Zoning a Post-Modern Metropolis

The first major revision of Los Angeles’ zoning codes were introduced recently to the Planning Commission. The goal, according to an article by the Architect’s Newspaper, is to create consistent timelines for land-use approvals; make zoning review more flexible and consistent; allow for abbreviated review processes for minor deviations from the zoning code; create consistent procedures for modifying existing projects; and streamline zoning approval for projects that meet specific plan standards. A final vote is expected before Thanksgiving.

This project reaffirms planner’s modernist belief in the efficacy of zoning and its usefulness as a way of creating order from chaos; the primary tool for planners to rationalize complex urban problems and diagnose well-packaged solutions. The problem is that Los Angeles is continuing to use a decidedly modernist way of thinking in a post-modern world.

Concentric Zone Theory Model

Post-modernism breaks down the hegemony of modernist rationality, allowing for multiple and equally privileged ways of experiencing and understanding cities. The transition to postmodern thought has been accompanied by a similar shift in the production of cities; the Chicago School’s modernist view of urban structure with a central core organizing the hinterland, characterized by the concentric zone theory, has given way to a postmodern view that replaces modernism’s center city logic with multiple logics all happening at the urban periphery and a breakdown in the distinction between inter- and intra-urban structure.

The Los Angeles School introduced the idea that Los Angeles is the archetype of postmodern urbanism whose patterns of urban growth and change carry explanatory power for cities beyond the five county metropolitan region. Joel Garreau made the same point in Edge City, “every American city that is growing is growing in the fashion of Los Angeles.” The physical manifestations of postmodern urbanism are visible in LA and so the city is a useful lens for examining the principle dynamics of contemporary urbanization and their impact on planning practice. The multiple logics (re)produced by de-centered growth, poly-nucleation, and sprawl all come home to roost in Los Angeles.

The essential problem is that planners (and the current re-write of LA’s zoning code) are currently ill equipped to deal postmodern urbanism, regardless how well they may understand its principle dynamics. The cityLAB manifesto of founding director Dana Cuff and her colleagues captures the essence of the problem:

"Transformations of the city exceed our ability to control them … we arrive at results seemingly by fast-forward, without clear grasp of how we got there. Though not necessarily temporally fast, change occurs as a set of discontinuous jump cuts: urban development is not progressive, but it can never turn back; design is increasingly regulated without ever showing improvement."

The rational ordering of cities from core to hinterland no longer applies. Current planning practice with its emphasis on process, technocratic analysis of things like ridership projections for mass transit, and shift away from the state and toward civil society is overwhelmed by more than just the pace of development; the practice of planning itself appears incapable of articulating and implementing a vision for the future of postmodern cities.

Where's the center here?

Planning has always been about responding to contemporary urban trends, beginning with the challenges posed by late-nineteenth century industrial cities, and must now reclaim some of its progressive, reform tradition in order to remain relevant in a postmodern age. To begin, planning must be self-aware and realize that objective rational argument, critique, and morality are not possible in a postmodern world. It would be irresponsible for planning to assume that it could continue to appeal to a rational logic, like strict Euclidean zoning, for making the built environment a better place when the principle dynamics creating and changing cities today are unresponsive to such an approach.