Close to Mankind

I root through property descriptions daily, in print and online. Many are colossally unimaginative, and more than a smattering resort to the 'tired trinity': close to schools, shopping, and transportation.

Close to Schools. It's Los Angeles, there's schools flippin' everywhere. LAUSD alone operates 658 campuses. One online source lists over 100 private K-12's. Throw in a few hundred pre-schools and few hundred colleges, from Pacific States University to the American Film Institute to Cleveland Chiropractic College, and you get the picture.  Pick a Thomas Guide page, any Thomas Guide page, there's enough flags to fill the U.N. lobby.

Close to transportation, you mean a busline? Wow, welcome to the greater basin, beaches, foothills, and valleys. The Metropolitan Transit Agency web-site lists 200 express, local, limited, shuttle & circulator lines.  Even the seemingly insufficient MTA rail system stretches over 73 miles (soon to be 80 with 2009's Gold Line extension), to say nothing of Metrolink commuter trains.  

Shopping? Commerce, in the city that drove a retailing revolution? A mere place to spend money? Ninety-nine cent stores?  Lazybones corner market?  Tacos de Adam?  

Really, isn't some of the most desirable real estate, deep in the canyons, high in the hills, sequestered at the cul de sac's end, the furthest from schools, transportation, and shopping?