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XUrban Activists Are Using TikTok To Highlight LA’s Housing Problems
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

Known as a platform for dancing teens, TikTok is also becoming a community space for young users to bring attention to wonky civic issues like housing and transportation.
A growing number of TikTok users are taking to the app to discuss how hard it can be to exist in Los Angeles. In one example, a user complains about Google Maps claiming a sidewalk-less road is walkable. In others, users bring up exorbitant housing prices while cyclists demonstrate the lack of bike lanes.
Videos ranging from homogenous suburban developments to accessible public transit have found a growing audience. #Urbanism has amassed almost 60 million views, #suburbs has over 194 million views and #urbanplanning has 184 million views. Across the board, the top videos under each hashtag do not paint American cities in a positive light.
Such content isn’t unique to Los Angeles. Young users across TikTok mock ever-expanding highways and indistinguishable intersections. But Southern California,—where cars reign supreme and suburbs keep sprawling—seems particularly central to the growing discussion about transportation and urban planning.
Max Dubler, the communication manager at Abundant Housing L.A., said the public discourse around urban issues has moved away from academics and policymakers and into online spaces. Its first home was on the Facebook group New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teens, which gained traction in tandem with the Yes In My Back Yard movement. Since then, Dubler said people have gained large followings across different platforms by discussing urbanist issues. The shift away from more traditional outlets, like academic journals, has drawn in new audiences by highlighting how these topics impact their lives. TikTok’s visual element helps make the conceptual topics more understandable.
“A lot of this stuff is highly visual,” Dubler said. “You can have all the diagrams and charts as you want, but people understand what this kind of dumpy little teardown house turned into 15 apartments looks like and they can understand that this six-lane arterial street got redone with some trees in a bike lane. You could show people that and they understand it and they're like, I want that for my life.”
How Short Videos Get at the Larger Concepts
One of TikTok’s early urbanists is Jake Gotta, who took to TikTok due to pandemic-induced boredom.
Crammed between videos of dance trends, Gotta said his videos were able to carve out a specific niche for viewers. In short clips, he could dive into issues like affordable housing or zoning laws in order to inform people about problems impacting their lives.
@beachboyz2men Thrifty ice cream is living history (and only $2!!) #icecream #thrifty #california #riteaid #sodafountain #dessert #history #foodhistory #vestige #remnant #socal #helado
“Hopefully, that gets people to start understanding that all of this is a larger systemic issue and there's not just one quick fix,” Gotta said. “They start to understand more of the larger concept from getting all these little consumable bites”
TikTok offers Greg Ruben a platform for him to look at Los Angeles with fresh eyes after nine years spent in New York. He has delved into the history of the old houses in his neighborhood, Highland Park. A video on El Mio, also known as the Smith Estate, performed well, and that led Ruben to explore why L.A. is the city that it is. Even some of L.A.’s iconic, towering palm trees reveal how the city is man-made; the land used to feature mainly chaparral plants. With TikTok, Ruben explores how specific choices shaped the city.
“Everything here was brought by someone,” Ruben said. “There's really interesting historical and cultural context when you try to find out why those plants, why these architectural styles, why this layout of the city.”
Highlighting specific locations can help provide context for Los Angeles’ current state, Ruben said. A video on bungalow courts—a style of housing unique to early 20th century L.A.—can point to the history of affordable housing solutions in the city, while discussing the stairs in L.A. shows that the city once prioritized streetcars.
“I would love to imagine what would have happened if we had kept building that type of infrastructure—more pedestrian and streetcar infrastructure—and kept those alive.” Ruben said.
Making Policies Personal
Showing off the human element of urban issues is what makes TikTok so useful to John Yi, the executive director of Los Angeles Walks. The discussion is often focused on city politics and infrastructure. His personal TikTok account allows him to show off his neighborhood, Koreatown, and demonstrate how those ideas are actualized in the streets. According to Yi, highlighting sidewalks built for cars or inaccessible parks can urge people to reconsider their own community spaces.
“I think that reframing something that's mundane in a slightly different way has been able to really attract people's attention,” Yi said.
TikTok’s format helps provide context for the theoretical content such creators often explore. From Gotta walking the hills of UCLA while discussing university housing to Ruben showing off staircases to Yi taking viewers through the streets of Koreatown, providing visuals can help viewers understand conceptual ideas. Time spent traversing the city to film content on top of the research that goes into each video can quickly add up. Reuben said he spends about five hours on each video, but payouts from TikTok’s controversial creator fund don’t amount to much.
Fostering community discussion keeps creators going back to the platform. TikTok’s algorithm helps push content to communities Ruben didn’t even know existed—a video about Cold War air raid sirens reached a whole group of users dedicated to the topic. But beyond self-proclaimed experts, Gotta said the algorithm can reach people who may have never considered how issues like local zoning laws were affecting their daily lives.
Gen Z is Looking for Answers
According to a Credit Karma report, about one-third of Gen Z live with family, and the rest have to set aside roughly half their monthly income for housing. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who could become the first Gen Z member of congress, focused part of his platform on affordable housing. And as climate change progresses, both Gen Z and millennials are turning to public transit, while fewer teenagers are getting driver's licenses.
Yi said younger generations, who tend to be interested in sustainability and environmentalism, have yet to fully tap into the transportation justice movement. Social media platforms like TikTok provide spaces to engage with these ideas, he said.
“Social media is like any other medium we've had in history, like television or radio,” Yi said. “[These] things have helped spread ideas and build community. I think social media is just taking the same page as all these others, but it's just a different medium now.”
Shifting complex conversations away from spaces dominated by credible experts, however, can lead to misinformation. Dubler said that housing can be a hard-to-understand technical topic, especially as some ideas within the space may seem counterintuitive. Just as TikTok’s visual element helps humanize the issue, he said it can also capitalize on those gut reactions with misconstrued facts. Big claims—such as Los Angeles having a certain number of empty homes compared to its homeless population—connect with people on a human level, but can lead them to draw incorrect conclusions. Much of what Abundant Housing LA is doing on social media is responding to false claims, Dubler said.
“It's like a little bit of nuance gets lost in translation when you're going from the policy, press and the academic journals to 280 characters on Twitter or 30 seconds on TikTok,” Dubler said.
Asking TikTok users to shape urban policy might be a big stretch. For Gotta, it serves as a useful tool to inform people of issues. A minute-long video won’t solve Los Angeles’ housing issues—but Gotta said it can get people to consider larger systemic issues. It also helps provide answers for topics that are of increasing concern to a young generation growing into adulthood.
“There's an entire generation growing up…that never thought they'd have a chance of buying a home unless they come from family wealth, [or] unless they got super lucky,” Gotta said. “Everyone's realizing that as they grow up, and searching for a reason why.”
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Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
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'Esports Winter’ is a Myth, Local Gaming Execs Say
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
Last year, global venture capital investment in esports dropped by more than 40%. Investors have been rapidly selling off teams and franchises, and the industry has witnessed a consistent decline in ad spend. This has prompted many critics to coin the term “esports winter,” referring to a fall-off in the industry, an indication that VCs believe their investments didn’t achieve success as expected.
A recent article in The New York Times highlighted two major esports leagues that recently divested from their teams: Madison Square Garden sold its team CounterLogic Gaming to NRG in April, while Team SoloMid sold its League of Legends Championship Series team in late May.
Arguing that the industry still has potential for growth, several gaming executives at a LA Tech Week panel said that instead of an “esports winter,” the industry was experiencing a period of “normalization.” The panel at SoHo House in West Hollywood featured Brian Anderson, CEO of Culver City-based esports outfit FlyQuest Sport, Gene Chorba, head of developer relations at Roku and Felix LaHaye, founder of United Esports.
“I'm actually very skeptical of the claim of an esports winter,” Anderson said. “I think that what I'm seeing in the market right now, ultimately, is just a lot of venture capital firms that deployed capital into the eSports space that are not generating the returns that they were looking for, and have now done the press junket and are labeling it an esports winter.”
“In reality,” Anderson said, “esports, in my view, is alive and well.”
Anderson said there were a lot of “unrealistic expectations” around esports since it became popular in 2016, and the current decline was a sign that the market was correcting itself. “This is a necessary pain point that any nascent industry is going to go through as it matures and develops, and I think that in, let's say, 24 months, 36 months, esports will be in a much better financially sustainable place,” he said.
“I think we're having a little bit of a normalization,” Chorba said. “We saw the entire economy was being shot to the moon, with nothing behind it… we were seeing valuations of companies, public and private, that just didn't make sense for what they were building.”
Other tech industries have experienced a similar “normalization” in recent years. Cryptocurrencies, NFTs and big tech have all seen a downturn in recent months after being flooded with VC interest for many years.
According to the panelists, the existing viewer base for esports was a clear sign that the industry still had potential for growth. “There's still a ton of attention on professional video games. There's still so much grassroots fan support,” Anderson said. “As long as organizations and developers are able to figure out how to actually monetize that fan base, I think esports is still alive and well and here to stay for a long time.”
According to Insider Intelligence in 2022, there were 532 million esports viewers globally, with nearly 30 million viewers in the U.S.; this is expected to increase to 34.8 million by 2026.
Chorba explained that the reduction in ad spend and brand deals in esports shouldn’t worry investors because these crucial revenue streams have slowed down for other industries as well. “Ad-supported is hemorrhaging money and really just trying to wait out what's really a bad economy right now,” he said. As more people stop paying for cable, Chorba said, eyeballs will move onto streaming sites like YouTube or Twitch to watch gaming content.
LaHaye and Chorba said that one of the reasons for the decline in esports investments could be that executives and VCs are running esports companies like tech or SaaS companies. “As a matter of fact, they are not tech companies. They are ad-supported entertainment products,” LaHaye said.
By taking their companies to IPOs too early, certain esports companies ruined their chances in the market, LaHaye added. “There's also a downswing that's done by a rush to [go] public,” he said. “There are some fairly poor business models in esports that are going through a rougher time.”
“[Game publishing] is a hit-making business,” LaHaye said. “I think there tends to be confusion between what is a fundamental issue for the esports industry itself and some business models within the esports industry being bad business.”
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Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
L.A. Tech Week has brought venture capitalists, founders and entrepreneurs from around the world to the California coast. With so many tech nerds in one place, it's easy to laugh, joke and reminisce about the future of tech in SoCal.
Here's what people are saying about day four of L.A. Tech Week on social:
Day two of #LATechWeek was so much fun at the @dotLA event—I ran into old friends and somehow I keep running into my H-Town people. The music and vibes by @dnice were so dope! @Techweek_#techweek23 🎉💃🏻🎶 pic.twitter.com/77E6EbfoGk
— Christina 💜 (@Themetamaven) June 8, 2023
It was terrific fun to see my #LongLA guy @spencerrascoff and his entire awesome @dotLA team show out for our entrepreneurial economy last night! @Miguel@AustinEkeler#PledgeLA team ❤️🫶🙌🥳🎉 we’re all building thr foundation of LA’s next 50-100yrs right now! 🌎🥳 Energy &… pic.twitter.com/hJwwpb4iNm
— Rob Ryan (@IAmRobRyan) June 8, 2023
Exciting energy at LA’s Earliest Stage Investors and Founders rooftop sunset mixer #LATechWeek
hosted by @fikavc@MaCVentureCap@blingcapital@amplifyla@techweek_pic.twitter.com/HWmhOmfm7N
— WeAreLATech📍Los Angeles 🌊 (@WeAreLATech) June 8, 2023
Thanks to the whole #musictech & LA Tech community for mayking #latechweek as fun as it gets at our MAYK HAUS AI MUSIC PARTY & ARTIST SHOWCASE. We had a blast! C U next year! @a16z@KatiaAmeri@Techweek_pic.twitter.com/OqxDPMHLHK
— stefan👄🇺🇦📍music’verse (@stefan_mayk) June 8, 2023
Swinging into the world of VC like a perfectly timed forehand! #InvestorTennis is the newest way to network while staying active. 🎾💼 #LATechWeek@Techweek_@Expert_Dojo@PropelVC@a16zpic.twitter.com/MpfERkjlLw
— Taissa Maleh™️ (@tmaleh9) June 8, 2023
gm LA tech week ✌🏽🌴 pic.twitter.com/DJD22bfE2D
— Tyler Denk 🐝 (@denk_tweets) June 8, 2023
A huge thanks to @upfrontvc and @nickbkim for a great rooftop breakfast event on Day 4 of #LATechWeek! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/UEEixSdzw5
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 8, 2023
#LatechWeek: Reconnecting post-Covid! Delighted to engage with inspiring women founders, collaborators, and climate/ESG investors! pic.twitter.com/qZu7BG6O6Z
— Aalia Mauro (@aaliamauro) June 8, 2023
It was inspiring to see so many bright, self-aware, energetic, young founders dedicated to:
doing things right
not compromising
sharing valuable insights
aspiring to better the world
Everything is cyclical.
Gen Z founders and founders event #LATechWeekpic.twitter.com/bgbLcNIuhu
— Kayla Cho (@0xkycc) June 8, 2023
gathered XR folks for #LATechWeek w/ @pearvc & crowdsourced predictions:
1) 40% expect regular headset wear on planes in 2025
2) 60% think the first @Apple#VisionPro app to reach 1M DAU will be made by a co that already exists
3) 90% say Apple will beat @meta to 100M DAU... pic.twitter.com/pwtBGpbuen
— Keith Bender (@keith__bender) June 8, 2023
halfway thru LA tech week, and I can confidently say Los Angeles has the best, most fun, and diversified tech + VC scene in the country. It's not debatable at this point
— Cass (@cassidyjrdnn) June 8, 2023
Sound baths with the sounds of the ocean at #LATechWeek 😌 pic.twitter.com/KSoV5JIFAr
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 8, 2023
Thank you to everyone who attended our Creator Economy Panel, co-hosted by @unitedtalent VC and @CooleyLLP, at #LATechWeek! And a special thanks to our panelists @CHRISELLEtweets, @MrEddieHuang, and @justinkan! @Techweek_#TechWeekpic.twitter.com/LlkNMQL4Nw
— GOLD HOUSE (@GoldHouseCo) June 8, 2023
Yes, @terryarbaugh and I I did ride @BirdRide scootere 16.6 miles to make it to an #LATechWeek event on time. This pic shows the first leg. We had to swap scooters due to dead batteries 🤣 pic.twitter.com/w3smaciAUd
— Connor Bush (@TheBushFromLA) June 8, 2023
Last night we hosted a #hardwaremeetup at our office for #LATechWeek.
It was an excellent event. Speakers Rahul Dhond from @firstresonance shared his journey in manufacturing and Karthik Gollapudi talked about his experience developing Dragon Flight software at @SpaceXpic.twitter.com/j30epg0gHk
— Duro (@durolabs) June 8, 2023
Going back to Cali! #LATechWeek!
Attending:
- @a16ztxo Demo Day
- @founderfamilia & @VCFamilia panels and after party
- Speaking at @3XPgg Gaming Expo and @DcentralCon@hackapreneur
If you would like to connect, please feel free to hit me up!#startup#founder#web3#nftpic.twitter.com/OPiyV9XMOm
— Jonathan G. ₿lanco 🛠🦄 (@jgproduct) June 8, 2023
We wrapped up our #LATechWeek day in the one-of-a-kind Budman Studios art gallery for "AI Music Showcase & Party," immersed in the future of music + AI! 🎶 pic.twitter.com/qm3VfY9mnW
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 8, 2023
Great sunset soirée by the beach. only in Silicon Beach. 🏖️ let’s https://t.co/qEYeXtxCqe ! #LATechWeek@Techweek_pic.twitter.com/5BOU9iRoqc
— stefan👄🇺🇦📍music’verse (@stefan_mayk) June 8, 2023
We had so much fun celebrating #LATechWeek with our friends from @amplifyla & @techweek_ 🌴
If you've been listening to our World Music 🎧 playlist, what has been your favorite track?#GoGlobal#TechWeekpic.twitter.com/W6tfYWuMLy
— GoGlobal (@goglobalgeo) June 8, 2023
Best part about LA Tech Week? LESS events. MORE intimate spaces with quality humans.@brexHQ Wired. Iykyk pic.twitter.com/nTmgAiShkg
— Jeanine (@JeanineSuah) June 8, 2023
In LA for #LATechWeek with Black Meta Agency tap in and let’s build! #Web3#Tech#VR#AppleXR#AppleMR#Fintech#Blockchain#NFT#Crypto#bmaweb3#lifeandtimesofhj -
Let’s rock!!! pic.twitter.com/VZKqwK9lou
— Howard R. Jean 🇭🇹 • DC • NY (@howardrjean) June 8, 2023
This is me at LA Tech Week
(my 49 year old body can no longer keep up 2023 founders) pic.twitter.com/ISSHdjrQEK
— Ed @ HelloStartup.LA (@hellostartupla) June 8, 2023
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The Impact of Authentic Storytelling. LA Latino/a Founders and Funders Tell All
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
As one of the most diverse cities in the world, Los Angeles is home to almost 5 million people who identify as Hispanic or Latino/a. Yet, many feel they still lack representation in the city’s tech space.
“I can safely say that last year’s LA tech week hosted all of the events on the west side, and very few were focused on telling Latino and Latina entrepreneurial stories,” said Valeria Martinez, investor at VamosVentures. “We wanted to change that this year.”
The event, titled “The East Side Story –– Latino/a Founders and Funders in LA,” was held at Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) in the vibrant Arts District with participation from VamosVentures, LatinxVC, VCFamilia, Supply Change Capital, and LEEAF.
The event was centered around stories about the Latino/a community told by its members. “Storytelling is the most powerful tool we have as human beings,” said restauranteur Bricia Lopez. “We are all here because of the stories that were told to us and the stories that were read to us.”
Lopez’s father migrated to Guadalajara, Mexico because he heard a story about a better life on the other side of the border. While he didn’t have the opportunity to see that “better life,” Lopez wants to share his story with the world in the hopes of inspiring others to share their stories.
“I think for many generations, we were the gatekeepers holding us back from telling our own stories,” Lopez said. “But we are now empowered to share our stories and when we talk about wanting to hear stories from us, it's because we want a mirror into the possibility of who we can become. To me that was how powerful a story is.”
With over 400 RSVPs and a packed house that ranged from founders and investors to vendors and aspiring entrepreneurs, the event brought light to a community hungry for stories they can connect and relate to.
Fanny Grande, CEO of Avenida Entertainment Group, said that on-screen stories about the Latino community are very limited. This lack of representation inspired her to start her production company that aims to empower independent creators.
“The advances of technology, social media and the new generation being very vocal about how they want to be represented gives me hope that things are going to change,” Grande said.
One way Avenida Entertainment Group champions its creators is by providing tech solutions to help fund and produce projects. At the event, Grande announced that her production company plans to launch an English-language streaming service for Latinos to provide visibility to these projects.
“A lot of our clients are so happy that not only did they get their projects made, they're going to be seen by the community who funded the project,” she said.
Patty Rodriguez, co-founder of publishing company Lil’ Libros, aims to give representation to the Latino/a community by publishing bilingual children’s books.
Rodriguez said that entrepreneurship was never a part of her vocabulary while growing up. She also had no experience in publishing before she started her business, but she believed that “we belong on these platforms.” For her, the greatest moments are opening the doors for Latino/a authors and seeing copies of their books at major bookstores.
“It's so beautiful to see your dreams come true and you're working every morning to see them,” she said. “It's wonderful to see them at Target, Barnes & Nobles across the country.”
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.