SCAG's Mark Pisano: 30 Years' Experience Planning Southern California

Before we get into the subject that are you most familiar and knowledgeable about, the metropolitan region of Los Angeles, please describe the conference you just returned from: the Rockefeller Foundation-supported, global urban summit on U.S. metropolises in 2050. What did you learn from your participation?

The premise of the conference was the population of the world and the global 21st century. As opposed to previous centuries, in the 21st century well over three-quarters of the population on every continent is going to live in large, urban regions. These urban regions will generate the world's wealth. Every continent is struggling with how to support growth, how to manage their environment, and how to build the necessary infrastructure and livability for communities to sustain themselves.

The main theme that came out of the conference is that the global environment, particularly in reference to climate change, is going to have a transformative effect on all urban areas, and we're going to have to manage and develop these areas in such a way that the planet can remain sustainable.

There was incredible tension between the Global North teams, which are mainly the industrial nations, and the Global South, which are primarily the developing nations. Although there are fewer large cities in the southern part of the globe, many of these regions are currently facing the effects of global warming-it's not a future issue, it's a today issue for them. Thus there was noticable tension between the Global South communities and, in particular, the United States.

The California State Department of Finance, as you know, has projected 60 million people will live in the State by 2050. What kind of governance structure does the state and our localities need to deal with such a large population?

What we learned at America 2050, when we went to chart the future of the United States, is that large global regions will be home to about three-quarters of all the population in employment of the United States, and that about 85 percent of its wealth increase will come from urban regions.

The question then becomes: How do we manage and cope with our growth? And those who believe that the growth won't come are just not cognizant of the global market forces and the global trading forces that are at play. The institutional leadership is going to have to come up with new ways of doing business. Business as usual simply cannot solve our goods movement, our air quality, our global warming, our housing costs, and the economic opportunity needs of providing for increasing income.

I personally believe that the experiment SCAG has undertaken in the last 20 years will be the model for the United States, and I believe that it's a model that can apply globally. That is, there will not be large, mega-institutions. Rather, the model will be to set goals, performance objectives, and partnerships with multiple agencies in an outcome-driven decision-making basis, where you say, "This is what we want to achieve," and then you identify who benefits from it and the payees into the system. I believe that will be the model for the future.

Then we will need structures to undertake the large-scale projects, whether they be state agencies or regional agencies, or more likely a combination of both. Will they be public agencies only, or will they be public and private? Again, it's going to be a combination of the two. That's the framework that I believe will be established all over the globe. We will not create new governmental institutions: 1) it takes too long, 2) there are too many diverse interests, and 3) the world is changing too rapidly for us to spend all of our time building institutions.

This interview will be a companion to an interview with State Senator Darrell Steinberg about SB 375, which is his bill addressing the land-use element of compliance for AB 32. In that interview, he says, "I've tried different ways to go about creating better land use governance and planning policy, but I think, during my years in the Assembly, all my work went for naught. But I believe that I found a better way with a better chance of success, and it's with the passage of AB 32, and the fact that mobile- and stationary-source regulations will not suffice. Land use planning is essential." Is the Senator right?

First of all, he's right in that technology alone will not address global warming. Land use and growth patterns are going to play a role. When you look at the 6 million people added to our Southern California region in the next 25 years, you quickly realize that land use and growth policies will be an important part of how we achieve our air quality and global warming strategy.

Our last regional plan noted that we got significant congestion relief and air quality emissions from coordinated land-use policies. The policy that we developed for our region is called the "Compass Blueprint Two Percent Strategy". You focus on two percent of the land area, and you begin to transform the way the region behaves and performs. Transit gets more productive, congestion is reduced, individual trip-making time is lowered. And finally, through mixed-use and new urban forms, we begin to house our population at a more affordable level.

I would agree with Senator Steinberg that addressing land use and transportation, or using those tools, is going to be an important policy when achieving a global warming strategy-not the only one, but an important component in achieving the strategy's targets.

SCAG recently delivered its Final Regional Housing Need Allocation Plan to the State of California's Department of Housing and Community Development. How does that plan conform to what you've been sharing in this TPR interview?

Our housing allocation (and I would say that it's one of the thankless tasks that the Legislature has given to the regional organizations) is an allocation of the amount of housing by income category that all of our member cities and counties have to plan to build. In order to be successful on that task, we were able to pass what we call the "Housing Reform Bill," SB 12. Alan Lowenthal carried the bill as an emergency item. We passed it in the first three months of this year. The basic concept and the basic innovation of SB 12 is that the growth forecast that we used for transportation and population employment is the same growth forecast that we use to determine the number of households and the number of housing units in one integrated growth forecast process.

The second innovation was that we coupled that integrated growth forecast with our Compass Blueprint–what the future is going to look like by way of urban forum process. Out of that came the following necessities: one, if you're going to have employment, you need to build transportation for those workers to get to work and move around the region, and two, you need housing to support the workers. We worked with our members intensively over the last year to create the growth forecast and housing allocation.

Finally, we have superb political leadership from the Regional Council, from the housing committee, and from a specially designated allocation task force and hearing board. The board conducted a process over the last year that enabled us to submit an allocation to the state without the rancor and arguments internally within our own structure, and we hope with minimal legal involvement. The last allocation ended up in dozens of lawsuits, including a lawsuit between the region and the state. What we submitted to the state achieves, in fact exceeds, the allocation that they had identified. We were able to do it on time, and we are able to do it without the acrimony that accompanied the last process.

It was all made possible by a reform initiative that says, "Your long-range planning for the region-for transportation, growth, and housing-should be an integrated process."

You have served since 1976 as executive director of SCAG. Reflect on that tenure: What has happened to this region in that time?

The first observation I would make on the 30 years is that, when I first began, everyone expressed their opinion that Southern California is too large, too unmanageable, too complex, that regional problem-solving just wouldn't work, and that therefore the best strategy was to break the region up. That would make the resolution of issues even more difficult: the problems of the region cannot be solved by its parts.

I would say the most fundamental institutional contribution of SCAG over the last several decades has been the institutional reform that it's undertaken. We recognized the size of the region and the state characteristics of the region by forming 14 sub-regional organizations that are our partners in this process. The success of the region means listening to its various members and its various sub-planning areas, so that they get reflected in the region, not having the region tell everyone what to do. That sub-regional structure then got built into a redefinition of the Regional Council itself, so that the Regional Council operates as a legislative body for Southern California, and has membership throughout the region, expanded in size from 19 individuals to, now, 72.

We have developed a representative structure throughout the region that reflects a "one person, one vote" model. We have a defensible, and I would say equitable, voting structure within the council. That legislative body oversees the work of the sub-regions, our work with the transportation partners, the commissions and the local moneys that they bring to the table, and it provides what I would call an "integrative glue" that brings Southern California together.

The third innovation, and I think it's equally important, is that we pioneered within this country the notion of outcome-driven, performance-based decision making. Everyone in this region wants equity and accessibility. They want opportunity for everyone. They want quality of life for everyone. Those are the basic goals that got expressed by very explicit outcomes. We developed systems of measurement so that we can evaluate all the various projects and strategies within the region and evaluate those outcomes.

Finally, the evaluation of strategies is based upon a return on investment of public dollars against those particular outcomes. The notion of a performance-based decision-making process enables an otherwise very fractured system to evaluate how well it's doing collectively. Large bureaucracies and large governments simply do not work. They're not able to collect money and distribute money in an efficient fashion, and furthermore, they're not able to attract the kind of private and user-backed investment needed to solve problems in the future. I'm going to suggest that our ideas for a sub-regional structure, institutional design, and decision-making processes will be the model for all of the large, urban areas, whether they're within this country or abroad.