The Role of Planning in Fixing Los Angeles' Development Woes

Kelsi Maree Borland interviewed Gail Goldberg, executive director of the Urban Land Institute, Los Angeles Chapter, and former planning director of Los Angeles and San Diego. The headlining takeaway from the interview is that Los Angeles need a new master plan to better confront the repeated controversies surrounding the city's development approvals process.

The exclusive interview touched on the major themes from a recent symposium on the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative—a local ballot measure that could put a moratorium on many of the development approval practices currently in action around the city. The initiative is also the most telling sign of the confusion and anger that development in Los Angeles inspires.

Goldberg's response to the current political climate of Los Angeles is to refocus the city's efforts on planning. Here's a sample of her view point on that subject:

We need to have plans that identify where that growth should occur and at the same time where it should not occur, but the reality is that we don’t have the experience of plans here in Los Angeles, and the plans that we have adopted in the past don’t come with a lot of detail in terms of infrastructure or urban design and neighborhood character, and those are the kind of things that people are really interested in.