L.A. Architects' Open Letter to City Officials: "Planning Must Emerge As A City Priority"

The city of Los Angeles has confirmed new City Planning Director Gail Goldberg, and Santa Monica is choosing its new director. What should the mandate of these new hires be? Should they mediate competing land use interests, or should they focus on creating and promoting livable, vibrant neighborhoods/city centers?

BL: Planning directors in the city of Los Angeles have typically not had a major impact on the character and quality of place-making, nor have they created an over-arching framework and plan for the city that is widely understood and endorsed. But we are at a significant turning point in the history of the city.

The city, with its greenfields long gone, needs to house its growing population smartly -- to creatively infill rather than assume sprawl is still an available strategy. So, city planning has become more essential as scores of urban infill development projects are proposed and neighborhoods and commercial hubs are asked to accept more density. If Los Angeles is to remain livable, planning inevitably must emerge as a city priority.

The planning department of a city does not legislate design, but there's no doubt that zoning, entitlements, community input, and other public and governmental forces have a huge impact on design. How, then, should a new planning director in L.A. approach design?

WF: It's an immense question, and of course Los Angeles is greater than just the city of Los Angeles. The issues that we face are multi-jurisdictional, and Los Angeles City Planning is one of the players in this big mixing pot. You're right that the planning director doesn't directly affect design, but everything that she does will, in its implications, affect the quality of our environment.

So the question is, how Gail Goldberg will manage it, and one of the issues, of course, is scale. She comes from San Diego, which is similar in that it's a highly car-oriented environment. But the scale of our city is so immense and the interest groups are so numerous that what matters most is how she manages the process of developing or redeveloping the city.

She will need to communicate in this very large city and strategize how she can be responsive to the community groups and individuals who call upon her. She has only so many hours in the day, and she'll have to establish priorities so she can tackle the issues that really make a difference. She might organize her staff so that individuals focus on particular issues and see to it that they're addressed.

The mayor has hired all new department heads, and he has established goals and objectives for each one of them. Progress can be measured against these goals. If you have a mayor who's focused on trying to accomplish something – and Mayor Villaraigosa is focused on urban design – it sets things in motion, and Gail really just needs to respond to it and be strategic. I think bringing architects and urban designers into the department and setting up a strategic sub-planning office would help introduce the elements of quality and result in design accomplishment. I think you'll find it will be very different from what we've experienced in the last 15 or 20 years.

As two of Southern California's leading architects/planners, share what our readers should expect from our city planners. L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa, in choosing Gail Goldberg, offered a goal of "elegant density," rather than sprawl. You both have professionally shaped Los Angeles's built environment; what does "elegant density" mean to you?

BL: It is a welcome moment when the mayor of Los Angeles is able to speak candidly and positively about the challenges posed by density. It is also comforting to know that the citizens of the city are beginning to understand that density is not only necessary but with proper planning, it can have a positive influence on the form of the city.

We, today, are in a rare moment when it's possible to proactively fashion the future of the city and create residential communities unlike the low density, single and multi-family housing with privatized open space that dominated Los Angeles for decades. We now must consider and plan for the common good of the city; each project must take responsibility not only for its own design but also for its contribution to a larger framework in the creation of a neighborhood and a community.

In L.A., where there have been singular efforts on the part of the departments of transportation, street lighting, street trees, and planning, I think a key move would be to coordinate those efforts and holistically think through what makes good streets and boulevards. Those elements affect a great deal of the open space in our city, and those departments should develop plans that can be implemented as individual projects proceed.

The mayor also recently chose a new general manager for the Department of Transportation, Gloria Jeff, and a new CRA CEO, Cecilia Estolano. What are the typical impediments that keep each city department in its own silo, planning only for their own stakeholders and not for a positive, contextual built environment?

BL: Unfortunately the jurisdiction, interests and goals of each individual department often conflict with the others. The Department of Transportation is interested in the movement of vehicles while the Planning Department focuses on the built form and the character of urban space and streets. Street Lighting is concerned with safety and illumination of our streets more than pedestrian scaled lighting. The CRA is responsible for various areas scattered throughout the city.

In addition to hiring very talented and thoughtful professionals, the mayor should form, in a sense, a cabinet made up of those directors and general managers, who have responsibility for shaping the city, asking them to meet on a regular basis, rather than operating in isolation, to work collectively to generate a truly collaborative vision of the city that meets individual department objectives yet strives for a higher goal of creative planning and design.

WF: It's critical for them to focus on design, because it all has to do with land development and the redevelopment of our city. Nothing is greenfield anymore, so they're intertwined. Traditionally, these domains have had their own distinct missions. Overlap and coordination will be the future. As we become more urbanized, transit-oriented development will be big. We're working on a number of station areas, the most current of which is the specific plan for the Culver City Expo Line station. In just that exercise, the overlapping jurisdictions have become obvious to us, and they all have to be coordinated. The CRA offers the ability to coordinate and focus resources in ways that only the public sector can do.

The issue here is to figure out how to focus it so we can coordinate land planning and urban design along with the transportation planning of the city, but it's not just the city; it's also the region.

Elaborate on how you hope these talented professionals, especially Planning Director Gail Goldberg, might structure their staff and set their priorities in order to better realize your hopes for planning in L.A.

BL: It would be wonderful if Gail could create a professional urban design team within the Planning Department. Only one or two individuals have led urban design, in the Planning Department, in the past. The city could benefit from an empowered and comprehensive urban design team. That team, which should involve City Engineering and City Architect Deborah Weintraub, could not only addresses individual community plans and design guidelines, but also work with neighborhoods on developing a common language of design principles among residents of Los Angeles. Urban design is not well understood, and examples of excellence are elusive.

Why do you think, in a city that has so many good architects doing work all over the world, that planning and design have not been linked more successfully in the city?

WF: I think we've been preoccupied with architects focused on self-expression. David Hockney has talked about the freedom that Los Angeles offers us as artists, and architects are no different. Architects such as Thom Mayne and others have spoken to the context of L.A. as an influence in their artistic expression.

Many architects have been more accomplished in the areas of self-expression, and less focus on the development of context. Maybe because we are less urban, compared to other cities-we are more of a "spread city"-we've never had great density, and only recently have we been talking about the re-emergence of urban culture here.

Mixed-use and transit-oriented development are adding a layer to our city that we haven't experienced before. And we wonder whether L.A. will remain a hotbed of creativity as the city becomes more urban, more mature and more reflective and begins to draw upon its memory rather than be totally independent in its influences. When we looked at entries for the AIA design awards, we found that the ideas are much more diverse and exploratory today than they were 30 years ago. L.A. will remain a creative "hotbed," except that new solutions will be more contextually driven.

The AIA is holding its national convention here in Los Angeles in June. What do you hope the delegates and guests will see and feel and be inspired by?

WF: Our city is something to be very proud of. We've organized over 100 tours around the region, and many of them are already over-subscribed. These will allow the delegates to get out and experience Los Angeles. Also, we've coordinated the host party with the design awards, to be held at Olvera Plaza. At that party we're planning on showing the best, the greatest and the latest from Southern California. With two Pritzker prize-winners here and a great interest in design, I hope that the delegates will enjoy the event.

BL: The last AIA convention in the city was in 1994, and the character of the city was very different at that time. I think people will be surprised by the increased density, by the amount of housing that has been built in the last six or seven years, by the renaissance of Downtown, and by the reinvestment in some of our historic buildings including City Hall and Griffith Observatory, and the construction of our new 21st century icons, Disney Hall, the cathedral, and the CalTrans building. Los Angeles no longer needs to be embarrassed by, or apologetic for, the character of the physical form of the city.

New ideas have always been a characteristic of Los Angeles. The notion of what makes Los Angeles distinctly Los Angeles is a conversation that occurs in the design community, in the political community and in the neighborhoods. As that conversation evolves I believe we will lead the way for other cities-Sun Belt cities, such as Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, and even for international cities that have grown horizontally-on how to increase density and population without necessarily replicating 19th and 20th century European or East Coast city models.