Which Way for The Future of Planning in L.A.?

Bill Roschen, president of the L.A. City Planning Commission:...The Planning Commission and the Planning Department have a challenging agenda for the next two years. As we look to the future, I hope to work pragmatically. Since coming to the department 13 years ago, Michael started the Expedite Department. From my experience, he has been a delight to work with. I personally am very happy to have him. We welcome him fully.

Michael LoGrande, director, L.A. City Planning Department:...One of the things that I'm really excited about is the mayor. He's committed to leaving a legacy in the next three years. One of the things that he told me in his office when we had a discussion was, he said, "Mike, you know our community plans aren't moving forward. I wanted a strong 12-to-2 plan. Why isn't that coming into council yet? I want to see some movement and traction with these items that have taken X number of years. Can you tell me why?" And we broke down the financial reasons and the budget problems, early retirement, and losing Emily Luddy and Jane Blumenfeld-that right there will stop most plans from going forward.

I see the energy from the mayor and the City Council. What the council envisions for Los Angeles is elegant density, embracing the 30/10 Plan for Measure R, and using those funds to plan around transit and plan for the future rail stations. They want to see advanced planning.

I explained that 25 percent of the department is funded by the General Fund. The rest is fee-supported by process applications. As a result, we're planning project-by-project-which we're doing a pretty good job of. But in the long-term, advance planning is dependent on the General Fund. Thus, we're competing for dollars with the police and fire departments, and we're losing. It worries me, because the reality is that the future of planning is tied to the reality of the budget constraints on the Planning Department.

We have a major hurdle, therefore, to get through in these next budget years to preserve the Planning Department. We talk about vision; we talk about the things we want to do; we talk about neighborhood protection and having historic preservation overlay zones. We must look at the differences in the cost of doing those. To "Do Real Planning" in a city as large as Los Angeles, to really invest in the future, is about dollars and cents.

I have to be realistic but also bring a practical approach to the Planning Department, to elevate the discussion and continue where Gail Goldberg left off. We all have talked about engaging communities and getting people excited about planning. We now have a lot of people excited about planning. We now have to get people excited about funding planning. Not only that, but we need to partner with people and partner with organizations like ULI-to help us plan for the future of Los Angeles.

Again, the reality is that with limited resources, it is very hard for us to update the 30-plus community plans. We have a number of really big community plans in process through the summer and next fiscal year that do a lot more than in prior years. We have great design chapters in these community plans. We looked at the context of buildings. But the on-going difficulty is funding these new community plans. We're engaging the private sector, with the leaders of council and the Mayor's Office, to make sure that we secure funding to update plans, not only community plans but other parts of the General Plan.

I love "Do Real Planning" discussions, but I remind people that the Planning Department has been doing real planning for a number of years. We presented a concept in the General Plan framework, the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, the Mello Act, and the Sign Ordinance, which we did a really good job drafting; we just couldn't get the votes to get it adopted. The department still has some war wounds from that one. We have done a lot of real planning in the Planning Department for a number of years. We want to celebrate that but also look at the future to see how to continue that.

In our way right now is next year's budget. It really is devastating to see our department turn into a case-processing department. Through my time as department's chief zoning administrator, I love development. I love the nuts and bolts of projects. When you have to go through a system where, project-by-project, you're negotiating for public benefits and you're negotiating for open space, you're sometimes left with the lenders to make sure the architects have the freedom to do good design and to make sure that the building fits into the neighborhood, rather than having a plan that lays it out and it's all done by contract. It can be a very frustrating uphill battle.

I want to take back from this evening's discussion some ideas about how we can secure the advanced planning arm of the city Planning Department, making sure that we can plan for the future of Los Angeles and that council members and decision-makers realize that it is an investment in the future, and, just like increasing the budget of the police and fire, it is an important part of city's operations.

Mike Woo, L.A. City Planning Commissioner: Christopher Hawthorne, in your work at the L.A. Times, you have an opportunity not just to look at Los Angeles but to travel to many other cities in the United States and elsewhere. Based on what you've observed in other big cities in the United States, does city planning in Los Angeles work better or worse than in other cities? What about city planning in L.A. works better, and what, in your opinion, works worse?

Christopher Hawthorne, L.A. Times architecture critic: There's no question that it works worse. Sometimes I'm glad that's the case because it gives me no shortage of material to write about. One of the amazing things about this city is that there's no other city even close to this size that faces so many fundamental questions about what kind of place it's going to be in the coming decades. Planning is right at the heart of that debate...

...The issue that's still very fundamental is a question of whether development is going to guide planning or if planning is going to guide development. There are a lot of vested interests that very much like things the way they are now. They like the idea of piece-by-piece planning and duking it out on a project-by-project basis.

If we can agree on the ideal, we can get to a point where planning and development answers tricky questions, such as how we get there politically. Is it the community plans that Gail Goldberg started? Is it a mayor who's more engaged? Do we have to wait for a new mayor who can bring in some fresh energy? That's the basic question around planning.

Mike Woo: Jane Blumenfeld, the mayor and the City Council have supported the concept of revising community plans and the concept of reorganizing the Planning Department along geographic lines. What has been the impact of last year's budget cuts on those two goals, and, perhaps more importantly, what difference does it make if the community plan revision program and the geographic reorganization of the department do not proceed?

Jane Blumenfeld, former principal city planner, L.A. City Planning Department: If nothing else in the way of reform of the Planning Department occurs, those two initiatives should occur because they will make the department sustainable. If you revise the community plans the way they are being done now, a large percentage of what now is case work will be eliminated. We won't need all these planners to do all the case work. Too high of a percentage of the department is engaged now in that kind of activity. We need the new community plans so the city's planners can function efficiently and effectively without having so many of them doing case work.

With good community plans, neighborhoods and developers will know what is expected in a neighborhood, reducing the number of cases in need of departmental review. For example, neighborhoods won't need to review the color of paint and windows, which is now commonplace in many parts of our city. For every case reviewed, staff must be assigned to consider it, a report prepared and reviewed, and then there is a hearing at the Planning Commission. There's a lot of work needless and stupid work involved for each case.

If we have good community plans so people understand what's coming to their neighborhood, they won't have those controversial project battles. We've seen it occur in a few places in the city where battles are resolved at the planning level and there are no appeals and no litigation. Revised community plans, when completed, will make the quality of developments in neighborhoods far better and predictable and, very importantly with respect to building a constituency, developers and others who influence the mayor and council will not need to file cases at all. This will reduce the budget resources necessary to fund the department.

Reorganization is also critical because there is no way to have a single person carry a project from beginning to end without having a team of people who know how to handle all parts of a project. If you still have a person who does lot lines and a person who does condos and a person who does something else, there is no person who can do something from beginning to end. It's critical to organize geographically and have everybody on the team know how to do all the things that are necessary for the geographic region. The other really important point about the geographic reorganization that helps everybody is that when you are responsible for some geography, you start to take ownership of that geography. You start to feel that it's an important place, and you start thinking more proactively. It becomes: "How can I make that commercial strip better?" Not just, "I'm filling out the form. I'm saying no to this, and here are the rules."

Mike Woo: Emily Gabel Luddy, some observers have said that the entitlement process in L.A. represents the worst of all possible worlds, that it takes a long time for a project to be entitled, and then, after going through that process, the project doesn't end up any better than if the process had been shorter. What's your reaction to that? Is that an inaccurate characterization?

Emily Gabel Luddy, former chief urban designer at the Urban Design Studio, L.A. City Planning Department:...I spent about 16 years as a decision maker, as either a zoning administrator or someone in charge of the city subdivision process, zoning administration entitlements, zone changes, and private streets-a big range of entitlement processes. The best projects have a dimension of physical design to them-an embodied sensitivity to the neighborhood that made it easy to get through the approval process. I wouldn't always say it was the approval process that was at fault, because in the process there are the advocates for development and the advocates community. By the way, NIMBYs play an essential role in the public discussion because they may raise things that would not otherwise be raised. Within that group of community activists, there are people that have insights into the local area that none of the planners will have because they do not live there, and, generally speaking in this budget year, they do not get out to the site. Well informed people of good will who oppose projects know who the nut cases are at the public hearing and will fully admit that. I want to give a shout out to what we often label, for convenience, NIMBY...

... What's difficult, and this is where there could be an improvement, is this city does not have a planned unit development section of the zoning code, other than this awkward, crummy thing that was done in the early 1970s under Cal Hamilton. Glendale and West Hollywood have one. Without one, you end up with the Wilshire Gayley project, the Robert Stern building, which is now almost an 11:1 FAR. Recently permitted by the commission that has, no kidding, ten suffixes to a planned unit development. This project at Gayley and Wilshire goes from a 6:1 FAR to a 11:1 FAR. It has 260 parking spaces on site to balance, 200 more than the off-site. It was a love fest at the commission. Why? The developer backed into the density and ended up with an environmental report that did not result in any traffic impact. The architect is Robert Stern.

There are 17 transit lines within 1,000 feet of this project. But, and this is my question to both the commission and the new planning director, at the moment there are no teeth in this plan's project approval to guarantee that this project will connect directly to the Metro stop in Westwood, which will happen someday. To me, that is a fundamental rule that needs to be made for urban design as well as everything else. Part of the process is that when really creative projects come forward, we do not have a good mechanism for the Planning Department to consider that project.

Otherwise my comments are about the authenticity of how the public hearings are conducted. A culture of authenticity is what we're looking for from everyone going forward.