Planners Asked to Show, Not Tell

“After 23 Years, Poorest Regions to Get Economic Boost,” declared a headline of a recent story in the Metro section of this newspaper, reporting that a large swath of ailing South-Central Los Angeles had been targeted for redevelopment by both city and county agencies.

What the headline should have read, of course, was, “Planners and Other Bureaucrats to Get Economic Boost, Poorest Regions, Maybe.”

This is not to question the good will of the agencies involved and the need to aid South-Central. The area can use all the help it can get and more, and that before stumbling forward, those involved should have some sort of community understanding and renewal strategy to guide the effort.

It is the least we can ask for when scarce public funds are involved. But those funds should be used to generate real projects, such as needed housing, vest-pocket parks and street beautification, not just for salaries of bureaucrats downtown, grants to pandering consultants or subsidies for well-connected real estate speculators, as has happened in the past.

Though redevelopment programs tend to be well-intentioned, too often they seem to get stuck in an uncharted bureaucratic bog infested with civil serpents. Indeed, some government workers have spent careers there, up to their waists in a paper-based muck, perfecting the art of evasion.

It is not that they don’t care, they say to anyone who asks. And then they go on and on, indignantly telling you why something can’t be found, or can’t be done, or why they can easily do it, but won’t. It is sometimes amazing to me that anything gets done in government.

I just hope that South-Central is not in line again for some grand macro-planning effort, centered in a cluster of offices in the bowels of the civic center, to be dragged out over a number of years, at the end of which a stack of reports will be released, heavy with statements of the problems, weighted by charts and multicolored maps, but light on recommendations and implementation. In short, full of sound and fluff, signifying nothing.

But far be it for me to sacrilegiously score the ancient administrative rites focused on the “in” and “out” basket and weaken the ranks of the civil service. However, while the long-range planning effort for South-Central inexorably moves forward, like some elephant in mud, it would be refreshing if there also could be some short-range, so-called pro-active micro-planning demonstrations.

If anything, such demonstrations should thicken the ranks of planners, involving intensive resident participation in a door-to-door, block-by-block exploration of what type of industry, commerce and housing is needed; where it can be best sited, how neighborhoods can be stabilized, housing preserved and streets, schools, security and, generally, city services, improved.

And while the planning process continues, implementation should begin as soon as possible, even if it is just a street closing or street beautification. For most neighborhood residents, planning is not real unless they can touch a result, be it a traffic barrier or a housing project.

Until that time, planning is considered a polite subterfuge, something to divert concerned communities while special interests huddle with politicians to make the real decisions downtown.

To be effective, planning is going to have to be a process that begins in the neighborhood, from the bottom up, starting with a modest project and moving from person to person, house to house, block by block, hopefully, to generate a success that will breed more successes.

That is how communities are renewed, not by bureaucrats and politicians rearranging offices and furniture downtown, appointing advisory committees, holding all-day conferences, commissioning studies, issuing reports and arranging press conferences. It is time for planning, to use a South-Central colloquialism, to get down.

And talk about studies, reports and multicolored charts, I am curious to see what will be issued at a press conference this week by the Los Angeles 2000 Committee, a citizens group organized by Mayor Tom Bradley to help guide the city’s development in the 21st Century.

Being a literal-minded journalist faced with periodic deadlines, I tend to be wary of futurism, thinking of it as a way to avoid dealing with the myriad problems of the present. Such preoccupations might titillate the academic community, but they have harmed the credibility of planners, reinforcing an image of timidity.

When I used that phrase last July to describe city Planning Director Ken Topping in a column wondering what his staff was doing other than to secure parking privileges and other benefits for themselves, I received a detailed letter from the department outlining a variety of programs aimed at making the city “a more livable urban place.”

According to the letter signed by Topping, the programs include community plan revisions “getting under way,” advisory committees “being established,” a new urban design unit that “will be formed,” antiquated, redundant mapping “being replaced,” and “for the first time in years, a work program is guiding, prioritizing, and scheduling a longstanding heavy overload of planning projects requested by the City Council.”

In addition, the letter stated “a neighborhood planning division has been designated to focus attention more directly on important local issues,” and “a fledgling citywide planning program centering on transportation, growth, air quality, urban form and waste management, is rising from the ashes of Prop. 13.”

It all sounded fine. But I wanted to know what indeed had been accomplished, or simply how have all, or one, of these activities made the city “a more livable urban place,” better yet make one block more livable by controlling traffic, reshaping the streetscape or forcing the construction of a more neighborly project.

“Don’t tell me,” I suggested to Topping at a subsequent meeting with him and his staff. “Show me.”

A lot of arrows are being shot into the air these days by the planning and development community. The hope here is that a few will hit their targets.