S. Gail Goldberg describes herself as a child of the suburbs, growing up in San Bernardino. But most people in Southern California who have crossed paths with her professionally know Goldberg as an urbanist with a keen interest in transportation issues.

Goldberg came to Los Angeles in February 2006 after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa appointed her to head the city’s Planning Department. She had worked in planning at San Diego for 17 years, the final six as planning director, overseeing the update of the city’s 20-year-old general plan.

The San Diego plan, known as the City of Villages, incorporated transit-oriented developments throughout the region, and built her reputation as a supporter for them. She is being honored as the leading local public-sector advocate of the projects.

In just 10 years in San Diego, she went from planning intern to the No. 1 city planner and that was after a career that started in her 40s when she went back to college about the same time she unexpectedly became a widowed housewife.

Goldberg had left college in the early 1960s to get married to her husband, Steven. They moved to San Diego, where he formed a company that produced air-pollution monitoring equipment. They had two sons, Matthew and Jason.

Then Steven died of a heart attack in 1982 at the age of 40, just as Goldberg had decided to earn a degree in economics at UC San Diego. Her internship at San Diego’s Planning Department was the foot in the door, and Goldberg started the climb up the ladder and eventual jump to Los Angeles.

“I’d say that everything in my career has been leading up to this position here in Los Angeles,” Goldberg said. “This is the most challenging assignment a city planner could ask for.”

Goldberg set an ambitious agenda for her first year in Los Angeles: update 12 of the city’s 35 community plans, create 10 transit-oriented district plans, and push for a citywide effort to reform and streamline its development process. Known as the “12 to 2” initiative, the process would allow developers to only deal with two city offices the Planning, and Building and Safety departments instead of the 12 they normally had to visit while seeking approval.

She also decided to get out of the car, frequently walking and taking the bus near her Hancock Park residence.

“I have to say for the first year and much of the second year, I spent every Saturday walking in neighborhoods and saw a very different view of L.A. than your view from the freeways,” Goldberg said. “Our neighborhoods here are beautiful and should be preserved, but could use more pedestrian-friendly venues, and these transit stations can become the heart of a community.”

Robert “Bud” Ovrum, L.A.’s deputy mayor of economic development, said Goldberg has been very accessible to the public, attending hundreds of community meetings to ask residents and business owners what they want in their neighborhoods.

“Metro will go out and build a subway system, but it wasn’t doing much thinking about the land use around those stations and Gail wanted to help with that,” Ovrum said.

The city is working on 11 transit-oriented developments: five on the Metro Gold Line extension into East Los Angeles and six on the Metro Expo Line, also under construction.

“The car that was meant to give us freedom, and did provide that for long, has now become a prison for some people in Los Angeles,” Goldberg said. “We are stuck in our cars and it is going to probably get worse, so people are going to have to have other choices.”

ADVOCATE

S. Gail Goldberg

Title: Director

Organization: Los Angeles City Planning Department

Quote: “I’d say that everything in my career has been leading up to this position here in Los Angeles.”