L.A.--Whose City Is It, Anyway?

Trying to be optimistic about the drift of planning and design in Los Angeles is difficult.

Witnessing the region’s frustrating traffic, persistent pollution, haphazard development, faddish architecture, oppressed pedestrians, abused ecosystem and fragmented governments, one might ask, what planning and design?

Still, being a relatively young, albeit fractured metropolis entering what urbanologists would call its second growth, the potential here for an attractive, accessible, livable city persists.

Certainly, one can take heart in the promise of such projects as First Interstate World Center downtown, the Pike in Long Beach, the fine-tuning of the Pasadena Civic Center, the expansion of Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design and the Pacific Design Center.

And then there are the neighborhoods that are slowly restoring themselves, such as Melrose Hill, aided by a historic district designation; West Adams and Highland Park, by a dogged house-by-house rehabilitation effort, and Carthay Circle by simply diverting traffic.

There also seems to be an increasing awareness that the emerging urban fabric of Los Angeles somehow must be better woven and detailed; witness the varied planning exercises now under way to mend Broadway downtown, 6th Street in San Pedro, Van Nuys Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley and the Olympic Boulevard corridor in West Los Angeles.

But, unfortunately, these efforts are exceptions, relative oases in a planning and design desert. As an extended tour of our cityscape sadly reveals, rapacious, insensitive developments continue--the increase in overdesigned, obese residential projects, maxed out mini malls, and cookie-cutter commercial complexes.

For specifics, just look at the march of new prison-like apartment blocks on the edges of Mar Vista and Los Feliz; the nouvelle gauche houses being shoe-horned north of Montana Avenue in Santa Monica; the new, glitzy Brentwood Gardens mall on San Vicente Boulevard, and the overscaled office towers sticking up like sore thumbs in Burbank.

Few days go by without some reader or community group contacting me to protest some outrage or other, be it the construction of a rude building, the destruction of a landmark, the mismanagement of traffic, or, as last week, simply the cutting down of two mature ficus trees on Hope Street downtown because the city felt they might interfere with pedestrian traffic.

Though some of the protests, I feel, have been motivated by prejudice and self-interest, most are valid. How else can one explain the design of the Fairway Building on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, or the apartment houses mooning Hawthorn Avenue in Hollywood with their parking?

And all this despite the flurry over the last few years over moratoriums and slow-growth initiatives, the promise of government to be more sensitive to neighborhood environmental issues, the airing of the problems by seemingly endless seminars and the gestures of concern by a few politicians, professional associations and public agencies.

Growth has always been the honey pot of Los Angeles, and not necessarily a bad one. Growth can create jobs, provide needed housing, stimulate culture, and generally make a more interesting place to live while holding out the hope for a better life for all.

It was this hope, when combined with Southern California’s benign climate, unique beaches, topography and vegetation, that spurred the region’s phenomenal growth over the last half-century, attracting waves of immigrants and migrants, myself included. California dreamin’.

Putting a damper on the dream has been unmanaged growth, which is what prompted the broad support of the recent slow-growth initiatives. While a few were defeated, all made their mark.

The initiatives were, in effect, a shot across the bow of government, a warning that something was amiss; the goose Los Angeles, which had been laying the golden egg representing a desired quality of life, was ailing.

But two years after the first wave of initiatives, it has become obvious that growth alone no longer is the prime local issue in Southern California.

A hint of this is offered by the initiative being circulated by an organization labeled Pasadena Residents in Defense of Our Environment, calling for more citizen control of the city’s growth policies. (If I lived in Pasadena, I’d certainly sign it, doing so before this Friday if the measure is to get on the March municipal ballot.)

What, from my perspective, is emerging from the various slow-growth and environmental movements is a much more crucial issue with ramifications beyond just planning and design. It is the issue raised in the question: “Whose city is it anyway, the politicians’, the public servants’, the professionals’ or the people’s?”

Increasingly across Southern California, residents at coffee klatches and community meetings are expressing their frustration and lack of faith in the ability of local government to manage growth, protect the dwindling quality of life and to foster a more livable city.

Though the words are there, most government agencies just don’t seem to be in gear. Persisting is an “us” and “them” mentality that looks at citizen involvement as an annoyance. (More about that and Los Angeles’ tardy and tattered plan for community planning advisory committees next month.)

As for the self-described professionals, including academics and architects, there have been a lot of talk, seminars, studies, conferences and consultant teams, but no real effect on improving the quality of life here except on those who collect salaries, fees and fame from such endeavors.

With too few exceptions, it has been politics as usual for the politicians. The most egregious example of late was the defeat of the Showa project that had been proposed for Little Tokyo and endorsed after protracted studies by the community and various city agencies. It lost out to a proposal propped up at the last minute by a gaggle of lobbyists.

Meanwhile, the powers and personalities-that-be seem to be too busy toasting memories of the 1984 Olympics, L.A.’s emergence as a world-class city, new cultural institutions and, most of all, each other, to worry about such mundane subjects as planning and design.

That is why L.A. appears at times to be less a city and more a folly. It is time to get serious about planning and design.