Huddled Masses : Neighborhoods Oppose Drive to Turn L.A. Into Manhattan

The planning experts are hard at work on a new vision for our urban community.

It is bold, seeking an end to the domination of the automobile.

It is innovative, seeking to cluster high-density housing along mass-transit routes and near rail and subway stations.

It is, in our opinion, just terrible--a planner’s dream that is completely out of touch with reality.

We had a chance to review these plans recently as the Los Angeles Planning Department gathered comment on its draft Land Use/Transportation Policy for the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

A version of the document eventually will be adopted as the city’s official vision of the 21st Century. As it stands, it envisions a new Los Angeles and a different San Fernando Valley. Made up of a network of high-density transportation corridors, the plan would fill our open spaces, add high-density housing and abandon an automobile-oriented transportation system that has been the envy of the world for decades.

Planners and bureaucrats are advocating dense, pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods, with housing built above storefronts, all within walking distance of transit centers. In the transit planner’s parlance, these are “transit-oriented districts,” nicknamed TODs. In reality, they are a West Coast version of Hong Kong and are an abrogation of the traditional Los Angeles way of life.

Before planners get locked into the concept, its validity needs to be questioned. Does the public really want to concentrate future growth in this city around mass-rail transit and stations, while abandoning the automobile as the preferred means of travel?

Many Los Angeles residents, especially those in the Valley, view the private automobile as a necessity. The automobile is at one’s doorstep, ready to provide door-to-door transportation. Motor vehicles move both people and goods and share the right of way with everything from buses to bicycles.

Like it or not, for most people the car remains the most flexible and desirable means of transportation. Even with the recent spate of carjackings, statistically one’s chances of getting mugged while in an automobile are considerably less than on a bus or subway.

It will be an uphill struggle to force the public to change its way of life and transportation patterns to accommodate what many see as unnecessary growth and development. Strong community opposition will emerge when rezoning efforts take place to create transit-oriented districts. These districts are envisioned as extending at least half a mile around each transit station. They would mix commercial and residential uses, one on top of the other.

This of course is what an earlier generation of planners wanted to avoid when they established commercial zones separate from low-density, quiet residential neighborhoods, which many residents would still prefer. They do not want this city to take on the character of the Bronx, Philadelphia or Chicago.

Our planners look into the future and see L.A. neighborhoods turned into European towns. But they lack the European “small is better” mind-set. And they don’t deal with the reality of the limited resources of our infrastructure.

A flat nestled above a patisserie or a ristorante may be a quaint sight for a visitor to a European city. But how many would want to replace their comfortable home or condo for a tiny apartment in the middle of a noisy commercial neighborhood? This is acceptable to Europeans because they have no choice.

Europeans manage their growth by closing down the drawbridge, and they make no bones about it. We visited Zermatt, Switzerland, last summer and talked at length to a major property owner who sits on the Town Council. We were told that the city fathers like the town the way it is. They have made it impossible for an outsider to buy a piece of land in the village and develop it. It is simply not allowed.

Hundreds of little European towns have scarcely changed in centuries. The residents have a good thing and want to keep it that way. A property owner can’t change as much as a brick, or even put up a small nonconforming sign on a facade, without permission from the city fathers.

Los Angeles has developed in a manner that has outstripped its ability to provide residents with the minimum infrastructure necessary. There are not enough solid waste, sewage, air, water, park, open space, library, police, fire and other services to meet the current need. Adding more development and density to a neighborhood while a vacuum exists in city services is simply bad planning.

The planners would exempt projects from the city’s traffic-congestion management plan if they were within half a mile of a transit station. That is one of a long list of incentives that would be dangled before developers. Others include reduced permit fees and speedy processing, tax credit and increment financing schemes, and head-of-the-line sewer hookups.

The plan for major urban centers encourages high-density development with a minimum 13:1 floor-area ratio. For those not schooled in planning jargon, we are talking about buildings like the Arco Towers. In effect, this proposal guts the city’s planning codes to alter Los Angeles as we know it.

Growth, high-density land-use and intensive urbanization are not inevitable. They are the result of city planning and political efforts that serve the few at the expense of the many. If a consensus is reached that Los Angeles residents want to live in Manhattan, then it is incumbent upon planners to meet their wishes. If, on the other hand, the majority want to preserve Los Angeles and, in particular the Valley, as the little bit of Heaven they once were, city planners should respect that viewpoint.