Visionary Plans for a Different L.A. His Utopian Model Brings Best of Country Life to the City November 25, 1983
MARSHA TRAEGER
Paul Glover, founder of Citizen Planners, with drawing depicting transformation of 4-block area.. By JOEL ENGEL Picture this; A vast orchard of fruit and nut trees, across which bikeways and solar freight.rails transport people quickly and efficiently from their solar-powered co-op homes. This vision describes neither a proposed outer space colony, nor a George Lucas fantasy. In fact. the place will be Los Angeles several decades from now if Paul Glover’s work comes to fruition. Glover, 36, is the founder of Citizen Planners, a burgeoning urban planning group whose aim is to restore the City of the Angels to a condition more befitting its name. "Los Angeles is an army camped far from its sources of supply, using distant resources faster than nature renews them," Glover said, noting that water, power, fuel and foodstuffs are all hauled into the city from great distances at great cost. The result is a "throwaway society contrary to the laws of nature.” Even the Los Angeles Department of Planning, Glover said, in its recent report "Keeping the Good Lilfe,” reached the conclusion that unless drastic changes are soon made in the way we live, the city will choke itself into an ignominious oblivion.
Far Reaching Plan The solution, he believes, lies in a farreaching plan that recommends: natural resources be used at the rate they naturally renew; food and fuel be produced at household, neighborhood. municipal and regional levels; the construction of solar greenhouse homes; repopulating the city in less centralized terms. In his pamphlet. "Los Angeles; A History of the Future," Glover, who holds a degree in city management, has outlined one specific city plan that revolves around the concepts of efficiency and selfsufficiency. "We need to bring our lives into a closer radius,” he said. "For vacation and refreshment, people drive hundreds cf miles to experience the country. Well, I think we can bring the best of country life to city living. The idea is not. back to the land but ‘bring back the land.’” The urban portrait he has drawn comes close to a Utopian model. with his ideal Loc Angeles becoming a model for the rest of the United States, and then the world. Global peace will be the consequence of such a plan uf action, he maintained.