about his vision of a denser and more vertical Los Angeles — with apartment towers lining commuter rail lines and struggling neighborhoods coming back to life by converting old industrial and office buildings into homes.
The mayor's vision is already becoming reality in parts of Hollywood, the Fairfax district, North Hollywood and downtown, where clusters of dense apartments have risen.
But Stuart Gabriel, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, said passage of Measure H would force Los Angeles officials to have a serious debate about how vertical and dense the city should be.
That's because the city would get the most bang for its affordable housing buck if it allowed developers to build larger apartment complexes.
"Obviously, with a large number of units put on a particular site, the cost per unit can come down," Gabriel said. "What we can hope for is to do things in a smarter way in L.A., and what that means is to allow for densification of development."