I have a request for greater Los Angeles in the coming decade. It's not a simple request, but it's simply stated: Over the next 10 years, I want you to become a city--that's right, a real city, like London or New York, Paris or Tokyo.
Okay, maybe a collection of cities.
In any case, I mean you should try to cease being a collection of freeways and malls, a sprawl of half-imagined neighborhoods, or a loosely-shuffled deck of cluttered boulevards and cultural icons.
Over the next 10 years, I want to find myself joining large crowds strolling nighttime streets. I want to hop cheerful and efficient subways and find them filled at all hours. I want to leave a theater at 11:30 and stop off next door for a late night snack. I want to visit many highly charming parks, where I find numerous benches and baby prams and pushcarts selling popcorn and hot dogs. I want to encounter endless stretches of outdoor cafes, competing fiercely, and pushed one up against the next. I want to book streetside tables and sip coffee while watching masses of humanity transported on shoe leather.
In fact, I want to find it harder and harder to get around in a car, and easier and easier to get around on foot. I want to visit fewer big venues and encounter more little shops; climb fewer on-ramps and drop quarters into more parking meters; stop at fewer mini-malls and walk on wider sidewalks.
In general, greater LA, I want you to finally give up that weird, tedious, half-ironic "no there there" aesthetic and adopt a "there everywhere" chic. I want you to give up being an awkward beast, and evolve into a coherent metropolis.
Okay, I know you have your challenges: fragmented government, weak city planning, absentee landlords, ferocious gangs, too few cops, too many noir film locations, a focus on glitz instead of substance.
But you've shown it can be done. I mean, when I look around, I can see you've made a lot of progress over the last 30-odd years, and you could be on the verge of something big. You built a few rail systems. You fixed up Pasadena, Glendale, Culver City, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills. Parts of West Hollywood and Downtown. Yes, I can now stand on certain corners in such centers, or stroll three or four blocks at selected hours, and almost believe I am in a real city...as long as I don't wander too far from my car, or turn down a side street.
You've made progress, but I'm sorry: I want Rome, or at least Chicago. Not as shopping mall theme parks operated by Rick Caruso, but as true city blocks. I want genuine urban experiences, and I want them here.
Don't tell me that a "world city" kind of life is impossible in Southern California, third wealthiest urban area on earth. Don't explain how you seem to attract strange, intensely private people, only interested in fixing up living rooms and backyards; folks only interested in cocooning in cars or museums or concert halls; only interested in creating rec rooms or theme bedrooms, building "outdoor rooms" to be featured in L.A. Magazine or decorating hip minimalist parlors to be profiled in Angeleno.
And if we really are like that, then I want us to change. In the coming decade, I want us to become different than we have been. I want us to want to be more like the people in other great urban areas and less like our cliché vision of ourselves.
I know this will take extraordinary effort, because yes, in a real city, people become passionately involved in civic life. They care what happens down the street and in city hall. They take an interest in the whole curio shop and not just their own velvet-lined box.
I want to begin by appealing to our wealthiest citizens, whether they owe their fortunes to TriStar or Coldwell Banker. Not just because they have the means, but because they know how to get things done. Over the coming decade, I want to challenge our wealthiest citizens to get out of their estates and Maseratis and theaters and galleries and pour their hearts into public parks and bike paths and open areas here in the town in which they have made their fortunes. Maybe that means adopting a recreational facility or an urban square, a stretch of beach or the boulevard around a favorite concert hall. Maybe it means sponsoring an outdoor festival or supporting the politicians who care about trains and trolleys.
Yes, we have Eli Broad. But I figure we need at least six more Eli Broads, and we need at least five of them to focus on public space. Millennium Park, anyone?
But of course I really mean to direct this request to the whole metropolis. As the New Year starts, I want to challenge all of greater LA to take a moment and imagine what the best aspects of the word "city" might mean to you and yours and everyone who lives in this remarkable but as-yet-unfinished place.
Follow Marc Porter Zasada on Twitter: www.twitter.com/theurbanman
For years I opposed the further densification of my little city, but have become convinced that only if we strangle auto traffic will we finally stop widening the 405 for $1 billion so that a few can save 5 minutes and invest in the public transportation system we had when I was a child -- world class.
Yes, it is already near gridlock on Santa Monica Blvd. MTA buses now travel nearly as rapidly as I can in a car to downtown. I only hope I live long enough for people to stop being so "precious" and get on the bus, ride the rails, and join humanity.
The ‘manhattan of LA’ is a region that stretches from the Westside to downtown LA, north of the 10, south of the sunset / Hollywood blvd. This is where 80% of the highrises are, 80% of the best restaurants, 80% of the nightlife, cultural offerings, etc.
The valley is queens / Brooklyn, south LA is the Bronx, the SGV is another borough and so on. The greater LA region will never densify to reach your expectations, but the 'west-central' or central LA core will. The key is the completion of the subway down Wilshire and up through West Hollywood. The dense transit-oriented development will follow as will more walkable neighborhoods.
I would say that LA is definitely getting there. I have now lived in the Beverly Center district for four years and rarely use my car except to get to downtown for work for which I take 1 street, Wilshire blvd.
We already have a nice core of dense neighborhoods that are very close in proximity to each other (downtown, Hollywood, k-town, mid-city west and Westwood).
It's just a matter of time before they all connect. I would say 10-20 years is doable with Measure R projects coming soon.
You have to realize that the 'manhattan of LA' is a region that stretches from the westside to downtown. This is 80% of the highrises are, 80% of the best restaurants, nightlife and cultural offerings. The valley is queens / Brooklyn, south LA is the Bronx, the SGV is another borough and so on. The greater LA region will never densify to reach your expectations, but the 'west-central' or central LA core will. The key is the completion of the subway down Wilshire and up through West Hollywood. The dense transit-oriented development will follow as will more walkable neighborhoods.
I would say that LA is definitely getting there. I have now lived in the Beverly Center district for four years and rarely use my car except to get to downtown for work for which I take 1 street, Wilshire blvd. In 10 years, there are plans to build two subway stops within walking distance.
We already have a nice core of dense neighborhoods that are very close in proximity to each other (downtown, Hollywood, k-town, mid-city west and Westwood).
It's just a matter of time before they all connect. I would say 10-20 years is doable with Measure R projects coming soon.
It would be great to have a transit system packed to capacity that goes from here to there. Right now, traffic is the number one reason people don't often get out of their own neighborhoods. LA has so much to offer, but it's not being used. That's a shame.
The problem is not LA. Maybe it's you. It seems like you have not embraced the LA way of life. Perhaps your dream of living in a "real" city would be best realized by moving to one that meets your idea of what that is.
The "creative expression of urbanity" you refer to is about as creative as your interpretation of "urbanity". If by trend-setting, you mean large unregulated experiments on land-use and zoning by developers with little concern for community, culture, and "urbanity" - you may be right. The only catching trends I've seen LA set are the ready destruction of the history and fabric of truly urban cities; the widening of streets; the disruption of neighborhoods and communities with superhighways; the historical neglect of useful public transportation; and the replacement of enveloping, walkable, pedestrian-friendly (i.e. urban) streets with parking lots and strip-malls. Statements like "LA sets trends..." may be true when it comes to blue-jeans and sun-glasses, but when it comes to urban development, LA is stuck in the destructive mentalities of the 60s and 70s.
I don't deny that LA has expressed creativity individual architectural structures, and I do think the city has a lot to offer and great potential for positive growth and future trend-setting. But I'd call the most obvious modern additions anything but "urban". I believe a lot of people have become so accustomed to this version of LA that they actually think they enjoy it, and may even defend it to urbanists like myself. Hopefully in 10 years you'll be thanking us for seeing things a little differently. ;)
In some ways don't you think the last part of that sentence could currently be replaced with "not just those who enjoy sitting on the highway for four hours, spending 45 minutes traveling 10 miles, and and who don't mind that cancerous yellow haze that hangs over the city"? Trust me, you've got quite a while before the hipsters have their way and you can comfortably and quickly commute across the whole city while reading a book or watching reruns of "Dancing With The Stars" on your iPod.
I'm not a "hipster" but I enjoy staying out past my bedtime on weekends.
If I'm in a restaurant in Silverlake late at night-----does that make me a "hipster?"
Having the isolation in L.A. is the point, for me, so I hope you get to move to another place and leave L.A. as it is.
I enjoyed your article....it was true and food for thought.