CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY : A Great City Is Responsive to Its Citizens

Aristotle warned that “a great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.” He thought the right size should be large enough for “the purposes of life” and could be seen in a single view.

The population of Leonardo da Vinci’s Florence was 30,000; Michelangelo’s Rome was 55,000; Rousseau’s Geneva was 25,000; Boston was 15,000 during the American Revolution.

Has Los Angeles created any greater spirit or culture with its 4 million people? This question should be pondered in the present soul-searching about San Fernando Valley secession.

Before the Legislature is a measure that would end the veto power of the Los Angeles City Council over efforts by the San Fernando Valley to secede.

The debate divides into two camps, the “centralizers” versus the “secessionists.” It is time for a third, reformist voice, that of the modern village, which proposes that big cities should be decentralized so neighborhoods have more power in pursuing a better quality of life.

If parallels with ancient cities seem quaint, consider the judgment of present-day cities by scholar Robert Dahl: “The larger the place, the less likely is the citizen to be involved as an active participant in local political life.”

In recent decades, the “new towns” planned in America averaged 73,000 residents. And in the age of e-mail, downtown skyscrapers may become dinosaurs as work is decentralized. Why can’t creating human-scale communities be the source of renewing and rebuilding Los Angeles?

The centralizers believe that big is beautiful: big government, big business, big labor. They say the San Fernando Valley was annexed in 1913 and should stay that way.

The centralizer mentality also invites the abuse of power. It is rooted in faceless, unaccountable and sometimes corrupt corporate and government bureaucracies. It is easier for the centralizer to construct skyscrapers than communities. Since the Watts riots 30 years ago, the centralizers have built a downtown skyline on top of neighborhood decline.

Their most recent bureaucracy is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, built on the premise that all routes of work and culture must lead to its 26-story “gateway” center downtown. That only 3% of future jobs are projected to be in the Central Business District is irrelevant to the MTA, whose credo is, if we build it, they will come.

The MTA could not wreck Hollywood Boulevard, drain the Runyon Canyon watershed or displace hundreds of residents of East L.A. if those communities had a greater hand in the MTA blueprint.

Centralizers are threatened by any sign of a genuine neighborhood voice. Those in the mayor’s office, for example, want to squelch neighborhood protests by requiring a $5,000 fee of citizens wishing to appeal a big development project.

This is not simply a liberal-conservative issue. Most unions like centralization, if only for collective-bargaining reasons. Many liberals claim that a central-city structure prevents racial “balkanization” and ensures a revenue stream for the inner city.

This liberal view fails to recognize that under the present alienating structure, L.A. continues to have raging race and poverty problems, is increasingly based on a low-wage work force lacking union protections and is the only major city to be torn by massive riots twice in a generation.

Centralization has failed to assuage or contain these problems. Any investment strategy to “rebuild L.A.” must include participation by self-reliant communities.

The secessionists, on the other hand, are held together by a hostility to present power arrangements, not by any common vision of an alternative. They are correct in attacking the City Council’s undemocratic veto power. But how would they address the problems of bigness?

A Valley City would be the sixth largest in the U.S., with 5 million cars, unmitigated smog, 250 public schools and all the problems of urban America. Any new, large-scale city would most likely be governed centrally, with neighborhood participation taking a backseat to lobbyists.

Even if the Valley is freed of the City Council veto, its secession must be approved by a perfect example of an unaccountable, developer-driven bureaucracy called the Local Agency Formation Commission.

The executive officer of LAFCO represents such big commercial developers as Warner Center and the Porter Ranch, and says that he intends to continue working for developers while running LAFCO. His philosophy would certainly guide the LAFCO approval process.

To avoid a Valley carbon copy of L.A., the Legislature would need to reform LAFCO with guidelines guaranteeing a stronger role for neighborhood participation. Similar guidelines were included when the Legislature supported the right of citizens to break up the L.A. school district.

All this will take considerable time, hassle, money and litigation and likely will lead only to new versions of the same old bureaucracies the Valley wants to leave behind.

Is there an easier way to make L.A. livable for Valley and inner city alike? I would prefer one Los Angeles, reformed and renewed, to two cities dominated by the same kind of corporate growth agendas and bureaucracy we suffer today.

The alternative is to decentralize power throughout Los Angeles to neighborhood levels. This means democratically elected neighborhood representatives taking part in decisions concerning zoning, growth and the environment.

Any token measures along these lines should be rejected as pacification. For example, Mayor Riordan’s L.A. Neighborhood Initiative program spruces up neighborhoods without empowering anyone.

Real reform should be proposed as a charter amendment in 1997. Neighborhoods should have the right to vote on any large-scale development decision affecting their quality of life. That would make officials more accountable to the voters looking over their shoulders than, say, to special interests lining their pockets.

Aristotle was right: The size of a city should be tailored to “the purposes of life,” not to the egos of the powerful. With a real voice in their neighborhoods, people will care more about the quality of life, work and environment than if they live like ants in a mega-colony. Where people feel they matter, they don’t secede.