Dream of Vision 2020 Requires a Solid Reality Check

Dream of Vision 2020 Requires a Solid Reality Check From The Newsroom by Michael Hart At the conclusion of the Economic Alliance’s Vision 2020 forum on Feb. 21, Alliance Chairman David Fleming proposed a champagne toast to the ever-so-optimistic enterprise. The couple of hundred in attendance could easily say, “That’s a wrap!” because it’s hard to see where the whole process is possibly headed next. Give Bob Scott and his cast of hundreds credit it’s hard to find fault with their vision of the San Fernando Valley 20 or so years in the future: We’ll all live close enough to Town Centers to walk to them for almost everything we want. And for what we can’t find, there will be Regional Centers for our “regional needs.” To get there we’ll take “readily accessible” public transit, even though freeways will be “upgraded and technologically enhanced.” Our good friend technology also will “improve air quality, reduce power demands, recycle water and conquer visual blight.” Cities will cooperate with one another and, if and when population increases, Smart Growth principles and Livable Cities strategies will make it so you won’t even notice. Everyone will live in a place they can afford and economic development will “provide an ever-increasing array of opportunities.” Who wouldn’t go for that? Certainly every elected official even remotely associated with the San Fernando Valley did. I know that because the day’s presentation at the Airtel Plaza Hotel included endless videotape of them stating in no uncertain robot-like terms what a great idea all this is. (In fairness, let me make it clear that one of those officials, Assemblyman Robert Hertzberg, actually appeared both on tape and in the flesh.) Even the Daily News, which manages to find fault on its editorial page with almost every institution in this city, waxed poetic the following Sunday about the future as revealed by Vision 2020. So, I guess that leaves it to me to ask a question or two. First, what took so long? Read all 36 pages of the report, and it sounds suspiciously like the kinds of General Plans cities all over the United States put together when they’ve got a lot of undeveloped land available and are worried about what might happen if somebody doesn’t step in and apply a little common sense. It’s not the fault of anybody who’s here now that this didn’t take place in a more substantial way 40 or 50 years ago. But with the possible glaring exception of Ahmanson Ranch (and you already know that story), most every inch of the Valley is already built out. So, how do you make a plan for perfection in a place that’s almost finished? “Reality’s reality,” admitted Economic Alliance CEO Bruce Ackerman the next day. “We don’t have a clean slate.” Well, let’s just say you are “stretching the envelope” to “think out of the box” here. Maybe you can imagine a way to take a misshapen, disorganized, unplanned but colorful, imaginative, chaotically charismatic place like the San Fernando Valley and mold it to your liking. How do you pay for those brilliant ideas? Certainly not with public money because, also according to this proposal, 20 years from now “the overall tax and regulatory structure is fair and competitive,” and we all know what that means. There is an answer, of course. Everything we want for the Valley can be provided for by the creation of more wealth in the area. But even if, as this proposal suggests, the regulatory process that accompanies business expansion is streamlined, and even if whatever these Town Centers are create a livelier retail sector, that won’t be nearly enough to get the job done and here’s why. High-tech and biotech are everybody’s promise for the future. But many of the Valley’s highest-profile companies in those sectors have moved their labor-intensive manufacturing components to other states or countries. Those that haven’t want to, and mostly for reasons that nobody at the local level can control. It is certainly likely that companies will continue to maintain their headquarters here, that R & D; staffs will remain, that maybe even more will come. But will the income that brainpower generates be enough to build a Vision 2020-like world without a sizeable manufacturing component to accompany it? Likewise with the Valley’s other giant economic engine, entertainment. At this point, elected officials are doing everything they can think of to keep production from moving out of the country. Perhaps they will be successful, but will the film and TV production increases we can reasonably expect be enough to support the kind of infrastructure needed to make this a comfortable place to live? Vision 2020 also calls for “preserving” industrial properties, but even if all the space available now were fully utilized, would it create that much more wealth than it already does? Dreams aren’t bad. Nothing happens without a vision, we’re always telling ourselves. But this vision will have to go through quite a few reality checks before it’s conceivable. Michael Hart is editor of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].