TRUMP L.A.: GREED OVER PURPOSE : The Epitome of Excess : If the city is serious about seizing its destiny and ceasing to be the ultimate response to the auto age, this proposal could not have come at a worse time.

Welcome, Los Angeles, to the Battle of Trump. Whoever thought that Donald Trump would bring together New York and Los Angeles--two diametrically opposite cities--in common sense?

Don’t feel, however, that because Trump has 125 stories planned for you and 150 in store for New York that he considers Los Angeles to be second-rate. He considers any city without his imprint second-rate.

For Los Angeles, he is offering a space-needle tower and complex in place of a valued landmark--the kind of historical and architectural treasure that countless communities would die to have as the center of a revitalization effort. For New York, he is offering more--a 150-story tower, seven “smaller” 70-story towers, a 1.5-million-square-foot regional mall and 7,000 parking spaces for Manhattan’s Upper West Side, already one of the densest urban neighborhoods in the country. For both cities, he is offering salvation.

Periodically, Trump warns New Yorkers that if Trump City isn’t wholeheartedly embraced, smart New Yorkers will move to New Jersey. It will be interesting to learn where he will expect Angelenos to move if his plans are thwarted.

Donald Trump is the epitome of excess. His projects elevate private greed over public purpose, an endearing quality to those who share the mind-set. But his projects also are totally unrelated to rational urban planning--if urban planning is defined as the sensible management of the built environment for the good of the public. Public concerns and public involvement are reduced to irrelevancies. Thus, Donald Trump’s vision is, in fact, a national problem.

The country abounds with planned or built projects that overwhelm in scale and impact their adjacent community and larger host city, projects that are openly hostile to public concerns and values and relate not one bit to local character and place. The difference among them all is a matter of scale; Trump’s are merely the biggest.

When private interest defines the standard for growth and development, public input is removed from the process of change. Democracy is made a mockery.

Some of Trump’s familiar intimidation tactics are already at work on the people of Los Angeles. He’s letting you know that many people are counting on him to advance his plans and bring prosperity to one and all, that he’s had buyout offers at twice his partnership’s cost and that if he doesn’t get what he wants, he can always pull out. There is meager room for negotiation, room for tinkering at most.

Demolishing the city’s first luxury hotel, whose Cocoanut Grove helped put Los Angeles’ name in lights, to make way for one more self-contained, mixed-use development is an unfortunate occurrence for a city that increasingly has been taking seriously issues of urban design and environmental planning. If Los Angeles is serious about seizing its own development destiny and ceasing to be the ultimate response to the auto age, Trump’s proposal could not have come at a worse time.

Even if cut in half, Trump’s mega-proposal would unleash cataclysmic change throughout the entire city. No mitigation Trump can offer would avert the negative impact, citywide, on traffic, air quality and real-estate values. Promised jobs, taxes and other mythical benefits would either not materialize or be drawn from other areas of the city whose inevitable decline would then require enormous new public investment to recover. This spiral of decline is assured anywhere too much development happens in one place by one developer at one time.

But Trump cannot impose his will on a city unwilling to accept it. The ownership of property is still not enough to overcome governance by laws, not men. And private property is still given the essence of its value by public investment. Los Angeles residents would do well to learn from the example of the well-organized and determined Manhattan group, Westpride, that mobilized the Upper West Side and the larger city in opposition to Trump’s West Side proposal, a project whose impact would be felt throughout its region, as yours would be. A model citizen group, Westpride discouraged NBC from considering Trump City as a headquarters site, raised money to hire requisite consultants and lawyers to begin building the opposition case and carefully laid the groundwork for the real test yet to come. Five years after Trump’s first announcement in New York, the formal review process has not even begun.

Los Angeles citizens might similarly collect themselves and respond not just in opposition to the irrational but in support of the sensible. Donald Trump may have, indeed, done Los Angeles the biggest favor since the car started splitting it apart. If his proposal is the catalyst for a public process that shapes the city’s future, he will have delivered a great gift. Surely, if Los Angeles does not seize this opportunity, Trump will.