Two Changed Features: Furthermore, at least two other features have also changed. The population boom never appeared, and, in fact, most Los Angeles neighborhoods had static or declining population between 1990 to 2010, especially during the past decade. Hollywood, for example, lost 15,000 people during this period, while the number of housing units in Hollywood barely increased. These latter figures, furthermore, are inflated because they reflect new housing construction, not the number of housing units lost to demolition or taken off the market due to disrepair or alternative uses.
Another important change is in the status of public infrastructure and public services. Waves of public sector budget cuts have resulted in significant reductions in maintenance across all categories. As a result, the second part of the Framework’s comprehensive approach has been undercut. Not only has anticipated growth in population, housing, and employment been much lower than predicted, but investment in public infrastructure and public services to maintain existing levels and upgrade them to meet increases in user demand have not appeared. This development, of course, is critical because even a static population can have increased demands for automobile use, electricity, water, sewage, recreation, and related infrastructure categories. For example, a family moving into a new McMansion will use far more resources and generate far more waste than a similar family living in a traditional single family home or apartment.
The contrast between these recent trends and those predicted for the same time period in the Framework is substantial. For example, the Framework predicted that Los Angeles would have 4,300,000 residents in 2010, 550,000 people higher than the actual 3,750,000 people counted by the 2010 Census.
Los Angeles is stagnant city: Rather than being a perpetual motion machine, Los Angeles has been overtaken be entropy. Everything is slowing down or declining, yet the City’s Plans are based on the old growth model. A city that was predicted to grow at historic rates and provide the necessary services and infrastructure to serve this growth has achieved neither. It is stagnating on both fronts.
Instead, we are left with a hollowed out vision. Tinsel town is old and tired. Furthermore it had two major civil disturbances, and one, in 1992, was the most destructive such event in the United States since the Civil War. And, not only are the socioeconomic conditions which gave rise to that upheaval still present, but Los Angeles is still ripe for a killer earthquake dubbed “The Big One”, while climate change is also bound to exacerbate the floods and fires that periodically threaten Los Angeles.
If this is not an overall scenario for returning to basics and fundamentally update the city’s outdated General Plan Framework Element, based on actual trends carefully extrapolated into the future, and then confirmed through a comprehensive monitoring program, then it is hard to imagine what other conditions would trigger an update of the citywide General Plan.
Into this snake pit the City’s elected officials have pushed hard for the Update of the Hollywood Community Plan, followed by similar updates for other community plans. While the proposed plan ignores the trends outlined above, it nevertheless is a plan based on economic stagnation. While one hand denies stagnation, the other hand attempts to alleviate it through yet another real estate bubble. This is why the Hollywood Community Plan Update fails to consider any of the demographic or infrastructure trends noted above, and instead resorts to large scale up-zoning and up-planning of Hollywood’s commercial corridors, as well as some residential neighborhoods.
The proposed Update is based on the neo-liberal premise that if real estate investment is deregulated, developers will pursue what their business models recommend, resulting in private sector mega-projects and skyscrapers whose economic benefits will then ripple across the entire local economy. Stripped of its boosterism, the proposed Hollywood Plan Update is nothing more than the application of Reaganomics and Clintonomics to municipal real estate.
Will it work? Only time will tell. There are, after all, mountains of cash warehoused around the world searching for profitable investment outlets. Plus, we know from the still ongoing financial crisis that began in 2008, that there is no shortage of institutional and individual investors who are willing to take a chance on highly risky real estate projects. Furthermore, we know from the current crisis, as well as the Savings and Loan Crisis on the 1980’s, that the Federal Government has a rich history of bailing out bad real estate deals when their failures reach epidemic levels. Few people are ever prosecuted during these busts, and most of the bad projects were sold back to the investors who initially lost them at a dime on the dollar.
Replicating the Hollywood Plan throughout Los Angeles: But, what will happen in Hollywood, as well as the rest of Los Angeles, if the Hollywood Update model is replicated? Will a city that can already accommodate 8 million people based on existing plans and zones suddenly boom if it is up-planned and up-zoned to accommodate 12 or 15 million people? The answer is that this strategy is doomed to fail. Even if hundreds of thousands of new residents streamed into Los Angeles, the city’s already strapped infrastructure and public services would be overwhelmed.
While no one’s crystal ball is fool proof, the Miracle Mile on Wilshire Boulevard is an indication that most of the mega-projects that would appear in Hollywood when the zones and plan designations are relaxed will be fiascos. Anyone who drives on the Miracle Mile in the day will see half a dozen new mid-rise, mixed-use projects. They are large buildings, with apartments or condos stacked on top of ground floor retail. So far, so good, but take the same drive at night, and you will notice that few lights are on. Most of the residential units and many of the storefronts are vacant.
Is it any wonder? In a city with a hollowed-out economy, poverty and inequality appear in lieu of new jobs. Meanwhile City Hall’s reluctance to engage in any economic planning and monitoring, as well as adequately invest in public services and public infrastructure, ensures that there will be few high end consumer to buy, lease, rent, or shop at the new stores and residential units. While the now famous 1 percent, or the less well-known top 10 percent, possess enough consumer power to support luxury stores in Beverly Hills and new shopping centers, like The Grove, there just are not enough of these well off shoppers to fuel another real estate bubble. Just because there is enough idle cash, lobbyists and publicists, compliant politicians, and in-house zoning technicians to inflate a real estate bubble, does not mean there are enough affluent consumers to sustain it.
Furthermore, what will give Los Angeles an edge to attract these new residents consumers, when it fails to maintain or improve its infrastructure, or even its appearance? In the final analysis, there just is not much that is appealing about high unemployment rates, traffic congestion, pot holes, unreliable and uncomfortable buses, 20 miles of subway, bad air, bill boards and supergraphics, treeless streets and boulevards, overhead utility lines, buckled sidewalks, cracker box apartments, and rundown parks and schools.
The chance that a city whose long-term approach to municipal governance is based on low regulation and low public amenities can successfully revive itself through a real estate bubble pitched to high end consumers is not good.
The prospects that the Hollywood Community Plan Update, alone or expanded to the other 34 community plan areas, will actually lead to a revival of the quality of life in Los Angeles, or even to an authentic, sustainable urban expansion that will not implode on itself, is minimal.
Instead the chance that it will boomerang and accelerate the deterioration of an already stagnant city is nearly certain. Since these outcomes are so obvious to so many people — at least those out of the City Hall orbit –- the really tough question is what drives this folly? Until those making these decisions reveal their phone logs, release their financial records, report on their private close door meetings, or dictate their memoirs in their gated and gilded compounds, we will just have to assume that they had more change jangling in their pockets downstairs than common sense upstairs.
Thank you, Ron, and Mr. Platkin for summarizing the shenanigans going on now in Hollywood “again” as well as consideration of a major population center of 4 MILLION people!!!! The idea of managing that many people who are in a 400 + SQUARE Mile area with a group of non-compos-mentis imdividuals who have nothing to guide them but lusts for power and cold hard briberies known as CASH.
To those who have the courage to move (like my son who is finding a whole new
experience in Colorado for his family and himself), good for you. For me, I have been
here since August, 1966, my home is old but paid for and I will stay here as long as I
last. (I am not Methuselah). For the rest of us, the answer is not redistricting, it is secession. Smallish large towns who manage themselves. That is my advice.
Re: Teddy—good to see the kids fleeing the Liberal Hellhole well before they lose the gusto to do so! Be sure to put your home in one of those living trusts so when the unfortunate day comes—the kids WON’T OWE ANY PROBATE FEES to the bastards. I was hoping for rain today to soak the rot and filth that we call “Hollywood” at their annual crap show. I guess even Mother Nature has given up raining on the Liberal Bastards’ parade!
Wayne from Encino – Ah, you feel better! Good.
Right now, I feel lost. Will we ever be able to make
the BIG CHANGES we need – how can people stay detached
and unconcerned? What do you think?
There is nothing in my article which states that LA is governed on a liberal model, which means a high level of regulation and a high level of amenities. My argument is that the philosophy guiding LA’s City Hall is deregulated markets, with little concern about monitoring, enforcement, public infrastructure, and public services. The technical name for this approach to governance is neo-liberalism. In the U.S. it began with Ronald Reagan and has gradually been adopted by most big city politicians, including LA’s.
I know I am not an ultra liberal nor am I an ultra conservativwe.
No one has all the answers. It is only discussing pro and con
the issues. But here in LA (city and county) votes are too often
unanimous and I do not believe that they take any opinions from
anyone in the public. Lousy job.
I for one am greatly alarmed by the symbolism of what Eric Garcetti, Tom LaBonge, and Antonio Villaraigosa are willing to do: sell the future of this City in exchange for a few campaign contributions to sustain their own unbridled personal ambition. Mr. Platkin has articulated the pathetic distopia that lies ahead in the Hollywood Community Plan update based upon the 2000 census when the 2010 numbers are available to our decision makers.
Antonio Villaraigosa will be remembered for driving businesses and middle class people out of Los Angeles. Even some of the employees in City Hall see the handwriting on the wall. Some are plotting their own move out of Los Angeles.
We know that smaller cities work better. The corrupt real estate machine wants just one mayor and 15 councilmembers to bribe (legally) with campaign contributions. This system of campaign contributions is strangling and drowning all community voices at City Hall except those who make contributions. The result is a toxic despair among the City’s residents. The scandal currently unfolding at the County Assessor’s office is just one example of the wealthy one to ten percenters being given illegal multi-million dollar tax breaks in exchange for a handful of campaign contributions to fuel a compliant elected official’s future ambitions. Those without that kind of money to grease the corruption political machine, are expected to quietly pay more taxes, pay more DWP rate hikes, and watch their own quality of life spiral downward. The concept of elected officials working in the public interest has become quaint and old fashioned. Corruption rises and more of the City’s tax base will move away.
Secession appears to be the only alternative for a disrespected and marginalized group of neighborhoods. The elected officials come and go, but the same corrupt process ensures that Los Angeles will continue to devolve into chaos as a result of a deregulated real estate speculation market substituted for Real Planning.
I agree with you. We must not let up the fight
against the corruption we live with everyday. The “gang”
think they have us running scared.
Every time we get a message from Ron Kaye and others
who do not believe we are helpless, we must use the new technologies
to share the information with everyone we know. We are in the majority.
Let us help ourselves now that we realize we are “used”.
One good thing has occurred. The Aboliton of the CRA!
When the HCP was issued in July 2010, the arrogant ones who preside over city hall never dreamed that lowly peons could ever assault this bastion of Crony Capitalism. As Gregory Paul Williams showed in his 2005 book, “The Story of Hollywood,” the CRA hastened Hollywood’s decline — just as Mr. Platkin notes.
As the CRA and Garcetti took over Hollywood, the deterioration revved up and the 1.4% population decline from 1990 to 2000 accelerated by 400% to 6%. They wanted us to believe that Hollywood had 224,000 people in 2010, when they knew it had 198,000. That made the HCP’s population project of about 250,000 residents in 2030 off by at least 60,000 people. The morea ccurate 2030 popluation is 190,000 or less.
Simply put, the HCP was a fraud to justify more CRA crony capitalism and to further loot the tax payers. We do not have a case of innocent miscalculation. Back into 2006, the new Director of Planning had told the City’s and Garcetti’s approach to zoning (whatever a developer wants) was a “disaster.” Supervisor Yaroslavsky called it a “Fraud.” http://bit.ly/cRH37r
Dick Platkin is revealing some of the merchanisms by which this Fraud visits Disaster on to us Hollywoodians.
We killed the Crony Capitalists favor tool, the CRA, and we can force the City to write a Hollywood Community Plan that is based on Facts and not on Lies and Myths.
OK, the activists on this list should send this idea to the leaders of the City’s Neighborhood Councils in Hollywood and each homeowner or resident’s group. Each of the Hollywood NCs and each homeowner group should contribute to a parking study. One of the ways the LA City Council is doing planning with lies and mythology is to make the baseless claim that because public transit (rail or bus line) runs down a street, the occupants of these skyscraper projects will be filled with people who magically give up their private autos and exclusively ride rail and bus. Oh, not so, but the community has not rallied to pool its funds to pay for a study of how many people living in the W, or Sunset apartments have really given up cars and therefore a reduction from the code required parking should be allowed. If you want to fight back against the fraud of Garcetti and others, you need to arm yourself with some objective and professional data instead of complaining on this blog.
You are completely correct. The City has the money to conduct the traffic study which would include how many use the subway and busses, by the city refuses to do the study until AFTER the plan has been adopted. That’s LA; shoot first, ask questions later.
Actually, we know the answers. People who live in TOD’s need cars. The has had the 2001 San jose Traffic study since er wel 2001 and not once haev I ever seen the city acknowledge its existence. Why? becuyse it rebuts the lies that Garcetti and the others use to promote more density so they can gvie more loot to their cronies.
Even if they used the subway, then that would increase their need for off-street parking. If one is away all day because they took the subway to work downtown, they can’t come home at 12:00 to change to the other side of street for street cleaning. we have deficient parking because developers do not want to pay to construct off street parking.
When off stret parking is really necessary, then the city gives a billionaire $52 Million to build a garage next to his art museum.
City Hall is stuffed to the gills with crony capitalism stealing us blind. Garcetti is their cheer leader and Wesson is the drum majorette.
Re: M. Starr’s comments—too accurate to dispute–that’s the sad truth of L.A.
Re: Platkin—ULTRA-LIBERALS are THE PROBLEM fool! And we produce too damn many Bolsheviks here in California, more in fact than all the Stawberries and Oranges COMBINED IN A BUMPER CROP YEAR! Reagan was a crony-capitalist before the term was coined, true—but he made sure YOU GREW THE ECONOMY DOMESTICALLY AND HAD JOBS, LOW GAS PRICES, AND LOW INTEREST RATES ALONG with the crony crap. GARSLUTTI and the other rats don’t tend to the economy, thus the rest of the taxpayers either wind up having to live outside L.A. and drive in to work, or have to flee altogether, or have to join the Machine and feed it campaign donations. Reagan could easily identify a COMMUNIST and would ANNOUNCE IT EVERYTIME HE DID! If Romney, GingSlut, Ron I-wish-I-was-a-registered-Democarat Paul, or SLUTORUM would do the same, we’d easily see the Obama-Fool out in November! But all the Republicans are just Democrats with pretend-Reagan ideology—they stand for ZERO. That’s why the election will tilt on 1% of the undecided electorate and why gas prices will decide this election cycle. People can only vote with their gas tank levels.
Anyone who likes Ronald Reagan’s free market anti-communism should have no issues with the elected officials at LA City’s Hall. They have the same approach of sweet heart deals for cronies, rejecting regulation and enforcement, while ordering 1400 LAPD officers in riot gear to use rough tactics to forcibly evict (and then prosecute ) Occupy Los Angeles from the grounds of City Hall in the dead of night.
There is no accountability or punishment for producing plans based on incorrect data even when protested by the community. Must be sweet to be a city employee. Garbage in–garbage out.
Hey anonymous:
Platkin was a part of the garbage at City Hill, couldn’t get promoted, now he has an ax to grind. Look at his responses anyone who disagrees with him, always has to have the last word. Pathetic.
Joey, at least, you are honest about admitting to being part of the garbage at the Planning Department. Now, show a little more honesty in admitting that what Mr. Platkin writes about are facts. If that is too much for you, wish you good luck in yet another promotion in your butt-kissing ways.