Panaceas - Real and Phony - for the City of the Angels, CityWatchLA, August 30, 2018

By Dick Platkin

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-According to the State of California’s latest climate studies, LA’s recent heat waves are not the new normal.

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Rather, they are just a small step toward much more dangerous levels of climate change that include sea level rise, crop failures, tree die offs, intense storms, and heat waves, all leading to increased human mortality. 

When these real threats are combined with other ones, also of our own making, especially proliferating homelessness and homeless encampments, it is clear that City Hall’s ho-hum, business-as-usual approach is moving in the wrong direction. 

Given this combination of dire trends, we should not be surprised that miracle cures are tossed around like free samples at Costco, even when they are patently ridiculous. 

The ridiculous panacea. Shoring up the ridiculous is the claim of the real estate sector, echoed by its advocates in academia, city government, and astroturf organizations. According to them, we can build our way out of these overlapping crises. All we need to do is curtail zoning and environmental laws, then the private sector will ride in, like a Hollywood western, to rescue us. 

We simply need to peel away any legal protections that interfere with the private sector’s pursuit of profit, and the resulting building boom will reduce the Green House Gases responsible for climate change. Furthermore, the unleashed housing boom will then “trickle down” through alleged processes of supply and demand and filtering. Never stopped by such minor details as evidence, or conflicting processes, such as the need for businesses to make a profit, these free market miracle cures bubble up like tar on the Miracle Mile. 

But, like all miracle cures reality cannot be willed away, and in this case, these free market solutions always collide with four brick walls. 

First, new buildings in Los Angeles require the demolition of existing buildings, and all of this previously embedded carbon is lost forever. It either blows away, including asbestos and lead paint dust, or ends up in a landfill. 

Second, new infill buildings require construction materials, all of which need energy for extraction, fabrication, storage, transportation, and construction. 

Third, new buildings, even when built to LEED standards, require large amounts of electricity and natural gas for their day-to-day operations. 

Fourth, new buildings in Los Angeles are auto-centric, even when they happen to be near bus and subway lines. Paid-for private investors, they only pencil out through high rents that exclude most Angelinos from living there. Those who can afford these buildings are mostly automobile owners and users, not the transit-dependent.  

This is the ultimate fatal flaw of new construction in Los Angeles that purports to be “green.” As confirmed by all Environmental Impact Reports, the new buildings and their forecast traffic generate unmitigatable levels of Green House Gases. They make climate change worse, not better. 

True, the City Council gives them a “Get out of Jail Free” card through Statements of Overriding Conditions, but these waivers are never verified. If they were, the building permits and discretionary zoning and planning approvals would be quickly revoked. 

So much for this phony panacea. It makes the conditions it is supposed to cure, worse, not better. If we did nothing, our chances of mitigating climate change would improve. 

Almost a Real Panacea.While there is no silver bullet that can miraculously address LA’s many unfolding problems, there is at least one approach that could significantly improve life in Los Angeles, and also significantly slow, if not reverse, climate change. 

(Photo left: Exemplary urban forest in Los Angeles. Every street could look like this.) 

This almost-miracle cure is the urban forest, and Alissa Walker made the most elegant case I know for planting and caring for trees in a recent Curbed LAarticle. Normally known as a booster of real estate projects, I tip my hat to Curbed LA for this extraordinary article on the benefits of much-expanded tree planting and care in Los Angeles.  

Among her article’s many telling points, the following struck me as most important. I have also added several points of my own points, which are in italics.

Benefits of trees: 

• Tree can cool down warming cities by up to 10 degrees. This means trees can offset both climate change and the heat island effect created by large buildings. 
• Trees can clean polluted air. 
• In addition, trees create shaded sidewalks, an important public improvement to increase walking, especially as Los Angeles gets hotter. Enhanced sidewalks are a key component of First-Last Mile programs to promote mass transit. 
• Trees sequester carbon, an obvious way to offset the increased urban carbon footprint resulting from real estate projects. 

Declining tree cover in the Los Angeles region: 

• The decline in LA’s tree cover ranges between 14 to 55 percent by area, with the greatest loss in neighborhoods,like Beverly Grove,blighted by McMansions. 

• Many trees are lost to LA’s sidewalk repair program, and these trees could be saved based on sidewalk repair models from other cities. 

• Heat waves and droughtsare also leading to the loss of the tree canopy. 

• City of LA budget cuts have also led to the loss of tree canopy. 

• Developers and homeowners can remove trees without replacing them if they pay a fee.  The City uses these fees to buy replacement trees, but they often remain in storage, even though many LA neighborhoods are in desperate need of trees. 

• Tree loss compounds chronic physicaland mentalhealth problems. 

Policy recommendations: 

• Preserving LA’s existing tree canopy should be a City Hall priority. Next, those neighborhoods without sufficient trees need to be upgraded by new trees, followed up by regular watering and pruning. 

• Adjacent cities, such as Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, are excellent models for planting and maintaining a thriving urban forest. 

• Los Angeles needs to acquire sufficient information on the value of its trees and determine the location of those that need to be replaced or planted new, then properly cared for. 

• Los Angeles should hire a citywide tree policy director to coordinate the work of all City departments that play a role in the urban forest.  This includes the Bureau of Street Services, Department of City Planning, Bureau of Engineering, Department of Building and Safety, Department of Water and Power, and Recreation and Parks. 

• Los Angeles needs an urban forest management plan, ideally an element of the General Plan. 

While trees are not a silver bullet, they are the closest things we have to one, and considering how relatively cheap trees are to plant and maintain, they are a true bargain. This is why Los Angeles needs to prioritize the planting and maintenance of trees, not squander City Hall’s resources on inflating another real estate bubble. 

It is time grow trees, not grow big buildings.

(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner who reports on local planning controversies in Los Angeles for CityWatch.) Please send any comments or corrections to rhplatkin@gmail.com.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.