Steven Leigh Morris, in a comprehensive article just posted at laweekly.com that will be in Thursday’s edition, penetrates the complexities of the radical changes under way to city planning rules — changes that are “are shrouded in mystery and yet to be unveiled at City Hall
The article headlined “Community Watchdog Cary Brazeman Fights Villaraigosa’s Crusade to Allow Development Everywhere” focuses on the founder of LA Neighbors United crusade to protect the city’s neighborhoods from City Hall’s campaign to densify the city even as residents are denied a voice in the process.
“There’s a theology at play, a utopian vision of a 21st-century “new urban” city proclaimed with far more zeal than evidence,” Morris writes.
“Skeptics
believe that Mayor Villaraigosa and his deputy, Austin Beutner, have an
ulterior motive for further loosening the rules on growth in a city
where those rules have never been strong: to fend off city bankruptcy by
feeding “underutilized” areas and land-hogging single-family
neighborhoods to Wall Street real estate investment companies.”
Morrie interviewed numerous community leaders, city planners and national experts in planning and calls into question the premise the high-density development is either an economic or social good.
He found LA already is a very dense city with only 25 percent of the city’s residents living in single-family homes and points to studies that show even around subway stops, residents of new apartment complexes use their cars to commute as often as others remote from public transit.
If you want to understand why the mayor and City Council are short-circuiting planning protections and processes, why they are gearing up for war against Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to abolish the CRA and its ability to subsidize unwanted high-density projects, why the future of the city hangs in the balance, you need to read this whole article.
It is a guide to how they plan to destroy LA for the profit of developers and Wall Street and, of course, to protect their own positions with the wealth that undermines our elections and our democratic rights.
Developers and career politicians loathe homeowners.
Developers and career politicians cannot profit from light and air. Instead, they want to cram as many bodies into every cubic yard of airspace. More density means more profits and more taxpayers.
Remember those slave ships? They didn’t have windows or balconies, did they?
I heard that Planning is counting on 75 per cent of their funding to come from developer fees and 25 per cent from the general fund.
Might bumping the CRA foil these plans or does that have nothing to do with it?
@anonymous on January 11, 2011 8:46 PM
Developer fees are independent of the CRA. In fact many building projects are outside the CRA project areas.
Bumping the CRA will help LA County and LA City because it will bring back EXISTING property tax revenue that was diverted to fund the Redevelopment Agency (its operating expenses), the subsidies it provided to private developers in terms of land purchases and funding, and the cost of repaying bonds. Also the CRA/LA has a horrible history of collecting back loans.
When politicians attack Prop 13 for cutting their revenues, I would say look at the Redevelopment debt and then you would find your missing source of EXISTING tax revenue.
On top of that, you can’t ignore the 800-pound public pension guerrilla.
LANCC should give a shout out to the Gov’s office and get a rep to attend. The point will be to show the Gov. just how many people from various parts of the City support abolishing CRA and their cash cow of millions. I’m always leary of other politicians not being in sync with what is going on in LA. Do they know how we feel and how we know about the corruption within City Hall. Brown would like to know there are a hell of a lot of us who support his idea of abolishing CRA. The Mayor has been having secret community meetings all over the city. The only ones who attend have been the kiss asses. Once Brown’s people AUDIT CRA has the failure of City Controller Wendy Greuesome refuses to do, then he will see the corruption
As it stands now you can’t get there from here when traveling sardine-can-packed freeways and streets.
Living in a futuristic city as depicted in any futuristic movie with skyscrapers going up through the clouds, multi-level hover craft wending their way between buildings and people walking hip-to-hip is a very bleak future indeed.
L.A. looking like Manhattan or Tokyo is a most depressing thought.
Of course, these corrupt, greedy high-rollers who envision this won’t have to live with it. They’ll commute to their penthouse offices via rooftop-landing helicopter from their palatial country estates where there’s elbow room and fresh air to breathe.
No sucking up smog or having their kids mix with the riff-raff for them. It’s no wonder that so many LAians are moving to the wide open spaces of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. Our relatively good climate be damned; there’s not much worthwhile here to make us want to continue doing so.
I just read Morris’ chilling article. Clearly, City Hall has not only declared war, but declared itself the victor against planning for a sane city. What part of upholding the American dream don’t they understand? That home ownership is the bedrock of all communities. It’s no secret most people view apartment living as temporary. That apartment dwellers do not feel a part of belonging in a community that owning a bit of turf brings about. I am not slamming apartment dwellers, but those aren’t the people making the effort to stop the Council, Planning Commission, Planning Department from selling out to Wall Street and every developer that promises greenbacks for their campaigns. It’s the homeowners that are campaigning to save Los Angeles from its’ “leaders.” Be nice to have their help, believe me.
I don’t know how many public events Michael LoGrande, head of planning, attends these days, but I do know he will be at one on January 19th. He speaks in Sherman Oaks at 7:00, Notre Dame High School, corner of Riverside and Woodman (right off 101 freeway). Come tell him what you think about his plan to ruin what’s left of Los Angeles.
Don’t waste your time talking to this creation of Antonio. It is the Mayor who needs to hear from the community.
Here are the comments, by no means comprehensive that I put on LA Weekly site:
“Thank you LA Weekly and Cary Brazeman for having the courage to take on complex issues which few understand or care about, but which affect everyone’s quality of life. After watching the Deputy Planning Director’s video full of gobbledygook and his comments, I don’t know if I should express fear at the turkeys who have taken over the Planning Department or express optimism that the citizens will not be fooled by a Planning Department that hardly understands what it is doing. Alan Bell’s comment that the Zoning Code is a one-size-fits-all Code, where the written standards for Sylmar’s horse country are the same for Silver Lake and Hollywood, left me scratching my head. Yeah! Sylmar and Hollywood have little in common, but what does that have to do with the Zoning Code? The Code has absolute standards, never meant to be standalone, but accompanied by the Community Plan for the area. The two have to be analyzed together to come up with standards for the area which are more specifically designed in the Community Plans, so that Sylmar and Hollywood, two distinctive communities are protected by their respective community plans. To claim, that the changes to the code are designed to protect these distinct neighborhoods is utter rubbish. If there is ambiguity, it is the Community Plans that need revision, not the Zoning Code.
The other contention that the language is ambiguous and not a solid basis for analyzing a project, and that the Code was written in the 30s or 40s by lawyers is equally facetious. The Code, in fact, the first comprehensive Zoning Code in the country written in 1946 by planners and not by lawyers, as claimed, has been sanctified by its legal standing over the years. LA should be proud of the Code that truly has protected the city and its neighborhoods with its unbiased standards that are ready to be gutted. Over the past 65 years, planners have had no problems working with the code, and certainly not developers, who have got all their projects approved. This new sentiment is baffling at best. Just who are the folks who can’t understand the Code; new planners, perhaps, who are ripe for training or a new crop of developers who can’t get the hang of it. Who are these people? The Zoning Code of the City of Los Angeles was never meant to be nursery rhymes that could be understood by 4 year olds. The code simply cannot be rewritten for the excuses provided that its rewrite is a better way to analyze projects that benefit a community. That is the function of a Community Plan and not the Zoning Code. So that is no excuse for gutting a Code that has stood the test of time to be disaggregated and simplified to please whom? The true reasons can be understood as one reads the new Core Findings Ordinance.
A sample of the Core Findings Ordinance provides evidence to the contrary than the one expressed by Alan Bell:
Here is the problem with the very first Finding: It takes away the finding from the all-encompassing “natural environment”, protected by CEQA to the “built” environment. Anyone who understands CEQA would go no further.
All these Planning Department reports are so detailed and convoluted that our response is minor by comparison. We’ve finally understood that it is preferable to get something out there than nothing.
It’s very strange that City Hall will destroy the life in our city. I hope that it’s mistake. If not I’ll write the resume editing about it.
Ron, we hope you’ll give us an update on this issue, because the city has wilfully left us in the dark. I’m just wondering if this is a sueable issue. The Brown Act may not have been violated based on current rules, but in such a large city to have a phone missing for months may set new rules as per the court decision.