The Unknown Los Angeles

Amanda Erickson of The Atlantic Cities recently referenced Cord Jefferson in a defense of L.A. Jefferson praises L.A. for helping  him to realize a more casual way of life. In addition to what Erickson quotes, I’d like to point out another excerpt from Jefferson. “I am near obsessed with LA’s mild weather, great produce, abundant vegetarian restaurants, interesting music scene, and proximity to my hometown,” Jefferson writes.

But I don’t think this “defense of L.A.” does the city justice. At over 500 square miles, the city, and even more so the county and the metropolitan area, contains a great variety of places and people. Good luck to Jefferson finding many vegetarian restaurants in Koreatown (there’s exactly 1 according to Yelp) or in Watts (also 1). By citing Angelenos’ “reputation for being abnormally casual,” Jefferson only perpetuates the myopic stereotype of Los Angeles and its residents.

This particular view of the City of Angels may accurately describe certain parts, particularly those near the beach. But it’s not true of the entire city. Downtown Los Angeles, where many employees dressed in traditional business attire roam the streets during lunch time, is a treat for urbanists and is only becoming more so with recent and planned improvements in and additions to bike lanes, public transit, and museums, as just a few examples. Other parts of L.A. similarly differ from the flip flop vision, each with their own personality and atmosphere.

The city, suburbs, and mountains of Los Angeles. The city also has beaches, parks, forests, historic buildings, universities, a subway system, public art...

This diversity in the built environment and in those who live, work, and relax in it makes Los Angeles a welcome place for uneducated and unskilled immigrants and “creative class” transplants, for seniors and children, for urbanists and open space lovers. This largely unknown, or at least unrecognized element, is the real defense of L.A.

International Planning Opportunities at USC

This past summer I traveled to Brazil and then China for two separate international planning opportunities provided to students through USC.

On May 20, 2011 I stepped onto a Korean Air flight that would be the beginning of an incredible summer of international experiences. My first stop was Rio de Janeiro where a group of USC students from various disciplines, including myself, would spend two weeks rounding out a semester of studies attempting to discover insights into how Brazil’s top tourist destination could use catalytic projects and policies to develop a positive social and economic legacy as part of their preparations for the 2016 Olympics. While in Rio de Janeiro we were privileged enough to meet with leading officials of the City, Region, and State, as well as with Olympic Committee members.

Advertisement for Maracanã stadium, which is being renovated for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. Photo provided by the author.

We presented our recommendations to a panel of these officials before we left. The trip and class was a great planning experience as well as a wonderful international adventure. It supplied an opportunity to work on an incredibly large project, provided insight into the scale of coordination efforts necessary for mega sporting events, and taught us another country’s planning methods and culture.

After one week being back from Rio de Janeiro, I boarded an Air Canada flight to Beijing, China. I had applied earlier that year through Career Services for the fellow program at the Chinese Academy of Urban Planning and Design (CAUPD)  and was awarded the opportunity to live in China for two months while working for CAUPD. I had no idea of the type or scope of project I would work on while I was in China but went with anticipation that it would be another mega planning project.

Beautiful landscape in China. Photo provided by the author.

For the two months in China, I worked on a contracted project for Luanda, Angola. The contract was providing regional and local planning documents for the City of Luanda and the regional area surrounding it. This project was a great deal larger in scope and in importance than what I had worked on up until then, since Luanda is a hyper-urbanized city within a country suffering from a high rate of urban primacy brought about by 25 years of civil war. This project was also difficult since socioeconomic data for a population of over 6 million people was non-existent, as census data had not been gathered for over twenty five years. This experience was incredible and offered me more planning practice in a foreign country and an insight into regional and national level planning.

 Both experiences were well worth the time, travel, and cost. For a graduate planning student such as myself, interested in sustainable and just developments both regionally and internationally, these trips were great, practical proving grounds for ideas, practices, and potential policies that I might use in the future. I hope everyone who is interested in traveling while studying at the Price School of Public Policy gets a chance, and those who still have time during their degree should certainly find out more information about what is available!

-Daniel Inloes

2nd Year MPL, Sustainable Land Use Concentration

 

Walking L.A.

This winter break I took my brother on a guided walking tour from Erin Mahoney Harris’ Walking L.A. This particular walk (Walk #25) brought us to the City of Glendale on a sunny December afternoon. The tour began at Brand Park, named after Leslie Coombs Brand, who was largely responsible for working with Henry E. Huntington to bring the Pacific Electric “Red Car” to Glendale. The park encompasses the site of his mansion, El Miradero, (which, fun fact for planners, is a miniature reproduction of the East Indian Pavilion at the Colombian Exposition in Chicago in 1893) as well as historic Queen Anne-Eastlake style Doctor’s House, and a Japanese garden. The park was not very crowded that Friday before Christmas. I spotted mostly dog-walkers and parents with toddlers at the playground. It was a pleasant, quiet retreat away from all the Christmas planning and shopping going on elsewhere around the city.

Leslie Coombs Brand with his wife. Photo found at: http://glendalehistorical.org/history.html.

From there, we walked south through a quaint residential neighborhood towards Kenneth Village. Established in 1923, Kenneth Village is a one-block “main street” that has all your essentials—salon, yoga studio, pharmacy, pet shop, cafés, liquor store, key cutter, bakery, auto repair shop, etc. It has a unique small town feel that is hard to come by these days. My brother suggested that we stop in at the Village French Bakery for an afternoon snack.  We picked out a gingerbread man and a fresh fruit tart out of the 20+ kinds of pastries and cakes available. We enjoyed our treats outside next to a group of elderly friends who had clearly been meeting at that bakery for years.  From what we could gather, most of the patrons of the businesses in charming Kenneth Village seemed to be from the surrounding neighborhood, perhaps dropping in on their way home, or walking through on an afternoon stroll.

For me, Kenneth Village provides an example of the many secrets that Los Angeles holds. Although I have lived here all my life, I still cannot say I know L.A very well. Since I bought Harris’s book a couple of years ago, I have found that L.A. is like an old chest you find up in the attic. Surely it’s a pain to get to, but its surprises you cannot find anywhere else.

-Emily Hsiung

2nd Year MPL, Economic Development Concentration

Uncertainty, Irony Loom after California Supreme Court Rules to Eliminate Redevelopment

By now you’ve probably heard. The California Supreme Court ruled last week to end redevelopment. The decision was a result of the high court’s opinion regarding the legality of two bills signed by Governor Jerry Brown that attempt to backfill the state budget with the tax increment revenue generated by redevelopment agencies. In summary, Assembly Bill 1X 26 ordered for the elimination of redevelopment agencies, and Assembly Bill 1X 27 offered an alternative opt-in redevelopment program given remittance payments of specified amounts from each agency. The subsequent lawsuit brought forward chiefly by the California Redevelopment Association (CRA) and the League of California Cities argued that the bills were unconstitutional under Proposition 22. Proposition 22, approved by California voters in 2010, generally prohibits the state from taking local funds.

In a worst-case scenario for redevelopment, AB 1X 26 was upheld and AB 1X 27 was ruled unconstitutional. In short, the California Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature had the right to eliminate the agencies since it created them, and Prop 22 provided them no protection from such action. Furthermore, in an ironic twist, the court ruled that the so-called “ransom payments” mandated by AB 1X 27, which would have allowed participating agencies to exist in an altered capacity, were unconstitutional under Proposition 22. In the end, the foundation of the CRA’s argument was used against itself to eliminate redevelopment agencies altogether.

RIP Redevelopment Agencies. Photo found at: http://loscerritosnews.net/lccn-exclusive-cities-governor-state-officials-respond-to-court-ruling-e-p2498-221.htm

Yes, many agencies wouldn’t have been able to pay their share of the $1.7 billion in remittance payments, causing them to go out of business anyway. However, the dissolution of over 400 agencies without an alternative can only be seen as a total loss by the CRA and redevelopment proponents. While some may choose to blame the CRA for its flawed and fateful approach, there was a widespread willingness to fight the bills in an effort to preserve redevelopment as it existed. More importantly however, finger pointing will do nothing to ease the anxiety of redevelopment agency employees and the organizations that benefited from their services.

Since the ruling there has been a mad scramble to understand the logistics and implications associated with dissolution of redevelopment while simultaneously fighting for its reinstatement – albeit in a different form. As of now, redevelopment is scheduled to sunset on February 1st when all agencies will hand their assets and obligations over to “successor agencies,” which, in most cases, will be the corresponding city. The successor agency will work with the State Department of Finance and the State Controller to pay off all enforceable obligations. The remaining assets and tax increment revenue will be placed in a state trust fund that will be distributed to schools, counties, and other agencies as regular property taxes would. This is, of course, a gross generalization of a process that is likely to be long, messy, and highly litigious.

In the meantime, the CRA is working to introduce legislation that would delay the dissolution date set by the Supreme Court. Over at the California Planning and Development Report, Bill Fulton and Josh Stephens suggest that some deal will be made to revive redevelopment, though without a solid bargaining position, the CRA, they suggest, will settle for an agreement in which they may need to contribute even more to state revenues than they would have under AB 1X 27.

At a press conference to unveil the 2012-2013 state budget on Thursday, Governor Jerry Brown remained open to the idea of funding some form of redevelopment, but under the condition that the Legislature brings him cuts to offset the losses in tax revenue. At the same press conference, Governor Brown announced that $4.8 billion would be cut from school funds if voters don’t approve a tax hike in November. The irony: Governor Brown initiated the legislation to eliminate redevelopment – and lauded the Supreme Court’s subsequent decision – primarily as a means of providing more funding for schools. With politicking like this the future of redevelopment and the prospect of battling economic and physical blight in California is bleak at best.

-Gerard Lopez-Miralles

2nd Year MPL, Sustainable Land Use Concentration

Urban Implications of RENT: “Right to the City”

You will never feel more pumped up about your future in planning than during the time you spend in a planning theory class. In one class, we discussed “The Right to the City” by David Harvey, in which he describes various theorists’ and urbanists’ – from Henri Lefebvre to Mike Davis – views of how the city should be developed and inhabited by all of its citizens. Writing in 2008 at the start of the recession, Harvey says:

Urbanization has always been…a class phenomenon, since surpluses are extracted from somewhere and from somebody, while the control over their disbursement typically lies in a few hands.

We could see the implications of this recently during the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests: people taking to the streets and occupying privately owned “public” space and aligning themselves adjacent to the “few hands” that Harvey points to – this time on Wall Street. From Karl Marx’s social class discussions to modern day, this is a battle that continues, and it is our job as planners and policy-makers to mediate the situation.

Even in popular culture, there is a call to action. Riding on the train and reviewing my notes from class, I heard the cast of RENT blasting through my headphones, lamenting their poor living conditions and pending eviction to create a cyberland:

How can you connect in a land when strangers, lovers, landlords, your own blood cells betray? What binds the fabrics together when the raging shifting winds of change keep ripping away? (RENT!) Draw a line in the sand and then make a stand!

(Note: RENT premiered in 1989, cyberland sounded really cool and new…maybe a [stretching] comparison to urban renewal’s attempt to bring “new life” and remove the stain of the poor from urban centers?)

While some might deem RENT as an odd comparison to Occupy Wall Street, I think it is pretty spot-on: groups of people binding together to fight against economic oppression and for their right to the city. It was a valid fight in the 1950’s and 1960’s when Jane Jacobs argued against urban renewal and for the vitalization of the street, in the late 1980’s when RENT was written, and recently with Occupy Wall Street.

However, this question came up in class: should the APA (American Planning Association) endorse the OWS movement? In 1965, planning theorist Paul Davidoff wrote “Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning,” arguing that planners must act as an “advocator” of people’s use of the city. I agree with Davidoff, and believe his writings transcend time to be applicable now to OWS. The APA should get involved; step in and take the interests of not just the protestors, but interest groups as well, to improve communication and come to solutions on economic, social, and spatial levels. The movement has purposely taken on an urban presence, acting as theorist Henri Lefebvre would have encouraged, as he gave considerable importance to space in revolutionary movements, “insist[ing] that the revolution [be] urban, in the broadest sense of that term, or nothing at all.” Davidoff rejected the idea of planners acting “solely as a technician” and argued that planners must get involved at all levels, citing “philosophy, social work, law, the social sciences, and civic design” as areas that planners must become familiar with and act upon in the interest of the public.

Zuccotti Park’s Demonstrators and Police Enforcement. Photo found at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049137/Occupy-Wall-Street-Violence-erupts-police-clash-protesters.html

However, Davidoff also stated that advocacy is for those who are “concerned with proposing policies for the future development of the community,” not just everyone with an opinion. Unfortunately, the movement’s goals and expectations are unclear at best, ranging from tax policy, student loan forgiveness, and closing down big banks. There is no real plan for change, only demands based on a vague ideal. So, what’s keeping the APA from endorsing the movement and acting as an advocator for the right to the city? Maybe if the movement put on a musical number as catchy as “Seasons of Love,” that summarized their goals and thoughts, the APA would be in Zuccotti Park and boardrooms collecting ideas to come to some solutions before demonstrators come down with pneumonia in the icy parks of New York City.

-Stephanie Byrd

1st Year MPL, Design Concentration

Public Spaces

By reference of Rabbi Ethan Bair comes this piece on public spaces. Maybe our attitudes toward public space would be aided by a dose of communitarianism.

The fountain at Bryant Park in Midtown New York. Richard Perry/The New York Times

On a side note, Plan On! Trojans hopes to provide original posts regularly throughout next semester.

Planning our Future

This Monday marked the launch of my program, Planning our Future.

Front cover of Where Things Are From Near to Far

In the program, Master of Planning students read Where Things Are From Near to Far, a children’s book about urban planning, to third graders in elementary schools around USC. I also plan to have reading sessions at a few after school programs.

On Monday, we had 3 sessions at 2 schools. Thank you to Ms. Berger’s and Ms. Mooring’s 3rd grade classrooms at 32nd Street School/USC Magnet and to the 3rd grade classroom at St. Agnes Parish School. The kids were very enthusiastic and eager to ask questions and to share their thoughts. After the last reading session at each school, we donate the book to the school’s library, so that any kid at the school can read it, hopefully sparking an early interest in urban planning.

All three sessions were fun, and I look forward to having more of them. It was interesting to see each of the readers’ different approaches, as well as how the setup of the classroom determined the structure of the session. I’m sure there are potential implications for education here, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.

As far as goals go, in the short term, I simply want to encourage the kids to contemplate the built environment, what determines it, and how they feel about it. In the longer term, I hope that some of the kids, especially those from underprivileged areas, feel more empowered in the future to take action and improve their neighborhoods through the planning process, potentially as planning professionals.

Thank you to Joanna Chan, Corrine Montana, Charlie Bond, Alexandra Schwartz, and Peter Enzminger for being my first readers. And thank you to Planetizen for their generous support.

-Dima Galkin

2nd Year MPL, Economic Development

Hollywood Farmers Market: A Unique Urban Form

The market is a unique built environment, crucial to this moment in history. This colorful shopping takes advantage of an existing street, at a time when it is underused, and adds only temporary, portable structures to meet its needs. Despite its flimsy construction, it is a powerful force in the neighborhood and the city. It brings people out of their cars and into a community. It distributes locally grown, pesticide-free food, promoting healthy diets and minimizing carbon emissions. A video was necessary to capture the movement inherent in this built environment. From the tents that support it, to the people that traverse it, everything is in motion. At a time when our government lacks funds to build permanent infrastructure, our planet demands responsible action, and our population requires healthy living, farmers markets are a simple yet brilliant solution to innumerable issues.

-Marie Sullivan

2nd Year MPL, Design Concentration

Return

Plan On! Trojans is coming back online. Stay tuned for more information.

On Hiatus/Vacation

Plan On! Trojans will only publish intermittently for the next three weeks as we break for the winter session.

Have a happy holiday season, be safe, and have a happy new year!

 

Edward Ng, Editor-in-Chief

PS Keep on submitting!

PPS Keep an eye out for our submissions contests next semester!