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Brave New Planners1
The subject here has very little do with Land Conservation or my activities in Portland
over the past year; instead it’s my reflections upon our daughter’s graduate school
commencement on Friday morning, June 16. Her degree: a two-year Master of Urban and
Regional Planning (MURP) from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, which has been
minting sharp-witted social workers, public policy wonks, and planners for more than 40 years.
Something rang in our daughter’s head when she explored graduate schools three
years ago while still working at her post-college job at NRDC in San
Francisco; maybe a peal of the anti-authoritarian humanism of the late
UCLA Professor John Friedman, who was lured from the University of
Chicago in 1969 to build the Luskin planning program. She (photo, on
right) also loved the climate, the beaches (or at least the idea of broad,
endless close-to-home beaches), the youthful, informal culture and its
restaurants, street food, and music festivals as well as the unmistakable
ethnic and racial diversity of the school and the city, our country’s
largest minority-majority community.
Salmon-brick Royce Hall, Luskin’s commencement venue, dates to 1929 as the largest
of four original classroom buildings for the new UCLA campus. All were designed in the
11thcentury Lombardy Romanesque style, reflecting the similarity between the dry and
scrubby southern California landscape and that of northern Italy.
All used extra-long Roman brick; a material re-adopted in recent
UCLA structures in a reaction to concrete, steel and glass
modernism. An ancient church in Milan was the primary model, but
motifs were borrowed from many European buildings of the
medieval era. Its twin towers, framing the arcaded front of the
central auditorium, have become a campus emblem; its sparkling
blue cambered ceiling spans an 1,800-seat auditorium between the
twin towers. Following a damaging 1994 earthquake, an extensive and hugely renovation
reinforced the structure against future earthquakes and re-tuned the hall’s acoustics for
musical performance rather than speech. Royce serves as the concert venue for the Los
Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Many renowned musicians and other public figures have
performed or given talks at Royce Hall over the eighty-eight years since its completion.
1 This is my first “blog” post on my new personal and professional website https://wesleytward.com, “under
construction,” as they say) and my second on LinkedIn. It’s meant to be a sort of “commencement”, without the
ritual gown and mortarboard of course, but I won’t reject a bouquet of flowers or a scattering of confetti as I toss
my hat into the widening ring of the blogosphere. Comments are welcome.
Royce Hal l
No matter how many times you’ve “walked” in or attended a commencement since the
eighth grade, I’ll bet the opening bars of Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance, cascading
forth from 600 organ pipes, will lift your head, swell your chest, make your heart pound, and
open tear ducts. This is especially true if we ignore the expansive, Trumpian theme of the
march’s imperial lyrics, much in need of revision.
Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free, / How shall we extol thee?
Wider and wider shall thy bounds be set;
God made thee mighty, / Make thee mightier yet.
The Luskin School’s graduates, some 226 Masters and 17 PhDs, represent its three
divisions, Social Work (the largest with 102 Masters), Urban and Regional Planning with 67) and
Public Policy with 59). The program began with the school’s official
greetings to graduates and families, followed by the unusual translation
of the English greetings into the seventeen other languages of the
graduates. In alphabetical order, they were American Sign Language,
Arabic, Armenian, Cambodian, Cantonese, French, Hawaiian, Hebrew,
Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Mixtec, Persian, Spanish, Tagalog,
and Turkish. Presumably to avoid seeming to privilege any language over the others, the
translations were ordered not alphabetically by language but by last name of the graduate
representing each language. All spoke well and clearly, making eye contact with the audience
and projecting voices well (as one would expect so close to Hollywood); some spoke more
quickly than others; some dramatized the words with their language’s signature hand gestures;
some put real passion into their thirty seconds. The greetings made us feel thoroughly
welcomed.
Each of the three divisions had a student speaker professing to change, or at least heal,
the world. All three groups of graduates were remarkably diverse. Taking the last names of the
MURPs as a quick if inadequate proxy, at least 62% of the graduates were men and women of
color. The planners’ student speaker, Carolyn “Caro” Vera, of Guatemalan descent, an effusion
of dark, wavy hair with subtly lightened ends flaring loose below her cap, was the most
entertaining and personal, managing to sound fervent and uncompromising without edging into
humorless stridency. Leaning against the podium with a small I-Pad in her right hand, she began
by “hyping” the audience with a call-and response refrain that brought laughter and loud
applause; she apologized for her use of an I-PAD to keep her on track (“I’m an honest woman”).
In Spanish, she thanked her mother who had “crossed multiple borders by herself at the age of
21” to reach the U.S. She noted that being a first- generation low-income student of color at a
major university was not romantic, it was often traumatizing and belittling. She called upon the
graduates to create change in their profession and the world; to apply a critical perspective on
their predecessors and their profession and not to repeat the profession’s long history of past
mistakes and damaging consequences including the systemic racism that has given form to so
many of our nation’s communities.
Some excerpts from Caro’s speech will give the flavor: “I’m here to
uplift the narrative of low income students of color who have fought to the
very end to cross this stage. It is our duty to advance equity; to support and
uplift communities of color …. We have an opportunity to invalidate and
replace racist housing and planning policies, prevent displacement and
explicitly fight gentrification in this city…. we must insist that “Black Lives
Matter” to us as urban planners – because we for %&#^ing decades (Oh
Jesus, I knew I was going to cuss, sorry, sorry Mom) have advanced urban planning policies that
have had damaging effects on people of color.” Again, loud applause from the audience and
faculty with whoops and hollers from her classmates. She radiated pride and relief as she
acknowledged the applause.
Following the student awards and speakers, Professor David Cohen, the master of these
complex ceremonies, announced an unexpected pause. The commencement speaker, Los
Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a rising political star
(though not a favorite of Luskin School graduates who
had suggested more dynamic and “progressive”
speakers), was delayed and would be arriving as soon
as possible. He was attending a funeral for a Los
Angeles fire-fighter who had died in service – obviously
not something a mayor could miss for a graduation
ceremony even at the city’s leading public university.
Professor Cohen invited the audience to stand, stretch,
use the facilities and enjoy a meditative musical interlude; whereupon, after a six-beat pause,
the impressive Royce organist launched into Andrew Lloyd Webber’s overture for Phantom of
the Opera. Some couldn’t resist craning their necks to check the chandelier, not as it turned out,
a feature of this hall. The ceiling cambers with their vibrant night-sky design seemed reassuring
anchored in place.
Garcetti, a graduate of Los Angeles public and private schools, Columbia University and
its Graduate School, and Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, is the city’s first elected Jewish
mayor and second Mexican-American mayor. He served as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy
Reserve; married a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, with whom he has an adopted daughter and has
fostered several children. He is a jazz musician and composer and is well-known in finance and
entertainment circles. Elected to the City Council in 2001, he was an
effective and markedly productive councilor in a strong-council form of
city government. As mayor since 2013, he has been a relatively
progressive spokesman for a diverse and vibrant city; a mayor in a huge,
weak-mayor city is like the captain of a container ship – enormous
Caro Vera
Royce Hall Ceiling
Mayor Eric Garcetti
inertia makes it difficult to change course. His “back to basics” approach reminds me of
Boston’s long-term Mayor Menino, dubbed “the urban mechanic.” Unless he gets bogged
down in the next couple of years, we should hear more from Garcetti on the national stage.
Already he is leading a large group of mayors who pledge, despite Trump’s policy, to adhere to
the Paris Climate Agreement. I was surprised that his speech left most people seated, but it
was workmanlike rather than impassioned. Even his claims of personal affiliation with these
diverse graduates failed to inspire. After all, he is the son of the former Los Angeles District
Attorney. And perhaps his invitation to graduates to find jobs with the City of Los Angeles
(which my daughter reports, do not actually exist in the city departments at present) did not
elicit the desired gratitude from his listeners, many of whom will soon be opening their student
loan repayment bills.
Or maybe the audience was saving its cheers and applause for the graduates
themselves, on their individual walks from stage right to stage left, passing one photographer at
the critical moment of shake with one hand and grasp with the other for the beribboned baton
of rolled white paper (to be replaced months later with the official signed diploma) and then
posing briefly for a second photographer before descending those always tricky narrow stairs to
the main level. One especially exuberant bellow – THAT’S MY BROTHER!!! – by a young African
American woman expressed the general good feelings in Royce Hall.
It was a secular ceremony -- no invocation nor benediction – a celebration of personal,
family, and institutional achievement. I recall no flags on stage no references to the Almighty.
The only flowers were the lei’s worn by many of the graduates and the bouquets held
awkwardly by family members for later presentation to their graduates. In that spectacular hall,
there was little need for additional adornment. After the rousing recessional and during a full-
bore Bach fugue, we passed through the Lombardian arcade into the sun’s direct glare flooding
the university’s historic quadrangle for fruit, cheese, hummus, cold cuts, wraps and cookies,
coffee, and punch (alcohol-free except for those few with personal flasks – not I though a cold
beer would have been nice); the festive milling of resplendent faculty and graduates, still
begowned and be-tasseled, with their hoods, “tams”, or “tudors”; the embraces, hugs,
handshakes, fist bumps, photographs, and the efficient return of gowns as soon as they could
be shed in the interest of surviving the blazing sun in that broad, treeless space.
The Dickson Plaza, as the original quadrangle is called, is oriented from east to west,
framed by the four original buildings, with Royce Hall and Haines Hall at the north, Powell
Library and the Humanities Building to the south, and the sparkling Shapiro Fountain at the
western end. UCLA’s playing fields and stadium, so perfectly green that they must be Astroturf,
beyond the fountain at a lower level. Beyond the stadium, the residential towers of this
47,000student university look like their own downtown. My Google Maps show that further to
the west lies West Los Angeles and the tangled canyon-side developments of Westgate and
Brookwood in the Santa Monica hills. Just over a 4-mile walk or a 2-mile drone flight northwest
of UCLA perches the jewel-like Getty Center with its 180-degree view of this throbbing city of
nearly 4 million people in 503 square miles, the second largest city in the U.S by population, the
66th largest city in the world; and, with 14.3 million people, the world’s 25th largest
metropolitan area (central city plus commuting ring).
In this context, Carolyn Vera’s challenge to urban planners seems audacious, even
breathtaking; after all, she’s an admitted millennial from a background of family and personal
struggle, and her context is California, the world’s sixth largest economy and arguably the most
dynamic and diverse urban culture in the U.S. But does her critique and challenge suggest that
her profession can rouse itself and us to face the challenges that we Americans have kicked
down the road for so long? To name a few: growing inequity in income, education, health,
housing, and living conditions; deteriorating infrastructure; persistent discrimination and
segregation in our “advanced” society; the anger and alienation that feeds terrorism; and
climate change which may be accelerating as an existential threat to our way of life, many of
our communities, and even our species. And let’s not forget the nuts-and-bolts issue of
commuter traffic, one of the few well-funded specialties of planning schools and consulting
firms – the daily headache and preoccupation of our urban civilization, consuming much of the
working day for millions of people and contributing mightily to the greenhouse effect.
I don’t want to end this with a political statement or a jeremiad. Above all, I felt glad to
have witnessed an exuberant, good-humored
celebration of young people of intelligence and good
will who had formed an intense, two-year community
marked by its diversity, inclusion, mutual respect,
teamwork, and high aspirations; and whose
graduates would now scatter to the four winds to
practice their widely underappreciated and
misunderstood craft and discipline. As I stood within
the arcade and watched a group of still-robed
graduates cheer as they tossed their mortarboards in
the air, and another group cluster in the relative shade of the Plaza’s southwest corner by the
edge of the glistening fountain (which I thought might soon attract some waders), Miranda’s
closing exclamation from the Tempest came to me:
O wonder . . . . How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world, That has such people in’t!
After the ceremony, Dickson Plaza
and Powell Library
A semblance of shade, Shapiro Fountain