PLANNING WATCH / PLAN-IT LOS ANGELES

DON’T EXPECT ANOTHER GREAT SOCIETY OR WAR ON POVERTY FROM AN OBAMA ADMINISTRATION -- A RESPONSE TO A HIGHLY INACCURATE ARTICLE First, the War on Poverty was liberal, but certainly not left-wing, and the Democratic Party is currently neither. As someone who was a VISTA Volunteer and then trained as a city planner based on that experience, the entire thrust of the War on Poverty was the liberal view that poor people had a culture of poverty. The purpose of the War on Poverty was to teach them middle class values, such as running meetings and lobbying. Privates like me in these programs were always knocked down when we tried to organize communities to confront institutions, as opposed to enhancing individual skills. Thus, you can see that affirmative action, which was actually instituted by the Nixon administration, comes from the same blame-the-victim outlook. Get the poor and minorities some individual skills and a leg up, but for, God's sake, don't organize people ...

How can we understand a totally avoidable train accident on September 12, 2008, in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Chatsworth, , in which 25 people died and over 125 were sent to the hospital, many with serious injuries? In this case a MetroLink commuter train collided head on with a Union Pacific freight train sharing the same track, but moving in the opposite direction. Yes, sharing the same track. Image driving on a one lane highway in which cars, trucks, and busses traveled at freeway speeds in both directions, but had to share that one lane. Furthermore, the only way a driver would ever know that an 18 wheeler was heading towards him or her was a stoplight. If it is red, drivers must get their car off the road. If it is green, just drive ahead on that one lane highway and trust that drivers coming from the other direction know what they are doing. If this strikes you as lunacy, you are only half right. This was the deliberate policy of the Metrolink Authority – mostly appoin...

In each presidential year we hear that the Democrats are the lesser evil and that even if they are hawks on foreign policy, the differences on domestic policy justify supporting them – as opposed to the alternatives of focusing on extra-parliamentary politics and voting for third party candidates. But, does this domestic argument hold water in 2008? I think not. Those who have worked in local government – which has been my professional milieu for the past 25 years – can all testify that it is impossible to discern a difference, especially in Los Angeles. Nearly all of the elected officials at LA’s City Hall have been or are mainstream to liberal Democrats (except for Richard Riordan, who was a liberal Republican tied to many Democrats, like Antonio Villaraigosa.). The elected officials are to a person blindly devoted to expanding the LAPD, direct financial aid to large developers in the form of tax and fee breaks totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, total cr...

The revenue rationale offered by LA's elected official for allowing commercial advertising on public spaces, especially sidewalks, as well as commercial advertising, such as billboards, and electronic signs which intrude on public spaces is extremely unconvincing. The several millions per year which the city earns from billboards and kiosks bolted to sidewalks, plastered on bus benches and bus shelters, pasted on newspaper vending machines, and now electronic billboards, could be easily offset by two simple steps: First, stop giving large developers and projects, such as LA Live, hundreds of millions in tax and fee breaks. These are the true budget breakers. Second, collect the various fees owed the cities on everything from bootleg construction to burglar alarms. Shame on those elected officials who justify dreadful visual pollution for phony revenue reasons. In fact, if they took these two small steps, they could also revoke the various regressive taxes they are foisting on...

Those who have toiled at City Hall or had extensive dealings with it, should realize the following: First, the ideology guiding the governance of the City of Los Angeles is neo-liberalism, not New Deal liberalism, as some people imagine because most City officials are Democrats. This is exactly same neo-liberal approach which now prevails at the Federal and State levels. It also is shared by this country's two ruling political parties. As far as I can tell, everyone who holds office in Los Angeles or has even an outside chance of getting elected, holds the same outlook. (To the extent that liberalism ever existed at the local level, it was in the 1930s when the City of LA built public housing.) Neo-liberalism means, in theory and practice, tilting government to promote the private sector. This translates to increased use of regressive taxes (user fees, sales taxes, property taxes) to redistribute wealth and income upwards. It also means reduced regulation of goods and servic...

It is amazing how little the large developers have to pay to City of Los Angeles elected officials in order get enormous tax breaks and benefits. You would think they could at least model themselves after U.S. friendly third world dictators, like Indonesia's Sukarno, and ask for the standard kick back rate of 10 percent. According to the Los Angeles Times, Anschutz Entertainment kicked in $19,000 to the Mayor's election campaign for a second term after they received $270,000,000 is tax breaks for the LA Live entertainment complex. Not too away, at the north end of the downtown, a $10,000 contribution to the Mayor from the Related Companies was not a bad investment for a $120,000,000 City subsidy to Eli Broad's pet Grand Avenue project. There is a unstated moral to this story, however. The next time someone complains that Los Angeles is in financial straights because of employee salaries, you might call their attention to the details below. These subsidies, by the way, f...

This extraordinary story in the LA Weekly demonstrates the poor state of urban infrastructure and services in Los Angeles. Not only does the city only devote four percent of it surface area to parks, but most of this parkland is undeveloped: Griffith Park. Furthermore, most existing parks are in affluent neighborhoods in which residents have access to private park and recreation facitilies. After all, they have back yards and some also have access to private clubs. Los Angeles Weekly, Wed., July 16, 2008 Parks and Wreck: L.A. 's Fight for Public Green Space In search of the Emerald City There’s a foul smell in Pershing Square . Well, several foul smells, really. Most prominently, there’s the smell of urine. It wafts in all directions, emanating from a dozen dark, hidden recesses spread throughout the square. There’s the smell of the fountain, a giant purple modernist abomination that every so often belches a tiny stream of liquid into a stagnant brown pool below. There...