Here's an intoxicating approach to city planning: Ask L.A.'s neighborhoods what they want, and then try bending the bureaucracy to satisfy them.
San Diego City Planner Gail Goldberg, newly-appointed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to head the L.A. Planning Department, apparently plans to respond to your neighborhood's specific need for change, the Daily Breeze and Times report:
Among her achievements in San Diego was creation of a concept called "City of Villages." The idea is that each village — there are five underway — will include housing, businesses, schools and public facilities such as libraries, and be pedestrian friendly with access to mass transit.
Goldberg said she does not intend to try the same concept in Los Angeles, but wants to find neighborhoods that want change and help them formulate plans that will foster new development and the amenities that go with it.
Big talk about a city of 465 square miles, from a woman who oversaw planning in a 73-square mile 342-square-mile city. But since L.A. is arguably a loose weave of neighborhoods with wavering borders and amorphous cores, let's give her the benefit of the doubt. It'll be interesting to watch what her department does with/for/to our neighborhoods:
I'm too new to Silver Lake to presume anything about it, but maybe long-timers out there can suggest a government leg-up for the neighborhood. I just consider us lucky to have shot down (for the moment) the 40-unit apartment building behind Trader Joe's.
As for Venice (our home from '96 to '00) there's apparently a homeowners association for the walk streets that wants to forbid anyone to keep tall hedges or high fences that shield their homes (and, for many, their only private yard space) from view of the sidewalks. Can/should the city have any say in that?
To hear some folks talk downtown's problem isn't that Skid Row cultivates human suffering or even that traffic's harsh - it's that there's nothing to do. Outside of backing the Grand Avenue plans, what specifically could the Planning Dept. do for downtown in the way of structuring plan overlays for zoning and public transit that will change life there for the better?
How will you want Goldberg's department to help your neighborhood change?
Posted by: Mack_Reed on Sunday, January 08, 2006 - 10:20 PM
