HOW CAN WE FIX L.A.’S PLANNING MESS?
ASK THE PLANNER: By Dick Platkin* In response to several recent questions on how Los Angeles can fix its dysfunctional planning process, these are my suggestions. It all begins with the State of California ’s legal requirement that cities must have legally adopted current, comprehensive, an internally consistent General Plans. So far so good. The Los Angeles City Planning Department has uploaded and posted the city’s seven legally required General Plan Elements on its website, including its 35 local Community Plans and the discretionary General Plan Framework Element. But, a careful look at these adopted policy documents reveals that they are a facade. To begin, they have no monitoring program, an act of negligence which has landed the city in court. Furthermore, in addition to the failure to monitor these plans, many of them are older than the city planners in charge of them . Their update is long overdue, and the ball is clearly in the court of City Hall to br