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Long before there were city planners, there were cities. They appeared and grew more or less spontaneously  — sometimes chaotically, sometimes   naturally, sometimes tidily,  depending on the site, the terrain, the climate, and the temper and ambitions of the settlers and their successors.

Lots of cities had risen by the time  the first city planners appeared, and not one of them was perfect.

Razing an entire city, no matter how small, ugly or misbegot, was never an option. Planners were, in effect,  repair people who were brought in to fix  the worst parts.

But they didn’t want to merely repair.

Seeking the power and status they thought they deserved, they connived  with city bosses on what they called  “urban renewal.” For a while, it was all the rage. Bureaucrats,  bosses  and planners were its principal advocates  as it gave them much more money and   power, along with headline-grabbing projects.

In New York and  Santa Monica, neighborhoods were  wiped out to make way for highways.

In Boston, a thriving working class neighborhood on the Charles River  was replaced by expensive condominiums. In Santa Monica, several blocks of beach cottages that were occupied by blue collar workers were demolished and were replaced by  two apartment towers, Santa Monica Shores., and  Sea Colony I and II condos.

In these and too many other cases,‘urban renewal” was, in fact, just another name for gentrification.

The “urban renewal” concept has been officially  out of favor for some time, but Santa Monica City Hall remains addicted to improving nhancing…fixing …beautifying…tinkering…    tampering…renewing..,adding… subtracting …changing.

The state mandate that cities revise their General Plans (LUCE) every 20  years

works on City Hall the way a case or two of vodka would work on an alcoholic. But, inevitably, residents wind up with  the headache and the hangover.

The  1984 revision led to 9 million square feet of  new commercial  development, and  ever-spreading  gridlock.

Though the 1984 revision is out-of-date and obsolete,  the City continues to apply its standards to new projects.

The 2004 plan is already five years behind  schedule, and won’t be finished for another year.

Based on what we’ve seen so far:  staff reports, power point presentations, three volumes prepared by the planners  – “Emerging Themes,” “Opportunities  and Challenges” and “Strategic Framework,” we’re not optimistic.

The purpose of the state-mandated plan revision is to give residents an opportunity to  determine their  town’s destiny for the next two decades. But   City staff and its consultants are clearly running the show.

The much-bruited community    workshops are “rigged,” according to residents who have attended them, , and the majority of the participants are City staff and “special interests.”

In addition,  though residents have said from the start that they want limits on growth in general and heights and density in particular, y, but no such limits have been set.

And the City and residents have yet to agree on the efficacy of offering “incentives” to developers, since we have suffered a surfeit of developers in recent years and already have too much of what they have to offer.

To the extent that there is a  throughline in the plan, it’s “urban form.” In the planners’ view, Santa Monica is in urgent need of it, but They have yet to define it in any coherent way, or to explain why Santa Monica is in need of it.

There are other serious problems with the latest iteration of the plan, such as its penchant for what amounts to spot  zoning that will further fracture the townscape.

But, worst of all, it is designed not to preserve or fine tune this  thoroughly idiosyncratic beach town, much less  improve the lot of its residents. It’s  designed to increase City revenue.

Anyone who doesn’t find the notion of diminishing Santa Monica in order to enrich City Hall as noxious as it is  insane is obviously suffering from an

insufficiency of fiber in his or her diet.