Blog: The Element in the Room

Any discussion about development has to be made in the context of the Land Use and Circulation Element (LUCE). I still have a four-color glossy brochure about the LUCE that was mailed to residents in January 2009, and it has multiple references to "no net new trips" in the context of traffic and congestion. Yet each new project -- commercial as well as residential -- conveniently ignores the attendant traffic that it will generate, the increase in visitors who will require essential services, and the costs associated with it all.

The recurring assertion that the Expo Line will reduce traffic is completely unrealistic. Unless everyone who works in Santa Monica will suddenly arrive by rail and every new resident in the apartment buildings erected near its future stops will get around town on foot or the bus, the congestion is unavoidable... and “no net new trips” is just a phrase.

One of the major drawbacks of Santa Monica's City Council structure is that elected Council members do not represent specific neighborhoods. They are elected city-wide and have no allegiance to any geographic area. So, as downtown grows ever more congested with vehicles and people, there is no designated representative for Ocean Park, for example, or the Pico corridor or downtown itself -- no one who can be rejected in the future for not having reliably represented constituents.

Without that responsibility, residents are likely to feel that their vote makes no difference which may explain the low turnout at the polls. Or the contradictory (and often misleading) messages that arrive in the mailbox may be too confusing: it’s still baffling how SMRR could have supported both Winterer, who tends to oppose development, and Davis and O’Day, who never met a project they didn’t like.

Though the entire city provided input for the Land Use and Circulation Element, the Planning Commission and the Council regularly seek exemptions from its provisions. If it weren’t for community activists, every exemption would be rubber stamped for approval ignoring, as the January 2009 brochure states, “a greater community role in determining the physical nature of the City to ensure that Santa Monica maintains its unique ‘beach town’ culture.”

Looking at the current proposals for downtown, that beach town culture doesn’t stand a chance as the City morphs, project by project, into Manhattan by the Sea.