DEEGAN ON CALIFORNIA-There’s a romance to the phrase “Pacific Coast Highway” that is for many a burned-into-the-brain vision of wide open, empty bluffs dropping down to the sandy beaches of the California coastline, and the blue Pacific Ocean dotted with surfers. 

Beauty, open spaces and the beach are often-cited attributes of the Golden State’s coastline. But, there is also an ugly side: dismissals, infighting, community uprisings, backroom dealing, and questions about the California Coastal Commission’s integrity. That matters. 

Every now and then, along the pristine coastline of Central and Northern California, there’s a beach community; but for most of the 1100 mile-long coastline, except for 100 miles where development and military bases have eaten up almost all of Southern California’s coastline, the western edge of California, practically 1000 miles of it, remains unspoiled and very coveted by beachgoers and builders alike. 

The majority of the coast is always at risk of being developed, and the watchdog agency to mitigate this is the California Coastal Commission. It matters how strong the commission is if it is to be able to push back against development and the cutting off of beach access to the public. Two big development projects, Sweetwater Mesa in Malibu and Banning Ranch near Newport Beach, show how the Commission is currently operating. One approval (subject to a lawsuit) and one “denial-but resubmit.” Failed state legislation preventing ex parte communications between commissioners and developers has intensified charges of “backroom deals.” The perceived integrity of the commission matters. 

The recent firing of the commission’s executive director may signal a tilt toward development and away from preservation and environmentalism along the coast. That also matters. 

The California Coastal Commission matters. It holds the power to shape the future of one of the state’s great assets: it’s mostly pristine coastline. 

How did we get here? Like many significant developments in California history, it came by way of politics, in this case a voter initiative called Proposition 20, the Coastal Zone Conservation Act, which, in 1972, led to the state legislature enacting the California Coastal Act in 1976. The California Coastal Commission was born out of that Act, with a mission to "protect, conserve, restore, and enhance the environment of the California coastline.” 

Developers wanted to create a private, planned community called Sea Ranch along the Sonoma County coast in northern California that would have included ten miles of coastline being cut off to public access. That sounded alarms. Activists gathered enough signatures to put Prop 20 on the ballot. 

From this beginning, the Coastal Commission has worked, mostly in harmony with environmentalists and developers to find a balance for development along the coast, that is, until very recently when controversy erupted over the firing of longtime staff member and incumbent Executive Director Charles Lester in February 2016. Suspicions were that he was not “developer-friendly” enough. His termination is a wound that has not yet healed: no permanent replacement has been named, and many people suspect the CCC will reboot as a more “developer-friendly” commission now that Lester is out of the way. Who replaces him will set the tone, and that’s what has many preservationists and environmentalists worried. 

No matter what the tilt of the commission, dealing with it can be an exhausting experience, as U2’s guitarist “The Edge” learned over ten years of trying to develop Malibu’s Sweetwater Mesa, located in a bluff high above the Pacific, into a residential housing compound. Dozens of lawyers and lobbyists, reams of required permits and public records, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in studies culminated in over 70 technical reports -- allegedly enough to fill 26 banker's boxes -- from what were called “all manner of experts — geologists, biologists, hydrologists, archaeologists, arborists, structural engineers, transportation engineer,” all to satisfy the needs of a very demanding California Coastal Commission. It’s this type of rigor that some feel will be compromised when the new commission director arrives. 

When the Coastal Commission recently approved the Sweetwater Mesa project, the Sierra Club immediately filed suit to stop it. The opposite result came from deliberations about another big project: Banning Ranch. One stretch of coastline that is beyond redemption or much protection (because development happened before the Coastal Act was passed) is the segment in Southern California running from Los Angeles south to San Diego. With some exceptions, this area is already highly developed. 

One notable exception is called Banning Ranch -- hundreds of acres on the coast near Newport Beach – which is the current cause celebre of anti-development groups. Plans to develop one of the last open spaces along the Southern California coast by erecting housing and a hotel, were turned down by a 9-1 vote of the Coastal Commission on September 7. That may have been more about “process” than “content,” and could resurface soon as a project. The developers can submit revised plans within six months. Opponents are using social media to campaign against it. 

Like the Sea Ranch development in Northern California that kicked off the concept of protecting our coastline through rules and regulations administered by the Coastal Commission, and because it downsized its footprint along the Sonoma coastline, the Banning Ranch project may resurface in a modified form. It’s the “big project” right now. 

The current “big issue” is ex parte communications between commissioners and developers, a practice that State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) has been trying to change. Her bill to ban private meetings between lobbyists and members of the California Coastal Commission was just voted down in the State Assembly, where only one dozen votes fell in her favor. Those that fear that backroom deals are how the Coastal Commission operates cannot be encouraged by the negative vote on the ex parte bill. 

The Surfrider Foundation that says their mission is “dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world's ocean, waves and beaches through a powerful activist network” has posted this warning: “The most pro-development commissioners with the worst environmental voting records are attempting a coup to weaken the Commission’s ability to protect the public’s coast and undermine the integrity of the Coastal Program.” That matters.

(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GELAND’S WORLD--We have to thank mayor Garcetti for taking disaster preparedness seriously. He brought Dr Lucy Jones into city government, where she considered our vulnerabilities in the event of a serious earthquake. 

As she pointed out, a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault -- what we colloquially call "the big one" -- would leave us without running water for an extended period of time, because lateral movement would break the water mains. 

We would also be without electricity and without an operating sewer system. Without electricity to recharge the cell phone towers, our mobile phone system would only be viable for a few hours. Driving would be difficult, because downed power lines would block city streets. 

In short, it would be a system-wide failure in which at least momentarily, wherever you happen to be stuck, you're on your own. 

For the past 8 months, the neighborhood council emergency preparedness alliance (NCEPA) has been hearing briefings by representatives of law enforcement and city departments. 

For example, we just heard a talk on how the Department of Recreation and Parks has been preparing to deal with a major disaster. In a city which has over 400 parks, nearly half being equipped with some sort of building, the Rec and Parks system is an obvious tool for dealing with thousands of people who have been driven from their homes by structural damage. 

It was pointed out that people don't feel comfortable remaining in unstable structures following earthquakes. In moments of such human displacement, people tend to congregate in open spaces such as public parks. 

The Department of Recreation and Parks has been thinking about this possibility and has developed plans. It's employees will go to predetermined posts or be assigned emergency jobs. They will cooperate with the American Red Cross in creating shelters. 

I must say that we were impressed by the level of awareness and attention to preparation we heard from the Rec & Parks representatives. In previous meetings, we heard from the LAPD and the LAFD, who will work with the emergency operations center to maintain order and provide critical services. 

There even seems to be a good deal of mutual organizing going on between the various agencies and law enforcement groups. 

So far so good. But one critical element appears to be missing from all the preparations. 

That element is you and me. The planners have left us, the public, largely ignorant of what the plans actually are. Consider the four million inhabitants of the city of Los Angeles along with another six million inhabitants of the rest of the county. 

Do any of us know where we are supposed to assemble in the event that an earthquake makes our homes dangerous and leaves us without running water or electricity? Nobody has told me where I am supposed to go, and I would imagine it's the same for you. 

We had a discussion of these uncomfortable facts at the latest meeting of NCEPA. I should point out that some people raise a counterargument: Making disaster preparedness plans available to the public could play into the hands of potential terrorists. I think this is an understandable point. But it's possible to make a distinction between preparing for an act of terrorism vs. preparing for a major earthquake. 

Preparation for a local terrorist attack is something that should obviously be confined to law enforcement and a few top ranking government officials. The rest of us don't need to know what the LAPD plans are, just as we didn't need to have detailed knowledge about how the LA Airport police were trained to react when terrorists attacked one of the terminals. We don't want to tell terrorists in advance that the members of the public will all be heading in a particular direction to a particular place in the event of public violence. 

But a major earthquake is a very different situation. To make an obvious point, earthquakes are not the sort of events that terrorists can plan for, and they aren't the sorts of events that anyone can fake. If we have a major earthquake, we will all know it. 

So my question to the authorities and to the NCEPA is this: It's ten minutes after the shaking has stopped. What do we do now? What do thousands of displaced people do? Where do they go? Should they shelter in place, meaning that they stay home and live on bottled water, or should they wander towards the local park, hoping that the authorities will be providing food, water, and shelter? 

My view is that the public ought to be told the plan in advance. We should all have knowledge of a nearby open-ground assembly point should our own homes be rendered unstable. And, we should all become part of a wide scale training and organizational program so that if and when we are on our own, we will be able to deal with it. 

To put it another way, we the public should be part of the planning and training process so that in the event of a natural disaster, we will know what to do and have the supplies and tools available to do it. 

Our proposal at NCEPA is that a few hundred community organizations, starting with the 96 neighborhood councils, provide training and organizing to the public so that if the big earthquake happens, our neighborhoods will be capable of reacting on the local level. Everyone will have access to water, shelter, and first aid. 

This means that the NCEPA organization needs to provide the connection between the city agencies and the public. At the public end of this pipeline, the neighborhood councils will play an important role, as will other groups such as homeowners associations and religious groups. 

From now on, the question we need to be asking ourselves is this: If the big one hit us tomorrow morning, would we be ready? Right now, the answer is obviously No. But the city has been making progress. What is left to be done is to bring the disaster preparedness program to the people. 

Addendum: We will be discussing emergency preparedness at the Congress of Neighborhoods, to be held at the Los Angeles City Hall this Saturday, September 24. Join us. If you register in advance, parking is free.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])

-cw

HERE’S WHAT I KNOW--In the years following World War II, Los Angeles was a fast-growing metropolis, an automobile-centric sprawling modern city, attracting new residents seeking a different type of urban living. Architects Heth Wharton and Ralph Vaughn were designing garden apartment complexes in Los Angeles, including Venice’s Lincoln Place, North Hollywood Manor and on thirteen acres of former dairy land in Sherman Oaks, Chase Knolls. Wharton and Vaughn followed the Garden City planning principles, arranging buildings around open courtyards and keeping traffic and storage to the perimeters of the complex. 

So many Angelenos have called Chase Knolls home over the years and in 2000, the complex was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument as part of an effort to prevent its demolition. But now, part of the property is at risk. 

The city has approved a Tenant Habitability Plan (THP) that allows the developer to knock down existing garages and laundry rooms and remove 138 mature trees to make room for new utility lines to upgrade electricity for future tenants so the landlord may install in-unit washer/dryer and dishwashers, amenities that will not be offered to existing tenants. 

By the end of the project, residents’ covered parking will be replaced by an uncovered, unassigned open-air parking space. The change will also compromise the tenants’ storage units, half of the laundry rooms on the 13.5 acre property, as well as the trees and wildlife. 

According to a tenant activist, “the developers could move the utility lines over a few feet to save the garages, laundry rooms and trees except they are clearing the area to build six new apartment buildings where the garages and laundry rooms are today. The six buildings will house 141 new units that will not be covered under rent control.” 

On top of that, existing residents will get a 10 percent rent increase, based on the total cost of improvements, which is “basically putting the infrastructure in place for the developer to build,” the activist adds. 

Many of the existing tenants feel the THP was not properly completed and should have been rejected by the Housing + Community Investment Department for numerous reasons, including all three sections regarding hazardous material abatement, listed as N/A, although two sets of tests submitted by the landlord confirmed the presence of both asbestos and lead in the garages and laundry room, slated for demolition, as well as other issues. 

The law mandates disclosure of hazardous materials; leaving out information or lying on the THP form or in testimony is a misdemeanor. Tenant activists have been appealing to Councilmember David Ryu to forward the THP to the City Attorney for investigation. 

This past week, prior to a calendared September 27 meeting, trees have been cut down to make room for the electrical updates, some of which contain nests, also a violation of the prohibition against cutting down mature trees during nesting season, which one of the activists brought before Ryu. The activist notes that trees will be continued to be removed through the end of September and possibly into October, despite the EIR indicating that no more than 65 trees would be removed and the DEIR supplement indicating that “it would make every attempt to relocate mature trees … would replace trees that are removed a part of the revised project with the same species.” 

The activists will continue to battle against the change to the historic property, changes that will compromise the quality of life for existing tenants. We’ll keep you posted.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.)

-cw

TRUTHDIG-It should be named “the exploitation highway.” The path begins at the Los Angeles Harbor and extends about 100 miles east to the warehouses that process goods for Wal-Mart, Amazon and other retailers. These products are unloaded from container ships from Asian manufacturing plants, where labor is much cheaper than in the United States. 

Here, far from the noise of the Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton brawl, are painful examples of what this presidential campaign should be about—$10-an-hour working people struggling to raise their families out of poverty, straining to send their kids to school, falling through holes in the safety net. 

At the port, truck drivers—classified as “independent contractors”—wait in long lines to pick up loads. Driver Daniel Anseko Vaina (photo above) told me he might get $185 a load to carry a container of Wal-Mart merchandise. From this, he subtracts $35 for fuel, $60 for the transportation company from which he leases his truck and another 5 to 10 percent for insurance, leaving him with less than $50 or $60 a day. 

The trucks carry the containers to warehouses. Most are east of Los Angeles, in the area known as the Inland Empire. There, goods are stacked, often precariously, on pallets, and then sped to sorting tables. 

Warehouse workers told me they receive about $10 an hour for dangerous work that offers no health or retirement benefits. One pallet knocked down Alejandra Lopez, 56. The company sent her to a clinic, which approved sending her back to work, despite extreme pains in her abdomen. She couldn’t make it. An attorney helped her get workers’ compensation, which paid for surgery. She cried as she told me her story. 

I met these workers while pursuing another story. We’d been talking at Truthdig about whether white blue-collar manufacturing workers, left behind in the current economy, would vote for Trump. But Latinos are now the largest single ethnic group in California, especially in the southern part of the state. Manufacturing jobs are declining. The white blue-collar workers I interviewed earlier in my career have diminished in number, along with the auto, aerospace and other manufacturing plants that once employed them. 

Instead of the story I set out to cover, my attention was caught by an article by professor Juan Lara of the University of Southern California: “Warehouse Work: Path to the Middle Class or Road to Economic Insecurity?” 

That was connected with another story of working-class economic insecurity: that of truck drivers, deprived of regular pay, classified as independent contractors—as if they owned a business. Together, they amount to a story: the exploitation of hard-pressed working people, no matter their ethnicity. 

Barb Maynard, a communications consultant for the Teamsters Union, which is trying to organize the drivers, introduced me to Vaina, a truck driver who goes by the nickname Seko. 

We drove around the edges of the Port of Los Angeles, which occupies 7,500 acres of water and land. The adjoining Long Beach Port sprawls across another 7,600 acres. The shipping industry says these two ports account for nearly half of the sea cargo coming into the United States. 

Classifying drivers such as Seko as independent contractors is a good deal for the trucking companies, which he said don’t have to pay salaries or benefits (drivers are paid by the company that receives the shipment upon delivery). Rather, money comes to the trucking companies from the drivers’ lease payments and parking fees for their trucks. The drivers buy fuel and supplies from the company—at the company store, you might say. As Tennessee Ernie Ford sang in “16 Tons,”  “Saint Peter, don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.” 

The companies say the arrangement gives the drivers the life of independent business people, able to choose their hours and working days. But the drivers’ days don’t allow for much independence. Seko said drivers begin lining up at the port at 3:30 a.m. to get a chance for a load when the gates open two hours later. “I start out at 5 or 5:30,” said Seko, who drives his truck until 3 a.m. 

Drivers circle the docks filled with containers, but there’s no guarantee of a load. “There’s no work,” the dispatcher could say, Seko told me. 

The warehouse workers have a different kind of bad deal. I met them through Sheheryar Kaooji of the Workers Resource Center, which is organizing warehouse workers to pursue rights guaranteed by law, such as safety and wage protections. He arranged for me to meet with five warehouse workers at the center, located in Ontario, Calif., a small city near the warehouses. They spoke Spanish and another resource center worker translated. They earn $10 an hour, the minimum wage. 

“Today, I made enough for my ride to work or to pay the babysitter,” said Marian Garcia, 45. She pays for her daughter’s transportation to college. To earn extra money, Garcia sells clothes and pots and pans bought off the internet. 

Warehouse work is dangerous. “There are so many injuries and accidents, you end up paying [your wages] for medical expenses,” said Rafael Sanchez, 54. “Boxes are stacked high, and there are injuries when boxes fall on top of you. Stacks topple over.” Speed for the quick movement of goods is all-important. “They used to time us,” said Sanchez. “We stopped that. Now they stand in front of you and stare. You will feel the pressure.” 

The workers are up against a business community fixated on recovery from the recession. I talked to Christopher Thornburg, director of the Center for Economic Forecasting and Development at the School of Business Administration at the University of California, Riverside. According to him, take-home pay for workers is understated. “Median earnings in the Inland Empire … is running $42,000 a year,” he said, adding that that’s what warehouse workers receive. But USC professor De Lara noted that that figure includes management and high-skilled jobs. If you count just unskilled, blue-collar workers, the annual pay is $22,000. For women, it’s $19,000. 

Generations ago, there were strong unions—the autoworkers, steelworkers, machinists, longshoremen and others. But an unfriendly judicial and regulatory system has made it almost impossible for unions to organize drivers classified as independent contractors or warehouse workers in scattered facilities, each with a different owner. That should be part of the presidential campaign.

It took courage for the workers to meet with me. The bosses could retaliate by cutting their hours or not giving them work. I asked why they’d agreed. 

One said, “We want our children to have a better life.” Another told me, “The reason we are struggling is not just for our children, but for everyone who works in a warehouse.” 

I was stirred by those words and touched by their stories. They were far different from anything we’ve heard in the presidential campaign.

(Bill Boyarsky is a columnist for Truthdig, the Jewish Journal, and LA Observed. This piece was posted first at Truthdig.com.) Photo: Bill Boyarsky. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Planning a large city like Los Angeles might be complicated, but it is not rocket science. In fact, the State of California outlines the process in detail through its periodically updated General Plan Guidelines, the latest draft of which is now available on-line. Furthermore, this update contains hundreds of live Internet links to other planning documents and databases. 

Nevertheless, Los Angeles has turned to three alternative principles to guide its multi-layered, opaque city planning process. Yes, City Planning has responded to the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative with its own proposal to update Community Plans, batch General Plan Amendments, vet environmental consultants, and upgrade technology, but this is really old wine in new bottles. 

To better understand this old wine, I have boiled it down to three components: 

Component 1: Private Parcels. Oblivious to California’s General Plan Guidelines, in Los Angeles city planning only refers to the regulation of privately owned parcels, not to the city’s entire landmass, the actual focus of city planning. Since these private parcels range from about 20 to 40 percent of most communities, it means that LA’s day-to-day planning process ignores the 60-80 percent of the city that consists of sidewalks, streets, undergrounded and above ground utilities, parkways, parks, senior centers, libraries, schools, government buildings, power line easements, and open space. Likewise, all of the public services that are necessary to live in a metropolitan area, such as telecommunications, water, electricity, waste disposal, education, public safety, streetlights, stoplights, directional signs, and hundreds of other services, large and small, are slighted by this truncated city planning process. 

In practice, this means that the inflated population forecasts that drive LA’s plans are only applied to the planning and zoning of private parcels. They are not the basis for calls to upgrade local infrastructure, local services, or the City’s annual budget. There is one exception, however. Transit is often mentioned, but strictly because it can be invoked as a rationale for up-zoning and up-planning private parcels that happen to be located near transit corridors and stations. 

Component 2: Real Estate Speculation. Once city planning has been restricted to the regulation of privately owned parcels, the next planning component is to open the floodgates for individual and institutional profit maximization. If an individual or institutional investor believes they can make more profit by a specific real estate project, whether or not is it legal, the City’s planning laws and regulations are conveniently bent to become “business-friendly.” This ad hoc regulation of land explains why most of LA’s city planners, despite masters degrees from well regarded graduate programs at UCLA and USC, devote their working hours to administrative processes that legalize otherwise illegal real estate projects. 

Ingredient 3: Squeaky wheels planning. Since the maximization of profit through investment in private parcels guides the planning process in Los Angeles, it continually leads to two wildly different outcomes, either too little or too much investment. Most poor neighborhoods languish with little private or public investment other than the LAPD, giving rise to a dilapidated built environment, as well as massive civil disturbances in 1965 and 1992. Meanwhile “hot” neighborhoods suffer from uncontrolled real estate speculation. Because so many of their speculative projects are out-of-character, out-of-scale, and exceed the capacity of local public services and public infrastructure, local residents frequently push back. 

In response, occasional projects are killed or withdrawn, some are redesigned, and a few are thrown out by litigation. But, when the projects cannot be pushed through because of sustained local opposition, City Hall’s fall back position is to wall off small geographical areas to placate local residents by adopting protective overlay districts. 

This is what I call squeaky wheel planning, and it has resulted in an elaborate mosaic in Los Angeles of D and Q conditions on individual parcels, Community Plan footnotes, Specific Plans, Community Design Overlay Districts, Historical Preservation Overlay Districts, Transit Neighborhood Plans, Residential Floor Area Districts, Station Neighborhood Area Plans, Pedestrian Oriented Districts, Neighborhood Oriented Districts, Community Plan Implementation Ordinances, Master Planned Development Districts, Interim Control Ordinances, and overlay zones and districts so obscure that few people have ever dealt with them. 

Furthermore, squeaky wheel planning is about to become even more complicated once the new re:codeLA zones are implemented on their own, or through a lengthy cycle of Community Plan Updates and their appended zone and plan designation amendments. As I previously explained, the division of the current R-1 single-family zone into 12 alternatives R-1 zones means that many more areas will be walled off through small overlay zones. A program that was supposed to simplify the mind-boggling complexity of zoning in Los Angeles will actually make it much harder to comprehend and impossible to enforce. 

Paying the Price 

Do Angelinos pay a price for a planning system that focuses on private parcels, bends over backwards to promote real estate speculation, and placates local opposition to excessive projects by oiling squeaky wheels with a vast array of overlay zones and districts? Yes. 

Price 1 is understanding. With so many layers of laws and regulations, only the most highly trained specialists can make sense of what is called planning. 

Price 2 is enforcement. While the City Council and the Planning Department might conjure up the rules and regulations, it is up to another City department, Building and Safety, to enforce these laws. Considering that this department is chronically short-staffed, has lost many experienced plan checkers, and pliantly bends to political pressure by routinely approving speculative projects, it is not up to the task. 

Price 3 is quality of life. Squeaky wheel planning can and does protect small areas, but its real purpose is to allow untrammeled real estate speculation to proceed in the rest of Los Angeles. Those neighborhoods continue to suffer even more from projects that are too large, too tall, that tax local infrastructure and infrastructure, and that impose short and long-term environmental costs. 

Price 4 is climate change. Climate change is the ultimate environmental cost of poorly regulated real estate speculation. These unplanned projects use vast amounts of resources and energy to build and then to operate. As a result, they cumulatively load the atmosphere with destructive Green House Gases, the engine of the climate crisis. Furthermore, despite hoopla that some real estate projects are transit-oriented, they have large parking facilities, cater to the well-off who do not use transit, and rarely monitor the transportation patterns of their residents and customers. 

Clearly, this old wine is not fit to drink, even if it is packaged in new bottles.

(Dick Platkin is a former LA city planner who reports on planning issues for City Watch. He also consults, teaches planning courses, and welcomes comments and corrections at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

RICHARD’S LA ALMANAC-In writing for the CityWatch Corruption Watch, a lot of focus has been on the harm which the crimogenic nature of the Los Angeles City Hall does to the City. The City Council’s crucial element is its voting trading pact which guarantees that no councilmember will stand in the way of any construction deal no matter how illegal or how harmful to the City. Thus, Los Angeles has become an “open city” where the whims of corrupt politician govern – and destroy – the city. 

We seldom address what has made Los Angeles a great city. Two ingredients have been crucial in our rapid rise the nation’s second city. The first is weather. For the most part, weather is beyond our control. If we include air quality as part of weather, then we have exercised some control over air pollution.   The other factor which favored Los Angeles above over metropolitan areas has been de-centralization. 

Los Angeles began de-centralized. In the beginning, there was nothing but scrub brush and some native inhabitants spread hither and yon. We are unaware of their existence except when as new comers we try to pronounce Cahuenga. [Originally, “cabueg-na” which was changed to Cahuenga by the Spanish who could not pronounce the native word for the pass through the hills. (The Story of Hollywood, by Gregory Paul Williams © 2005 pp4-5)] 

It was a few hundred years before the concept of centralization aka densification became relevant for Los Angeles. 

The Landmark 1915 Study of Traffic Conditions in Los Angeles 

By 1915, Los Angeles had developed a serious problem due to centralization of business within a small area, about 1200 wide between Hill Street and Main Street and from First Street down to Seventh Street. The original densification was partially topographical due to Bunker Hill and the LA River, but it was primarily psychological as people were accustomed to retail being within that area confined area. 

With the advent of motorized vehicles, the concentration of business made for horrible traffic due to the street cars (trolleys) which left only room for one lane of traffic in each direction. In other words, the terrible traffic congestion due to the centralization of business was man-made. Other urban areas in the early 1900's were also topographical, Manhattan was a 2.5 mi vs. 11 mi island.

Decentralization was the Solution 

The 1915 study saw the obvious solution. In a gigantic circular area like Los Angeles, business had to expand outwards from the core downtown area. There was no significant geographic barrier. The City had learned to adequately bridge the river and the unobstructed expansion to the south and residential expansion to the west was clear once one was beyond Bunker Hill. 

As the civic leaders recognized, the topography of Los Angeles’s 5,000 plus square miles made decentralization as important in attracting newcomers as the weather. People came to LA in order to own detached homes on single family lots with yards and fruit trees. 

Relationship of Transportation and De-densification of LA’s Core 

In the brief pre-automobile days of Los Angeles’s growth (late 1800's), the horse drawn and then motorized trolleys allowed people to live farther from LA’s commercial center than in the crowded eastern cities which had been constructed in the 1700's and early 1800's, when fastest means of locomotion was a carriage. Thus, eastern urban homes were narrow, close together, and without yards, e.g., the Brownstones and tenements of NYC and Philadelphia row houses. 

Because Los Angeles grew after motorized transit, there was no demand for crammed residential housing, but rather people could spread out miles away from the core downtown area. Decentralization was as a significant attraction as the weather.     

Soon automobiles became the dominant mode of transportation which facilitated the expansion to more distant single family residential neighborhoods. The individual car was much faster than the trolleys as cars did not make unnecessary stops and the autos had maximum versatility.   

The 1915 Traffic Study Recognized the Great Harm of Densification 

The 1915 Study laid down the main principle that business, retails store, etc. had to expand outwards towards the periphery as there was a mathematical relationship between population density and traffic congestion. In fact, expansion would occur as a matter of course, unless retail, business, and population were artificially restricted to a core area.   Business, retail and industry had to follow the population as the residential areas expanded. The concentration of offices etc. in the Basin would benefit a few wealthy landowners while harming everyone else. (1915 Study p 38) 

The 1922 Los Angeles Traffic Commission Report 

By 1922, however, the city was slow to heed the mathematics and the advice in the 1915 Study. Thus, the Los Angeles Traffic Commission was established, and its heart was the most profound recognition of what was essential to set Los Angeles on the correct path: City officials were ethically forbidden to participate. 

“Public officials are, by the very nature of their office, prohibited from being participants. They must act in a judicial capacity and it is not appropriate for them to take sides for or against public improvements where there are conflicting interests and divided public opinion. City officials by reason of the position they occupy, are ethically prohibited from initiating such measures.” 1922 The Los Angeles Plan, p 3 

As a result of this ethical insight, the City began to follow sensible traffic plans. Trolleys were removed from the surface streets as they were not only a major source impeding traffic but also they were maiming and killing Angelenos. Trolleys run on fixed-rails down the center of the street, forcing riders to embark and disembark in the middle of the street where many riders were struck by autos. 

Los Angeles’s De-densification made it America’s Most Desirable City 

For several decades Los Angeles was allowed to expand outward and we became the nation’s #1 destination city. After WW II, however, the forces of corruptionism, about which civil engineers warned us in 1915 and 1922, took control of the newly formed Community Redevelopment Agency and used tax money to make the most devastating mistake Los Angeles had ever seen, namely Bunker Hill with its concentration of office towers next to downtown. 

Elementary mathematics, which had been done in 1915, showed that the result of Bunker Hill would clog LA traffic congestion. Bunker Hill was designed to make a few men vastly wealthy by retarding the movement of offices etc. towards the periphery.   Instead, a combination of corrupt officials, real developers and construction companies conspired to make the Valleys into bedroom communities while retaining as much office, retail and industry in the Basin. After that disaster, Century City was constructed giving rise the endless nightmares on the 405.

The Death of Decentralization is Killing Los Angeles as a World Class City 

The forces of corruptionism control City Hall today, and they are killing Los Angeles just as surely as if we had entered an Ice Age. 

The new middle class, i.e., Family Millennials, have placed Los Angeles as #60 on the list of places where they wish to live. As predicted in 1915 and 1922, these corrupt policies of concentrating development in the Basin are artificially increasing the cost of housing and making transportation a non-functional. CalTrans has opinion that just the Hollywood Millennium earthquake Towers will make the Hollywood Freeway.

In rejecting the Millennium Towers, Judge Chalfant based his decision on the City’s refusal to acknowledge the unmitigable traffic impacts that Hollywood densification would have traffic congestion. City did not address Caltrans’ "concern(s) that the project impacts may result in unsafe conditions due to additional traffic congestion, unsafe queuing, and difficult maneuvering" for the 101 Freeway, where the Level of Service (sometimes "LOS") is "F". 

F = Failure. The density is so terrible that it has already has an F and the City wants to greatly increase the traffic load. This type of corruptionism and disregard for facts are the major causes for Family Millennials deserting Los Angeles. 

Decentralizing to Cucamonga, Texas, and Beyond 

Angelenos are still decentralizing, except now their destinations are hundreds and thousands of miles to our East. People who want a better life are decentralizing to Cucamonga and Riverside, and then they escape to Texas, The Carolinas, Tennessee, Colorado. Rather than recognize that their corruption has doomed Los Angeles as a viable city in second half of the 21^st Century, corruptionism is cannibalizing what is left. They are borrowing billions of dollars in order to maximize density with knowledge that the City will never have the financial base to repay the billions of dollars which it is borrowing and giving the real estate speculators. 

Assuming that a decentralization plan could be devised, the corruptionism which has seized control of City Hall would never tolerate Los Angeles to deviate from its present densification course until they have drained every last cent from the tax payers. Would that LA could return to the yesteryears of 1915 and 1922 when mathematics and ethics played a role in Los Angeles’ planning.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.)

-cw