A summer of suburban strife

Only In LA

IT'S A war out there, and it's ugly. No, we're not talking about gangs, or even Jeffrey Katzenberg's lawsuit against Disney. This is something really close to the heart of Los Angeles: a fight about a new freeway.

Specifically, it is a fight between Alhambra and South Pasadena, two fiercely independent mini-cities in the San Gabriel valley north-east of downtown. For 35 years they have been arguing whether the 710 freeway, which hurtles towards them from Long Beach by way of the impoverished Eastside, should be extended an extra 6.2 miles, thus ploughing straight through their respective backyards.

Alhambra is adamantly in favour because its working-class population relies on decent roadways to commute. But South Pasadena, an altogether ritzier community of dinky bungalows and manicured lawns, is belligerently anti, and last week managed to persuade a judge to postpone any decision and keep the matter tangled up in the courts for a good 10 or 20 years more.

Some suitably spiteful rearguard action was in order, so Alhambra promptly blockaded the roadways connecting the two communities. When that risked looking a little - shall we say - petty, it reprogrammed the timers on its traffic lights along the border so they would only stay green for seven seconds. Result: total gridlock.

The mayor of Alhambra, Mark Paulson, has made an utterly unconvincing attempt to explain this away in terms of traffic control. "This is not a childish payback, or a pissing match," he claims. Right.

Then again, maybe he is right. In a part of Los Angeles county that has been riven by in-fighting for 100 years, this isn't childish at all, but deadly serious. Back at the turn of the century, Alhambra seceded from Los Angeles because it didn't get along with city hall. Its neighbours, Pasadena, San Marino and San Gabriel then declared their independence too, both to thwart LA's lust for Lebensraum and to fend off the prospect of a Greater Alhambra. South Pasadena, meanwhile, split off from Pasadena proper because it wanted to keep alcohol off its streets. They've been slugging away at each other ever since.

And you thought the Balkans situation was confusing.

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AN ATTEMPT to foster rather more productive community relations is being made, meanwhile, right in the smug suburban heart of Orange County, south of LA. This is a part of California so denuded of its original rolling farmlands that it's hard not to want to rename the county Agent Orange: instead of fruit trees, all you see is mile upon mile of identikit upscale housing developments with about as much good neighbourly spirit as a Middle Eastern peace conference.

Now, the largest new development to hit the county in a decade is going to try to change all that. The 8,000-home Ladera Ranch, rising near the town of Mission Viejo, will encourage walking rather than driving by devising a series of shortcuts accessible only on foot. Garages will be tucked away at the backs of houses, leaving space for a front porch where residents can sit and actually see who their neighbours are as they walk or drive by.

The development is also installing a special Intranet computer network with high-speed cable lines, so kids can message each other on the community e-mail and parents can reserve spots on the golf course, check church service times or order out for pizza from the local restaurant plaza.

This is quite a revolution for a part of the world best known for its attachment to guns and conservative prayer-breakfast groups, here "family values" rarely, if ever, actually involve mingling with other families. And will it work?

So far, around 9,000 families have applied for the first 900-odd houses, which means that something about it must sound faintly attractive.

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NOW THAT Steven Spielberg and his friends at DreamWorks have dropped out of building a new studio on the last piece of open land left in western Los Angeles, frantic efforts are being made to save the rest of the environmentally sensitive 1,000-acre development that DreamWorks was supposed to have spearheaded.

Activists who picketed DreamWorks for years sincerely hope the area can now be restored as the delicate coastal wetland it was before the bulldozers arrived. The developers, meanwhile, are trying to claim that the loss of DreamWorks is no more than a minor blip in their plans to build a mini- city of 70,000 residents just north of the LA airport.

Leaders of the so-called Playa Vista project insist that their phones have been ringing off the hook with companies offering to build the soundstages that DreamWorks no longer wants and provide the project's economic backbone. But when David Herbst of Playa Vista appeared on a prominent local radio show last week, he was challenged to name a few of the companies he had been hearing from. He wouldn't do it.

Name just one company, persisted the show's host, Warren Olney. Mr Herbst stuttered, and fell silent. Every environmentalist tuning in across town gave out a little yelp of glee.