Los Angeles From Above: The Oneness of Our Plight

The 150 members of the LA 2000 Committee this month urged us to look at the Los Angeles Basin from the vantage point of an airline passenger who sees a vast urban area stretching from horizon to horizon.

See it as one area, the committee said, beset by communal problems--pollution, transportation, governance--that increasingly affect the quality of life. LA 2000, whose members include corporate leaders, preservationists, developers, educators, clerics and ethnic and cultural representatives, finds the area reaching “critical mass . . . self-energized by its bigness, drawing to itself more people, energy and wealth to become even bigger and more powerful.”

Lest we become a “Balkanized landscape of political fortresses, each guarding its own resources in the midst of divisiveness, overcrowded freeways, antiquated sewers, ineffective schools, inadequate human services and a polluted environment,” the committee proposes overarching regional agencies for growth management and environmental quality.

All of this brings a sense of pain to some of us who have “been there,” tackling the same problems over the past 20 years--and recognizing that growth problems will not be solvable without a structural change in the way planning is conducted. For planning is the logical answer in dealing with local problems of growth.

The concept of regional planning is not new. The subject has been one of great urgency to some people--and of evil consequences to others. It embraces an unknown future, a void “out there” on which its form and character even the experts disagree. William R. Ewald Jr., a “planner’s planner,” once said, “Planning is unrelated to the basic issues and what we actually do; there should be an essential bond between thinking and doing .” That was more than a decade ago; how little we have learned about managing our environment.

A combination of technology and population growth, with its concentration in urban centers, has produced a metropolitan region that today does not even resemble the one we considered unmanageable in the 1960s. The issues of growth embrace not only land use and the swelling of population, but cover a whole spectrum of environmental and social consequences. Yet instead of conducting a broad public dialogue on the growth issues and ways to deal with them, we have dichotomy. While we realize that we can’t have instant solutions, we have not yet accepted what Ewald calls our period of “epic change”--the fact that we have outstripped our current institutions. While we recognize the problems, we ignore the fact that our institutions are relics of pioneer days. One day we must recognize the need for a regional governmental structure: Our problems are no longer local problems.

Small cities in metropolitan areas used to be manageable. They were formed primarily for the purpose of governing those who have common interests. People could plan their own destinies, govern themselves and exercise community participation at its democratic best. The small community could provide conveniences, yet serve as a satisfying counterbalance to the aggressiveness of the large city.

But while each political boundary seemed to circumscribe a paradise for those who carved it out, something went awry. For many years small communities managed to govern fairly well by establishing special districts, joint-powers agreements with adjoining cities and contractual arrangements with the county to supply services. The Los Angeles metropolitan area, with its many small cities, developed a unique and manageable pattern of government that, for a time, was studied as a model for other metropolitan areas around the nation. “Home rule” became a shibboleth of American patriotism; anything that impinged upon it was suspected of being subversive.

At a UCLA colloquium nearly two decades ago, a group of small-city mayors met with regional-planning exponents to look at some bold new ideas aimed at alleviating the pain and struggle of satellite cities in the metropolitan area. But the mayors were so dedicated to the need for a small city’s existence that they spent the entire session justifying the reasons for their being--while lamenting their plight. What they made clear was their vulnerability to economic factors beyond their control. Today these same outside forces are still beyond local control, and cities are helpless to prevent changes.

Good planning on a regional scale can bring sanity to the problem of growth and help create an environment of citizens’ choosing. The Southern California Assn. of Governments has set guidelines for regional growth that could create a more liveable region. But SCAG has no power to put its programs in place, and can only close the purse strings of federal and state sources when a project does not conform to guidelines. In each county of the region, there are jurisdictional entities that can override SCAG guidelines in the interests of local goals.

Federal and state laws have forced local communities to look at their old ways and prerogatives in a new light. But there are still many forces resisting environmental protection acts, the Federal Clean Air Act, environmental impact statements--for private as well as public projects--and other stringent laws requiring conformity to new regional and state standards.

Continuous, effective regional planning, culminating in a regional plan, cannot happen without a regional structure to give it force and validity equal to the task. What would it take?

It might require a realignment of county government and a change in the state Constitution. There have been some excellent concepts proposed in the past--by California Tomorrow, the League of California Cities, the Regional Plan Assn. of Southern California, state legislation calling for more powers for SCAG, plus guidelines for reshaping government in metropolitan areas by the California Council of Intergovernmental Relations. Regional commissions have been created through statewide initiatives, such as the Regional Coastal Commission, an outstanding example of citizen pressure bypassing legislative inattention to the urgency of the times.

Development of a master regional plan through a newly conceived regional mechanism, either a new form of government or a powerful agency, could help shape the Southland of tomorrow. We now know that major problems of urban growth won’t be solved unless we share the functional responsibilities. We know that no one of the current entities can handle the whole job--but we have found that one of the strongest parts of the equation is that third force , the citizen sector. Citizens can address the need for regional solutions and set the broader goals to raise the quality of life.

If we are in an epic time, as Ewald warns us, we must design bold new patterns to meet the changes in the second half of this century. By taking a pragmatic approach, as expressed in Fischer’s Law--”In American politics, nothing much happens until the status quo becomes more painful than change”--we can be sure things will get much worse before serious remedies are applied.

Let us hope we have the foresight to shun that conventional wisdom and start now to “think regional.” Given the money and talent available in this fabled place, we can develop a system that balances growth with proper regard for the quality of life for every Southern California community.