This is the final part of a special weekly edition within our CCA Reflects series leading up to the DTLA 2040 Community Plan hearing at LA City Planning Commission on September 23. Parts I and II unpacked some of the key remaining issues within the proposed plan. Part III considers the plan's role in economic recovery from the pandemic. Ready to weigh in? Call in to CPC on 9/23. Agenda here. Suggested talking points here.
"Don't call it a comeback. We never left," reads a store window on Broadway Street in Downtown Los Angeles. "DTLA is Open," reads another. There's no question that Downtown continues to feel the pandemic's impacts, but its strong recovery is within reach. DTLA is Los Angeles' center for jobs, new housing options, public transit, culture and entertainment -- making it a major revenue generator for the city. Our urban core has an irrefutably outsized impact on our region, making its future something that we should all support.
Downtown transformed over the past 20 years from a quiet office park into dynamic neighborhoods home to 80,000 residents with an additional 125,000 expected by 2040. The Los Angeles City Planning Department has been hard at work to prepare for Downtown's future growth by working with the community to update its new Community Plan known as DTLA 2040.
DTLA 2040 is the blueprint of Downtown's future for the next two decades, and it will be considered again on Thursday by the LA City Planning Commission. The plan will help add housing affordable to a wide range of income levels near transit, grow our tourism industry, bolster public transportation infrastructure and encourage new public parks and open spaces. With these improvements, Downtown LA can become an international destination on par with the most beautiful, livable cities in the world while effectively meeting the needs of Angelenos.
DTLA 2040 is progressive in many ways. It eliminates parking requirements, signaling that Los Angeles is moving towards an increasingly people-friendly, sustainable environment with a shrinking carbon footprint. It is more welcoming to schools and childcares that would like to locate in Downtown, further supporting our efforts to make it a place where people can live across all stages of life. It updates adaptive reuse regulations providing for more opportunities to repurpose existing buildings for new uses like housing, allowing flexibility in the face of uncertainty created by the pandemic. It is also the first Community Plan to implement the city's new zoning code that will eventually apply citywide as it is activated with the adoption of future Community Plans.
The plan is designed to foster equitable development and deliver much-needed affordable housing units through its Community Benefits Program that builds on the most successful mixed-income housing production policies in the city. The Program allows projects to be built larger, with more density in exchange for community-serving elements like affordable housing and public, on-site facilities like parks, open spaces and child cares. We expect this will deliver substantial amounts of new affordable housing that will not require any public dollars to produce.
DTLA 2040 creates transparency and consistency in the land use process. Residents, workers, property owners and real estate developers will have the same information about what types of buildings can be built where. This allows communities to anticipate how their neighborhoods will evolve. Most importantly, it takes political influence out of the equation, reducing opportunities for corruption and restoring trust in our local government.
Yet, there are meaningful ways to improve the plan so it can create enough flexibility to accommodate Downtown's future growth and support the City's Regional Housing Needs Assessment requirement of approximately 500,000 new housing units by 2029. The plan should go further to allow more housing near LA's expanding transit network, lift overly restrictive zoning in Skid Row, Chinatown and the Arts and Fashion Districts, and ensure that communities can grow around existing schools instead of isolating them in industrially-zoned areas as they are today.
The plan is the product of dedicated community engagement and stakeholder input that will help alleviate the housing crisis, improve transparency in the development process and cement DTLA as an incredibly resilient, vibrant and world-renowned urban core. DTLA 2040 is a bold, forward-thinking plan that can drive not just Downtown but the entire city's recovery.