In L.A., the West Finds City to Imitate, Execrate

As the poster child of urban sprawl, Los Angeles is the city the West loves to hate.

“You never know whether you’ll be able to get anywhere in the stinking traffic or choke to death in the stinking air,” Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman gibes.

But like it or not, the booming cities of the West are becoming more like Los Angeles every day. Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, Seattle and others are all seeing the mounting congestion, sprawl and smog that are so closely identified with Southern California.

“The image of L.A. puts fear into everybody,” said Ellen Ittelson, director of planning services for the city of Denver. “But it’s a hard road to avoid.”

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, most of those fast-growing metropolitan areas have done little to avoid following in the footsteps of Los Angeles. After years of resistance, some are now making belated efforts to build downtown housing and light rail systems.

Nevertheless, “they’re following in L.A.’s footsteps against their will,” says Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demographics at USC.

Las Vegas has embraced growth so enthusiastically that it’s close to becoming another L.A. suburb. It was the fastest-growing city in the country during the 1990s, posting an 83% population jump to more than 1.5 million people in 2000.

Its roads are often as clogged as the Ventura Freeway at rush hour. Air quality is something only a mayor could brag about. In fact, Las Vegas faces sanctions from the Environmental Protection Agency if it doesn’t reduce air pollution.

The Phoenix metroplex, which grew 45.3% to more than 3.3 million people, also has come under fire for its brown cloud of dust and haze that cloaks mountain vistas. Denver, bordered by three of the 10 fastest-growing counties in the country, is being forced to build bigger freeways. The Seattle area, which saw a 15% population increase in the past decade, faces similar problems.

They all malign Los Angeles. And every day, they take another step in its direction.

“We should take all the city managers from every city in the West . . . to Los Angeles for six months,” says James Corless, California director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project.

Why? “To learn about mistakes.”

Colorado’s rapid growth is troubling for Jan Buhrman, a resident of Superior. The city between Denver and Boulder grew from 255 people in 1990 to 10,663 residents in 2000, making it the fastest-growing city in Colorado.

Buhrman faults state officials for getting a late start on legislation aimed at controlling development, and for failing to come together to tackle transit and density as regional issues.

Buhrman grew up in the shadow of Disneyland and remembers the sights and smells of the orange and strawberry fields that once surrounded the theme park just 30 miles south of Los Angeles.

“I saw everything get paved over and developed [near Disneyland],” said Buhrman, 45. “Now Colorado is getting crowded. We’re just trying to hold on to what open space we have left and not duplicate what L.A. has done.”

The reason for the rapid growth in major Western cities is the automobile. Like all U.S. cities that boomed after 1950, those metropolitan areas were planned to accommodate vehicles rather than the trolley and rail lines that ushered in growth in the East.

The resulting freeways and wide boulevards let people live in cheaper outlying suburbs while commuting to the cities where jobs were concentrated.

Decades of dizzying growth have taken a toll on Los Angeles County, making it more difficult to provide water and power, pushing affordable housing farther from job centers and lengthening already maddening commute times.

The county’s population grew to more than 9.5 million in 2000, giving it more people than Arizona, Colorado and Wyoming combined.

As far as the rest of the West is concerned, the chief exports of Los Angeles have been air pollution and urban exiles like John Hatch.

Like many former Californians, he fled the big city but found that its problems followed him.

Phoenix seemed a long way from Los Angeles when Hatch moved to Arizona in 1990. There were seldom any lines at banks and stores, and the freeways were wide open.

Hatch now believes planners took a wrong turn by allowing rampant development in the surrounding desert. For the 51-year-old teacher, the resulting traffic and pollution means it’s time to get out.

“I was flipped off in traffic 12 times in one week,” he said. “People are stressed out by the growth. . . . It happened in Los Angeles, and now we’re seeing it in Phoenix.”

In the search for solutions, officials meet with planners from around the West.

“We seek out successful models wherever they exist,” said Frederick Steiner, an Arizona State University professor who heads the project. “But none leap to mind for Los Angeles.”