Carey McWilliams once described Los Angeles as “a collection of suburbs in search of city.” The 29 March 2008 edition of The Economist featured a nice piece, “Tackling the Hydra,” describing LA’s attempts to change itself into a “normal city.”

I have never been to Los Angeles, but descriptions I have read make it sound reminiscent of that Southern hydra, Atlanta. In fact, some have said that Atlanta is making a good faith effort to take the prize for miscreant urban planning.

That being said, LA is trying to change. The change comes in the form of what is being called a “neighborhood revolution,” designing self-contained suburban neighborhoods. We’re talking multi-story condos with shops on the ground floor and parking in the basement. Put these near public transportation, so the theory goes, and people will make the shift to a less automobile-centric style of life. This, after all, has been the bane of multiple large cities like LA and Atlanta.

Developers have been putting subdivisions near highway onramps and watching as folks jump in their cars, having filled them up with $4/gallon gas, and jump on the highway for a 1 hour commute. Now they hope that putting a condo development near the local train station will encourage folks to jump onto public transport. Let’s hope it does.

In order to do it, the city will overcome the bane of public transportation: free public parking. The city of Los Angeles forces businesses to provide a set number of parking spaces (based on a schedule, no less). This makes sense if you assume the car as the sole means of transportation. According to story: “This raises the cost of doing business and hugely lowers the cost of driving.” Free parking has, in fact, been called “a fertility drug for cars.”

My personal experience bears this out. I have lived a couple of places where I used a car very little and multiple places where I used it a bunch. Without fail, the single greatest incentive to jumping of the bus was the high cost (both in time and money) of finding a parking place and leaving my car there.

The early trends are not all that encouraging. Approximately 29,000 people live in LA’s historic downtown area, many in stylish lofts located near SoCal’s finest public transit system. Survey data show that just 11% took public transit, 17% walked, the rest drove.

With gas prices continuing to rise and the economic outlook foggy (at best), it might just be the time to begin suggesting a reformation of the way we structure our cities. Not that there haven’t already been myriad calls for change. The unfortunate reality is, however, that calls for change only really start to get traction when the pain of remaining the same seems overwhelming. Urban planners and psychologists, it seems, have this one thing in common.