SIX FAILINGS OF THE PLANNING PROCESS IN LOS ANGELES
Los Angeles residents who follow local land use issues have a gut feeling that something is truly wrong in how their city is governed. But, since they have difficulty determining exactly what has failed so badly in their local government, here is one effort to explain the underlying problems. In a nutshell, the Los Angeles planning process has stumbled badly in considering the capacity of local public services and infrastructure to meet the existing and future needs of the city’s residents. More specifically, a careful examination of the city’s efforts to address its infrastructure needs reveals six related lapses. Furthermore, the only current remedy for these failures, the gradual updating of the city’s 35 local community plans, is not just too little and too late, it will make the situation worse, not better. This is because the real impact of these plan updates will be to reduce the administrative barriers faced by developers and speculators intent on building larg