Reality Bites as City’s 20-Year Blueprint Enters Final Phase

The Los Angeles of the future looks pretty good on paper: a bustling metropolis where streets are safe and full of life, where public transit whisks commuters swiftly and comfortably from place to place, where residents poor and rich have equal access to parks, schools and jobs.

But putting dreams on paper is the easy part.

As they draw up a blueprint for growth in one of the most complex cities in the world, Los Angeles planners are discovering that reconciling the public’s dreams with reality is tremendously more difficult.

The two-year task of updating the city’s General Plan is entering its final months. In many ways this will be the undertaking’s most complicated phase as planners try to marry a vision for the future with the realities of the present.

They face the challenge of making the city a more business-friendly place without sacrificing environmental protection; of promoting the development of urban centers without destroying the rich patchwork of single-family neighborhoods; of encouraging new forms of transportation without denying the region’s long love affair with the automobile, and of accommodating an influx of more than 800,000 people over the next two decades without overwhelming sewers and landfills.

At a conference today, planners will update their progress toward formulating a 20-year development strategy for the city and discuss how forecasts of traffic congestion, sewage capacity and unemployment levels will shape the plan’s final form. The meeting is at 9 a.m. in the conference center of the Department of Water and Power’s Downtown headquarters, 111 N. Hope St.

“Where do we think the current trends lead us in economics, the infrastructure and traffic?” asked Con Howe, the city’s planning director. “If we do not change our policies and our actions, what is likely to happen? Those questions are important backdrops for saying if this is not what we like and not what we want to see, then we will have to make some changes.”

Already, early versions of the plan present a vision of Los Angeles that is in some ways dramatically different from how the city has developed over the past century, but is in other ways comfortably similar.

The General Plan serves essentially as the city’s land-use constitution, governing how and where Los Angeles will develop over time. It establishes broad policies and sets the tone for the more detailed community plans, which dictate how specific neighborhoods will grow block by block.

A carefully crafted plan that is followed over the long term can help provide the stability desired by residents as well as developers, and directs costly infrastructure improvements to where they are most needed.

Over the past year, planners have conducted dozens of workshops all over the city, asking residents how they want their neighborhoods to look, feel and move 20 years from now.

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The product of those workshops is what the planners call the Directed Growth Strategy, a policy that seeks to channel 75% of the new growth over the next two decades onto 5% of the city’s land--ideally, those areas best equipped with infrastructure such as roads and sewers to handle a greater number of people.

This 5%--generally along major boulevards and in such areas as Warner Center and Downtown--would accommodate 75% of new homes and apartments as well as 90% of new offices and shops. The remainder would be distributed as evenly as possible throughout the city.

There are a number of reasons for this approach, but all have their roots in the spread-out style in which Los Angeles has traditionally developed. Since very few neighborhoods in the city have a classic “urban” character, there are relatively few places with the sort of vitality and street life found in most major cities.

By increasing densities in targeted neighborhoods, planners hope to make transportation to those areas more feasible as well as create “urban villages,” where jobs and shops would be close to houses and apartments.

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In another radical departure from the city’s past, planners are suggesting building apartments and condominiums above ground-floor shops and offices. This “mixed-use” development conserves space and encourages walking rather than driving. More than 90% of housing built over the next 20 years will be apartments and condominiums.

At the same time, channeling growth into targeted areas protects most single-family neighborhoods from the intrusive growth that results in single-story bungalows next door to four-story stucco apartment buildings.

Yet city archives are full of ambitious plans that were never realized. Even the city’s current General Plan, adopted in 1974 and never fully implemented, is considered a good one. Without the legal teeth and the commitment of political leaders behind it, the new plan will go nowhere.

There is discussion in the highest levels of the Planning Department over how to make the plan stick. Among the most effective methods would be to restrict and monitor development outside the targeted growth areas so large-scale projects would be impossible.

“I think the city can be the master of its own destiny to some extent,” Howe said.

But even if the city’s population remains stable, traffic on its streets and freeways will continue to slow down because of development in surrounding cities, according to transportation consultant Bradlee Williams.

Heavy reliance on automobiles involves a price beyond the obvious problems of traffic congestion and air quality. Roughly 35% of the city’s land is taken up by roads, driveways and parking lots. By comparison, the entire stock of houses and apartments occupies 38% of the land.

Over the next 20 years, Williams estimates, traffic will increase by 35% and average speed is forecast to drop to less than 35 m.p.h. In areas such as Granada Hills, the gateway into the city for commuters from northern Los Angeles County, average speed will drop below 10 m.p.h.

“One-third of all the traffic we have now is going to be added again,” Williams said, explaining that the type of traffic jams that followed the Northridge earthquake will become ordinary. “That was really just a foretaste of what’s to come. That is going to be common.”

Likewise, the city’s economic development is affected by the overall health of the region, and vice versa. “If the city strangles, the region strangles,” said economic consultant Jay Natelson, president of the Natelson Co.

But the next 20 years will be dramatically different from the past 20 years. Natelson predicts the need for new commercial space will taper to less than one-third the amount built between 1980 and 1990.

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By contrast, the city desperately needs more housing units that are safe and affordable. Between 1980 and 1990, the city’s population grew by 17%, but the housing stock grew by only 9%. Consequently, 22% of Los Angeles’ housing units are overcrowded and 35% of households pay more than one-third of their income for rent or mortgage.

The population will continue to grow over the next two decades, but city officials are concerned that our infrastructure--facilities such as landfills and sewer systems--may not be able to keep pace.

Already, sewer systems are operating near capacity, said engineer Armen Melkonian. And landfills are filling up quickly. Efforts to plan and build new facilities are time-consuming and costly. Drawing board errors can make them even more so.

“Reliability is the key,” Melkonian said.

The State of the City POPULATION Over the next 20 years, Los Angeles is expected to grow by about 822,000 people to 4.3 million--an increase of 24%. By contrast, the five-county area that surrounds Los Angeles is expected to grow from 14.5 million to 20.3 million--an increase of 40%. Most of the growth--63%--will come from births. The rest will be foreign immigration. The influx from other states will fall to insignificant levels. As it is, the city is among the most diverse in the world.

Latino: 40%

White: 37%

Black: 13%

Asian and Pacific Islander: 9%

Native American Less than: 1%

LAND USE

Residential: 38%

Open Space: 23%

Streets and infrastructure: 21%

Industrial: 9%

Commercial: 4%

Other; 5%

Average residential density in the city is roughly 12 units per acre, ranging from four units per acre in Bel-Air to 71 units per acre in Westlake and 131 in Central City.

HOUSING Roughly 60%--or 780,000--of the housing units in Los Angeles are apartments and condominiums. The other 40%--or 520,000--are single-family homes. About 57% of housing units are occupied by renters. Another 37% are occupied by their owners and 6% are vacant. About 29% of existing housing units are at least 50 years old and 40% are over 40 years old. About 11% were built in the last decade and 22% in the past 20 years.

ECONOMICS

Los Angeles is the largest employment center in Southern California, with roughly 1.9 million jobs. Between 1960 and 1990 manufacturing jobs in Los Angeles declined by 31%, while professional and service jobs increased by 71%. Between 1990 and 1992, the state lost 523,000 manufacturing jobs. Two-thirds of the loss occurred in Los Angeles.

TRANSPORTATION

About 57 million miles are traveled each day in Los Angeles, or 15.4 million person trips and 10.6 million vehicle trips daily. Only 5% of trips are made by public transit.