The Tree is not a City

In Los Angeles, our mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has decided that native trees are better than non-native. I would say that in general this is true, that the native species do have a singular fit with their environment; but there are a whole assortment of adapted species coming from similar climates around the world that flourish here. In fact, Southern California has been defined by a handful of these: the Jacaranda, the Liquidambar, the Ficus. But the palm tree has been specifically singled out by our mayor as particularly offensive, mostly because of what occurs during the Santa Ana winds when its fronds are strewn over the streets, wreaking havoc on passing cars, houses, and the occasional pedestrian. My feeling is that if the city would do routine maintenance on the trees, there would be no problem. I personally cannot imagine a Los Angeles without the subtle play of more traditional street trees – the Sycamore, the Magnolia, the Jacaranda – against the tall, sinewy Washingtonia robusta or the squat yet eerily evocative Phoenix canariensis.

The city of Pasadena has a different problem. They have embraced the palm, in fact using it as the street tree on one of the main approaches to the city, the Arroyo Parkway connecting the city to the end of the 110 Freeway. The problem here is, it’s the wrong palm. Clearly they wanted to use the Phoenix canariensis, a tree that has, for as long as Southern California has been depicted in literature and other media high and low, come to signify beauty mixed with a forlorn sense of longing, an impending doom, a paradise soon to be lost. These trees give the streets of Pasadena a certain nobility, a vaguely Mediterranean air that appeals to those in the city who imagine a connection to a distant, patrician if not European past.

Instead of the Phoenix canariensis, the geniuses at the city opted for the Phoenix dactylifera, a desert date palm whose many negative associations include the groves that you passed on the way to Palm Springs, rows and rows of ratty looking trees that were once farmed (and perhaps still are?) for dates but that were so uncompelling en masse that, passing in the family station wagon, they never once inspired a quick stop, unlike those immense dinosaurs down the road. No, the choice of the dactylifera by the city of Pasadena only has one explanation: Value Engineering. Unable or unwilling to foot the bill for the canariensis, some bright fool from city hall decided that it would be acceptable to substitute for the lesser tree. As if nobody would notice. I mean, come on, if you don’t want to spend the money on the right trees, find another solution: maybe there are fewer trees; maybe you adjust the design; or maybe you don’t put in those ridiculous crosswalks that scream “bad public art” and that snarled traffic for months along that crucial artery.

Despite the fact that Antonio Villaraigosa declared war on the palm in Los Angeles, someone managed to slip in a few fairly recently along Century Boulevard approaching LAX. Whoever was responsible for that certainly did it right – bolding alternating the Phoenix canariensis with Tipuana tipu in the parkway and lining the median with Washingtonia robusta. Pasadena should have taken a lesson from that and spent its money well. But then again, who would have noticed?

A Line in the Sand

At the end of July, the Montecito Planning Commission delayed approval of Rick Caruso’s plan to transform the Miramar Hotel from a collection of dilapidated buildings alongside the 101 into a new resort destination. At the end of the 11-hour session, Caruso was begging the Commission to deny his proposal outright, claming the changes they were requiring would kill the project.

The problem as I see it is not the relative quality of this specific project – the Miramar certainly could use a major overhaul – but in something much larger: a subtle but very real sense that we as citizens have lost our say in our government. Instead of playing a part in the larger debates of our time – how do we fix and expand our infrastructure, improve our education, provide universal health care, and invest in sustainable energy – we focus on problems we can manage.

Witness the proliferation of Design Review Boards, Town Hall meetings, Neighborhood Councils, etc.: our powerlessness with the big issues makes us hypervigilant when anything that reeks of the bullying power of money comes too close to what we hold most dear. It seems that only when our specific community is targeted, when our immediate surroundings are threatened, or when the very authorship of our lives is at stake, do we take a stand.

Our lack of power with the bigger issues makes us passive and apathetic; we tolerate the erosion of our democracy because it falls away in vague, abstract little bits that are hard to define or even perceive. But come too close to home and our instinct to fight kicks in. Sure, you can plunder our schools, ruin our environment, and suspend habeas corpus at will; but don’t dare come into our neighborhoods and tell us how we should live.

Rick Caruso entered the fray with the confidence that he could win over the locals the way he has in retail projects across Southern California. However, in those other projects he was building retail developments near other retail; the fact that he added housing to the Americana at Brand perhaps gave him the idea that residential and retail could happily coexist.

When he proposed his Brand New Urbanism in Montecito, screening a video that showcased all the cheesy elements that make the Americana so dreadful – the period architecture, the bold perennials, the water fountains dancing to Frank Sinatra classics – Rick Caruso was sure the Montecito Planning Commission would eat it up. Fortunately, they saw past the song and dance routine and were able to request specific improvements that would better reflect the spirit of the old Miramar, a formerly middle class retreat set among humble cottages lining the beach in this particular corner of the city. And at the end of August, after complaining about the changes the Planning Commission requested of him, Caruso came back and received unanimous conditional approval for the project. Final approval is expected at a hearing on October 8, 2008.

Neighborhood activism clearly paid a part in making this a better project (though I fear the dancing fountains remain). The larger and much harder question is, can we extrapolate on this experience? Can we harness this power to shape our world locally to address some of the bigger, scarier issues? Or do we retreat to our lives, content in having fought off the beast, but unwilling to look beyond the borders of our community?