Finding Neighborhoods in L.A.

There was standing room only at the Sherman Oaks Women’s Club last month as the city Planning Commission got an earful from the public on a draft plan to streamline land use decisions and bring them closer to home. What’s at stake is power over local development.

Two of the major changes in the new city charter approved by Los Angeles voters last June are the creation of neighborhood councils to advise city officials on local concerns and a set of local planning commissions that will decide on new development projects. On July 1, less than seven months from now, the charter will take effect. The hours of often-impassioned testimony that commissioners heard last month, most of it harshly critical, reveal how much remains to be done. Perhaps the hardest task will be bridging the huge gap between the expectations that fueled charter passage and the sobering realities of change in this megalopolis.

The area planning boards and neighborhood councils created by the charter are two expressions of the desire of Angelenos for some measure of control over local change and for a stronger sense of roots, of neighborhood identity.

The area planning commissions--the charter specifies a minimum of five--will be composed of residents from those areas. In broad terms the panels will review smaller projects and those with only local impact, like a new nightclub or mini-mall. The current charter gives that authority to remote downtown administrators who may not care much about the traffic or noise--or the benefits--that development could bring. Big projects with citywide significance, like a museum or major shopping mall, will be handled directly by the city Planning Commission.

Last month planning commissioners heard public comment on the department’s proposal to create six area planning commissions, or APCs: North Valley, South Valley, South Los Angeles, West Los Angeles, Harbor and Metro. Most speakers argued that more commissions were needed for meaningful community-level planning. Each APC will cover from 220,000 to a million-plus residents. For example, the proposed Metro APC, with more than 1 million residents, includes Hancock Park, downtown and Boyle Heights, three communities with quite different development priorities. Shouldn’t this APC be split at least into two? some speakers asked. San Fernando Valley residents raised the same questions about the two proposed Valley boards.

Behind these concerns are legitimate questions: What defines “a community” in this city of more than 3 million people? How big is too big? How much power should each neighborhood have to block projects that residents may not want in their midst, like low-income housing? If six APCs are too few, as many believe, how many are enough?

The Planning Commission meets again this week and could decide then on the APC boundaries and the permitting and appeals process. The commission can adopt the Planning Department’s recommendations or modify them. The package then moves to the City Council for approval. We urge the Planning Commission to consider dividing at least the gargantuan Metro APC.

What’s more critical than the precise boundaries or number of commissions is the integrity of the process. That will depend upon the goodwill of the residents on those boards.

Los Angeles is long past the point where “neighbors” mean only the folks across the street or down the next block. Even when we break this enormous city into smaller pieces, it will take effort to find common ground.