01/06/05

LC050106

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Our special report on surviving sprawl takes us to a place where
the car is not king.

Bev Perry>> People said we want a place to congregate, we want
a place to call our own. We want entertainment, we want places
to shop and eat. We want a gathering spot for the community and
I think that's what we got.

Val>> And then, how Sri Lankans in Southern California are
coping with the devastation in their homeland.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Southern California's population is expected to grow by
more than eight hundred people a day for the next twenty years
and the question is where will they all live? Now we could
cover every available foot of land with condos, apartments or
homes, or we could start thinking differently. Tonight in our
special series on surviving sprawl, Saul Gonzalez shows us an
alternative. It's called the new urbanism.

Saul Gonzalez>> Vast stretches of Southern California are being
covered in an expanding sea of suburban sprawl and as sprawl
grows, open space and farmland disappear, potential water
supplies dwindle and congestion worsens, turning drivers into
prisoners of their communities. If we somehow don't put the
brakes on sprawl, many experts fear disaster lies ahead. That's
the view of Katherine Perez, a transportation and land use
expert.

Katherine Perez>> What my concern is is that the legacy will be
an unlivable Southern California.

Saul Gonzalez>> Unlivable?

Katherine Perez>> Unlivable. A place where people don't want
to live, business don't want to be. You can't breath the air,
you can't drink the water and the resources are all used up, so
where are we going next?

Saul Gonzalez>> In an effort to stop sprawl from turning the
California dream into a nightmare, growing numbers of planning
and transportation experts are championing another way to plan
and build our communities. It's called new urbanism. New
urbanism is all about the search for alternatives to sprawl
through the creation of distinctive communities that give their
residents a sense of pride and place while also helping to
protect the environment. The key to doing that, say new
urbanism planners and architects, is to remember the past and
rediscover how we used to plan and build our neighborhoods and
communities.

Stefanos Polyzoides>> New urbanism invents little or nothing.
It just rearranges all the pieces of the built world in a
profoundly different way. It's everything in place and a place
for everything.

Saul Gonzalez>> Architects Stefanos Polyzoides and Elizabeth
Moule are leading practitioners and advocates of new urbanism.
They say its fundamentals are easy to understand.

Elizabeth Moule>> I think it's very simple. I think it's a
walkable city and it's a transit-oriented city. It's life with
an automobile, but also after an automobile. So it's very
simply said. It's making neighborhoods and towns compact,
pedestrian-oriented, mixed in use so that we don't have to jump
in those cars and make a small trip to drop our kids off at
school or to get a bottle of milk or what have you.

Saul Gonzalez>> New urbanists ask us to look beyond the homes
of many new suburban neighborhoods and recognize what we don't
see. No places to work, no stores and restaurants, no libraries
and post offices. These community essentials are often far
away, well beyond easy walking distance.

Katherine Perez>> We're putting houses down because of the
need, but we're not connecting to the other things that people
desire to have a full quality of life. That's the problem.

Saul Gonzalez>> Instead of designing sprawling low-density
communities that consume land and force residents to use cars to
get just about anywhere, new urbanists favor compact pedestrian-
centered development. An icon of this style of urban planning
is the community of Seaside on the Florida Panhandle. Seaside
is a kind of new urbanist Shangri La, a densely-zoned but
pleasant township where everything is just a walk or bicycle
ride away. Corner grocery stores, schools, churches and a host
of community services. Here the fascias of homes are graced
with front porches, not two-car garages. And to enhance a sense
of community, Seaside's designers also created ample public
squares and plazas where people can mingle. Yet for all of its
charms, can the planning principles that work in this modern-day
Mayberry work here?

>> "118 to West Los Angeles? Normally fifteen minutes. That's
taking forty-three to get through."

Saul Gonzales>> Auto-addicted and sprawl-covered Southern
California. One community that's done it on a more modest scale
is the city of Brea in North Orange County. It turned a once
dilapidated downtown into a vibrant new urbanist showpiece where
just steps away from the commercial main street is a village of
single-family homes.

Bev Perry>> It has been a bigger success. It's better than I
ever imagined it could be and I think, if you ask most people in
town, they'd tell you the same thing.

Saul Gonzalez>> An ardent supporter of new urbanism is Brea
City Council member, Bev Perry. She says new urbanist planning
has helped create a civic renaissance in her town.

Bev Perry>> People said we want a place to congregate, we want
a place to call our own. We want entertainment, we want places
to shop and eat. We want a gathering spot for the community and
I think that's what we got.

Saul Gonzalez>> The residential district is composed of
cottage-sized homes on small lots with quaint walkways between
them. Instead of big front yards, residents share a common
green space. They are planning touches meant to encourage old-
fashioned neighborliness.

Frank Welsh>> I've lived in California all my life, which is a
long time. I hardly ever knew my neighbor's names. I know all
my neighbors here. Everybody knows everybody.

Saul Gonzalez>> Frank Welsh retired here with his wife. In
comments that would be music to the ears of the new urbanist,
Welsh says he decided to move here because everything he needs
is just a walk away.

Frank Welsh>> I've got everything I need down here.

Saul Gonzalez>> You're not marooned at home if you don't have a
car?

Frank Welsh>> No, no. In fact, someday I will not have a car,
you know, if I live long enough. I'll get myself on a hotrod
wheelchair and go down there or have my wife drag me by the
heels. But it's there. It's neat.

Bev Perry>> One person told me, they said you know what? I
know I need my car during the week, but on Friday night, I drive
home, I park my car and, unless there's something that I'm going
out of town for, I don't have to get back in my car until Monday
morning when I go back to work.

Saul Gonzalez>> In spite of success in places like Brea, new
urbanism has critics, people who argue that its proponents can
be elitist, trying to impose their ideas on the way they think
people should live.

John Young>> I think people, including myself, want to be able
to have a little room, a little elbow room, to grow up in.

Saul Gonzalez>> John Young is a developer of single-family
homes in the Inland Empire, a place that's become synonymous
with sprawl. He says the majority of families buying homes want
to live in spacious subdivisions even if it means a long drive
between home and work.

John Young>> When you ask the public what they want, they still
want a back yard and a front yard. Eighty percent want to buy
out in the suburbs.

Saul Gonzalez>> They hate getting in their car, they hate
traffic, but they don't hate it that much.

John Young>> That's correct, because they want it. They want
it. They will drive an hour to get to it.

Katherine Perez>> Many developers will say, well, we're just
meeting the market demand. We're meeting consumer need. Well,
my response to that is you're not asking the consumers. You're
not giving consumers another choice. You're saying to them,
here, here's your one size fits all. If you want to buy a home,
this is what we're going to offer to you, disconnected from
anything else. You've got to own a car to get in and out of the
thing and you don't really have a choice in terms of how you
want to get around.

Saul Gonzalez>> However, new urbanist choices are popping up
all over Southern California from abandoned office buildings
turned into hip lofts in downtown Long Beach and Los Angeles to
an apartment complex over stores on Sunset and Vine in Hollywood
to the construction of residential and commercial projects just
steps away from the Gold Line trolley route connecting Los
Angeles to Pasadena. Elizabeth Moule and Stefanos Polyzoides'
architectural firm is responsible for the Gold Line projects.
Like other new urbanist architects, they hope their designs can
improve both our natural and social environments.

Elizabeth Moule>> What we're concerned about is bringing a
sense of community and a sense of togetherness back into cities
and allow people to walk and engage one another and to really
reduce their daily trips that they're taking right now in their
cars, and spending less time in their cars and more time with
one another.

Saul Gonzalez>> As our population swells, more suburban growth
is inevitable. However, suburbia's critics say that, if you
want to preserve the California dream as we grow, we'll need
greater imagination and innovation in how we create the
neighborhoods and communities of tomorrow. For Life and Times,
I'm Saul Gonzalez.

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Val>> It's hard for most of us to watch the pictures of death
and devastation coming out of Asia in the wake of last month's
tsunami. Now imagine if you were looking at your homeland. For
many California immigrants, this tragedy is very personal.
NewsHour correspondent, Jeffrey Kaye, went to Buddhist temples
in Pasadena and Los Angeles where congregations are dealing with
both relief and grief.

Jeffrey Kaye>> This weekend, traditional New Year observances
by Southern California's Sri Lankan-American communities were
marred by grief and mourning.

[Film Clip]

Jeffrey Kaye>> As many as 35,000 Sri Lankan immigrants live in
the Los Angeles area according to community leaders. Buddhist
temples are focal points for the community. On New Year's Day,
one in Central Los Angeles held a candlelight vigil to remember
those killed by the tsunami. On the island nation of Sri Lanka,
the death toll is estimated at more than thirty thousand. With
communication systems destroyed, news is only trickling out and
people here are waiting to get word about the fate of friends
and family members. Professor Kottegoda Warnasuriya fears the
worst for his brother, his brother's wife and their four
children who live in a coastal village.

Kottegoda Warnasuriya>> I don't know what happened. I believe
that the house is destroyed completely because the tsunami came
as far as the temple of the village and it had to pass our
house.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Have you spoken to your brother?

Kottegoda Warnasuriya>> No. I have no contact because all the
communications -- we don't have anything, any telephones or
nothing.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Even as Sri Lankans worry about the fate of
loved ones, they are also trying to provide assistance to
victims. At a Buddhist temple in Pasadena, California,
volunteers sorted and boxed supplies to send to their stricken
homeland. As they did, a steady stream of donors brought in
goods. There were piles of supplies. The people sorting them
seemed overwhelmed by the volume.

>> At the temple, what we need right now is personnel. There
are so many clothes to be sorted. We need people's help.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Buddhist monks supervised the volunteers and
carried boxes. Most of the goods here were donated by non-Sri
Lankans, according to The Venerable Newala Lakkana.

The Venerable Newala Lakkana>> We are very grateful for the
American people. You know, sometimes the Westerners, although
it's not like Asian people because they don't say hi every time
or they don't talk, but sometimes it's difficult to understand,
but now we understand their hearts.

Jeffrey Kaye>> By the end of the weekend, volunteers had
collected enough goods to fill five cargo containers. The first
is scheduled to go out by ship tomorrow for the one-month
journey to Sri Lanka. While volunteers collected supplies not
far away, members of the Sri Lankan Association of Southern
California work the phones.

>> "Okay, thanks. Talk to you later. Bye."

>> "You can either donate it into a bank account online or you
can send a check."

Jeffrey Kaye>> They brought cell phones and contact lists to
raise as much money as they could in an evening. Who are you
calling?

Shan>> Actually, I started calling my personal friends and then
I'm going to go to another list that I put together. Old work
friends, networking.

Jayam Rutnam>> "Yeah, we are at a telethon here and we're
collecting money to send to the victims in Sri Lanka."

Jayam Rutnam>> Just about everybody wants to know how much
they'd like to give and we tell them an amount and they say
they'd like to give more, which is really great. Everybody
wants to help.

Jayam Rutnam>> "Fifty dollars? Oh, great. Okay, I'll put you
down for a hundred."

Jeffrey Kaye>> Keshini Wijegoonaratna, president of the
organization, says the money collected -- it amounted to five
thousand dollars -- will be sent to Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka's
largest non-government charity and development organization. In
Sri Lanka, there have been reports that the civil war that's
gone on for two decades has hampered relief efforts, but
Wijegoonaratna says here differences have been set aside.

Keshini Wijegoonaratna>> I don't see it happening right now.
It's like people are coming together and trying to work as a
team. There are groups of people trying to do different things,
but they are all going to be going to Sri Lanka eventually.

Jeffrey Kaye>> While most of the financial aid is for immediate
needs, members of the Dharma Vijaya Buddhist Temple are
embarking on an ambitious project. Local businessman, Ananda
Perera, says he and fellow temple members want to adopt a
village and raise two and a half million dollars to rebuild
homes and an economy.

Ananda Perera>> Farmers have lost the ability to farm because
the ground is soaked with salt water. Fishermen have lost their
boats, their tools. We want to provide the village temples, the
churches that have gotten destroyed, so that they have a place
to go back and worship.

Jeffrey Kaye>> In addition to supporting relief efforts in his
homeland, the temple's spiritual leader, The Venerable Walpola
Piyananda, is ministering to his congregation here.

The Venerable Walpola Piyananda>> Some of them know their
family is lost, they've died, and some of them know their house
is lost. They're coming and crying and telling me their
stories. Then I have to, through psychology, counsel them and
listen to them.

Jeffrey Kaye>> And what can you tell them?

The Venerable Walpola Piyananda>> You know, the Buddhist
teaching is everything subject to change. Everything
impermanent, nothing permanent, so we have to accept
impermanency. We have to go on.

Jeffrey Kaye>> On New Year's Day in a solemn ceremony, members
of the temple prepared offerings for representations of the
twenty-eight Buddhists. The intent, explained one member, was
to pacify the souls of the dead and to try to comfort the
living.

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Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm
Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film this week is the
hard-hitting "Hotel Rwanda" starring Don Cheadle in a true-life
story set during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Jean Oppenheimer
of New Times, and Andy Klein of CityBEAT and ValleyBEAT. Jean,
what did you think of "Hotel Rwanda"?

Jean Oppenheimer>> I think it's one of the most important films
of the year and it's also one of the best. I think its value
comes from the fact that it's really aimed at a mainstream
audience and the subject matter is so important that hopefully
more people will go see the film. It does star Don Cheadle as a
very soft-spoken hotel manager, true-life story, who ended up
saving twelve hundred refugees who had sought refuge actually in
his hotel.

This may sound very crass, but the movie is viewer-friendly.
For one thing, the actual incident was over a three-month
period. Eight hundred thousand Tutsis were killed, macheted to
death, and the film very wisely suggests the violence but
doesn't show it. You don't see bodies being hacked up. Also,
the stars are American. It's in English and the story unfolds
in a way that's easy for Western audiences to understand.

Larry Mantle>> Andy, what did you think? Do you agree?

Andy Klein>> I agree partly. I think it is an important film.
I'm not sure I think it's a great film, but it's tremendously
effecting. I mean, I was sort of being resistant. I wasn't in
the mood to be watching it at that moment, and you do get pulled
in to the human story. I mean, it's very cleverly attached to
his feelings and the way his whole manner of behaving changes to
accommodate this situation. He really doesn't want to be
involved. It is a little like "Schindler's List" in that way.
It's very, very powerful. Sophia Okonedo, who plays his wife,
is also terrific. I mean, Don Cheadle is money in the bank, as
always. There's a little bit of too user-friendliness with Nick
Nolte and Joaquin Phoenix showing up in these small parts, I
think just to make it more acceptable.

Larry Mantle>> All three of our films have rather tough themes
this week. That's certainly true of our second film, "The
Woodsman". It stars Kevin Bacon in the role of a paroled child
molester who's now trying to make his way in his home community.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Well, certainly a controversial subject matter.
Andy Klein, did you think "The Woodsman" delivered on its tough
themes?

Andy Klein>> As well as anybody could hope for. I mean, this
is an almost impossible subject matter, particularly when the
central character in the film you were with really for every
second of the movie is a child molester. I mean, how are you
supposed to sympathize with this guy? The director, Nicole
Kassell, focuses it very wisely, I think, on him trying to
simply not get rid of these urges, but not indulge them. He
can't help what he feels, but he can help what he does. It
doesn't make any apologies for his past behavior at all, but the
idea is simply if he can essentially control himself. I mean,
he already knows that what he did was horrible. He's wracked
with self-hatred. If he can control himself, doesn't he in fact
deserve a second chance? It does, I think, make a case for that
preaching.

Larry Mantle>> Jean?

Jean Oppenheimer>> Yeah, I thought this was a very good film.
Kevin Bacon is terrific in the lead role. This reminded me
somewhat of a film that came out a couple of years ago that I
thought was great called "LIE", Long Island Expressway. Both
films make really unusual demands on the viewers which, I think,
is what makes this such a good film. The protagonist has
committed a terrible crime, a really unforgivable crime, and I
think that puts the viewer in the position of being conflicted
through the entire movie. Not even so much the character, but
in terms of what the audience is bringing to the film. There's
a certain conflict that you have through the whole thing. This
is a man that you simply cannot forgive for what he has done and
yet you want to have a certain type of compassion for him. I
think that that's a very interesting and difficult balance.

Larry Mantle>> And finally, we have another chance for an
acting clinic by Sean Penn. He stars with Naomi Watts and Don
Cheadle in "The Assassination of Richard Nixon".

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "The Assassination of Richard Nixon", Andy?

Andy Klein>> In 1974, this real-life character, Sam Bicke, in
fact did make this attempt at assassinating the president by
hijacking a plane and crashing it into the White House. He
never in fact got off the ground. They seemed to have stuck
pretty closely to his story here. Sean Penn plays this really
kind of inveterate loser, this guy who doesn't really get it. A
lot of his problems in life aren't his fault, but a lot of them
are.

He never sees that he's to blame for anything. His marriage is
falling apart -- he's married to Naomi Watts -- he's been thrown
out of the family business by his brother. He has this crackpot
idea for a new business and he wants to get a small business
loan and you know from the beginning that it's futile. He
focuses all his frustration on this assassination idea.
Unfortunately, as much as Sean Penn gets to act up a storm as he
loves to do, this is so much like "Taxi Driver" in its content.
It's really a more middle-class version of "Taxi Driver" and it
doesn't come close to that level of intensity.

Larry Mantle>> Jean?

Jean Oppenheimer>> I don't think it's actually aiming to be
another "Taxi Driver". I thought it was good because Sean Penn
is terrific in it. It's a very bleak, very depressing film and,
like the film we just talked about, it makes a lot of demands on
the viewer. More, because it's so bleak and depressing. But
for some reason, I really felt for the character. I mean, he is
such a loser and I don't know if there's something where a part
of me really identifies with him and just felt so badly for what
he was going through and knowing that he didn't have a prayer of
ever being the person he wanted to be.

Larry Mantle>> Well, thanks for joining us for another edition
of FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC
joined by critics Andy Klein of CityBEAT and ValleyBEAT, and
Jean Oppenheimer of New Times. Please join us again next week
at this same time for another edition of FilmWeek on Life and
Times.

Val>> And remember that you can hear a full hour of FilmWeek
every Friday morning at 11:00 a.m. on KPCC Public Radio. And
that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and
Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

Taking a stand for farmland. Our special report on sprawl takes
us to a place where open space is a way of life.

>> You get that psychological relief from that sense of
relentless urbanization that is not natural. That's not the
natural state of man. I mean, we didn't grow up in this sort of
urban area where you spend all of your time there.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.