Holidays in Cosmopolis: Enjoying Urban Planning

by Tony Chavira

A lot’s happened in a year, and it’s strange for me to think that this is actually the third time I’ve written a “Holidays in Cosmopolis” article. Not that the other years weren’t fun or special, but so much has happened in this past year both politically and for our website that I’m not sure if we’re even the same Los Angeles anymore. We’re like a new place, and we’re most definitely a nicer-looking website.

For me, the biggest change crept up over the course of the year: I spent a few hours each day reading about urban planning efforts around the world, gathering articles for our now-defunct News section and occasionally blogging, and somehow I eventually began to discover that I really enjoyed urban planning issues. The more I wrote about them, the more I began to feel tied to a great community of writers, journalists and professionals who spend their waking hours trying to untangle complicated policy in order to simply help people live their lives. The problem, as is the problem in lots of fields of helping people, is that there are a ton of different ways to help and none of them are completely “right” per se. If you go back over my articles, I’ve clearly fallen into a camp that advocates for smart urban density, tons of accessible public transportation, and a severely-reduced bill for housing and transportation because of that. For this vital perspective—that really helped me put into words something I’ve been able to see but not explain until recently in my own life—I want to thank Mr. Kaid Benfield at the National Resource Defense Council. I read his blog just about every day, and I even click through to his links. It’s pretty clear when you read through the blog that Kaid is immensely knowledgeable and is really clear about his goals when making his points, even if I may not necessarily agree with them. Needless to say, it forces me to think about how I phrase just about everything I write on FourStory, and Kaid’s articles always give me a fantastic foundation for how to approach urban and environmental issues.

Christmas in Los Angeles

Secondly, for several reasons, I’d like to thank Mr. Ben Welle at City Parks Blog for his articles. First, as you can probably figure from the name, the articles on City Parks Blog take a comprehensive and multifaceted view toward the development, maintenance and politicization of the park space, and (just as significant) how important that is to providing a safe, clean and affordable environment to those living in it. But what I enjoy most about City Parks Blog is that Ben and company have a really firm understanding of the greater underlying point of parks: having a warm, free, and democratically-useful space that is always available to the public. Public land, actual land for the public, is a term akin to “free land,” “national land” or “our land,” and the writers at City Parks Blog never forget that basic point. Now if only I can get Ben to finally submit something to FourStory....

A contentious site for some, and yet riddled with fantastic and thoughtful arguments, Chapman University’s Professor Joel Kotkin’s website New Geography is another daily read I’ve linked to more than once. What I enjoy most about New Geography (and the writers Mr. Kotkin brings to the site) is that they have no qualms with swimming against the larger public sentiment toward planning and environmental assumptions. Most importantly, they write about issues like transportation planning for more cars, being okay with sprawl or stopping cap and trade without so much of the full-blown rhetoric you might expect when these issues arise. Whether or not you agree with their stance in any of the articles posted to New Geography, the very fact that they are comfortable raising these relevant issues and smartly playing the devil’s advocate says a lot about the credit they give to the complexity of these important, historical issues. Sign up for their RSS feed and I guarantee you that something they post will capture your eye and seize your attention.

Last but in some ways most important is Mr. John Michlig’s blog Sprawled Out, which I will admit to using as last-second inspiration for quick blog articles. Though it’s based on John’s viewpoints of development in his hometown of Franklin, Wisconsin, many of its strong themes resonate with how I see planning and development efforts come together or collapse here in Los Angeles. I can absolutely guarantee that many of the thoughts and themes in my FourStory blog posts were generated by a thought or theme in one of John’s. From sleazy political dealings, to freeway-focused transportation planning, to neighborhood design standards, to enriching the biking and walking experience in our towns, to the latent unpinning fear that if something doesn’t change now, it never will ... John’s blog is an absolute must-read, must-subscribe to those who care about making sure that we live in an overall better place in ten years than we do today. Most importantly, it shows us that we can really learn from each other and pool our efforts if needed, no matter how different we might perceive Southern California to be from the greater Milwaukee area.

Although I can’t call myself a planner, a planning journalist, or even an expert on planning or development, I absolutely look up to these people as my mentors, and would be eternally grateful to ever be seen as one of their colleagues as we try to figure out, through writing, how to do good with what we’ve got. Thank you all, and happy holidays.

Previous “Holidays in Cosmopolis” articles are here and here.

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