Valley Residents Express Hope, Dismay Over L.A. Life : Development: Input is meant to help planners set a course that reconciles economic growth with environmental protection and narrows class differences.

Dozens of dreamers and doubters from across the San Fernando Valley turned out Wednesday night to share their visions of how Los Angeles should look and function in the next century, helping urban planners to redraw the city’s blueprint for future growth.

Some came to watch, some to criticize and some to contribute to the Los Angeles Planning Department’s efforts to update the city’s General Plan, but almost all agreed that these days, the City of Angels is at times a hellish place to live.

Among the hopeful--sort of--were longtime Woodland Hills residents Glenda and Donald Zeledon. They are thinking about buying a house in Palm Desert and fleeing Los Angeles, as they say many of their friends have already done. But it is not a move they particularly want to make, they said.

“We are really trying,” Glenda Zeledon said, “but we don’t see any real evidence of anything changing.”

They came to the meeting looking for ways to clean up the graffiti that scars their neighborhood, they said. “We are disillusioned and disenchanted with California right now,” she said.

Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn., was one of the doubters.

Wednesday’s efforts come 20 years too late, he said. “They’re looking for Band-Aid results,” Schultz said. “We can discuss the problems, but I don’t know that we can solve them. I’ve seen the city get to this stage, so I’m not encouraged as to where we will be 45 years from now.”

Wednesday’s meeting was the third citywide--and the first in the Valley--in a series intended to elicit public input on redrawing the Los Angeles General Plan to guide the city’s development over the next 50 years. The current plan was adopted in 1974.

The undertaking is an ambitious and unprecedented project. City officials are trying to combine traditional urban planning approaches with mass transit plans and reconcile the need for robust economic development with environmental protection.

Planners hope to narrow the differences between poor and upper-middle-class areas, such as South-Central and Woodland Hills, by spreading the burdens and benefits of new development evenly throughout the city.

The goals of the project, which is scheduled to go before the city Planning Commission in November, 1994, include:

* Reducing traffic congestion and cleaning the air by improving public transportation systems and directing them into targeted areas to stimulate economic growth.

* Revitalizing poor communities while preserving neighborhoods.

* Encouraging the construction of affordable housing.

* Streamlining the approval process for new development by eliminating the burdensome environmental-review process for some projects, while at the same time conserving natural resources.

* Encouraging cooperation between public agencies and individuals.

To that end, planners are encouraging public participation in redrawing the General Plan. Specifically, planners want to know what residents like about their neighborhoods and what they do not. The information will be compiled later this year and used as a guide for the new plan.

A second Valley meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. April 13 at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Panorama City.