L.A.: 'Most Politicized' Planning In The World

Josh Stephens writes, "Moderated by Planning Commissioner Michael Woo, the 10-member panel represented some of the region's most astute practitioners and observers of planning in Los Angeles, ranging from architects to developers to journalists to former members of the Planning Department staff. They amounted to an unusually candid bunch, whose expertise centers not necessarily on planning per se, but rather on that unquiet beast known as planning in Los Angeles.

If no other lesson emerged -- for LoGrande or anyone else who would dare imagine what the city should and could look like -- it is that Los Angeles is sui generis, in its form, geography, demographics, history, and politics. Jane Blumenfeld -- the recently retired consigliere to Lo Grande's predecessor, Gail Goldberg -- said it most bluntly by calling it "the most politicized planning land use development city in the world.""

Thanks to Josh Stephens