Making Los Angeles Great Again … When Quality of Life Mattered

(1) Anyone who thinks that Quality of Life will become even one of the factors in the City’s plans for the future is living in a world of delusion. 

(2) LA is wedded to a government of the billionaire developers, by the billionaire developers, for the billionaire developers, and it shall not perish. 

Nonetheless, day dreaming can have its pleasures 

When Quality of Life Mattered 

Well over one hundred years ago, a good Quality of Life was the essence of Los Angeles.  People flocked to Los Angeles because the Quality of Life was fantastically wonderful.  Not only did we have eternal summers, but a modest family could buy a home with a yard and fruit trees. 

The Coincidence of Quality of Life and Transportation 

In the late 1800's, rail transit and Quality of Life were symbiotic.  In the ensuring decades, Henry E. Huntington constructed his rail system so that people could easily reach next towns where the homes were located.  By 1887, the LA’s electrified transit system expanded to more towns which seldom built out farther than ½ mile from the trolley line.  Where people lived was still controlled by the time it took to walk somewhere.  Then and now, ½ mile is about as far as people will walk. (Photo above: 1950’s Echo Park to Hollywood trolley in Los Angeles.) 

Since there were no cars in the late 1800's, no one compared a trolley to having a private motorized vehicle.  Once invented, however, the superiority of cars was instantaneously perceived by everyone.  Even real estate speculators could see that private cars allowed people to move to the new towns, independent of the trolley lines.  Again, Quality of Life was the obsession which fueled immigration to Los Angeles. 

By 1910, Angelenos who could do even simple arithmetic saw the looming threat to Quality of Life from excessive densification.  In 1915, the civil engineers of City of Los Angeles produced an extraordinarily comprehensive and professional Study of the Street Traffic Conditions of the City of Los Angeles. Thereafter, a series of additional studies were performed. Some promoted Quality of Life while others were transparent developer attempts to loot the city treasury. 

The motive behind the faux-proposition of the Highest and Best Use of Real Estate was “Developer Profits Trump Quality of life.”  It resolves down to one factor: profit per square inch.  Whatever use will maximize the owner’s profit per square inch should be allowed – the more you can build on your land, the more your land is worth. 

Land use in LA had become so chaotic and dense under the Highest and Best Use Doctrine that downtown was non-functional and elsewhere landowners were operating industrial facilities next to residences.  Thus, in 1908 the City of Los Angeles was the first city to place the Quality of Life ahead of developer profits and instituted zoning.  Although the City was sued, it prevailed in the courts and city land use regulations spread throughout the nation. 

The 1915 Study of Street Traffic conditions proved that subways and fixed-rail transit, e.g. trolleys, were mathematically impossible to serve a sprawling urban area and would only benefit the few property owners who had land next to the transit systems.  Rather, the city should allow all types of commerce and industry to follow people as they spread out into the valleys subject to strict zoning in each area.  The most important danger to avoid was concentrating offices in the Basin and turning the Valleys into bedroom communities.  The harms of density in the Basin with most residences in the valleys were obvious: 

(1) Offices in the Basin with residences in the valleys would create terrible traffic congestion when people who were living in a several thousand square miles tried to squeeze into a couple square miles in DTLA, Bunker Hill and then Century City.  There was no rational reason to manufacture terrible traffic congestion because a few crooks wanted to make gargantuan profits from Bunker Hill. 

(2) Basin Density deprive thousands of people of their property rights: Except when City Hall corruption tips the scales, landowners in the valleys can compete with excessive projects in the basin since the Basin projects in are not financially feasible.  

After World War II, Angelenos were asleep at the wheel and the developer corruption gained control.  The odious Community Redevelopment Agency [CRA/LA] was a “mini-communist state” where government made specific decisions for certain favored developers and then the city financed those projects.  Small land owners cannot compete with the government which has the power to stop its competitors. The developer controlled CRA/LA exiled Quality of Life from City Planning.  The freeway system was highjacked in order to concentrate offices in the Basin and to relegate homes to the valleys with absolute knowledge that this pattern would create unbearable traffic congestion, for which the forces of corruption had s solution.  More Mass Transit!  

At the time the CRA/LA was formed in 1948, most Angelenos would not fall for the More Mass Transit charade as they were living with the daily nightmare of trolleys.  The More Mass Transit phase, while indispensable to developers’ long-term plans, would not be launched until decades later.   

The Fraud of the First City General Plan 

In 1970, the City released Concept Los Angeles: The Concept for the Los Angeles General Plan.  Basically, it threw Quality of Life under the bus and endorsed the notion that developers should be allowed to build, build, build. Step one would be to construct mega-projects along certain mass transit lines.  Concept Los Angles had artful propagandists to deceive the public. 

In reality, there is nothing wrong with cars or with freeways.  The culprit is excessive density, specifically, too many office towers in the Basin.  That is very evil which the civil engineers foresaw in 1915.  In 1915, they realized that all forms of land use had to spread outwards as people moved into the valleys.  In order to deceive Angelenos about the actual cause of traffic congestion, the anti-car mythologies arose. The real solution to terrible traffic congestion is de-densification.   Mathematics has not changed in the last 110 years. 

The Quality of Life Is No longer a Factor in Los Angeles Planning 

We have known since 1915, our Quality of Life rested in our residential neighborhoods and that required our not allowing densification in the Basin.  That meant no Bunker Hill, no Century City, no new skyscrapers in DTLA, no densification of Hollywood.  Rather, offices should have been forbidden in the Basin beyond the density we had in 1950.  There is no rational reason for office towers, except to make the people who own that land vastly more wealthy while making life much harder for everyone else. 

While Family Millennials know nothing about the death of Quality of Life as a component in LA Planning, they do know that if they stay in LA, they will never own a home, they will never build equity, and the cost of living will be sky high.   

Anyone who thinks that developers will give up their death grip on Los Angeles City Hall is living in a delusion.  

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