BUS TOUR SHOWS CITY'S DYNAMICS INTERNATIONAL VISITORS SEE 'EVERYDAY' L.A.

Byline: Lisa M. Sodders Staff Writer

Next week, dozens of international visitors will get a tour of Los Angeles that most tourists never see.

Led by Los Angeles urban designer/planner Deborah Murphy, this ``cliche-busting'' tour will take them from picture-postcard views of Beverly Hills and the Sunset Strip to blighted areas around Skid Row and MacArthur Park.

By showing the visitors a comprehensive overview of the city, ``it makes it more everyday for them,'' said Murphy, who owns her own urban design firm in Los Angeles. ``They can relate it to their own city and see that we have (ordinary) people going to work every day, and that it isn't just movie stars.''

Sponsored by the extension program of University of California at Los Angeles, about 25 mid-career professionals from the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship program will board a bus and tour sites like the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant, Griffith Park, Los Angeles International Airport, the old trolley line in Venice, and the oil fields of Baldwin Hills.

The career professionals, who will spend a week in Los Angeles, work in various fields - environmental policy, urban planning and design, economic development, social services and human rights, said LeRoy Graymer, who founded UCLA Extension's public policy program.

As tour leader, Murphy will point out how the city's freeways separate distinctly different neighborhoods, and tell the history of such areas as West Adams, Jefferson Park, Koreatown, Chinatown, Los Feliz, Little Tokyo, Beverly Hills, Westwood and Boyle Heights.

She'll explain how Los Angeles County consists of 88 cities, and that only 4 percent of the city of Los Angeles is green space, compared with other U.S. cities' 9 percent to 11 percent.

She will show how L.A.'s geography and weather patterns influenced its development and that many of the plants the city is known for - including those famous palm trees - are not native plants and require irrigation and other measures to survive.

Murphy, a second-generation Angeleno, is senior associate and project manager at MelEndrez Design Partners for the Griffith Park Master Plan. Also an urban design and planning consultant for the cities of West Hollywood and Long Beach and the Community Redevelopment Agency of the city of Los Angeles, she has been doing the tour for UCLA since 1993.

The fellowship program brings more than 100 mid-career-level professionals from developing countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and the Middle East to study at several participating U.S. universities for a year.

In addition to the tour, the participants also will attend a series of lectures from faculty members and public policy officials. They will learn ``all the issues we face, across the spectrum: economics, transportation, environmental policy, urban development issues, community development and housing,'' Graymer said.

The tour gives ``a sense of Los Angeles as an urban laboratory,'' Graymer said. ``By getting below the superficial, visual level one sees when you visit the city, you get a chance to understand the dynamics of neighborhoods that reveals the diversity of this region and illustrates how people live and work in this environment.''

And ultimately, despite all of the problems facing Los Angeles, Murphy says her tour also delivers a message of hope.

``It's showing my hometown, the places I grew up, that I love, and some of the challenges and things we wish were different,'' Murphy said. ``There are so many problems to solve, but lots of good people working to solve them.''

Lisa M. Sodders, [phone]

lisa.sodders(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Griffith Park is one of the L.A. sites on a UCLA Extension tour led by urban designer and planner Deborah Murphy, shown with her dog, Roaninish.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer