I went to the 1pm meeting of the LA Planning Board in Van Nuys yesterday as they took up the matter of the sub-division of 15137 Gilmore. They will be building two homes, whose illustrations show them as one story ranches. There was one other person there named Katherine, who lives next door, and we both could find nothing to object to. These days, architectural mediocrity is something to be welcomed as long as it is not a McMansion.

However, I stood up and told the sewer, fire, engineering, lighting and zoning board members about the poor condition of Columbus Avenue north of Victory. I talked about the “illegal” sub-division of Roya Street (where three homes and a street have been jammed into an 18,000 square feet lot that backs up to the trash area of the Chinese market on Sepulveda). I also spoke up about the continuing leak of water on Columbus, the lack of sidewalks and curbs and the general bad condition of the roadway. They all took notes and tape recorded me…. so maybe this will help.

Zoning boards work off paper plans and follow rules that are mathematical but frequently illogical. We all know that Los Angeles is oftentimes ugly and hideously planned, so how is it that it is also the most “planned” city in the world? On paper it looks OK to jam 36 homes into a hillside in Woodland Hills, but when that development is completed, the results will be wall to wall garage doors with sun baked asphalt and clone housing. In Bel Air, one developer is planning to build four houses on four acres, and there were longtime residents there who also objected to the deforestation and destruction of the natural environment.

Is there also a way to stop the development of undeveloped land? I mean that there are literally thousands of one story buildings in Los Angeles which could be turned into multi-story residences with walking and public transportation as a way of life. We have freeways and homes and malls stretching from Joshua Tree to Santa Monica from Ventura down to National City at the Mexican border. Orange County has barely an orange tree left to pick. Can’t we concentrate our new homes in walking districts and start building up rather than out?

At the meeting yesterday, I also asked why Gilmore St (between Kester and Columbus) had new sidewalks but nobody had bothered to plant trees. Katherine agreed that the street looks bad because there is no consistency in the foliage. Well we are getting somewhere, we just need to work on:

Guns
Graffitti
Junk trucks
Loud music
Barking Dogs
Litter
Prostitution
Smog
Illegal immigration
Billboards
Traffic
Sprawl