Unintended Consequences
By Frank Gruber
A friend of mine -- I'll call him Bill
-- emailed me after reading last week's
column in which I complained about Santa
Monicans Fearful of Change (SMFCs). He
told me that I was very persuasive --
except that I persuaded him to send a
donation to the Santa Monica Coalition
for a Livable City (SMCLC).
Not the result I wanted, but then Bill
comforted me by telling me that I had
achieved something in common with planners
-- an unintended consequence.
Bill describes himself as a "free-market
capitalist." His usual view is that
the City regulates property owners too
much. He had a terrible experience running
up against City regulations a few years
ago when he tried to add an addition to
his house. So what's eating Bill? I'll
quote from his email:
"I appreciate the enthusiasm
for the LUCE planning process. But this
is where the (lack of, in Bill's view)
transparency and legitimacy come in.
I simply have no confidence that, if
they (the City) wanted to drill an oil
well in my back yard, I would know about
it before the trucks arrived. Nor have
I any confidence that the City Council
and the planners would think twice about
sacrificing my local neighborhood's
interests if they identified a benefit
for the larger community.
"In light of my view that this
process lacks transparency and perhaps
legitimacy as well -- and because I
do not want to invest the days and weeks
of time necessary for careful study
and effective advocacy -- I have concluded
that my best alternative is to fuel
the people who would simply bring the
entire process to its knees, who would
oppose, unconditionally and in the most
unreasonable and asinine manner possible,
any development. In other words, the
thing you complained about in your column
-- that the SMCLC and their ilk are
simply unreasonable -- is what I like
best about them: for my neighborhood,
"squeaky wheelism" seems to
be an efficient and effective strategy."
Bill's neighborhood, by the way, is
near the "industrial lands"
north of the freeway, which are those
areas of the city that look most likely
to experience convulsive redevelopment.
Indeed, what has Bill concerned are the
recent proposals for large apartment complexes
enabled by recent housing legislation
the City Council enacted (see
story), but which the City Council
last week made subject to discretionary
review by means of development agreements.
(see
story)
When Bill's view -- that he can't trust
government because when given the chance
officials will make the wrong decision
(and not let him know about it) -- is
juxtaposed with the views of anti-developer
no-growth outfits like the SMCLC they
show just what a rock and hard place government
is up against.
The rock is the conservative attitude
that government generally makes things
worse in a misguided attempt to make things
better. The hard place is the very people
-- they typically call themselves liberal
-- who pressure government to get what
they want, by calling what they want the
same thing as the public good.
I see Santa Monica government and politics
differently than how my friend Bill does,
although we agree about the unintended
consequences. My impression is that nearly
every attempt by the City at social engineering
becomes so mangled by the collision with
residents out to protect what they've
got, that unintended consequences are
only too predictable.
For instance, the City's attempts to
protect affordable rental housing in existing
neighborhoods have had the consequence
that developers build ever larger and
more luxurious condominiums.
It is possible to plan in a manner that
limits unintended consequences. The key
is not to reinvent the wheel. It is possible
to learn from the past.
Ah, the past. Another argument I've heard
against my criticism of SMFCs is that
it is rational to fear change when change
has been up to no good.
I can understand the appeal of this argument.
One can argue that the past wasn't so
great, but that's not the point. There's
nostalgia to factor in. The "grass
is always greener" aphorism also
has a temporal dimension -- the grass
was always greener back then, too.
That's because the past is always certain,
and the future is always uncertain.
One way people try to avoid uncertainty
is to try to perpetuate the past, but
the problem with this philosophy -- the
"throw a spanner into the works"
philosophy that Bill likes about the SMCLC
-- is that the past is going to be the
past no matter what. It's not going to
be the future. Change happens.
You can't look at Drescherville in the
industrial lands, or the mobile home park
on Colorado that is slated for redevelopment,
and say with any confidence that what
you see is permanent.
Perpetuating the past is not the same
thing as learning from it.
If you fear change, and you try to block
it, you're going to get the worst of it,
because "change without change"
is likely to perpetuate the trends that
you didn't like. Take the industrial areas
of Santa Monica. Historically zoned for
jobs, over time they will, without change
in the City's general plan, be redeveloped,
like it or not, for more intense concentrations
of jobs. This has happened with much of
the City's former industrial lands already.
An office building or a post-production
facility has more jobs per square foot
than a factory. Factories, like Papermate,
are history in Santa Monica. The explosion
of jobs on formerly industrial properties
is what has created the traffic problems
in Santa Monica that annoy us all.
There's now a proposal in the works to
turn Papermate into more post-production
facilities. It would be much better for
Santa Monica if housing were built instead,
with appropriate infrastructure. But that
can't happen without change to the land
use element of the general plan.
If you don't fear change, you can manage
it. You can build residential neighborhoods
with a grid of slow-moving streets, with
businesses and restaurants that people
can walk to -- including people in neighborhoods
like Bill's that have historically been
cut off from the rest of the city.
If you fear change you won't know what
hit you. If you're looking backwards,
all consequences will appear unintended. |
