Winogrond Prepares the Stage for Gail Goldberg at L.A. Planning Dept.

You've been the interim planning director for the city of L.A. setting the stage for the selection of Gail Goldberg. Tell us a bit about how the department has positioned itself for this new leader in the way of resources and focus.

When I arrived in September, I committed to the mayor that I would do three things: first, help him find the best possible candidate in the United States; second, keep the department stable in the interim; and third, draft my own personal assessment that I will leave for the mayor and the new director of the department - not a big, thick report, but a very synthesized set of strategic observations.

When I arrived I saw that I had to add a couple of things. One was to re-instill hope, belief, and excitement in the department about what planning is and can be. Simultaneously, I recognized the need to begin building the bridges from the department to the various places where the bridges might have been weakened or damaged in prior periods, including City Council offices, or other places where the department credibility was struggling.

And one additional realization was that some organizational changes simply could not wait. While I could keep the promise not to make any fundamental policy changes or embark on any policy initiatives unless instructed by the mayor, many things needed to happen in the department immediately.

Let's go to the first objective. Has the mayor, in your opinion, picked the best person in the country for this job?

We all hope so, and we all believe so. As I said to the Mayor Villaraigosa, the best person is not going to have any interest in the job, and may not even know the job is available, because they're doing really well someplace else. So our goal became to create, through quite a process, a short list of two or three names who all could handle the job, and the mayor would then decide on chemistry.

I believe we've accomplished both of those. A very small group of names came out of a much larger group. That very small group could all have handled it, and then the mayor picked the best from his personal perspective of a working relationship. I think we got the best of both worlds. I have no doubt Gail will do the job exceptionally well.

Conventional wisdom has it that the Planning Department, while staffed by talented people, has been in a rut and unable to think beyond transactions into a coherent vision to break through silos and really think about neighborhoods and communities. What is the capacity and ability of the Planning Department today to begin to make those breakthroughs?

The department, while replete with talented individuals, had dismantled most if not all of the organizational functions that deal with planning. One of our tasks in this short period was to develop a short-term strategy to determine among the senior managers what organizational initiatives needed to be completed by the time the new director arrived.

There was an enormous number of vacancies – funded but unfilled – and the work wasn't being done. So we, in really quick order, started the process to bring in a whole new generation of planners to fill positions (which have, in all cases, long been authorized by the council). That is up and running. New bodies have started arriving. Those people are being asked to do things that have never happened before. They go right to work on the counter while starting to get used to their particular assignments. The best people are being selected; excited, trained planners are coming into the department who know nothing about its old reputation and are convinced that something exciting is happening there.

The senior managers are now required to make collective decisions, including on work that may not be directly related to their team. All of the managers are working on, for instance, our new initiative to take subdivisions and zoning administrator functions out to the Valley to have a full-service Valley operation. The positions have already been chosen, we've purchased the computers, and we're just working out a seating plan.

We have re-birthed the code studies unit – the section assigned to managing, modernizing, and updating the code had literally been removed. The community plan update section is being revived, as is the citywide transportation unit,

There have been two important exceptions to the rule that no new policy efforts would be initiated during this interim period. Mayor Villaraigosa and some of his staff recognized that some issues simply could not wait. The two primary examples: first, I and the department have been working with Bud Ovrom's cabinet of the other city-making departments –housing, redevelopment, building and safety – on the mayor's strategy for South Los Angeles; and, second, that same group is packaging a policy discussion of the residential-industrial land use collision that's going on in different parts of the city as housing developers are pushing into the industrial areas.

You referred to Bud Ovrom's cabinet, and the reputation has been that everyone in City Hall, especially in planning, operates in isolation. What are the opportunities to work collaboratively as a city in all its departments on the revitalization of Los Angeles and its neighborhoods?

I may be the interim person, but I'm an Angeleno. I'm a Venice boy, and I know the city of Los Angeles government pretty well. I've worked with it while managing adjacent cities. I didn't come in as a stranger, and I cannot tell you the number of meetings I've been in regarding this exact question. Someone will say, "You know, I've been working on this stuff since the Bradley administration, and we have never met together before like this," where the key managers of the departments, with real tools and real money, are working collaboratively on strategies. It's very exciting.

I'll be happy to go back to doing what I was doing, but I'm completely envious of the new director, particularly because of this atmosphere. This is the most unique opportunity I've witnessed since I've known Los Angeles: a passionate, strong mayor who gets it. He is instructing the departments to work together and holding them accountable. We have a City Council that is supportive and a council president, a Council PLUM committee chair, and a new Planning Commission who really get planning and the importance of planning.

Many think of city planners working mainly with private developers, but there is an incredible amount of public investment in the built environment in Los Angeles, and the largest developer in the area is the LAUSD. What role can the Planning Department play in the constellation of city agencies and departments to coordinate and leverage these public investments in facilities for the betterment of the neighborhoods and communities of Los Angeles?

I'll give you an example of what it can be, and then I'll give you a caveat. The example is that in South Los Angeles, this collaborative effort of all these teams, ranging from housing to Community Development to the CRA – all the people from City Hall who really know what's out there and what resources they have - are trying to work synergistically and trying to identify sub-areas where housing money or commercial revitalization money would be eligible.

There are transit stops and places where community gardens might go in. There are places where schools have been built recently or will be built so that all of these areas could be pulled together to demonstrate what we all say can be done – what prior mayors said they wanted to but did not deliver – which is that the most disenfranchised areas that have had the least amount of private investment could become very attractive to investors through a combination of our efforts. We should put our money and our tools where are dreams are. That strategy is up and running, and the background work is coming along.

The caveat is that the school district needs to come into this as a partner in place-making and community-making. Unless they are more cautious, the very sites they select might be the sites that could play an equally or more important role as one of the other pieces of that holistic community- and place-making strategy. Their resources are large, but it's not a contest of who has the most; it should be a collaborative effort. Of all those who are making those physical differences in the community, I'd say the school district is not at the same table in selecting those areas.

Give us an update on both the city's community plans and the general plan for Los Angeles. And elaborate on how the department approaches the areas of the city in need of the most attention.

My very personal take is that the general plan is fine. It created a framework, and it has all the stuff; it's not the problem. It includes smart growth and transit-oriented development, and it identifies the corridors. And then the community plans were all updated. There are 35 community plan areas, and 34 of them have been updated; Hollywood is the last one that's being finalized. And a number of communities want a second round of community plan updates since the new general plan was adopted.

This leads to something I didn't mention before which couldn't wait. The re-staffing is starting to take place, and the excitement within the department and the creation of team energy has re-started, but what are the priority projects? Which community plans should be done first, given the enormous backlog? Which ICOs and code studies should be done first? I have discussed with Councilmember Reyes a strategy in which his PLUM committee would facilitate the discussion among the council members, with the mayor's guidance, about re-prioritizing the backlog.

We're not asking for anything new in the budget – just let us keep what we have – but the department shouldn't be making the priority decisions about which projects come first. That should be done by the executive and legislative branches. That process is now up and running, and we're packaging the material for Councilmember Reyes, and throughout the spring, the re-prioritization of the department's work will be happening. It will include the recommendations of the talented and knowledgeable Planning Commission, which has its own thoughts about the priorities, and they are now meeting to figure out their priorities so they can then influence that discussion with the council.

While you were heading the department the city controller's office published a fairly scathing report detailing operational inefficiencies in the department. Did that report agree with what you witnessed on the inside, and what sort of challenge does Gail Goldberg face in responding to it?

The audit has a set of findings, and specific recommendations crafted by a planning consulting firm. I asked the senior managers of the department if they disagreed with the findings – they don't. I view the audit as the perfect foundational tool for the new director to strengthen the need to change these antiquated managerial (I certainly would never call them "leadership") techniques presently used in the department. However, I don't think the new director should feel a need to implement those specific recommendations. The director must find her own best way to meet the issues raised by the findings.

Especially as infill development increases, some people note that NIMBYism is occurring because people do not believe that the planning process will result in healthier, more livable communities. So they go into a defensive posture to protect what they have. How does City Hall make residents believe that planning will cope properly with the expected growth?

The proof is in the pudding. Those government people you just mentioned must approve projects that meet the neighborhood concerns. In many cities in the United States - certainly in the ones that are doing well - this issue has been addressed head-on, and thoughtful solutions have evolved. Two pieces are missing in the Los Angeles solutions. First, the city must recognize that streets are public rooms and that development offers the opportunity to influence the quality of those public rooms. My favorite quote of the great architect Louis Kahn is, "A street is a room by agreement."

The second part is the three-dimensional quality of the buildings that are actually built. Los Angeles is one of the last cities in the country that has not shifted its planning process from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional orientation. So even though the battles go on, the final product may not win the hearts and minds of the community, and the community is suspicious. Many believe that most of that mistrust is not about density. It's about being thoughtful and caring about your neighbors in your development solutions Maybe the neighbors will be OK with the density if the department cares about their real issues.