One Lincoln That’s No Monument

Lincoln Boulevard is practically a paradigm for what troubles Southern California.

This is the major thoroughfare that runs through the city of Los Angeles’ Westchester community, the county’s Marina del Rey and north into Santa Monica. The street also borders Culver City.

Lincoln Boulevard is a living, if gridlocked, example of why the notion of regional government must move out of the realm of civics lectures and into the real world where Southern Californians are choking from environmental problems that do not respect municipal boundaries.

Along a four-mile stretch of the Lincoln corridor, various developers and local governments are currently proposing to add office space equal to nearly half that in downtown Los Angeles, enough retail space to house four Westside Pavilion malls and more housing units than in all Hermosa Beach. Just picture it.

At the heart of the matter, of course, is money, and the potential tax revenue that one locality can hope to gain by allowing construction of a huge commercial or residential development. Of course, the traffic, air quality or sewer demands caused by a particular development spill over into surrounding communities as well. That’s the unhealthy fallout.

No local government is blameless in this kill-or-be-killed game, a game fueled by the increasingly cutthroat competition for tax dollars. When city and county governments know they cannot count on sufficient state and federal help to provide government services, the “I’ve-got-mine” mentality translates into the kind of runaway development proposed for the Lincoln corridor.

That is why so many urban planners who are thinking beyond neighborhood boundaries recommend regional government for the “big picture” items like transportation, air quality and water. The regional government bill introduced last month by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and other efforts like it deserve serious and thoughtful discussion by concerned citizens as well as by lawmakers. Our lungs, idling cars and water faucets really don’t care whether they’re choking in Marina del Rey or Culver City.