Linking City’s Growth to Help for Poor Urged

A proposal linking revitalization of impoverished areas of Los Angeles to booming downtown development was presented Saturday at a conference organized by minority leaders to discuss the problems of the city’s unbalanced economic growth.

Almost 200 community leaders, elected officials and union representatives attended the conference at Occidental College, which addressed the issue of low-income neighborhoods being neglected while economic development has been directed downtown.

Manuel Pastor, an economics professor at Occidental and proponent of a proposal to link downtown development with economic help elsewhere, said the plan would “require that if corporations develop a parcel downtown, that they also develop a parcel in South-Central or in East Los Angeles, or that they contribute to a housing fund” for those areas.

The plan, which gained some support from conference-goers, would require developers and corporations to address what Pastor called the “economic polarization” of the community between the haves and have-nots.

Pastor said similar plans have been successful in other cities--such as Boston--which like Los Angeles have booming downtowns and deteriorating neighborhoods.

The conference was intended to mobilize minority community groups involved in grass-roots development issues. Organizers hope to take suggestions from Saturday’s conference and develop a series of land use and planning proposals for local government officials.

Pastor, Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Asian Pacific Legal Center, and Mark Ridley-Thomas, executive director of Southern Christian Leadership Conference West, organized the conference. They noted that ethnic minorities now make up 54% of the city’s population, constituting a “new majority.”

“Rather than focusing on what potentially divides us, rather than seeing each other as threats, we see each other as allies,” said Ridley-Thomas, referring to an informal alliance among leaders of minority communities.

Organizers said they do not know when they will present their inner-city development proposals to local officials.