A few suggestions to shine up the Big Apple might give the Big Orange a brighter glow

Recently the New York Times asked 10 distinguished citizens for their ideas on how the city might be improved.

They asked them to look beyond the familiar political problems to “modest changes” or “imaginative approaches” that could “help make New York a better city.”

Most of their ideas, it seems to me, might make life better in Los Angeles, too.

Lewis H. Lapham, editor of Harper’s, suggested that New Yorkers see their city as a city, rather than a wilderness of preying wolves. He proposed that big companies make gifts of streets, public schools, subway cars and so forth, making the purchases and doing the work themselves, and deducting the cost from taxes. “Under no circumstances must any money be entrusted to politicians.”

Sidney Zion, lawyer-journalist, said lift the prohibition on drugs, thus dismantling a vicious industry, reducing street crime, easing the burden on law enforcement and freeing victims.

John Chancellor, NBC commentator, said keep the trucks off Fifth Avenue.

Bayard Rustin, civil rights leader, said restore toilets in subways: “Anyone who has visited a major European city knows it is within the capacity of human intelligence to provide decent and safe public facilities.”

Brendan Gill, a writer for the New Yorker, said rehabilitate old houses, for people, instead of building new concrete towers for corporations.

Don Darling, a pitcher for the New York Mets, said “get our priorities straight.” Keep teen-agers from drinking; put our best minds on the drug problem, and build a domed stadium for the Mets and Giants.

Benno C. Schmidt Jr., dean of Columbia Law School, said give drivers better signs.

Mel Levy, a senior engineer in the Transit Authority, said use the brains of city employees, instead of hiring expensive outside counselors who bring disasters.

Roy M. Cohn, lawyer, said “demystify the ballot,” which needs no explanation to anyone who has ever tried to understand a proposition.

Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, said be responsible for a cleaner city: “Encourage citizens to bring out their brooms and trash bags once a week on behalf of a pleasanter New York.”

Not only would some of those be good ideas for Los Angeles, they wouldn’t be too hard to do.

I am convinced, for example, that public awareness is the answer to our litter problem, and we have one. More signs saying DON’T LITTER; more trash barrels, more sweeps; maybe even a little light enforcement of the anti-litter laws.

As I recently observed, the streets in Germany are clean; why not here?

I also noticed in Paris that there are many toilet facilities on the street, with signs now and then pointing in their direction. This is unknown in Los Angeles. We are lucky if gas station toilets are unlocked.

Of course in Paris you are likely to find a dour old woman tending the toilets, and you are required to drop 1 franc 20 centimes in her hand or in a dish, before you can enter. But that is cheap enough, if you’re in a hurry.

I suspect there are so few public facilities in the United States because we are still a prudish people, and don’t like the idea of public toilets. We evidently assume that nice people don’t have to go.

Why not require all new office buildings to have public facilities on the ground floor?

As for Gill’s idea of housing humans, not corporations, I notice that Los Angeles, like New York City, has thousands of fine old houses, many built in the first two decades of the century, that are being allowed to decay and vanish while towers keep rising in their place. All over the central area these houses exist, from downtown to Beverly Hills, from Hollywood to Baldwin Hills. Why can’t they be refinanced, improved and preserved, to give us a city of less density, more individuality and more human warmth?

But I suppose that is more revolutionary than public toilets.

Our signs for drivers aren’t too bad. This city exists for drivers. Even so, there are too few signs pointing in general directions, saying, for example, this way to Hollywood, to Griffith Park, to downtown, to the Coliseum. You have to get there first. Also, many freeway on-ramp signs in the city are hidden behind bushes and small trees. I’m not against vegetation, but couldn’t it be trimmed to make signs visible?

I don’t know whether our city employees would give us better improvements than hired experts or not, but we always are hiring experts and empowering commissions and they sometimes blunder. Whatever happened to Bunker Hill? I suppose we will hire experts to build the Great Subway and it will be a Great Disaster.

As for giving drugs to junkies, I am convinced that prohibition doesn’t work for drugs any more than it worked for alcohol. Sidney Zion quotes Ring Lardner: “Prohibition is better than no booze at all.”

I am not an expert on that complex problem, but it’s obvious that we are spending billions on anti-drug enforcement and losing the war, meanwhile creating a new kind of street criminal, a new, powerful and ruthless criminal elite, a national mood of lawlessness and violence, and a miserable class of dependent victims.

Zion asks: “What if we gave them the drugs, and let the doctors administer the drugs, for no money and no strings? Druggies on the nod are no danger to us. Immoral, you say? Permissive? Tell it to the victims and their families.”

Meanwhile, why don’t we pay teachers more, keep libraries open longer, and everybody plant more bougainvillea?