PLANNING WATCH / PLAN-IT LOS ANGELES

Commentary on article: In the decade of the 1980's, LA's annual growth rate was about 2 % per year, the basis for the General Plan Framework Element, which is based on extrapolations of 1990 census data. The city's growth rate has now slowed to .25 % per year over the past decade, and in most of Hollywood, there was actual population decline. Yet, the proposed Hollywood Community Plan Update assumes that LA's former growth rates from 30 and more years ago will return and continue ad infinitum in the Hollywood Community Plan area. This is what is called bad city planning in which local zoning is ramped up to serve this imaginary population, while the city's infrastructure and services have been so decimated that they cannot even serve the existing or even declining population.

Big cities' population boom slows to a trickle, census data show Some of California's largest cities, including Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego, saw their populations plateau or even decline from 2000 to 2010, ending a decades-long trend of expansion. By Ari Bloomekatz, Los Angeles Times , Sunday, April 24, 2011 http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-old-cities-20110424,0,5154235.story Growth has altered the skyline of downtown Long Beach over the last decade. New high-rise condo towers dot Ocean Boulevard . Older buildings have been converted into lofts, and a new shopping center and entertainment complex rose on the site of the long-shuttered Pike amusement park. But when the U.S. Census Bureau released population data earlier this year, some in Long Beach were shocked to learn that between 2000 and 2010, the state's seventh-largest city added only 735 residents — a growth rate of 0.2% and far below the national average of 9.7%. Long Beach is one of...