Following L.A.'s script

[sf_eddo]

It's the LA Times 125th Anniversary and there is an interesting article on the future of cities and Los Angeles' specific impact on it. It kind of makes me sad that they refer to both CityWalk and The Grove as the "future" of cities.

from: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/history/la-et-125future3dec03,0,7498928.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Following L.A.'s script
From its earliest boom-town days, Los Angeles has always sold itself as the city of the future. Thanks to its changeable nature and international status, it's still a model for how contemporary urban
By David L. Ulin, Times Staff Writer
December 3, 2006

Totally citified
http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2006-11/26619236.jpg

The hangout, redefined
http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2006-11/26619239.jpg

- What L.A. gave the world
A decade or so ago, I went with my father to a Friday night concert in a Cape Cod town. It was August, and the village green — an expanse of grass stretching off Main Street — was packed with vacationers and locals, all eating hot dogs and drinking sodas, reveling in the coolness of the evening air. In the midst of this, four men stood beneath a gazebo, playing old-time standards: "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," "In the Good Old Summertime." After a few songs, I turned to my father and said, with something akin to revelation, "It's like a living turn-of-the-century museum."

My father took great exception to this notion, especially when I went on to suggest that, if such towns represented the past — a last glimpse of the way we once lived in this country — then Southern California was emblematic of the future, with its inevitable growth and sprawl. "God forbid," I think he said, which is probably how a lot of Americans feel. But the idea of Los Angeles as harbinger of the future is hardly outrageous, and has little to do with the region's traditional booster ethos, the hype that tells us we live in a city outside history, in which the old rules no longer apply. Rather, Southern California's purchase on the future has everything to do with history — with geographic history, with demographic history, with the history of technology, with our sense of this place as a final landscape, the last territory on the American continent, where we must finally face ourselves because there is nowhere else to run.

This futuristic sensibility is a big part of how Los Angeles has always sold itself, from the first real estate boom of the 1880s to the rise of the movie business and beyond. As far back as 1904, when a syndicate of leading citizens (including Henry Huntington, E.H. Harriman and Harrison Gray Otis) got the rights to buy up huge swaths of the San Fernando Valley, L.A. was a city with its eye on the future, a city on the make.

Yes, this was an inside deal, one that ultimately yielded more than $100 million in profits because of the syndicate's secret knowledge of a plan to irrigate the arid Valley with water from the Owens River. Still, in its aftermath, Los Angeles became the template for an entirely new kind of city, horizontal, sprawling, defined less by steel and masonry than by speed and light. Nature, for the first time, was no longer an obstacle, but a challenge to be overcome. Need water? Import it. Need to connect the most far-flung districts of the megalopolis? Build a network of roads, of freeways, and in the process redefine the relationship between the city and its geography.

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It's no understatement to suggest that the future identity of L.A. can be traced to the Valley land deal, which set in motion a whole host of developments that continue to unfold to this day. In that sense, it was the syndicate's ability to conceptualize the future, and the role of Los Angeles within it, that set the stage for much that was to come.

Such a future, to be sure, has not always been bright or sunny; it often comes at quite a cost. In the case of the Valley, the price was the Owens Valley, and the lingering implications of a water war that, in one form or another, has gone on for 100 years. But before we judge the past too harshly, it's important to remember that history is complicated, and that events, once set in motion, play out in a variety of ways.

Whatever we think about its origins, Los Angeles is now a laboratory for both our nightmares and our dreams. The city's sprawl, its apparent shapelessness, has for better or worse become a model for how contemporary urban landscapes work, with its de-emphasis of the center in favor of a constellation of satellite communities.

Meanwhile, L.A.'s ethnic and cultural diversity has made it a new kind of international city, belying the mythos of the melting pot in favor of something far more elusive and profound. That's a key development, because it suggests the way the rest of the country — indeed, the world — is going, as borders become increasingly fluid and we elide into an economy of global scale.

More to the point, Southern California's diversity adds up to a wealth of experience, of identities, that makes L.A. a city without a defining narrative. Detractors like to highlight this as emblematic of our essential rootlessness, but as usual, they miss the point. Instead, it's a three-dimensional expression of the notion that in Los Angeles, like everywhere, we are all just making it up as we go along.

Like it or not, of course, the detractors have no choice but to deal with us, as L.A.'s aesthetic spreads. You can see it in every mall, every planned community, in the blurring of so-called high and mass culture, in the ascendancy of noir. Most tellingly, Los Angeles has begun to influence the way even the most traditional cities are reconfiguring themselves — just take a look at Times Square. In his 1998 book "Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World," Carl Hiaasen lamented Times Square's reinvention as "home to MTV, Condé Nast, Morgan Stanley, the world's biggest Marriott hotel, the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, and soon a Madame Tussaud's wax museum…. The dissolute, sticky-shoed ambience of Forty-second Street has been subjugated by the gleamingly wholesome presence of the Disney Store." Yet if Hiaasen was on the right track, he missed the larger picture; it's not Disney that's the template, but the Grove.

Ever since the opening of Universal CityWalk in 1993, Los Angeles has been on the cutting edge of what social theorist Norman M. Klein calls "scripted spaces" — sites that eclipse the line between public and private, designed to resemble organic urban settings when they are, in fact, elaborately planned. The re-development of Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade is emblematic of this concept, as is Beverly Hills' Two Rodeo and, indeed, the Grove. The new Times Square is just a larger, gaudier scripted landscape, reconstructed almost entirely in the style of L.A. What does it say when New York, which as much as any city thrives in opposition to Los Angeles, adopts a quintessential Southern California strategy to revitalize one of its most iconic sites? It can only mean that the future starts with us.

In 1991, shortly after I moved to Southern California, I interviewed Carolyn See at her Topanga Canyon home. During the conversation, she said some things about Los Angeles that helped to clarify the way I thought. First, she told me that L.A. was its own place, fundamentally different from other cities, where "you don't go down to the cafe and drink a lot of coffee…. You get in the car, drive for an hour, have a long leisurely lunch in a beautiful yard." Then, she cited Paris in the 1920s, envisioning Los Angeles in the 2020s as a city that might have a similar sort of influence and reach.

Fifteen years later, See's assessment remains not just possible but prescient, although I might give it a slightly different turn.

Yes, L.A. is a city of global impact. And yes, we are a testing ground for the future: our own, and that of cities everywhere. I don't think, however, that Los Angeles will ever be like Paris. Instead, it is Paris (as well as New York, Chicago, London, you name it) that will — that have already — become increasingly like L.A.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
david.ulin@latimes.com

[Buckeye Native 001]

I love L.A. but it is not, and should not be considered, the "city of the future"

[bryson662001]

L.A. used to be the city of the future. Now it is the city of the present since many other cities have caught up to it. But to give it credit.....it did get there first.

[Buckeye Native 001]

But is "there" a good place to be? Our mass transit is developing but still sucks, neighborhoods and infrastructure continue to fall apart, hardly anyone can afford to live here, and all this city needs is another disaster like an earthquake before it's citizens come unglued.

[DJM19]

Well LA has a palimpsest of transportion. It went from massive mass transit, to massive car transit.

[scribeman]

I would hardly call Los Angeles the city of the future, for all that I think it's a fantastic place.
These succinct comments:

But is "there" a good place to be? Our mass transit is developing but still sucks, neighborhoods and infrastructure continue to fall apart, hardly anyone can afford to live here, and all this city needs is another disaster like an earthquake before it's citizens come unglued.

express everything that I would have said. When I think "city of the future" I very definitely think of centralized urban planning that goes up, not out, since common sense dictates that the scarcity of land increases at a historically exponential rate. Chicago and NYC definitely win that battle, as they have the historic grid-pattern at every part.

[scribeman]

L.A. used to be the city of the future. Now it is the city of the present since many other cities have caught up to it. But to give it credit.....it did get there first.
Well, no, not really. Chicago and NYC had their suburbs in place a very long time before Los Angeles did. I suppose you can credit some technological implementations to Los Angeles, but mostly in regards to computers and traffic electronics. And Paris/London/Other European cities are several centuries older than Los Angeles. I have not seen a compelling argument in the original article which shows some trait that Los Angeles had before these older cities, unless a Village Green with a Sunday fair is somehow the only distinguishing feature?

[hoju]

This article is absurd. It offers no supporting evidence for its statement that the reinvention of Times Square was influenced by a few pre-fabricated malls in Los Angeles. Further, the article's assertion that a completely unsustainable, poorly conceived plan of urban development is somehow "cutting-edge" is laughable. Oh but I forgot, LA is an "entirely new kind of city, horizontal, sprawling, defined less by steel and masonry than by speed and light."
pfft! Speed and light. Give me a break.
I like LA a lot, but as a model for future urban development, never.

[edluva]

love it or hate it, I'd have to agree with the general point of the article. I think the idea of LA as the birthplace or epicenter of synthetic realities signals the move of the modern city away beyond being a manifestation of solely physical urban form, into the abstract where the physical form is manufactured to resemble some non-native theme or concept. In other words, it's now the virtual theme that becomes the primary driver of the physical form, rather than what has traditionally been some concrete physical necessity. I really think that the advent of virtual space and the dissemination of information/culture within it (the internet) is going to change the way we think about our physical reality - and no question LA is at the forefront of that, for better or worse. It is a fact that modern Times Square is an icon modeled and fabricated on a historic template. The Times square of today is not the original - it's every bit the plastic, manufactured theme that those horrible "lifestyle centers" we have in LA are. Our "rediscovery" of the urban living is also an historicist romantic theme - it stands in stark contrast to the economic reality of modern America, and it's a product that only the upper crust can purchase. Transportation and sustainability were never pillars of this argument to begin with, and so there's no need discredit the article on the basis of that presupposition.

And scribeman, NY and Chicago had suburbs early, but they were never auto-oriented cities at the core. LA is the archetypical decentralized, disseminated city.

[ocman]

The article isn't about centralized versus uncentralized urban models. Ulin isn't arguing that. He's talking about "scripted spaces". But in terms of urban models, suburbanity isn't what LA started. But having rows of houses while abandoning and surviving without a central core is what LA began. Bring urbanity and business from the core and into the suburbs is the LA creation. Nowadays, it's abandoning even that model and evolving into a multinodal urban model, hence the revival of Long Beach, downtown and Hollywood. For that, LA is a pioneer for other cities that will eventually reach geographic limits: the evolution into a multinodal urban model. In that way, it's still a city of the future for post-war cities in its pliability going from central-cored city to non-cored city to a hybrid of the two (multicentered). Whether that is going to be the sustainable model is too soon to tell, but I see sprawled cities eventually following this trend as well.

[sf_eddo]

The Bay Area's growth pattern in recent years has been more or less following the "model" that Los Angeles built - decentralized auto-dependent sprawl out to the furthest reaches of the Central Valley (Stockton, Tracy, etc) and also along the I-80 corridor to Sacramento.

[Chicago103]

But is "there" a good place to be? Our mass transit is developing but still sucks, neighborhoods and infrastructure continue to fall apart, hardly anyone can afford to live here, and all this city needs is another disaster like an earthquake before it's citizens come unglued.

Very high cost of housing and on top of that its difficult to not own a car and hence have all the costs associated with it, no thanks.

[svs]

Very high cost of housing and on top of that its difficult to not own a car and hence have all the costs associated with it, no thanks.

There is a reason the housing costs are high outhere. Its because a lot of people want to live here.

This is also related to the fact that more millionaires live out here than any place else in the USA.

Public tranisit is not as bad as most think. We are constructing a train system that is almost as big as Chicago's already ever if the West side is still poorly served.

As for the City of the future, I still believe that more national trends for better or worse start out here than in any other city.

[ChrisLA]

There are a lot of people who live without cars in Los Angeles, and by choice. What many people speak of as Los Angeles is not part of the city of LA. These folks live in the burbs and have not clue about taking the bus or trains around the city of LA.

They live in the suburbs, and yes its true the service isn't the best in the burbs, just like any other big city burbs. I've taken the buses and trains in the city of LA and its not bad. I said it before and I'll say it again, LA's MTA at the present time is much better than most public transporation agencies in this country. In addtion to the MTA, there are several other transit agencies in the metro that are pretty good such as the Santa Monica Blue Bus, Long Beach Transit, Foothill Transit, Torrance. There are others but these are the top ones I can think of right now.

Here in Long Beach, not only are we serviced by the Long Beach Transit, but the MTA, Torrance Transit, LADOT, and even Orange County has a line that runs into downtown Long Beach. So we're not lacking as some of you migh think. I also know a good number of people who own cars as well, but also use public transportation to commute to work.

Anyway some people need to get off their high horse. Its fine you like where you live, but you don't have to put down another city to elevate where you live. That forumer know who he is, please its getting old we all know what your views are now, no need to express it in every thread.

[Chicago103]

There are a lot of people who live without cars in Los Angeles, and by choice. What many people speak of as Los Angeles is not part of the city of LA. These folks live in the burbs and have not clue about taking the bus or trains around the city of LA.

They live in the suburbs, and yes its true the service isn't the best in the burbs, just like any other big city burbs. I've taken the buses and trains in the city of LA and its not bad. I said it before and I'll say it again, LA's MTA at the present time is much better than most public transporation agencies in this country. In addtion to the MTA, there are several other transit agencies in the metro that are pretty good such as the Santa Monica Blue Bus, Long Beach Transit, Foothill Transit, Torrance. There are others but these are the top ones I can think of right now.

Here in Long Beach, not only are we serviced by the Long Beach Transit, but the MTA, Torrance Transit, LADOT, and even Orange County has a line that runs into downtown Long Beach. So we're not lacking as some of you migh think. I also know a good number of people who own cars as well, but also use public transportation to commute to work.

Anyway some people need to get off their high horse. Its fine you like where you live, but you don't have to put down another city to elevate where you live. That forumer know who he is, please its getting old we all know what your views are now, no need to express it in every thread.

I didnt mean to insult the city of LA on a whole, I am just lamenting the plight of people who want to live a location efficient lifestyle without cars. Now I know as well as anyone that it is easier to live without a car than the masses make it seem to be, this applies to virtually anywhere, including LA. Now that being said I still think it is more difficult to live car free in LA because you have to orient your life around mass transit which as of now is only in small corridors along the transit lines. I know you can argue the same can be said of Chicago but the difference is that Chicago has alot more centralized employment in its CBD. In LA downtown is transit accessible but can the same be said of Century City? In addition there are countless other employment centers in LA, many of which can be hard to get to without a car. Now can a person when he or she is looking for a white collar professional job realistically limit their job search to transit accessible areas? In this country the only places where you can do that without seriously limiting your job options is Manhattan and downtown Chicago, sure Chicago has plenty of suburban employment centers as well but its fairly easy to ignore them because downtown Chicago is so huge. I have heard on here that even in cities like Philly it would be unrealistic to contain your job search to the CBD, especially if you are a married couple in need of two jobs.

[Master Shake]

Funny thing is that when I am in LA, I am struck at how much it reminds me of the edges of Chicago and certain high dense suburbs of Chicago, like Evergreen Park and Oak Lawn. Both came of age at about the same time. Much of Los Angeles proper is pretty high density similar to Chicago's bungalow belt. In particular the commercial strips seem more dense than comparable areas of Chicago.

Ofcourse LA has meager density in its CBD and has nothing comparable in density to the Chicago lakefront and Northside.

But once you hit the burbs, LA has much greater density than the suburbia of Chicago, an issue that has been much discussed.

[fflint]

Los Angeles certainly does have density comparable to Chicago's lakefront and north side. We've been over this a thousand times on this forum, but I realize you're new.

There are 202.85 square miles within Los Angles city limits that contain 3,035,598 people, for an averaged population density of 14,965 persons per square mile over that land area, and there are smaller areas within that are much more dense than that average.

Geographical Area -- Year -- Square Miles Area --Population -- Population per Square Mile --

Westlake 2000 3.18 106,710 33,543
Wilshire 2000 13.85 292,101 21,097
South Central Los Angeles 2000 15.48 260,095 16,797
Southeast Los Angeles 2000 15.44 254,976 16,509
Boyle Heights 2000 6.03 86,735 14,377
Palms-Mar Vista-Del Rey 2000 7.95 110,044 13,834
Central 2000 128.21 1,752,024 13,665
West Adams-Baldwin Hills-Leimert Park 2000 12.71 172,913 13,605

[sbarn]

I didnt mean to insult the city of LA on a whole, I am just lamenting the plight of people who want to live a location efficient lifestyle without cars. Now I know as well as anyone that it is easier to live without a car than the masses make it seem to be, this applies to virtually anywhere, including LA. Now that being said I still think it is more difficult to live car free in LA because you have to orient your life around mass transit which as of now is only in small corridors along the transit lines. I know you can argue the same can be said of Chicago but the difference is that Chicago has alot more centralized employment in its CBD. In LA downtown is transit accessible but can the same be said of Century City? In addition there are countless other employment centers in LA, many of which can be hard to get to without a car. Now can a person when he or she is looking for a white collar professional job realistically limit their job search to transit accessible areas? In this country the only places where you can do that without seriously limiting your job options is Manhattan and downtown Chicago, sure Chicago has plenty of suburban employment centers as well but its fairly easy to ignore them because downtown Chicago is so huge. I have heard on here that even in cities like Philly it would be unrealistic to contain your job search to the CBD, especially if you are a married couple in need of two jobs.

You can definitely can live in San Francisco without a car... however New York (Manhattan to be exact) is really the king of the carless city in the U.S. There are some cities where you can live without a car... then there's Manhattan, where its basically prohibitively expensive to own a car.

[scribeman]

Funny thing is that when I am in LA, I am struck at how much it reminds me of the edges of Chicago and certain high dense suburbs of Chicago, like Evergreen Park and Oak Lawn. Both came of age at about the same time. Much of Los Angeles proper is pretty high density similar to Chicago's bungalow belt. In particular the commercial strips seem more dense than comparable areas of Chicago.

Ofcourse LA has meager density in its CBD and has nothing comparable in density to the Chicago lakefront and Northside.

But once you hit the burbs, LA has much greater density than the suburbia of Chicago, an issue that has been much discussed.
Well, midwesterners were the ones who basically built Los Angeles' central core. That's why there's a sensible downtown, and everything else beyond that goes to hell.

[tocoto]

As the post oil era approaches it will be interesting to see if LA can keep up or if it becomes the city of the past.

[dktshb]

Los Angeles certainly does have density comparable to Chicago's lakefront and north side. We've been over this a thousand times on this forum, but I realize you're new.

There are 202.85 square miles within Los Angles city limits that contain 3,035,598 people, for an averaged population density of 14,965 persons per square mile over that land area, and there are smaller areas within that are much more dense than that average.

Geographical Area -- Year -- Square Miles Area --Population -- Population per Square Mile --

Westlake 2000 3.18 106,710 33,543
Wilshire 2000 13.85 292,101 21,097
South Central Los Angeles 2000 15.48 260,095 16,797
Southeast Los Angeles 2000 15.44 254,976 16,509
Boyle Heights 2000 6.03 86,735 14,377
Palms-Mar Vista-Del Rey 2000 7.95 110,044 13,834
Central 2000 128.21 1,752,024 13,665
West Adams-Baldwin Hills-Leimert Park 2000 12.71 172,913 13,605


I am not sure where you got those statistics but as of the 2000 census LA's population was 3,694,820 Million
and as of 2005 it is 3,957,875 according to the California Department of Finance.

Also, to those who talk about sprawl; the LA Meto is more dense than any other metro in the continental US.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/10/AR2005081002110.html
Los Angeles also is the only major US city in the country to continue getting more dense.

As far as mass transit it's one of the largest providers in the country and the city is one of just a few cities seriously adding more and more miles of track: If interested you can look here:
http://www.urbanrail.net/am/lsan/los-angeles.htm
http://www.metrolinktrains.com/
http://www.mta.net/default.asp

[fflint]

The statistics come from the 2000 census. I was talking about density within Los Angeles, not merely the density of the entire city, just as Master Shake was discussing only part of Chicago and not the rest of that city. LA most certainly has densities that can compare with those in the most crowded parts of Chicago. That's the point, and I laid out the data.

[dktshb]

:previous: Oh I know you were talking about just the city of Los Angeles. I was just referring to the 2000 census population; That figure was over 600,000 less than the actual 2000 figure that's all. Since people started throwing around density I also wanted to point out the the Metro is the most dense in the United States.

[edluva]

^re-read again very carefully what fflint said, and think.

[Buckeye Native 001]

I'd really love to know what the hell people expect to find when they visit Los Angeles.

[dktshb]

^re-read again very carefully what fflint said, and think.

Hmm, just a bit patronizing... I see now fflint was only referring to 202.85 square miles of a city that actually totals 469.1 square miles. Not actually knowing the actual square milage of Los Angeles until now I can forgive myself for making this mistake.

[LosAngelesBeauty]

As the post oil era approaches it will be interesting to see if LA can keep up or if it becomes the city of the past.


Yes! Even as gas hits the $5 mark, I think more and more people will DEMAND rail (not just acquiesce to it). Right now as it is, still most people in LA don't realize there is another possible alternative to the car. They think, "That's it! If I don't have a car, I'm done!" The idea of expanding rail on the scale of cities like Beijing is unfathomable to most Angelenos. I don't think it has anything to do with the lack of funds, but the lack of political will (beyond the mayor and a few council members) and also the lack of public demand. Acquiescing to rail is different than demanding it. People need to realize that expanding rail is not only for the obvious benefits of forgoing auto-traffic, but also the intangible benefits of city-life.

LA will have remnants of auto-centric architecture for probably centuries, but I believe that there will be enough development in the next decade or so just within Downtown LA/Hollywood and possibly an extension of the Purple Line down Wilshire Blvd. to provide a much more enjoyable urban experience than what is available today.

[hereinvannuys]

Ulin writes, "The new Times Square is just a larger, gaudier scripted landscape, reconstructed almost entirely in the style of L.A. What does it say when New York, which as much as any city thrives in opposition to Los Angeles, adopts a quintessential Southern California strategy to revitalize one of its most iconic sites?"

NY wasn't adopting a "Southern California strategy" it was adopting to the economics of the millenium: the entertainment industry is what made Times Square 100 years ago and what makes it today. NY poured law enforcement into the area to make it safe. It mandated that buildings make space for electric signage. It offered tax credits to developers to build hotels, offices, revitalize theaters. I can't think of a single section of Los Angeles that throbs with so much life, walking, excitement and commerce.

In the 12 years that I have lived in Los Angeles, I have set foot in Citywalk exactly twice. I find it to be appalingly gross. The restaurants are horrendous, the crowds are full of low class bald headed gang members and their fat chicks with tattoos and thongs... and homies from the Inland Empire. There is expensive parking and synthetic, fake buildings that are mere facades with no residential use. It is the opposite of form follows function. The function here is form with no substance.

The air pollution around CityWalk is horrible, the noise from the Hollywood Freeway combined with the muzak in the mall is deafening. There is nowhere to walk outside of the canned, corporate Disneyfied environment.

God help us all if this is the future.

[Segun]

^ I agree. The comparison to The Grove and Times Square is a little exaggerated. You can make similar observations about any other mall. TSX is hardly "scripted".

[LosAngelesBeauty]

I can't think of a single section of Los Angeles that throbs with so much life, walking, excitement and commerce.


Well, although it's always going to feel different in LA for an urban enthusiast because of how disparate it's energized-pockets are without the connection by subway lines, there are definitely areas of LA that have what you're talking about, just not to the scale perhaps of Times Square (but then again Times Square pales to Shinjuku, but that's ok).

I can think of a few places that have "energy."

1) Santee Alley in the Fashion District

2) Hollywood Blvd. on any regular day between Highland and Vine.

3) Santa Monica and Pasadena

4) Weho (SM Blvd. and Sunset Blvd. at night)

I think it's a little extreme to say that just because you got there by car, somehow the feeling of any positive urban energy you might feel at your destination is somehow illegitimate! I can say for absolute certainty that not everyone goes to Manhattan by rail. There are a shitload of people who arrive by car and find street parking. I know because I've done that with people who live out in NJ going into the city. You find parking and start walking around, just like you do in Old Town Pasadena or Santa Monica, just on a much, much larger scale.

Personally, I think both Pasadena and Santa Monica are trying their best to be more progressive, compromising with such an intense car-culture. And now that Pasadena is served by the Gold Line it does give us hope that one day, the stations (such as Del Mar and Memorial Park, etc.) will be as busy as any other station. (I believe that relies solely on Downtown LA's successful revitalization, but that's another story!)

Anyway, I love LA and I've got my issues with it just like anyone else here. I've debated within myself if I could be allowed to enjoy myself just because I got somewhere by car. It's almost become an urban religion and I've just come to accept LA as a car-city with rail possibilities. You can really enjoy this city if you do have a car. If you have a lot of money, it shouldn't even be an issue.

[WesTheAngelino]

My Faux Foot Traffic notion seems to have sparked a good debate here.

LAB, the reason I feel that the "urban" energy of 3rd street or Old Town is illegitamate, is that they are really no different from an indoor mall. People, whether they know it are not, are still bound in without walls ( i would say this applies far more to SM than Pasadena however). It's hard to explain what I mean here....but if you tried to walk elsewhere from 3rd street, you'd understand perfectly I think. Basically the "urban energy" disappears once one has ventured out of this designated shopping/eating/movie watching zone, which was created for the sole purpose of bringing people encapsulated in their autos and funneling them into the encapsulated mall environment all the while making them think they are NOT enclosed in order to give the mall more cache. It's nothing but what William Fulton calls "Toon Town Urbanism" (btw, if you haven't read the Reluctant Metropolis, stop what you are doing right now and go to Barnes and Noble and pick up a copy).

[LosAngelesBeauty]

^ I understand what you mean and I believe it doesn't have to do with SM or Pas being "faux" as much as the areas not being large enough in our urban utopia. Because the concept of driving into Manhattan (just like Pas or SM) still works because once you park in Manhattan you are free to roam an urban/pedestrian area, but on a scale so much larger than Pas or SM that it becomes O-K, and even great!

I think both SM and Pas are TRYING to be progressive by adding residential to their respective commercial areas (3rd St. and Old Town/Paseo). I think SM is actually more 3-D than just linear 3rd St. because you still have decent pedestrian foot traffic on 4th/2nd and Ocean Ave. and the Pier. And I think Pasadena has the potential for SO MUCH more because of Paseo Colorado area being connected to Old Town. The only thing that BLOCKS Pasadena from becoming a substantial pedestrian zone is just TWO commercial office buildings. The two that separate Old Town from Paseo Colorado. If they can just get rid of ONE by adding in retail/restaurants, then you are essentially CONNECTING the two major centers with now a decent mix of residential being added in!

Also, I have been throwing around a couple of ideas for Pasadena:

1) Add a cable car/trolley service on Green Street from Delacey to Lake Ave. and possibly even to Pasadena City College. There are now three very obvious areas in Pasadena that shopping districts (Old Town, Paseo, and South Lake Ave.). These three areas can be connected by an at-grade trolley service that would essentially expand the pedestrian zone to something truly respectable. Plus, along that way you would stop by the Pasadena Playhouse, etc.

2) Add attractive signage in Old Town that directs people to the Norton Simon Museum. Everytime I give one of my tours of LA to people from out of town, we always WALK to Norton Simon from Old Town. It's not THAT bad actually, and there could be some simple aesthetic improvements along the bridge over the freeway geared toward pedestrians that can make the walk seem more enjoyable. This would give Pasadena a healthy mix of culture/shopping/entertainment that would raise its status even amongst the critical urban enthusiasts here on SSP!

[WesTheAngelino]

^ Re: 1) : I think a streetcar in that area would be serverely underutilized. This goes back to my point about it being nothing more than a feedlot for people who drive there. If I drive there, what am I going to use a trolley for? Sure, I might do it ONCE, but I really don't think it would serve any real purpose and would probably have nothing to offer that the MTA rapid bus that runs down Colorado can save for nostalgia.

[ComandanteCero]

well, i was going to offer a detailed rebuttal to a lot of the more idiotic assertions in that article. But it looks like people have mostly hit on them. Needless to say, I think sustainability is going to the key word in 21st century urbanism and architecture. The form it takes within that envelope will tend to lead it to pedestrian friendly mass transit oriented development in most urban areas, how people decide to express that will certainly be up for grabs (but i hope cartoon mainstreets isn't it).

I feel L.A is great for reasons that have nothing to do with the cartoon streets they mention (mostly its people, culture, creative power and natural beauty.... i still can't get into the car culture and all that entails but the other things i mention more than make up for it).

I think L.A has the greatest potential of all cities in the country to really blow up and completely reinvent itself in a way that no other established city can. The 21st century will hopefully see L.A continue developing and redeveloping along its existing rail lines (while expanding the system or some other form of mass transit), and continuing to reinvigorate its downtown. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next big boom cycle dt. L.A blows upwards with highrises the same way Miami is doing right now (hopefully not in the same architectural style), I also wouldn't be surprised if other nodes in the city (hopefully served by mass transit if not already) also blow upwards. In other words, L.A has the potential to become something vastly more complex and interesting than what that article implies, and it's too bad it just runs with the old cliches about superficiality and fakeness.

[edluva]

the problem is I think some of you guys risk becoming dogmatic about what constitutes a "real" urbanity vs a "fake" one. A more abstract look at cities takes into account the prevailing modes of not only transit, but also prevailing modes of communication, commerce, politics, and technology. It goes back to the (idiotic and counterproductive, in my opinion) notion of the public sector's role in preserving moms and pops in Chicago, or the double-standard in which self-purported urbanists chastise projects like 3rd street/grove/old town pasadena while praising Westfield centre in SF.

I see little difference between malls situated in highly transit-dependent areas like SF, and "malls" situated in auto-dependent centers like Grove or Santa Monica. In both cases, you have the public-sector subsidizing megaprojects which seek, almost exclusively, to enlist multi-national retailers into a manufactured setting, at the behest of an overarching development agency. In my opinion, the term "lifestyle center" rightly applies to both urban, as well as suburban developments of this nature because they all reflect a common business model which occurs with little regard to the transit mode of intended patrons. In my opinion, 3rd-street evolved into a primarily auto-accessed destination because of LA's lack of a practical transit network, not because it is in fact an "outdoor mall".

And I disagree with the notion that Time's Square is somehow completely organic. The moment a public/semi-public agency begins to define how a contiguous tract of urban space is to operate or look, it becomes more and more "manufactured". That's not to say something is wrong with that, just that it's a sign of our times. Cities are always in a state of flux. Let's not let old notions hold us back from seeing them for what they are *now*, and in a broader context.

[sf_eddo]

It goes back to the (idiotic and counterproductive, in my opinion) notion of the public sector's role in preserving moms and pops in Chicago, or the double-standard in which self-purported urbanists chastise projects like 3rd street/grove/old town pasadena while praising Westfield centre in SF.

I think I'm the only one who hates Chicago's Mag Mile, New York's Times Square/5th Avenue, and Union Square in San Francisco.

I more or less agree with you edluva - I see no difference between retail-themed areas of a City, or a mall, or a "lifestyle center". This is why suburbanites like Joel Kotkin go to real cities and proudly declare them Disneylands for shopping and restaurants.

You can recreate the urban formula-retail experience almost anywhere, but you can't recreate the buzz, creativity, or flat-out exuberance of local and independent retailers in actual neighborhoods out in the suburbs.

[Mad_Nick]

LA's public transit network has improved significantly, yet the transit ridership to work in the city of LA is equal to(2000 census) or lower than(2005 american community survey) that of New York's suburbs, despite poorer service in the NY suburbs (or at least I assume LA has better service, otherwise it wouldn't be much improved).
I think the main problem with LA is the attitude people have towards transit, not so much that the transit network is bad.
This is unfortunately also one of the hardest thing to change. New Yorkers have grown up around transit, and view it as a perfectly normal method of transportation whereas people in LA, like most Americans, haven't.
I think a real change in attitude could take a few generations. If you target youths, the least mobile group in an auto-oriented society, those youths might grow up without the anti-transit attitude all to common among Americans.

[WesTheAngelino]

LA's public transit network has improved significantly, yet the transit ridership to work in the city of LA is equal to(2000 census) or lower than(2005 american community survey) that of New York's suburbs, despite poorer service in the NY suburbs (or at least I assume LA has better service, otherwise it wouldn't be much improved).
I think the main problem with LA is the attitude people have towards transit, not so much that the transit network is bad.
This is unfortunately also one of the hardest thing to change. New Yorkers have grown up around transit, and view it as a perfectly normal method of transportation whereas people in LA, like most Americans, haven't.
I think a real change in attitude could take a few generations. If you target youths, the least mobile group in an auto-oriented society, those youths might grow up without the anti-transit attitude all to common among Americans.

^ No, dude, it's just bad. It HAS improved significantly over the past decade, hell the last five years, but aside from a few corridors...it absolutely sucks. As someone who has gone from transit dependent to having a car, I can honestly say that if I didn't live near the rail or a good rapid bus corridor with frequent service I'd rarely if ever take transit.

But you are onto something wit the catching them while theyre young part, as I brought up in another thread. However, students at L.A.'s two major colleges aren't most transit dependent in the world, especially at U$C :rolleyes: