A Valley That’s Same, Only Different
The year is 2050 and you’re humming along in your fuel-cell car, seven stories high on the double-decked San Diego Freeway, heading to an NFL football game in, of all places, Palmcaster.
(Yes, Palmdale and Lancaster merged long ago and now have 1.2 million people, 10 Krispy Kreme doughnut joints and 24 escalators, 23 more than the area had at the turn of the millennium.)
A wall of office towers filled with banks, dry cleaners, jail cells and classrooms lines the freeway on either side. You shoot onto the Antelope Valley Freeway, zipping past three-story glass houses packed as tightly as Tetris blocks and mega-malls with soccer fields on top.
Futuristic fantasy? Perhaps, but this vision--well, at least some of it--comes from informed crystal-gazers, such as urban planners, scientists, developers and community activists. Most of these people and many Valley residents see good things in the future of the San Fernando Valley and environs. In 50 years, there will be less pollution, better transportation, smarter development, a stronger sense of community and even glitzier malls, they say.
Sure, some doomsayers paint a “Blade Runner”-esque picture of tomorrow’s Valley, where street corners are held down by rough-looking men warming their knuckles over trash can fires.
“The Valley’s going downhill, and it’s going to be more rundown in 50 years,” said Rhonda Cowan, who runs a party shop in Tarzana.
But that outlook is the exception. Even jaded Valley residents who have put up with, like, you know, one insulting stereotype after another, are optimists at heart, especially when it comes to their hometown.
On the way to the Palmcaster Palm Pilots football game, traffic is thick but moves smoothly. It’s 11 a.m. on a Sunday and a master Caltrans computer rules the road, keeping the titanium bumpers of cars within inches of each other without touching. Lane jockeying, it seems, has gone the way of white-walls.
The weather is perfect--80 and sunny in December. (Global warming helps.) The sky is swimming-pool blue--no smog in Los Angeles anymore, thanks to fuel-cell cars.
Every few miles, a sign on the freeway welcomes you to the next micro-pality: Paradise Hills. Lakeview Shores. Ranchos de los Ranchos. The Valley cityhood movement has spread like a virus.
Growth Expected Into North County
By this point, according to informal projections, the population of the Valley and north Los Angeles County will have swelled to about 3 million, with the biggest growth in Santa Clarita, Palmdale and Lancaster.
“By 2050, the Valley will probably be a suburb of Santa Clarita,” said Larry Kosmont, a Los Angeles-based urban planner. Problem is, there won’t be any new freeways to handle the newcomers. The Valley’s grid of freeways was planned in the 1950s, built out in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s and will remain essentially the same 50 years into the new century, said urban planner Bill Fulton.
“The only way to add capacity will be to double-deck ‘em,” Fulton said.
On some of the Valley’s bigger freeways, such as the Ventura and the San Diego, the upper deck--as high as 70 feet above ground--will be reserved for car-pooling and buses. Other anti-road-rage ideas may include automated reversible lanes for commuters and special VIP toll lanes for drivers willing to pay each month for a pass.
Cars will be different, too, and you probably won’t be leaning against a pump and filling your ride with gasoline in the year 2050. Rechargeable electric vehicles will have come and gone, and most drivers will be relying on fuel-cell technology that uses hydrogen and compressed oxygen, said Larry Caretto, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Cal State Northridge.
But you won’t be relying on cars as much anyway--at least that’s what planners predict.
Instead, you’ll be able to zoom from Studio City to Chatsworth via Metrolink train or bus, said Allyn Rifkin, a Los Angeles city transportation engineer. Certain streets, such as Sherman Way and Victory Boulevard, will be transformed into bus-only commuter corridors.
By 2050, head honchos at Burbank Airport will be adding another terminal (the one finally built in 2005 will be out of date), and Van Nuys Airport will be restricted to private jets--no prop planes allowed. But neighbors won’t have to worry, because the jets will make less noise than leaf blowers.
Malls Will Be Place to Connect
The urban plan will shift because of these transportation changes. Business clusters will spring up around airports, Metrolink stations and bus depots. Warner Center-like areas, mini-downtowns of glass towers and shopping malls, will dot the Valley.
And the golden era of mall culture--the heyday of the Valley Girl--will return. Even though most people will do their shopping on the Internet, entertainment will draw people out of their “living spaces” to stroll the waxed floors of neighborhood malls. Picture the Sherman Oaks Galleria with an indoor surfing park, a Pokemon gaming casino and an adult-movie multiplex showing the latest skin flicks made in the Valley.
And imagine Ventura Boulevard as the Champs-Elysees of the Valley. Well, maybe that’s a stretch, but it will sport more trees and possibly some red brick paving stones, planners say. And many strip malls will have evolved into stroll-friendly promenades.
“Retail areas will emphasize human interaction as people work and shop more at home,” said Con Howe, Los Angeles city planning director.
Pastor David W. Miller says the computer age will bring people closer.
“In a world dominated by the computer and the Internet, there’s going to be such a hunger for human fellowship and for a stronger connection to God,” said Miller, who leads the Church at Rocky Peak in Chatsworth.
College Classes Will Be Online
Culture will have put down roots in the Valley, with more highbrow attractions such as playhouses, art galleries and museums. Today, the Valley struggles to get first-run art house movies, despite the fact that it’s home to some of the biggest movie studios in the world.
“But that’s going to change,” said Tom Lee, chief executive of the Newhall Land & Farming Co., one of the top developers in the Santa Clarita Valley. “As communities grow and mature, people get more involved in cultural activities.”
CSUN will have 50,000 students by then. But most will go to class virtually, Caretto believes, since Internet lectures will be the norm.
By this point, Tarzana might have its gilded Tarzan statue. Ever since Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan and founder of Tarzana, died in 1950, his family has been pushing for a museum, a statue, a loincloth look-alike contest--anything--that could memorialize the town’s connection to its ape-man namesake.
If looking back to 1950 is any guide to how much will change in the next 50 years, the land-use plan of the San Fernando Valley is destined to remain essentially the same. Take Ventura Boulevard. In 1950, it was the Nile of the Valley--a river of commerce that snaked the length of the Valley, bringing life and activity to communities along its course. It’s basically that way today. And it’ll be that way in 2050.
“Whatever somebody thinks of the Valley, you can’t say it wasn’t a planned community,” Howe said. “In 50 years, it’s probably going to look pretty similar to the way it does now.”
One aspect that may look different will be individual homes--taller, sleeker and packed more closely. Lots will be divided and vacant parcels filled. As real estate prices continue to climb, aging one-story homes will be ripped down and replaced by three-story luxury pads.
Political Tremors May Be Felt
Yet the biggest change won’t be houses, highways or malls. It will be in the political landscape, if Valley secessionists get their way.
“By the year 2050, there will be few people alive who remember when the Valley was part of L.A.,” predicted Richard Close, chairman of Valley VOTE, the secession group.
Close is convinced the Valley will break off from Los Angeles in 2002, the earliest date the municipal divorce could become a ballot initiative. Others say secession won’t stop there.
“Soon it will become a tale of two Valleys,” said Eric Shockman of Sherman Oaks, a political science professor at USC. “You’ll see a north-south split, with an affluent southern Valley city and a poor, neglected northern Valley city.”
And if the Valley does split in two, it will divide itself again and again and again, like an amoeba, to form dozens of self-governing micro-communities, Shockman said.
But Shockman doesn’t believe that will happen. He sees the Valley as stronger today than it has ever been. Valley industries, such as entertainment and high technology, will continue to flourish, bringing more jobs, more people and more clout to the Valley of the future, he said. Satisfaction with the status quo will stymie secessionist dreams.
“In 50 years,” he said, “this area will be a thriving, highly urbanized, highly sophisticated place.”
Who really knows? But if these ruminations are the faintest bit accurate, the Valley’s future looks pretty good, even if Sundays are spent schlepping to Palmcaster.