Blueprint of L.A.’s Future Is Outlined for Officials : Growth: Five council members hear a report on the draft General Plan. Enthusiasm for it may be hard to generate.

Acknowledging that politics has the power both to inspire and to stifle vision, planners drawing the blueprint for a future Los Angeles this week briefed City Council members on how the city could look, feel and move in 20 years.

The meeting between planners and five council members was among the first in a series of gatherings intended to get elected leaders involved in the two-year process of redrawing the city’s General Plan--the document that guides growth.

The Wednesday meeting was organized by northwest San Fernando Valley Councilman Hal Bernson and was attended by two other Valley lawmakers--Laura Chick and Richard Alarcon. Council members Mark Ridley-Thomas and Rita Walters also attended the City Hall meeting.

Support of the new plan by council members is considered critical because they will ultimately determine whether the policies outlined in the broad document are followed or ignored.

In the past, some planning experts argue, Los Angeles planners have crafted remarkable visions for the city’s future only to have them disregarded by politicians with different ideas or more parochial interests.

“We’ve got to have the support of the council to do this,” said Bernson, chairman of the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee. “To do that, the council members have got to feel like this is important to them.”

Drumming up such enthusiasm, however, may be difficult--not just for the council, but also for the 3.5 million people who will live, work and play in the Los Angeles that the new General Plan seeks to create.

Unlike neighborhood planning projects, which generally have more immediate goals and are easier to define, preparing a new General Plan requires residents and politicians to look beyond their neighborhoods and think of themselves as citizens of the larger city.

“You’re not going to get thousands of people turning out like you would if you proposed a swap meet at the end of the block,” city Planning Director Con Howe told council members.

“This project takes a look at the city as a whole for the next 20-plus years,” said senior city planner Emily Gabel, who oversees the General Plan project.

Gabel outlined for council members the two proposals under consideration by city planners. One would concentrate new development around rail and bus stops, creating urban environments that would be denser than most and more accessible to pedestrians. The other would channel growth along major boulevards.

Gabel and other members of the planning team stressed that both proposals are fluid and elements of each might be included in the final plan, scheduled to come before the City Council late next year. Both plans, for instance, contain proposals to construct more mixed-use development, a style that mingles commercial and residential uses in a single building or area.

No plans have been drawn up for specific neighborhoods.

For the most part, the council members at Wednesday’s meeting said they were encouraged by the progress planners are making on the project. Councilwoman Chick, for example, said it is crucial that she and her colleagues work with planners to solicit ideas from residents.

“I have very definite ideas about how to get more and different people in the process,” she said. “I am excited about this. I think it is going to help us find something that is sorely lacking and that is a vision for the city.”