Quote:
Originally Posted by Westsidelife
Nice that a major dead zone will bite the dust, but the design leaves much to be desired. It pretty much reaffirms the notion that while LA is getting denser and orienting new development around transit, its urban design remains hostile to pedestrians. Talk about a huge ass driveway.
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Density growth does not happen often enough in L.A. that we can take a new dense development for granted. That being said, aesthetics and pedestrian experience are important and should be taken into consideration by the architect and developer. At this point in time, L.A. is still in its infancy as a world city and given its history as a car capital of the world, we can be pleased when we get density and ground floor retail as I believe this development has. L.A. generally will not build the type of pedestrian friendly urban buildings that cities such as S.F. and N.Y. are accustomed to having. If we are always cutting the curb for cars, then there will be an issue putting the pedestrian first.
L.A. is very slowly addressing the pedestrian in its newer residential mixed use developments. But, it is a very slow process and it may be another 50 or 100 years before the pedestrian becomes important in L.A., important enough to put ahead of the needs of vehicles. Well, S.F. and N.Y. already put the pedestrian 1st to a fair extent. But, N.Y. is 400 years old and S.F. was already very dense over 100 years ago.
At that point in time, the city of L.A. was in its infancy. So, it's not fair to compare the two on that basis. The land in L.A. was vast, so L.A. grew outwards. S.F. could only go up. You can't build a city on the bay, but you can build it on the peninsula. Even in S.F. and N.Y., you will still find empty plots of land available for development. But, those opportunities are far and few between in those cities. Generally, in those two cities, shorter buildings or properties will be demolished and larger ones that fully take advantage of the zoning laws will be erected.
To some extent, demolishing shorter buildings in favor of larger ones is beginning to happen in L.A. However, I'm often disappointed with the architecture in these newer larger developments in L.A. I can understand that real estate developers may want to cut costs. However, I cannot understand why any developer would want to build ugly structures that disrespect man's understanding of aesthetics and worldly beauty. Unfortunately, that disrespect is a constant arsenic in the architecture here in L.A. Lack of thought and lack of quality. Lack of respect for the pedestrian and the list goes on and on.
The city started out very well architecturally. I'll point out the Old Bank District and old Los Angeles. But, that architectural style never caught on or carried over past the late 1920s. That's unfortunate because old L.A. has a lot of respect for the pedestrian, community and aesthetics. There were money hungry developers back then too. Just too much land to develop outside of downtown L.A., whereas Manhattan and S.F. had no choice but to build up.
Maybe we can call the current era we live in a renaissance for L.A. and particularly the central parts, downtown and surrounding areas. Well, at least we now know that our downtown isn't a dump not worth saving and that L.A. can be and become a great city if we really force real estate developers to build aesthetically pleasing and pedestrian functional buildings. Oh, and yes I do remember that part of that equation is building the mass transit that will get Angelenos from point A to point B.
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