Growth: Disease or Blessing?

You sometimes get the idea that Los Angeles County Supervisors never met a building project they didn’t like, no matter what damage it might do to the environment or to what extent it will cram more autos onto the roads. The board voted 4-1 this past week to permit the filling of another canyon on the Malibu coast, this time for a golf club, resort and exclusive homes.

In stark contrast, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley was providing the sort of leadership the region needs by trying to reduce the impact of a $2-billion project north of Chatsworth that involves 2,195 homes, 1,200 townhouses and nearly 6 million square feet of office space. Bradley threatened to veto the project unless the developer built homes that are affordable to less-affluent buyers, reduced parking space to encourage ride-sharing and transit facilities and provided a better mix of residential and commercial property.

And when City Councilman Hal Bernson, the project’s sponsor, modified the plan to get itthrough committee on a 2-1 vote, Bradley accurately labeled the alterations as cosmetic and said they do not change the fundamental problems of the massive development. The full council should reject the plan as currently proposed. If not, Bradley should veto it.

At Malibu, the developer asserted that the resort was planned to protect the environment. That would be some trick: Approximately 5 million cubic yards of dirt would have to be moved to fill in the canyon.

Southern California needs development--and redevelopment--that provides new jobs and affordable housing. But this surely does not mean filling canyons along the coast or building super-scale projects that will further overload highways and other public facilities. There must be limits, or else the cumulative impacts of growth will overwhelm the natural assets that made Southern California so attractive to newcomers in the first place.