Group Puts L.A. 17th Among Big Cities for Children’s Safety

Poor education, traffic congestion, air pollution and economic inequality put Los Angeles behind most major U.S. cities as a safe and sound home for children, according to a ranking by a national environmental group released Tuesday.

Los Angeles received a C- grade on the Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card issued by Washington-based Zero Population Growth, which lobbies for causes ranging from a national population control policy to fighting urban sprawl. That mark placed L.A. 17th among 25 major cities ranked in the study. Seattle, San Francisco and San Jose were the leaders.

Southern California suburbs scored mixed results. Santa Clarita and Irvine were among the top 10 of 92 suburbs studied, but the bottom 10 included four Southland cities--Inglewood, Pomona, El Monte and San Bernardino.

Unlike lifestyle or business-oriented surveys that evaluate cities as places to buy a house, the Zero Population Growth study seeks to promote “social, economic and environmental justice,” said Priscilla Y. Gonzalez, the report’s principal researcher.

Cities with populations above 100,000 were judged by 14 criteria, including teenage pregnancy rates, infant mortality, preschool enrollment, crime rates, air quality and public transit use.

Cities lost points for large gains or losses in population. Rapid growth hurts cities by outstripping their ability to provide education, public works and social services, said Peter H. Kostmayer, a former congressman who heads Zero Population Growth, while population declines shrink the local tax base.

Although the survey results produced the expected pronouncements of pride among high-ranking cities, others just as predictably criticized the study’s methodology and questioned the fairness of trying to capture complex social realities in simple letter grades and numeric rankings.

Kostmayer, a Democrat who represented Pennsylvania, acknowledged that rankings do not present a complete picture, but defended his study’s usefulness. “It’s really not the rankings, but the information that’s important. It tells cities how to improve the quality of lives for children,” he said.

Local officials and others who research area social and economic conditions said much of the information underlying the rankings is outdated and pulled down the ranking of several cities.

Los Angeles, for example, got an F for economics. The poor grade came from 1990 census figures for the proportion of home ownership and children in poverty, and a 1996 unemployment figure--numbers that reflected a crippling national recession.

“Those are almost meaningless indicators,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. Los Angeles’ relatively low 1990 home ownership rate, Kyser said, was a snapshot of a market coming out of the high prices of the 1980s. When prices crashed in the recession, home sales picked up dramatically, he said.

Los Angeles’ unemployment rate was last measured in the 1990 census; subsequent figures are estimated from that data. Kyser noted unemployment in the much larger Los Angeles metropolitan area has dropped since 1996, from about 8% to 5.5% reported in July--better than the 9.3% Los Angeles unemployment rate cited in the Zero Population Growth rankings.

Last-place San Bernardino says it too was hurt by bad data. The report lists the city’s unemployment rate at 10.4%, but San Bernardino marketing director June Durr said the city estimates its unemployment rate at 5.7%.

Oxnard ranked 68th out of 92, in part because of a failing grade for education based on a low proportion of preschool students and too many high school dropouts. Oxnard officials said those figures--also based on the 1990 census--had sharply improved.

In Pasadena, which got a D and finished 66th among suburban cities, City Councilman William Crowfoot said the low health ratings overlooked innovative city efforts. The methodology of the study gave Pasadena no credit for a nonprofit program that provides free medical care to uninsured children, he said.

Highly rated Santa Clarita, the only Southern California city to get an overall A, had a shot at the top spot but fared badly in the public transportation category, for which it got an F. Fewer than 1% of its residents use public transportation and the average commuter drive is 30.5 miles.

“Those figures have to be outdated,” said Santa Clarita Councilwoman Jan Heidt. “We have the fastest-growing public transportation system in the area. In the last few years, we have put in bus service around the [Santa Clarita] valley, and express bus service into Los Angeles.”

Kostmayer agreed that cities with problems are often those that come up with creative solutions. The study, he said, simply “helps to focus attention; it’s not intended to be a criticism of low-ranking cities.”

James Fallows, a veteran journalist and media critic, said interest groups will continue to use rankings and report cards as long as media outlets encourage them to.

“Just as politicians know that gimmicks make the evening news, these groups know that lists make the evening news. The question is, why are we in the press suckers for these?” said Fallows, the former editor of U.S. News and World Report--a magazine that, coincidentally, just released its highly publicized annual ranking of U.S. colleges.

Times staff writers David Colker and Daryl Kelley and correspondent Richard Winton contributed to this story.

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Kid-Friendly Cities

A report released Tuesday by Zero Population Growth rated American cities for 14 quality of life indicators such as economics, education, environment and health. Major cities were ranked separately from suburbs.

RANKING OF MAJOR CITIES

RANKING OF SOUTHLAND SUBURBS

* Source: Zero Population Growth