Free advice for Mayor Villaraigosa

Los Angeles Magazine's cover package calling Antonio Villaraigosa a failure as mayor also includes suggestions from a dozen SoCal experts, observers and advocates of various ilk. Author D.J., Waldie, for one, says the mayor should act to prevent the momentum for density tied to transit from being just another scheme to choke neighborhoods with unsmart growth. The package starts going online later today, but here's an early look at some of the advice:

Ron Kaye, blogger - I keep thinking the mayor will wake up one morning in his mansion and wonder what he’s doing there, as if it were a dream—that he’ll remember he’s just a punk from East L.A. who doesn’t put the rich and powerful on a pedestal and take such pleasure in having become one of them. So my advice is this: Forget about becoming governor. Put on some jeans, muss up your hair, and have a beer with the ordinary folks fighting to save their jobs, their neighborhoods, their families’ futures.

William Deverell, historian - There’s a huge opportunity - obligation - to redesign our love affair with the car.... L.A. can, and I think should, get out ahead of the revolutionary thinking on cars: how many, how big, where they can go, how they are powered, and what they must share the road with.

Aaron Paley, president of Community Arts Resources - Close Wilshire Boulevard on Sundays and other contiguous boulevards to create a Ciclovía modeled on the highly successful example of Bogotá, Colombia.

Kerman Maddox, political consultant - The next four years should be about jobs, jobs and more jobs!

Others quoted include David Sefton, artistic director of UCLA Live; Antonia Hernardez, president of the California Community Foundation; David Abel, president of ABL Inc.; Bill Allen, president of the LA County Economic Development Corp., and author Joel Kotkin.