Los Angeles City Planning created the General Plan Search Tool to improve accessibility and usability of the City’s General Plan. The City of Los Angeles General Plan includes 11 Citywide Elements and a Land Use Element, composed of 35 Community Plans. Previously the General Plan was only available as a series of separate PDF documents, some of which were not searchable. This tool assembles a database of the Goals, Objectives, Policies, and Programs in all General Plan documents, including Community Plans. Other sections in each Element, such as background information, are not included in this database.
User Guide
The General Plan Search Tool uses 3 fields:
Elements
The first field is the desired Element(s) the user wishes to include in the search. If the Land Use Element is selected, then a secondary dropdown menu will appear to search within a specific Community Plan(s). At least one Element must be selected.
Type
The second field allows the user to specify any combination of Goals, Objectives, Policies, and Programs that they wish to search. At least one Type must be selected.
Search
After selecting the Element(s) and Type(s) the user can enter a desired search term, series of search terms, or leave this field blank. Quotation marks or commas can be used to refine the search as follows:
- To search for a specific phrase, put the phrase in quotes. For example, a search for “Parkway Trees” in quotes will return results only for statements that include that full phrase, such as “...parkway trees along city parks and streets.”
- To search for statements that include more than one keyword, not necessarily as a phrase, do not use quotes or commas. For example, a search for Parkway Trees will return results for statements that include both words, such as “...trees planted in the parkway.”
- To search for a series of terms, put commas between each word. For example, a search for Parkway, Trees will return results for statements that include the word “parkway” and/or the word “tree,” but not necessarily both. This is especially useful when searching for multiple versions of a keyword, such as bicycle, bike.
Use the “Search” button to generate results based on the selections made to fields above.
Results
In the listing of results, Citywide Elements appear first, followed by Community Plans. Citywide Elements are returned chronologically based on when the Element was last updated. Community Plans are returned alphabetically. Click on any colored rectangle to expand or collapse results.
Download Table
Search results can also be downloaded as an Excel file.
Common Errors
If pop-ups are not allowed in your browser, then PDF links will not open. Please allow pop-ups to view PDF links.
Some text in this inventory has been manually transcribed. There may be typos or inconsistencies. Please alert Los Angeles City Planning to any errors found by emailing Planning.GeneralPlan@lacity.org.
The tool is programmed to return results that include the keyword, for example: “Sustainability” may return different results then “Sustainable.” Efforts have been made to correct for these discrepancies, but the best way to ensure comprehensive results is to use multiple search terms separated by commas. For example, enter in the keyword field: Sustainability, Sustainable, Climate Change, Global Warming.
Please allow up to two minutes for larger searches to complete. Large searches may have results returned on multiple pages, be sure to scroll through all results to ensure that your search is complete.
A recently adopted Element may take several months to be loaded to the tool.
Users are encouraged to reference the PDFs of each Element for background text and context for the Goals, Objectives, Policies and Programs available in the Search Tool.
