Real Planning in Los Angeles: Nothing more than a rickety ‘Development Process’

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PLATKIN ON PLANNING--Los Angeles may have an aging, out-of-date General Plan, but it, surprisingly, does have a planning process. It might not be the one taught to professional city planners in graduate school, and it might not be the one required by the State of California, as formulated in up-to-date General Plan Guidelines from the Governor’s office of Planning and Research. Nevertheless, it is there, warts and all.  

The real planning process is totally ad hoc, and the best way to understand it is through the metaphor of a football field. At the line of scrimmage – which corresponds to real estate speculation -- are elected officials, for the most part hand picked by one of the teams. On one side of the officials is a team of professional football players, what seasoned observers call the urban growth machine.  On the other side is the junior varsity, which is corresponds to neighborhood and environmental groups. 

As they battle each other to move the line of scrimmage, at City Hall this translates to the permitted size, height, and use of buildings. The professional team usually wins, which means that the elected officials routinely approve their projects. 

Sometimes, though, the scrappy junior varsity pulls off a victory, and it is able to stall or even stop plans, zoning ordinances, and individual projects because they are out-of-scale, out-of-character, or out-of-synch with infrastructure and service systems. With the help of outsiders, such as lawyers, the junior varsity occasionally scores a big win, like AB 283, which puts the planning process back on track for several years.  

But, while the football game is played for control of privately owned land, the stadium itself is wobbly and on the verge of collapse. This means that even when the pros have a winning streak, which is most of the time, the stadium and its surroundings are still in bad shape. Failure, in fact, is only a question of time, as explained below. 

The major steps of this rickety process 

Macro-level Planning: The following is the logical sequence of events, but in Los Angeles many steps are conducted out-of-sequence. For example, the City is now redefining local zoning through re:code LA, prior to any official updates of the General Plan and local Community Plans. In a great sci-fi time-travel plot, City Hall is implementing plans that have not yet been prepared and adopted. 

• The City Council approves the General Plan, including its mandatory and optional elements. The mandatory elements are stipulated by State Law, while, optional elements, such as the General Plan Framework, are initiated by the City Council. 

• The General Plan is then implemented by zoning ordinances, municipal budgets, and Capital Improvement Programs. 

• Public agencies, both municipal and external (LAUSD), engage in their own sectorial planning, budgeting, and work programs in parallel to the General Plan. They each operate in a silo, independent of other City departments and outside agencies, oblivious to the City’s official planning process. 

• While State law has detailed General Plan monitoring report methodologies and requirements, they are ignored by the City of Los Angeles, which does not systematically monitor its General Plan, departmental and agency sectorial plans, and the City’s five year Capital Improvement Program.  

Micro-level push back against planning: In response to top-down macro level planning, at the level of private land use there are many forces pushing in the opposite direction. 

• On a lot-by-lot basis developers apply for parcel-level discretionary actions, such as the spot-zones and spot-General Plan Amendments that the Neighborhood Integrity Ordinance intends to stop. 

• Aggrieved parties, usually neighbors or local civic organizations, appeal these discretionary actions. The adopted discretionary actions then fold in many conditions of approval, most of which are beyond the authority of City Planning and the concern of Building and Safety. 

• Communities push back against over-development through local zoning overlay ordinances, such as Specific Plans and Historical Preservation Overlay Zones. 

• Developers also push back against adopted plans and zones with their own pro-development zoning overlay ordinances, such as Transit Neighborhood Plans.  

• Developers also push back against adopted plans and zones through bootlegged and illegal construction. When residents report these code violations to the Department of Building and Safety, the Department sporadically mails out notices to correct or issues citations. The buck usually stops at this point though since the City Attorney seldom pursues zoning and building code cases. 

One consequence of this convoluted planning process is that the city’s public infrastructure and services -- like the football stadium in our analogy -- are ignored. The Department of City Planning defines their day-to-day planning mission as the efficient processing of developers’ requests for discretionary actions. It is not comprehensive, rigorously monitored planning, but what the executive suite calls the “development process,” and what they publicly define as promoting foreign and domestic investment in quickly approved Los Angeles real estate projects.  

Because this outlook has been regularly shared with Neighborhood Councils and other community groups in recent years, they, too, have gradually accepted this truncated definition of city planning. Rather than holding City Hall’s feet to the fire to make sure that planning includes carefully monitored goals and programs related to air quality, public facilities, parks, streets and sidewalks, mass transit, libraries, climate change, emergency services, and the full spectrum of municipal infrastructure, they too often but unwittingly abet the real estate speculation agenda of the City’s elected officials, especially Mayor Eric Garcetti. 

Luckily, this minimalist approach to municipal governance is now peaking, like it did in the 1980s and 90s, because of public push back. The City not only regularly loses law suits over illegally granted zoning entitlements, but from March 2017 onward, the City’s voters will most likely force City Hall to start planning Los Angeles through the Neighborhood Integrity Ordinance. The era of market forces substituting for the planning process is finally coming to an end, and you can lend a hand to make it happen. 

 

(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles City Planner who reports on local planning issues for CityWatch. Please submit any comments or corrections to [email protected].)

-cw