AV called last valley with room to grow

Report: L.A. sprawl hits wall;
Valley still looks to good future

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press March 8, 2001.

By LISA WAHLA
Valley Press Staff Writer

LOS ANGELES - Don't let the shopping malls, cookie-cutter housing tracts and "big box" retail outlets fool you - suburbia L.A.-style is dead.

A new report on urban sprawl finds that Los Angeles, which for 120 years has modeled suburbanization for the nation, has reached its limit.

"The suburban era for metro L.A. is not only over; it's been over for 20 years," said researcher William Fulton, one of the primary authors of "Sprawl Hits the Wall: Confronting the Realities of Metropolitan Los Angeles."

The Antelope Valley is the "the last valley" in Los Angeles County, and one of the last areas in the five-county area with room to grow, considering environmental restrictions in other counties.

"It's not too late for the Antelope Valley," said Michael Dear, director of the Southern California Studies Center. "You're going to get growth - the question is how are you going to manage it? There is a way to do growth in constructive, hopeful ways, not destructive ways."

The report was presented Wednesday by the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, and the Southern California Studies Center at the University of Southern California.

Researchers gave a bleak picture of those realities - crumbling infrastructure, desperate shortages in affordable housing, a serious jobs-to-housing imbalance and the worst traffic in America.

The L.A. metropolitan area, which in this report includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, will add 6 million people over the next 20 years.

L.A. is on pace to surpass New York as the nation's largest metropolitan area. But its traditional growth pattern - over the hill and into the next valley - is obsolete, researchers say.

Strategies suggested by the researchers include considering the environment, closing the gap between rich and poor and overhauling a current economic system that discourages construction of needed housing.

Most of all, researchers say, civic leaders must come together to find regional solutions to pervasive urban problems.

For the first time in its history, L.A.'s growth is coming primarily from within, rather than through migration or immigration. In other words, the birthrate is far exceeding the death rate.

While the explosive growth locally has grabbed headlines, researchers emphasized that older urban areas - long considered built out - have experienced an equal amount of growth.

"In the last 20 years, 40% of the region's population growth - more than 2 million people - has occurred in older parts of the region that have virtually no `raw' land," the report said.

By contrast, the Antelope Valley has land and opportunity for quality growth and infrastructure development. However, the Valley's revenue base is low compared to many other areas, and it takes a lot of money to build infrastructure.

Because few multifamily housing units are being constructed, this increased density in poor areas has meant more doubling and tripling in single-family homes.

Recently constructed homes are mostly single-family dwellings, built either in affluent foothills or coastal areas or in outlying areas, far from job centers.

"We're building the wrong type of housing in the wrong location at the wrong price for the type of growth we're experiencing," researcher Jennifer Wolch said.

At this point, the Antelope Valley offers homes in the $150,000 range that would sell for a quarter-million dollars or more "down below" in the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere.

The housing shortage is exacerbated by the state's economic system that encourages shopping centers and auto malls and effectively discourages new housing. The system rewards cities with sales tax dollars for commercial development, while needed multifamily units that would further drain limited fiscal resources go unbuilt.

"Many jurisdictions like the Antelope Valley have not enough resources to address the kinds of infrastructure needs that exist," Wolch said.

"The rules of the game in terms of state and local financing need to change."

Overall, the L.A. region has recovered from the recession of the last decade, becoming a "center of the high-paying `New Economy,' " with jobs in the high-tech and entertainment fields dominating the growth.

But the desirable jobs are developing disproportionately in affluent foothill suburbs, such as Santa Clarita and Thousand Oaks. Low-skill, low-wage jobs are prevalent in distressed areas, deepening the divide between rich and poor.

Of course, improving the job-to-housing balance has been a top priority for Antelope Valley leaders for years.

Fulton suggested that the real problem isn't the scarcity of jobs in the Antelope Valley - the issue is the lack of affordable housing in the L.A. basin.

The challenge for Antelope Valley planners is to look beyond the local need for jobs, he said. Local leaders must come together with their counterparts around the region to develop long-term solutions.

"It's one thing to be on the Palmdale City Council and say we want jobs. It's another thing to be in on regional conversations about improving the job-to-housing balance throughout the region."