"Bulldozer Town" Southern California 

                         If you were to ask someone what architecture, planning, form of buildings, or local ordinances their community may have, he or she might not have a straight answer for you. Many might say it is a conglomerate of different architectures, preferences, styles, and series of laws and that is what makes their region so unique. What a ridiculous answer that would be, as it is far to often SoCal residents spew something to that effect. The vast majority of people, whether they like it or not, have an architecture, style, density, layout, and an ideology of development that they envision their city is or will be in the near future. That is most likely why they chose to live there in the first place. These virtues of planning and development come from their personal insights, tastes, and upbringings. This type of behavior has arguably been in our nature since severing ties with the British in 1776 and the creation of state governments [1]. Unfortunately, civic engagement in local government is far weaker in many cities than it should be as citizens either feel their voice is already being heard, or do not make the effort to pick up a phone or go to a public hearing.

            The roots of the American town hall meeting should be more cherished and seen as the exemplar of a direct democracy. If we do not engage our local experts and local officials, they will most definitely not engage us [1]. Being raised in the Santa Monica Mountains, the rustic hill country architecture where exposed wood beams, plaster, organic features, and scrub brush landscapes are the norm, and shops are of a smaller and locally owned nature. Driving amongst the mountains, one can witness the uniqueness of the homes and people, but the homogeneity of their commitment amongst them. As someone who has worked in property management and brokerage, I have found that the style and culture of local areas, through our built environment, can become very personal and deeply emotional to how individuals envision their community. For this reason, local public hearings for even the smallest changes or redevelopments can face harsh uproar. While my community is unincorporated, it has always been able to keep a close leash on LA Country supervisors and certainly did not sit by the waist side and let outsiders tarnish that legacy.     

            As many less dense communities in Southern California like Simi Valley, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, or Santa Clarita see influxes in their populace as the development cycle continues, residents can feel helpless as their slice of heaven becomes bulldozer town for strip malls and track homes, degrading the personality their communities once had. While developers usually focus on large undeveloped parcels of land amongst the city, residents commonly garner these parcels for social gatherings, outdoor recreation, or open space [2]. For many, this process can happen in the blink of an eye, the story polls go up to display the width and height of the building, brochures are distributed about the “grandeur” of the new structure, and before you know it construction begins.

                    In Santa Clarita, the Newhall Ranch development which is underway will include 20,885 homes, a 1,000+ acre commercial district, a water reclamation plant, seven public schools, three fire stations, and two regional parks along the Santa Clara river [3]. Of course, this is land that the community has always cherished for outdoor recreation, and this mountainside along the Santa Clara River has represented an iconic backdrop for the city [4]. Not to mention, no matter how much in assessments developers are willing to pay, the mass addition of residents will put a new strain on city services and inevitably increase street congestion. A development like this alone will change the nature of a city, losing its more rural nature of the past to a more master planned community with 4-6 lane central roads, corporate vendors, office space, and never ending construction. While residents and local environmental groups have shown opposition, stages of the Newhall Ranch surveying and construction are steadily progressing.  

            A more extreme example where residents didn’t really take a stand was shown by Malibu’s “Legacy Park.” In 2006, the City of Malibu purchased an 11acre raw piece of land adjacent to the city’s center for $25 million. After spending an additional $6 million creating man-made hills, planting native brush, and installing a complex underground water reclamation system the City was forced to take extreme actions to address it’s debt. While residents where furious with the unusable, heavy brush-filled park, to make matter worse, the city felt it had to allow redevelopment of the nearby “Malibu Lumber Yard” (a locally owned lumber yard and hardware store set on 2 acres of city-owned land) [5]. Meanwhile, city council members were touting the completion of “Legacy Park” as one of the cities greatest accomplishments and an example for statewide conservation efforts.

Soon after, the historical hardware store was torn down and is now a giant cement cube home to high-end clothing shops like James Perse, Kitson, and Tory Burch [6]. Residents have squawked that while there is nowhere to purchase a hammer now, $100 t-shirts are easy to find [5]. In a city where approvals to development and permitting is usually a grueling 3-5 year process, within months the City of Malibu approved the demolition of the hardware store, and signed off on one of the most unpopular developments in the city’s history. Furthermore, the high-end development led to a domino effect in central Malibu, evolving into a tourist hot-spot with similar high-end shops and eateries useless to residents. While many are frustrated, no one is necessarily in a position to throw commercial leases out or tear the buildings down at this point.

                     The residents of Malibu could learn many inherent benefits of the greater citizen participation seen in the City of Pasadena. Citizens of Pasadena have always been proactive, and it shows in city council members that more closely represent a “protective” force than anything else. One of the city’s more significant hurdles is seen in it’s central “historical district”, in which shops and buildings within this zone are protected from architectural or structural alterations [7]. Talking with many Pasadena residents over the years, citizens take their community personally and have shown no bounds in preventing unfavorable development from bringing hundreds to public hearings to establishing heavily funded coalitions overnight.

            Amongst the city, shops and businesses are usually low-rise and tasteful, parking lots are limited, streets and sidewalks are clean and well maintained, and residential areas can be seen meticulously tree-lined with a collection of craftsman and Victorian style homes, many of which are historically protected properties under a fund supported by the city itself [8]. It was no surprise that this community was able to halt Caltrans’s 710 freeway originally planned to run through the center of Pasadena. Currently, construction of the freeway has been abandoned in the Pasadena area. At one point, city council members were able to convince Caltrans of considering putting the freeway underground, which would have cost 3-4 times a much. Eventually, the freeway run from Long Beach to just north of the I-10 in San Bernardino totaling 23 miles, leaving a gap remaining from Alhambra to Pasadena [8]. That being said, the City of Pasadena united on all fronts was able to hold off State and Federal officials from freeway construction, an impressive accomplishment considering no other freeway in Southern California has been left with such an unusually large gap.

            It is examples like these that show the authority local governments with civic engagement can have. This relationship and participation is the backbone of a grassroots democracy. However, what communities need to understand is that people in the policy and development worlds all have jobs. Developers want to approve entitlements and max-out a property’s equity, brokers want as much square footage to take commissions from their leases, and city council members can become hypnotized by their power to increase tax revenues or add to skylines. While that is not always inherently a bad thing, outside interests can be ignorant of communities long held values, cultures, or conservation efforts. Unfortunately, citizens tend to be the “invisible majority” in this sense and developments can slip through the cracks of their attention spans. What can even be more concerning are those who don’t know they can speak at their city halls or when or where meetings take place. This is especially important in regions of Los Angeles where cities are seeing increasing populations and skyrocketing property values through greater density. Residents need to be far more proactive in this sense by reading public notices, keeping up with city council meeting schedules, diplomatically protesting when poor decisions are made, and establishing community leaders. Whether residents want to believe it or not, the path of their city can be at their discretion.    

              

Work Cited

[1] L. Cooper, Terry “Citizen-Centered Collaborative Public Management.” University of Southern California. December 2006. 29 September 2013. Print. <Jstor.org>

[2] “Fiscal Sustainability and Local Governments in Southern California.” Malakoff, Laura. National League of Cities. 4 June 2012. 29 September 2013.

[3] City of Santa Clarita CAFR. 30 September 2013. Web. <www.santaclara.gov>

[4] “Newhall Ranch.” Newhall Ranch.Net. 30 September 2013. Web. <newhallranch.net>

[5] “Construction Begins on Malibu Legacy Park.” LA Times. 22 September 2009. 30 September 2013. Web. <latimes.com>

[6] “Malibu Lumber Yard.” Landscape Architecture Foundation. Lafoundation.org. 5 January 2011. 16 January 2013. Web. <www.lafoundation.org>

[7] “Design and Historic Preservation.” The City of Pasadena. 2 October 2013. Web. <www.ci.pasadena.ca>

[8] “Pasadena Residents Express Strong Opposition to 710 Plan.” San Gabriel Valley Tribune. 7 August 2012. 2 October 2013. Web. <www.sgvtribune.com>