No Governor we don't need a Marshall Plan, we need The Olmsted Plan

by Alden Olmsted
Jan 15, 2025

I don't even know where to start.

How about 1930 — When my cousins the Olmsted brothers wrote a sentence that could just as well be a Times headline today:

‘This is going to happen, and this is your moment to do something about it or you’ll miss your chance." - from 'Eden by Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region'

The two landscape architecture firms were speaking of course not of inevitable winds or fires, but of the issues that such rapid urban development (yes visible even in late 1920's) would bring to Los Angeles.

But after these two weeks is it a stretch to read it either way?

In a three-day old NBC clip now going viral, CA Governor Gavin Newsom assumes an assured posture as he declares "we’re already organizing a Marshall plan, we already have a team looking at reimagining an L.A. 2.0.”

No Governor, L.A. Doesn't need the Marshall Plan to reimagine the Palisades or Altadena, we need the Olmsted Plan - the plan we should have implemented in 1930.

* *. *

Notwithstanding Marty McFly, humans have yet to find a way to go back in time.

But what if we could?

Angelenos and tourists alike have a longstanding love/ hate affair with L.A.'s traffic, urban sprawl, and compared to other big cities, lack of a ‘relatively’ accessible greenway system.

In other words yes Randy - We Love L.A.! - even as we mourn what could have been.

- A Central Park.

- An Emerald Necklace.

- A Golden Gate Park.

- A Pasadena-to-Santa Monica Trail - ‘The Rose to Sea Greenway’ (author's sugg.)

Did we get any of those?

Nope.

Instead we (all income levels equally) have to drive to go for a walk.

The irony!

* *. *

The Olmsted Brothers and the Harland Bartholomew firm gave us a gift

in their 1930 plan - which LA commissioned - and now the Santa Ana Winds and likely misguided human sparks together have combined to give us the wake up moment of the century.

It’s time to embrace what L.A. could have been, should have been.

Can be tomorrow.

Implement the Olmsted - Bartholomew plan.

We’ve paved paradise once, let’s use this opportunity to un-pave and return some of the land to its wild roots.

I believe we’ll find in ourselves a desire a return to those roots as well.

Alden Olmsted
Grandson to Jack Olmsted, UCLA Prof., Rhodes Scholar, 1st Provost UCR
Son to John D. Olmsted, Claremont Graduate, founder of Jug Handle SNR, and Independence Trail, Nevada City
Cousin to Frederick Law Olmsted, Brookline MA