Ali Modarres, Professor of Geography, CalState LA

I see environmental degradation from congestion and poverty in the built-up areas and sprawl at the edge of the urban environment. We need to look at the structure of the city in terms of growth management.

Migration is a global phenomenon. In 1962 there were 1.5 million refugees in the world; in 1992, there were 15 million and there are probably more now. Historically, California has been a magnet for immigrants. During the 1980s there were 7 million immigrants to the US, and 1 out of 7 came to the LA region. As a result in 1990, 1/3 of all residents in our region are foreign born. Since 1980, 10% of immigrants are highly skilled, the rest are unskilled.

Between 1980 and 1990 most of the population growth in LA was in the inner-city, near the freeways, close to downtown, in lower socio-economic areas. Now the San Fernando Valley is reproducing South Central LA, in terms of demographics.

The major increase in LA population density has been mainly in the lower economic, Latino neighborhoods, except some of southern Glendale where there are many Filipinos.

African-American population growth declined in South Central and Compton areas. Latino growth has concentrated in South Central, Crenshaw, and the central San Fernando Valley. Asians have settled mainly in East LA and the San Fernando Valley.

We project continued growth in lower socio- economic areas, in the built-up environment, the central San Fernando Valley, inside the I-405-5-101 triangle, east LA and southeast LA County. A lot of this is through conversion of single family homes to condos, and garages to apartments, even in areas zoned for single families. However, there is still high home ownership in a majority of lower income areas. Gentrification of the inner city is not happening in the US, nearly as much as other developed countries. It appears yuppies don't want to move to the inner city.

Rick Cole, Local Government Commission

Most people view LA as a good place to get away from, because of a sense of congestion, crime, and economic decline. Even on the suburban periphery, there is a loss of sense of place, where people would not want to walk, children have trouble playing, or old people with walkers would not want to shop. Many people have a sense of real loss, of the life in small towns or Europe.

Portland, Oregon is the best example of a US urban city that has recaptured downtown. But in LA we are building everything oriented around auto transportation, with large parking garages, wide busy streets, where it is difficult to walk. Even in higher density units, we need lots of garages for several cars per family.

We need to deal with the issue of sprawl with Livable Communities. We need a unified look at land use, transportation and social structure of our communities. Seaside Development is a resort community designed to include front porches and sidewalks. Pasadena has some affordable housing that is oriented toward the neighborhood. There are mixed-use neighborhoods in Portland and elsewhere.

Most commercial developments are large office buildings or malls surrounded by huge parking lots. But Levi Strauss built its building around an open space that is useful for the public also.

The bus is not designed for our low density suburban sprawl. Portland integrates bus, train, auto, and walking. Now 40% of people arrive downtown in other than a single occupant auto. Sacramento has established an Urban Policy area, stating that they won't subsidize water, sewer, schools, etc. outside that area.

The present projection for L.A. is to consume all the suburban land, leaving behind empty commercial and manufacturing buildings in the inner city.

In L.A. the average person turns on their car ignition 13 times per day, so 49% of our energy consumed by transportation. Some 39% of vehicle miles are traveled by the 20% upper income families, while only 9% by the lower 20%.

Citizens need to be involved in the discussions on transportation. We need to stop building cities around the auto, and focus on people. We need to be aware of the environmental, economic and social impacts of sprawl. See the recent Bank of America report on sprawl. The growth of business, infrastructure, and land use outside the core sucks economic life out of the inner-city, leaving a lack of tax base to support the inner cities.

Frank Hotchkiss, Urban Possibility

My intent is to defend suburbia. I believe that certain sprawl is good, and to make suburban life livable is OK. I will use Orange County as the epitome of sprawl.

In 1870, the SCAG region had a population of 25,000. In 1950 it was 5 million, now it is 15 million. It is very ethnically diverse throughout the region. The black, Latino and Asian populations are spreading out throughout the region, including Orange County

There is considerable density in Orange County. For example, Laguna Miguel has 48% attached residential buildings, and it is similar in other towns, such as Woodbridge, Tustin Ranch, North Ranch, etc.,

South Coast Mall is working well even though malls with huge parking lots are going out because of the big boxes discount stores are undercutting them. The Asian Garden Mall is very attractive and successful. Broadway Street, which caters to Hispanics, in Santa Ana is very successful, there are no empty stores. There are some human meeting places in some of the malls. However, gated communities bother me. Some are open to bicycles and pedestrians, others are not.

Some questions facing Orange County are how to transition the closure of Tustin Air Base and El Toro Air Base? Is sprawl a problem, if it is balanced development? Should we have contiguous growth or scattered growth? If it leaves more room for adaptation and expansion, more identification with smaller communities, then leapfrogging open space makes good sense.

Comments:

Rick Cole: Frank's development design is very attractive, but the problem is transportation. How do you get from one place to another? In Orange County the only way to get around is in the auto, which is very energy inefficient, requires a very expensive infrastructure, isolates people, and is inaccessible to the old, young, disabled, and poor.

Ali Modarres: Transportation is very important. Because the suburbs have attracted commerce and industry, the result is over 15% of commuting is now out from the inner city to the suburbs.

Frank: In Orange County the designs were not done with public transit in mind. However, there are a series of small commercial centers, 2-8 acres in size. A majority of the people in Orange County are within 1/4 mile of these small centers. I believe that if we put the next 5 million people in the highly urbanized inner city areas, it will be too concentration in high crime neighborhoods.

We need new types of transportation, such as minibuses, jitneys, etc. Even if we assume most of the new growth is next to transit stops, we will see little effect on congestion. Even if we increase present mass transit use by 3-4 times, the next 6 million people will still vastly increase the number of cars. We need to help people move to where the jobs are. HUD has a "Moving to Opportunities Program."

Ron Ketcham: It is better to have an economic penalty for sprawl.

Frank: We must provide sites for manufacturing to be competitive in the global economic market.

Rick: We are less competitive globally because of the sprawl. It cost $1 trillion for the infrastructure in our cities. If we replicate that infrastructure on the outskirts, it will make us more expensive than other countries.

We need development patterns that provide opportunity and diversity. We need equitable population balances, with mixed ethnic groups. Effective mass transportation could provide mobility for all people.

Ali: If we don't change the pattern, we will increase poverty in inner city and raise the potential for more conflict.

Gene Fisher: The cost of transportation is key. It seems the people with the money can pull the plug on certain groups.

Ali: All other cultures seem to emphasize homogenization. I believe cultural conflict is the root of our growth problem. Sprawl makes race hidden, if you can afford it, you move.

Gene: The cost of that choice is expensive.

Frank: The African American population has spread throughout the region. In Orange County there are many Asian and Hispanics. We can't get the integration by forcing the whites into the inner city. I believe the inner city infrastructure can't even take any more people, so it would be cheaper to build outside inner city.

Rick: The middle and upper income blacks are dispersing like the whites, so those left in the inner city are only the very poor blacks. It doesn't help the poor blacks that the black lawyers and doctors have moved to the suburbs, so there is no leadership left in the poor neighborhoods.

The inner city is not too full, if we built 130 units with 1100 people on an empty lot, is improving the neighborhood.

Comments from the Audience;

The LA sewer system is over capacity, the big developers can fill it up if we don't stop them.

Mixed use development depends on the construction of the subways and rail.

I have never seen mixed use development work.

Growth in downtown is better.

The Playa Vista development is wrong.

Transportation engineers work on formulas based on traffic management plans. Peter Gordon and Marty Wax assume the only way to get anywhere is by car. But in 1900 there were trolley tracks and sidewalks, they had concentrated growth that worked. Then "visionaries" said we could build our cities around cars, now they say we can't go back to the trolleys.

I worked for a pension fund that would only invest in large malls, they wouldn't look at inner city development. Where is there inner city investment? Who is doing it? Empowerment zones are not working?

Rick Cole: There are people going against those trends. When recycling started it was only hippies, now it is mainstream.

Nature needs to be included. We have built houses over every active fault. Lancaster is right on the San Andreas fault. If the dam failed, about 1/3 of Orange County would be underwater.

Frank, are you arguing for disposable communities?

Frank: No, we need more attractive places to live.

Ron: Pasadena had many people in the community participating in the community decision-making process. The Old Town area once was bad but is now very attractive.

Gene: We need to look at sustainable communities. We need to get to the root of transportation and economics, no one wants to look at the true cost and root causes. Let's move toward to a higher quality of life.

Rick: We need to move toward energy efficiency, but the decision-making process is not allowing new developments to move toward that.

Frank: We need to find roots some other way, telecommunications could lead to less commuting, which could lead to even more sprawl. We need to do both inner and outer city growth.

Ali: We also need to talk about the immigrants, and where they come from, and how we can help them have sustainable lives at home, rather than move. We are getting toward the maximum carrying capacity of the planet at 8-10 billion people.

We have asked students to consider earthquake fault lines in developing north LA county, and they could not find any places to build.

The issue is human relationships to each other and to the environment, we need to truly understand human ecology.

Ted Crovello: Complexity is what we are all about. How do we respond? What is the subset of the population that can influence the decision-makers?