Planners Search for Common Ground in L.A.’s Future

In a vast city divided by mountain ranges and freeways--not to mention income, class and ethnic suspicion--a small group of urban planners is working toward an ambitious and elusive goal.

Planners hoping to shape the future of Los Angeles are looking for common ground--areas in which residents of a contradictory metropolis can agree on how the West’s largest city should look, feel and act in the next century.

It is no easy task.

As this Planning Department team writes the first major revision of the city’s blueprint for growth in nearly two decades, it faces two challenges: to get rid of the things that make the City of Angels hellish--outrageous home prices, excruciating commutes and neighborhood apartheid--as it tries to preserve the things that make Los Angeles heavenly--wide open spaces, an unmatched mix of cultures and postcard-perfect single-family neighborhoods.

And the planners will try to do this not with government grants or loans, but through the numbingly dry language of zoning laws.

The plan, one-quarter complete, aims to spread the benefits and burdens of new development evenly across the city, but also strives to change the way Angelenos think about themselves and their community, to encourage people in Chatsworth to care about what happens in San Pedro and vice versa.

And unlike many visions for the future, the new plan proposes only ideas that have been realized in other Southern California cities--namely Santa Monica, Burbank and even prewar Los Angeles. In many ways, the plan seeks to return to urban designs that prevailed before the automobile, a time when developments were packed close together--but attractively so--to encourage walking.

For instance, Santa Monica’s popular Third Street Promenade, a street blocked off to traffic, demonstrates how such density can be made attractive and how an ailing commercial strip can be turned into a thriving pedestrian nightspot. Burbank’s downtown along San Fernando Boulevard illustrates how to mix apartments with restaurants and bookstores.

“There are ways to make density attractive,” architect Kate Diamond said. Some famous cities have dense development but nonetheless retain their charm, she said. “No one wants Los Angeles to be like New York, but I’ve never heard anyone say they don’t want Los Angeles to be like Paris.”

L.A. planners are even learning lessons from their own city. The Leimert Park neighborhood in South Los Angeles, they say, is an example of an urban village surviving in the midst of sprawl. And courtyard-style apartments, dating to the 1940s and found throughout in the city, offer alternatives to giant stucco boxes.

In effect, the General Plan, last revised in 1974, holds the promise of shaping the way generations of Angelenos live, work and play--from how long they spend on the freeway to whether there will be parks for their children. And the two-year project has gained urgency as the city recovers from last year’s riots and languishes in a recession.

“I think a lot of people are so busy trying to survive today,” said Senior Planner Emily Gabel, manager of the General Plan project. “They are ready for a different city.”

The General Plan acts as a blueprint for growth. Rather than dictating specifics, it establishes broad policy goals and sets the tone for smaller, more specific community plans.

Today, planners are unveiling preliminary sketches of the kinds of development they hope a new General Plan would encourage. Based upon community meetings and interviews with architects, developers and land-use experts, the drawings show attractive, integrated development--a street corner, for example, with smart landscaping and small stores, perhaps located underneath apartments on the upper floors.

The planners will not unveil recommendations for specific streets or areas. That is many months away. But today’s public forum, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at City Hall, will let planners share their philosophy with the public.

Over the next several months, planners will continue to refine the plan with input from neighborhood groups and community leaders. They are scheduled to bring it before the City Council in November, 1994.

In nearly 40 workshops this spring from the jumbled apartments of Westlake to the manicured lawns of Woodland Hills, residents told planners they want something new for their city, not just for the middle class and rich, but for all.

Much of what residents asked for was predictable. They want better public transit--not glamorous trains, but buses to help inner-city residents reach jobs in the suburbs. They want more parks and bike paths. They want neighborhoods that are safe and clean.

But the residents at these workshops surprised planners by endorsing a fundamental shift in the way Los Angeles has been developed. They understand, planners said, that single-family home communities, which take up 29% of the city’s land mass, may not be the most practical way to house a metropolis of 3.5 million people. They told planners they wouldn’t mind more apartments and condos, provided they were attractive and well-built.

In short, they saw that the old philosophy of how land is used and shared does not work anymore.

As land-use attorney Robert McMurry put it: “As long as we adhere to the current system, I think Los Angeles is going to strangle on its own planning.”

And from Robin Cannon, president of Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles: “I don’t want to rebuild the same Los Angeles. I want to build a new Los Angeles.”

But whether the visions of McMurry, Cannon and the new General Plan will ever be realized depends on the will of a City Council that has been criticized for putting politics and provincialism above the greater good of the city.

The city’s current General Plan is, by most accounts, a good one. It sought to cluster development into widely dispersed centers connected by mass transit. The goal was protecting single-family neighborhoods from ticky-tack commercial strips and other “unsuitable uses.”

But the plan was never really followed. Only a few real centers--downtown, Century City and Warner Center in Woodland Hills--developed, partly because of economics. Moreover, during the wholesale growth of the 1980s, the Planning Department did little more than act as zoning cop, not always able to focus on the big picture with so many small projects.

But often developers simply requested, and got, exemptions from the General Plan with the support of their City Council representative.

Traditionally, council members rarely disagree with their colleagues over development issues in their districts, creating 15 fiefdoms when it comes to planning. Land-use decisions often are made without a view to their effects on other parts of the city, critics say.

Consequently, the pieces don’t always fit together.

“Planning is just really a matter of political will,” said William Fulton, publisher of the California Planning and Development Report. “Planning is about getting three votes. More often than not in Los Angeles, it’s about getting one vote.”

Fulton and others acknowledged that new Mayor Richard Riordan may help the process along, but the city’s weak-mayor system of government limits his ability to force compliance with the plan. And Rebuild LA’s efforts dovetail with the plan’s long-term goals, forging a convenient public-private partnership.

But will the council follow the General Plan this time?

Some planners think so, saying broad public support could persuade the council to maintain a broad vision. Some council members, such as Joel Wachs, agree but quickly note that planning is by nature a political process, subject to parochial concerns.

But how does a General Plan accomplish anything at all, especially when it is subject to political and economic currents and is, inherently, a broad document?

The answer lies in several mechanisms that, although they can’t force developers to build, say, charming apartments on a quiet street, can create conditions that will allow this to occur.

A sampling:

Zoning: Planners could protect single-family neighborhoods from the encroachment of apartments and shops by specifying that they be built near transit stops or commercial areas, creating an environment that encourages more walking and less car traffic.

Design standards: Those apartments need not be boring boxes. The plan could require that communities develop design standards to create an atmosphere or simply to upgrade the area’s appearance.

Cutting red tape: Streamlining the city’s complex permit procedures would make the planning process more predictable and thus encourage developers to comply with extra aesthetic demands, such as design standards. Planners already talk of producing a master environmental impact report for the entire city, taking the costly burden of preparing the documents off of individual developers.

And while Gabel and her team of city planners want to assure neighborhood groups that their communities will probably change only slightly, she concedes that some areas will change dramatically--and some residents will not be happy. “There is always going to be friction at the edges of change,” she said.

Indeed, not everyone is enchanted with the city’s vision.

At a symposium earlier this month, a woman scrutinizing a map of Van Nuys criticized plans to enhance the city’s transit system. “You know what they’re thinking?” she asked her husband. “No one’s going to drive anymore. They’re going to herd us all on buses like we’re in the Soviet Union.”

“Sheesh,” her husband mumbled, fiddling with his car keys.

The situation reminds Allan Wallis, research director for the National Civic League, of the fight to build London’s sewer system in the 1800s, a landmark event in civic planning. Although the city was racked by a cholera epidemic brought on by poor sanitation, wealthy residents refused to pay for a sewer system because the disease was most common in poor neighborhoods.

It was only after one of Queen Victoria’s own children was stricken and doctors realized no one was immune that Parliament appropriated the money to build the sewers. Parochialism gave way when Londoners saw they were all part of the same city.

“People who live in comfort, people who feel insulated feel they can continue to pay for their security,” Wallis said. “But they are all responsible.”

Household Incomes in Los Angeles Although Los Angeles neighborhoods are divided by physical boundaries such as mountains and freeways, they pale when compared to the income gap that separates poor communities from rich. Some of the poorest neighborhoods arew most in need of new development and quality affordable housing, yet they are also on the list of most builders. Such disparities are being considered as the city revises its General Plan. Citywide average: $45,789 Northeast L.A. A: $34,297 South L.A B: $23,634 Metro Center C: $40,113 Southwest L.A. D: $42,205 Central L.A. E: $22,283 Southeast Valley F: $48,312 Northeast Valley G: $44,508 Northwest Valley H: $56,538 Southwest Valley I: $61, 854 West L.A. J: $97,249 Harbor K: $38,963 Source: Los Angeles City Planning Department

Part of a City As city planners draft a new planning blueprint for Los Angeles, they are evaluation how much space the 465-square-mile city devotes to various kinds of development. Residential housing takes up the biggest chunk of the city’s land, while the infrastructure-the roads and freeways -makes up the fifth of the space. Open Space: 22% Infrasturcture: 21% Single-family Residential: 29% Other Residential: 9% Industrial / Commerical: 12% Other: 7% Source: Los Angeles City Planning Department