Laguna can’t be afraid of change

When internationally acclaimed architect Andres Duany stood in front of city leaders recently, vying for a chance to change Laguna Beach, I was reminded of another famous architect, Ken Smith, who won the right to design the Great Park in Irvine.

That was in 2006. Now the original vision for the park is only a faded memory.

Given the current polemic conditions in Laguna Beach, there is little chance that Duany, who represents one of several firms bidding on the Village Entrance Project, will survive the black hole that consumes city planning.

The problem is that the Village Entrance is the least of our worries.

Our downtown has not changed considerably in decades — except for the addition of more expensive restaurants.

Our traffic has gotten exponentially worse with pedestrian accidents following suit.

Laguna Canyon has languished without direction and now suffers as a result.

What has saved Laguna from itself is not the people, buildings or roads. It’s the environment. Thankfully, we still have our clean, beautiful beaches, which means we still have tourists.

If you think about it, the only real change that the city has been able to muster is fancy new parking signs. That’s not a knock against the city government. It’s just a reality of our city politics.

What we need now is a better comprehensive plan, a real plan based on a bold vision for the city. If we continue to piecemeal our projects, bickering along the way, we will languish. We will never, ever be able to keep up with the population pressures around us.

This political season, as the City Council prepares for three openings, there is hope for something — anything more than nothing. There is an opportunity to voice your opinion at a city workshop on the Village Entrance Project on July 16.

There are so many good ideas around us. If we truly value international architects, then look at what they do and embrace their plans. Don’t put so many conditions on them that they end up losing their spark.

For example, it’s time to judiciously raise the height limit downtown. With the help of a surgeon’s knife, we need a little face-lift. We need to allow for residential lofts above some buildings — not all and not at the expense of our village atmosphere.

This would bring much-needed vitality, affordable housing and smart growth downtown.

We need to close some of downtown to car traffic and rethink how we move tourists around.

We need to significantly improve mobility.

These ideas are not mine. People have been trying to get similar plans approved for years. In the meantime, a growing, dissatisfied younger generation expects live-work environments. Laguna needs this infusion of talent and should welcome it.

Resident Maya Dunne is a planner who has worked for the cities of Irvine and Los Angeles. She is also an adjunct professor at USC in public policy. She thinks big — but with practicality. She loves Laguna Beach as her home but agrees it could be so much more.

“The world is changing,” she said. “Younger people, if you look at the research, want to be in a place that’s more like a city, in the sense that it offers more creative spaces. You can’t do that without a little more intensity and purpose.”

For Dunne, it starts with downtown Laguna, near her home. She knows the effects of higher density but is not afraid of it.

“What is the downtown going to be? Is it going to be a bunch of T-shirt shops, or is it going to be something with a credible mix of things that makes it more interesting?” she asks. “There are some really creative things that are done to increase sustainability and increase economic development.”

Dunne rattles off projects in Berlin, Prague, Krakow and Santa Monica.

They have things in common: variety, vitality, open spaces, museums, life.

They don’t have a downtown that closes at 8 p.m.

Any talk of a new village entrance should first answer the question: An entrance to what?

Is it a thriving, creative city leading the country in urban planning?

Or is it a dying facade, living off old ideas that cannot survive much longer?

If we hire Andres Duany to tell us the answer, we should listen to him.

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at davidhansen@yahoo.com.