710 FREEWAY EXTENSION: PRO and CON : In South Pasadena, Mourning the Loss of Community : Trees and houses are symbols of something far more important than closing a gap in a map.

The completion of Route 710, the Long Beach Freeway, through South Pasadena has been in limbo for almost 30 years, leaving a 6.2-mile gap on the map that Caltrans is now determined to close. Meanwhile, the city of South Pasadena and a growing number of environmentalists, historic preservationists and neighborhood associations from within and beyond are equally committed to preventing its closure.

But amid the figures that continue to be hurled about traffic levels, transportation alternatives and mature trees and historic homes that will be destroyed, the most important victim of projects such as this one can scarcely be seen or heard--community. Homes, trees and traffic are important because they bear directly on the possibilities of preserving a vital experience of community that is becoming a truly endangered species in urban society.

For more than 25 years, I have witnessed the impact of major public projects on communities in this area. Communities are viewed as disposable and replaceable. There is a wrong-minded notion that relocation grants, replacement housing or moving houses to new sites somehow can make everything OK. Community after community has been destroyed as a viable living organism; what were communities of people have become areas in a metropolitan region without social bonds, cohesion or identity.

Freeways and redevelopment projects are not the sole cause of the alienation and loss of civility we have to confront every day, but they bear a significant share of the blame. It takes decades of nurturing and living to grow a community. It has taken a century to create this one that Caltrans seeks to roll over with its earth-moving machinery, steel and cement. Make no mistake: If this freeway is built, the community of South Pasadena will be destroyed. People may continue to live there, but the fragile network of relationships, valued images, symbolic places and shared experiences will be broken.

Communities are cells of the social body into which children are born, grow up and develop a healthy sense of who they are and where they are in a turbulent world. Communities are where young people and mature adults learn the skills of citizenship. There is no substitute that will serve these purposes as well.

Even when concern over the impact on community of this project--involving extensive demolition of homes and businesses, massive excavation and enormous dislocation of families--surfaces, it seems like pretty wispy stuff. In a public hearing, the fundamental importance of maintaining the fragile web of human connections and meaningful routines that constitute a community collapses under the weight of such tangibles as jobs for construction workers, lost tax bases for the city and school district and traffic congestion.

Places like South Pasadena are increasingly rare. After living in the Los Angeles area for 43 years, I know of few communities that are so alive. It is not the wealthy white enclave it once may have been, but one of the more successfully integrated communities in Southern California.

The most fundamental problem with Caltrans is a mind set that exemplifies what Thorstein Veblen called “trained incapacity.” It is the highway-engineering mentality that cannot tolerate the 6.2-mile gap in the map. I made this observation to a Caltrans employee at a hearing and he replied, “Like nature abhors a vacuum?” “Yes,” I said, “Like Caltrans engineers abhor a gap.”

It remains to be seen whether the values of Caltrans or the value of community will prevail.

FREEWAY PLAN:

State transportation officials are considering completing the 710 Freeway between I-10 and I-210. The “Meridian Variation” roughly follows Meridian Avenue except for a 1.4-mile section between South Pasadena High School and Arlington Drive, where the route curves slightly to the west.