Planning guru has a pep talk with L.A. City Council

By Steve Hymon

Oct. 8, 2007 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

A couple of weeks ago, a man named Jaime Lerner dropped by City Hall for a visit. Actually it was more like a pep talk for the entire populace of Los Angeles, not to mention the city Planning Department, which had invited him here.

Jaime Lerner, of course, is not exactly a household name. In terms of local connections, he is best known as the former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, the city whose expansive system of busways inspired the Orange Line in the San Fernando Valley.

Lerner is also known in planning circles as a guru of “sustainability” -- as someone who took a growing city and helped it build a new transit system and new parks. His message, in short, is that cities can be environment-friendly, pleasant places to live and work and walk. . . .

If what?

If everyone can get on the same page. Here are a few excerpts from his hourlong speech in council chambers:

On turning cities around: “Is it possible to make a city better and improve its quality of life? Every city in the world can make it better in less than three years. All you need is a shared dream.”

On the automobile: “He is the kind of person you invite to a party and he never leaves. . . . He’s very demanding. . . . The car is like our mother-in-law. We have to have a good relationship, but we can’t let it ruin our lives.”

On his commandments of sustainability: “Provide a good transport system within a decade that allows most people to use mass transit to get where they’re going on a routine day. . . . Improve downtown so that it’s not empty half the time -- it should be the city’s heartbeat.”

But isn’t that just the same ol’ feel-good, “Let’s make it happen” stuff we often hear from local politicians?

Yes, but Lerner said it better than most.

Any other intriguing ideas from him?

Yes, there was one we really liked: At one point, Lerner talked about something he called “urban acupuncture.”

The idea is that a city can tremendously improve its appearance by installing a few exceptionally well-designed buildings or street-scape-type features that either make everything else around it look good or, at the least, distract from how bad everything else looks.

Among the examples he pointed to were the stylish entrances to the Paris and Bilbao, Spain, subways. Anything, he said, would do the trick -- even sleek newsstands.

Deputy Los Angeles planner Jane Blumenfeld was enthralled with the idea and launched a pretty good idea of her own: Host a small competition each year in which the city provides a little bit of funding to anyone who comes up with a great “urban acupuncture” idea.

Of course, it would help if the city had money. But the city’s finances at the moment are in a downturn thanks to declining tax revenue.

Which leads us to . . . what’s up with that telephone tax that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants to put on the February ballot?

The city currently collects the tax, but three lawsuits have challenged its legality for a variety of reasons that are both technical and exceptionally boring to describe.

The gist of it is that Villaraigosa wants to give residents a slight tax cut in exchange for their voting to keep the tax, thus ensuring its legality.

At stake is about $270 million in annual revenue.

If the city were to lose that money, it would be bad news for the budget and city services. Politically attuned readers may note that Villaraigosa will be up for reelection in 2009 and may run for governor in 2010.

And the last thing he wants to do on the campaign trail is explain why the city had to slash services.

Remember -- this is a city that makes residents fork over half the cost of sidewalk repairs in order to expedite them.

So Angelenos have reduced their per-capita water use in recent years. Should they be patting one another on the back?

Not yet. Check out the accompanying chart, which shows that the amount of electricity consumed in single-family homes has crept up in recent years.

Among the explanations for the trend, according to officials at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, are that homes are larger and therefore consume more power to keep cool.

Homes, too, are increasingly crowded with more electronic doohickeys such as super-sized television sets and computers.

The DWP says it is going to hand 2 million fluorescent lightbulbs to residents over the next year to promote more power savings. Those bulbs consume far less energy than a standard bulb.

On the subject of saving power, when is the city-county “lights out” event?

County Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke and City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel want residents and businesses to turn out “nonessential” lights between 8 and 9 p.m. on Oct. 20. “It’s a great opportunity to conserve,” Burke said recently.

It is apparently OK to keep “nonessential” appliances fired up during that time.

So it’s OK to be looking at something naughty on the computer or watching the baseball playoffs that evening -- just do it in the dark.

What lurks in the Los Angeles River?

The group Friends of the River has been conducting fish surveys in the river in recent weeks. The second survey was done just north of downtown Los Angeles near the Metrolink rail yards.

The yield: about 25 carp, 50 green sunfish, 100 tilapia, 20 to 25 black bullhead (a type of catfish), 80 to 100 fathead minnows, several hundred mosquito fish and a handful of armored catfish.

The good news is that none of the fish had three eyes. The potentially even better news is that several of the fish were sent to a lab to test for toxins. We’ll let you know when the results are in.

What about that developer’s idea to fund the subway?

Attentive readers may recall that developer Ken Kahan proposed recently in this space to use tax increments from parcels along Wilshire Boulevard to help fund the subway-to-the-sea.

Tax increments are the difference in property taxes when a property is sold or redeveloped.

Maybe it’s a great idea, maybe not. At least it’s an idea. We invited local pols to weigh in with their thoughts, and a few did. One who didn’t was County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, an MTA board member and Westsider who in the past has never been shy about piping up over traffic and mass transit. Interesting.

City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel said the plan was worth looking at.

In her view, building mass transit often increases the value of nearby properties, and that could generate the increment to pay for the transit.

“Is this the end-all? I don’t know,” Greuel said. “But we should never close our eyes to ways to make it happen.”

We’ve run out of space this week, but we have some more reaction, and we’ll get to that another time.

Next week: Night skies.

steve.hymon@latimes.com

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Subway meetings

Before the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority can build a subway along Wilshire Boulevard, it first must do a so-called alternatives study.

The idea is to see whether the subway is the best way to provide mass transit to the Westside. The MTA will hold five meetings this month to allow the public to learn more about the rail line. All of the meetings are from 6 to 8 p.m.:

Tuesday:

Emerson Middle School,

1650 Selby Ave., Westwood

Thursday:

Pan Pacific Recreation Center,

7600 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles

Oct. 16:

Wilshire United Methodist Church,

4350 Wilshire Blvd., Windsor Square

Oct. 17:

Beverly Hills Public Library,

444 N. Rexford Drive