PLANNING WATCH / PLAN-IT LOS ANGELES

Mobility Plan 2035: Is the Road to Hell Paved with Good Intention? By Dick Platkin* (Published by CityWatchLA on Nov. 12, 2015) In general, the public pays little attention to the City of LA’s legally required General Plan, including its mandatory and optional Elements.   But the required Circulation Element, called the Mobility Plan or MP 2035, is different, at least among that small minority of Angelenos who care about local government.   This might be why the Los Angeles Times and KPCC have regularly reported on the Mobility Plan. I find this new General Plan Element problematic, but not for the reasons presented publicly and privately by the Element’s critics, including those who have filed a lawsuit to overturn it. To understand why MP 2035 is problematic, let’s take a broad look at LA’s transportation realities: ·       Los Angeles continues to have the worst traffic congestion and the worst air in the entire United ...

Greening Los Angeles – Filling the Mostly Empty Glass By Max Tomaszewski and Dick Platkin * (Published in CityWatchLA on August 3, 2012) In the field of city planning there is little mystery about the relationship between urban land use patterns and climate change.   Los Angeles’s auto-centric design forces automobile travel, and therefore locks most residents into extensive use of greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels.   These emissions have immensely contributed to SMOG and now to climate change; have pushed the atmosphere’s carbon content to dangerous levels, with some outcomes, such as this summer’s extreme weather events, already observable. Los Angeles’s Auto-Centric Design :   In Los Angeles, auto-centric development blankets the metropolis from the foothills of the San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and Verdugo mountains to the Pacific coastline.   An extensive freeway network connects this urban quilt, now over 70 years old.   Horizontal, automobi...