In Palos Verdes Estates, where the first home builders 80 years ago had to pass muster before an "art jury," it came as little surprise when city fathers nixed wireless telecommunications contraptions that would clash with the community's carefully nurtured ambience and obstruct ocean vistas.
"When you move to a community, you want cell coverage, but you also want beauty and aesthetics," said attorney Scott J. Grossberg, who helped the city wage a legal battle against Sprint.
Earlier this month, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the seaside community, ruling that city officials could bar the construction of unsightly cellular towers. The city's victory was hailed by urban planners concerned about the proliferation of visual blight in the name of technological progress.
Like Palos Verdes Estates, San Francisco, San Diego County, La Canada Flintridge and other communities have fought the purveyors of cellular service in court on aesthetic grounds and, for the most part, have won. The recent legal disputes, planners say, could encourage telecommunications companies to develop more creative alternatives amenable to residents' concerns -- or spur more litigation.
In its ruling the three-judge panel paid heed to the esoteric benefits of landscape unmarred by the accouterments of modern public utilities.
"The experience of traveling along a picturesque street is different from the experience of traveling through the shadows of a WCF [wireless communications facility], and we see nothing exceptional in the city's determination that the former is less discomforting, less troubling, less annoying and less distressing than the latter," the panel observed in the ruling. "After all, travel is often as much about the journey as it is about the destination."
The judges quoted 19th century Viennese architect Camillo Sitte's lyrical waxings on beauty and art in an 1889 book that became a classic in urban planning. Their Oct. 13 ruling also pointed to a state utility code giving city leaders the right to define what might "incommode" the enjoyment of public right of way.
Sprint had argued that the city's rejection of two wireless construction projects on aesthetic grounds violated the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which bars municipalities from action that constitutes "a prohibition on the provision of wireless service."
The appeals court panel disagreed, pointing to the company's own assertion that it already serves some 4,000 customers in the affluent enclave.
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Court says cities have the right to bar telecommunications towers
Source: Los Angeles Times
Date: 10/26/2009
