The City of Angels has become a city of limits, facing major
environmental decisions that will determine the political agenda until
the end of the century and the quality of life for decades.
Loosely controlled growth in the postwar years has outpaced efforts to
protect Los Angeles’ air, water and soil from pollution. Studies by
local, state and federal agencies warn that deterioration of the city’s
environment will reach critical levels as the population soars by an
expected 20 percent in the next 13 years.
Cleaning up the environment will cost billions of dollars and force
drastic changes in lifestyle, with such measures as trash separation,
water conservation and mandatory car pooling, according to interviews
with politicians, community leaders, educators, environmentalists and
consumers.
"There is a collision with myth and reality," said Los Angeles City
Councilman Mike Woo. "The main crisis now is there is a conflict of the
dream of living in Southern California. The dream is colliding with the
reality of what L.A. is becoming – a big city with pollution problems."
Those are the top four paragraphs of a two-part story by reporter Karen
West published in the Daily News on Nov. 29, 1987 under the headline:
"City of Limits: L.A. MYTH, REALITY CLASH, ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS LOOMS.
The articles examined the problems of over-development, traffic
congestion, air and water pollution, landfills and ultimately the
threat to the quality of life in a city of neighborhoods with
tree-lined streets and abundant sunshine.
Clearly, things haven’t worked out too well — and they are about to get worse..
For every step forward, there have been two steps back.
Traffic congestion is worse, the worst in the nation. For strides made
in cleaning the polluted air, we still have the nation’s dirtiest.
Contaminated ground water is still as big a problem as it was 23 years
ago.and water is increasingly in short supply. The still relies on
dirty coal plants for nearly half our electricity. Despite progress in
recycling, there is still a long way to go to reduce our reliance on
landfills.
You can read these articles and judge for yourself whether our
officials have recognized that a generation ago LA had reached the
limits of growth and the growth economy and needed to change the
direction of its policies to conserve resources to preserve the essence
of what made our city such a great place to live and work and do
business.
No issue that was touched on in "City of Limits" was more important than development.
The articles were written at a time when then Councilmen Zev
Yaroslavsky and Marvin Braude had overwhelming voter support for a
ballot measure that was supposed to put tight restrictions on new
projects.
"If we don’t make tough decisions very soon, the region as a whole
could take a quantum leap backward," said City Councilman Zev
Yaroslavsky.
"We are entering a generation of sacrifice.
"Uncontrolled growth is the largest single contributing factor to our sewage problem. Unless we check this growth, there is a real likelihood that sewage flow will soon exceed capacity."
The truth is we have trampled on the limits on growth, becoming one of
the densest cities in the nation with high-rise office buildings even
as we gobbled up industrial land and open space.
We have turned a city of single-family homes into a city dominated by
apartment buildings, chased away the middle class, good jobs and major
corporations.
Our roads and sidewalks are crumbling, our water and power systems
aging and deteriorated, our public transit system inefficient, carrying
no more passengers than it did two decades ago.
Our city teeters on the brink of bankruptcy even as it slashed public
services and imposes fee and rate increases on its heavily-taxed
citizenry.
Yet, we still refuse to recognize our reality and are racing forward to
short-circuit planning processes and rules that protect the quality of
our lives.
The architect of this escalation in pro-development policies is Austin
Beutner, the de facto mayor, first deputy mayor for job creation and
economic development, interim general manager of the DWP.
Beutner’s vision is to line up the interests of business, developers,
contractors, organized labor and the political apparatus while using
the wealth in the Community Redevelopment Agency, DWP, Airport and
Harbor departments to subsidize even more development.
At the same time, he is embarking on a radical transformation of
planning policies to speed approval of new developments, remove
safeguards and limit public input.
In an article on City Watch LA, Cary Brazeman outlines many of these changes and offers his evaluation of their danger.
The seven changes he examines are Zoning Code Makeover, Westside Subway
EIR, New Hollywood Community Plan, Draft Urban Design Standards,
Community Design Overlay Ordinance, "12-2" Plan B, California
Sustainable Communities Strategy
He rates some as far-reaching dangers, others as moderate —
evaluations that many concerned people believe are even more
threatening.
Commenting recently on the City Planning website, activist James O’Sullivan concluded that the proposed zoning code simplification ordinance had
only one purpose: To make it easier for developers to get around the
rules on variances.
"They were easy enough to get around before but Planning is now looking
for slam dunks…The reason I think is simple, to make it easier for
Planning to approve more projects, to make many more projects basically
by-right."
LA has been in a long downward spiral for a long time and the speed of
our descent is about to accelerate for the benefit of the few at the
expense of the many.
It is madness.