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According the Fishman, the proponents of Los Angeles central business district faced off against rural land owners and suburban advocates. While both the mass transit and roads bond issues were put to a vote, civic leaders strongly advocated on behalf of the MTSP because it furthered the suburban ideals embodied by Los Angeles. If Los Angeles fixed its mass transit system, development would be focused around the train lines. Land prices would rise and it would become increasingly expensive to build single-family homes along these lines and this would complicate further expansion by the city. Los Angeles had grown dependent on single-family developers to build houses for recent arrivals.
Single-family developments were ideal for the city of Los Angeles because they could be financed cheaply and it reduced the city’s infrastructure costs. Most single -family home developments could be started with minimal financing. Developers would buy rural land from farmers and finance the construction of the subdivision’s infrastructure, including “roads, lighting , and drainage.” The developer could then sell mortgages for the first phase of homes to pay off their initial loans. After the initial set of homes was built, the builder would then finance any future home construction in the subdivision with these early mortgage sales.<ref>Fishman, 164.</ref> The developers could earn large profits and the city could cheaply expand because developers paid all of its infrastructure costs.
While retail businesses and downtown developers favored the mass transit plan, far more people benefited from the MTSP. Roads, unlike mass transit, could not only connect people to downtown, but it would also join the growing suburbs. Civic organizers railed on behalf of the MTSP and started a well-organized campaign to get the bond issues approved. While civic leaders vigorously advocated for the MTSP, a small section of the PE plan was “decisively defeated.” Fishman claims that it only then did the PE “began its rapid deterioration.”<ref>Fishman, 166.</ref>
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While Fishman’s conclusions are compelling, they undermined by insufficient evidence. His entire argument is based on the assumption that Angelinos wanted to preserve the suburban character of Los Angeles, but he fails to identify voices within the city that portrayed the debate over the bond issues in these terms. He has not sufficiently demonstrated that Angelinos saw the bond issue as either an affirmation or rejection of the suburban growth model. He has elevated the vote on the bond issues as a vote on the concept of suburbia. He has deemphasized the local concerns that citizens had about the election to strengthen his broader points on suburbia. The bond plan proposed by PE was expensive, and Angelinos undoubtedly realized that only benefit some suburban residents while the MTSP potentially benefited all of the cities motorists. The passage of the MTSP could be just as easily attributed to the fact that the MTSP had a broader coalition of supporters.
