A New Vision for Los Angeles

The term “city planning” has long seemed an oxymoron in Los Angeles. Countless neighborhoods have been overrun by inappropriate projects as a permissive bureaucracy unprepared for growth failed to recognize the broader consequences of piecemeal development: frustrated residents, congested freeways, overloaded sewers.

Today the City Council has the opportunity to take a positive step toward putting Los Angeles on a path toward responsible and sustainable growth when it considers the first redrawing of the city’s long-term planning blueprint in 22 years. The General Plan Framework establishes guidelines and limits for city growth over the next 20 years and sets the tone for the more specific and technical neighborhood-level community plans.

The General Plan seeks to channel new growth into those areas where the infrastructure--streets and sewers and utility lines--can accommodate it, mainly along boulevards or in already urbanized areas such as Warner Center or Century City. More important, though, it seeks to protect those areas that can’t handle more growth, such as the eclectic patchwork of residential neighborhoods that distinguish L.A. from most other big cities.

Some will recall that these were the precise goals of the city’s current General Plan--adopted in 1974 but never really followed. Indeed, the proposed plan runs a similar risk of being ignored by the City Council, which tends to treat the city’s 15 council districts as fiefdoms. But Los Angeles can’t afford not to aim for the rational and modest goals the new plan sets. The city is under federal mandate to clean up its air and water. A population increase of 800,000 over the next 20 years is predicted. And with public money drying up, careful planning is essential as Los Angeles begins to replace or modernize its aging infrastructure.

The new plan does not encourage growth. Nor does it frustrate it. Instead it looks at new ways of making better use of the city’s existing resources to better accommodate more people. It offers a toolbox of planning ideas that residents can tailor to the specific needs of their communities--such as how to make commercial areas friendlier to pedestrians.

This type of planning is a switch for modern Los Angeles, sold to generations as the antithesis of 19th-century cities. But Los Angeles itself is a different place now and it’s time to embrace a new vision for the 21st century.

The new plan will not turn Los Angeles into an urban oasis overnight. It does offer a practical guide for the city to follow. No matter how visionary, though, a plan is only as good as the people who implement it. All the city’s residents--from elected officials and building executives to longtime homeowners and new immigrants--have a stake in seeing a new General Plan succeed.