Planners Look to Public for Vision

Planners drawing the blueprint for future growth in Los Angeles are looking for ideas from the public on how the city should look, feel and move in the next century.

At public workshops Saturday morning in Tujunga and Monday night in Northridge, planners want San Fernando Valley residents and merchants to describe how they envision their communities developing over the next 20 years.

The ideas will be incorporated into a revision of the General Plan, the document that serves as the city’s land-use “constitution” and directs how Los Angeles will grow in the long-term.

Specifically, planners want the public to comment on preliminary ideas for future growth that seek to accommodate more people while limiting the impact on traffic congestion, sewage capacity and air quality.

Saturday’s workshop in Tujunga begins at 9 a.m. in the auditorium of the Sunland-Tujunga Municipal Center, 7747 Foothill Blvd. Monday’s workshop in Northridge begins at 6:30 p.m. in the main building of the Northridge Recreation Center, 18300 Lemarsh St.

Both workshops last about three hours.

At workshops in other parts of the city, residents reacted favorably to ideas such as mingling apartments and condominiums with shops and offices to create dense urban villages throughout Los Angeles. The thinking behind such “mixed-use” communities is that they encourage less use of the automobile because most destinations are within walking distance.

Also, by encouraging more development in certain areas, planners hope to ease the pressure for changes in single-family neighborhoods. Planners envision that the urban villages would be linked by public transit such as rail lines or express buses.

Planners caution, however, that whatever plan emerges from the two-year process may take several more years to become reality. Even then, changes will be slow.