Con Howe has been doing some reflecting on his 13 years at the helm of the Los Angeles Planning Department. Howe, who is leaving in September and plans to launch a West Coast branch of the Urban Land Institute, took over a department in 1992 that had been roundly criticized by a panel of outside city planning directors. They found L.A. overly politicized and bureaucratic. Howe, at the time New York’s planning director, participated in the assessment. Still, nothing could have prepared him for coping with the fallout from the 1992 riots, the 1994 Northridge Earthquake or the severe recession of that era. Howe focused his efforts on streamlining the city’s building codes and giving property owners more development rights. During the charter reform movement, he helped create local planning commissions and reduced the amount of hoops that developers had to jump through.
Question: Councilmembers have been quoted as saying they want your replacement to push their own vision. Does such a planning official exist?
Answer:
Some of the rhetoric implies that they want an enlightened despot. It’s like they want a shining knight on a horse, but they could get a Don Quixote on a donkey. It’s really misplaced to think all the aspirations of so many different neighborhoods and people get placed into one person. Ultimately, planning directors are not elected and they shouldn’t presume to speak for the electorate.
Q: People seem to be taking shots at you as they describe what they are looking for in a new planning director.
A:
I don’t know that much of it has been personalized. At least I don’t take it that way. They are describing aspirations. If you look at the things said in the search when I was hired you’ll see many of the same things. Criticism is part of the public process.
Q: There seems to be frustration that a few neighborhood groups are able to squelch sound development projects.
A:
It’s always a struggle to get people to care beyond their immediate area. It’s absolutely true that part of a planning director’s responsibility is to push for citywide issues and communitywide issues. It’s always hard to get people to look beyond the short term to make sure the long-term needs are met.
Q: Have you seen many truly deserving projects get killed by NIMBY types?
A:
Actually, no. Things get changed as they should in response to criticism. Usually they’re changed for the better. But no, I can’t think of any project that I thought was important that hasn’t gotten approved.
Q: Los Angeles still faces a crushing demand for housing. What can be done?
A:
One of the city’s great strengths is the low-density single-family neighborhoods, so we’re not going to disrupt those. When you look at the areas that need the investment and can handle the added density, really it’s commercial corridors such as Wilshire or Ventura or Vermont. Over last few years we’ve been assiduously removing zoning barriers to building in those areas. Basically, the strategy has been to encourage development by removing all the barriers that we find. We now have evidence some of this is working.
Q: What neighborhoods attract the most residential development?
A:
One of the things we are pleased about is that new housing is spread throughout the city. Historically it just used to be in certain higher-income areas. But now it’s in nearly every part of the city, especially downtown and the Wilshire Corridor and in Hollywood and North Hollywood. We live in a city that’s fundamentally built out in terms of first-growth development. From here out almost all our new housing will be redevelopment or infill.
Q: How did you become interested in planning?
A:
I was always interested in design issues and political science. When I was in college, I was accepted into an internship program during (New York Mayor John) Lindsey’s administration. I then got a graduate degree in city planning from MIT and worked in the Massachusetts governor’s office on redeveloping old military bases. After that I moved to New York and had a series of jobs in the planning department.
Q: What was it like working in New York?
A:
That was a time of a real building boom in Manhattan. Ultimately in the mid-1980s I became director of the Manhattan Office of City Planning and I worked on a lot of really interesting projects like the rejuvenation of Times Square and downtown projects like Battery Park City. Eventually I became executive director of the office that handled planning for all five boroughs.
Q: So why come to L.A.?
A:
I was recruited in 1991 by Tom Bradley. I’m actually the last general manager appointed by Bradley. On a cold winter day in New York, looking out my office window where I couldn’t see a single tree, a consultant hired by L.A. called to ask if I would be part of a peer evaluation team, along with other planning directors. I came out and spent a couple of days making recommendations and suggestions. One thing led to another and I agreed to be considered for the job. I have never regretted it.
Q: It must have taken some time to get used to a new city.
A:
People always think of them being very different, but except for the intensity of high-rise development in Manhattan there are a lot of parallels physically with the cities, even more so in terms of their diversity economically, ethnically and racially.
Q: What were some of the first changes you made?
A:
I was struck that the development standards weren’t established high enough and made everything discretionary. So we established what I consider high but realistic development standards, which encouraged people to build without needing special permission.
Q: That was the genesis of the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, which speeds the conversion of older office buildings into residences.
A:
Adaptive re-use is a perfect example of that. Every one of those conversions would have required variances. We just established standards in the code and told people to build by right. I’m always being asked, “Did you know XYZ is happening on the corner?” and I now get to say, “No I didn’t know.” That’s great because if I don’t know about a project it’s because they didn’t have to ask special permission from us.
Q: L.A. has allowed strange uses to pop up next to each other, like a library next to a strip club that’s next to an auto-body shop.
A:
That kind of stuff just doesn’t happen any more. If you look at the anomalies that exist, they date from decades ago. So much of what we are doing now is healing some of the problems of the past. I really do think the quality of development is far better today because the quality of planning is so much better.
Q: Do you believe Antonio Villaraigosa has a good grasp of planning issues?
A:
I am optimistic. We have had a chance to work with him on a couple of projects. I think he is really savvy about the different pieces of a project. I think his enthusiasm and concern about economic development will mean those types of projects will get his full attention. I think he is interested in seeing good development occur in all parts of the city.
Q: When you became L.A.’s planning director, what was the best piece of advice you got?
A:
John Ferraro, the former council president, once reminded me that the City Council always has the final say, but he said to me and I think it’s quite telling that if all that planners do is just parrot back what they think a council member wants to hear then there’s really no need for a planning department. That’s why I think it’s important for the planning department to provide professional advice to the council and the mayor, fully accepting the fact that it’s a democracy and the council’s elected officials have the final say.
Q: Any other advice to your successor?
A:
If they don’t know the city, the most fun part of the job is getting to know the different neighborhoods. Obviously, I would encourage them to speak to a lot of different people and listen to a lot of people. When I first got here every council member gave me a tour of their district. You have to always stay open and receptive to all points of view.
