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Originally Posted by citywatch
part of it is LA has historically been aimed at ppl of modest means, not a corporate or $$ type of town like some of the most prized major cities of the world are. part of it also may be due to all the ppl who've settled in the city through the yrs who have judged things in a way similar to the woman with the frightening cat face, jocelyn wildenstein. IOW, the type of person who does something where you wanna ask: what the heck were they thinking?!!!
some of the disinterest also may have been influenced by an embarrassment about the situation. Such ppl can easily become resentful of overly upfront criticisms of the city-----not sure if that includes threehundred & just-in-cali. I'm just saying...
so if various ppl in LA know things aren't too attractive, but they also feel somehow insulted when unflattering comments are raised about their hometown or the hood they've invested in, then their reaction will be "shoot the messenger".
Most ppl in city govt----esp mayors----consider it bad form & bad etiquette to remark on how LA can be quite fugly, so that's also part of the problem. so we end up with deny, deny, conceal, conceal, downplay, downplay. And then turning around the situation becomes even harder to accomplish.
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Very good points, citywatch, and thank you. The latter half is the point I raised earlier, in which I meant "public relations"; I was thinking of other Los Angeles neighborhoods more than downtown, specifically Bunker Hill, which suffered from a crisis in this situation. (Note I'm not sure how and where this may have been referenced elsewhere on SSP, but these are my own thoughts.) As west coasters familiar with Bunker Hill went through a certain crisis in development related to its public relations technique: we had this neighborhood go up based on positive response to "glamour and sophistication;" city height limits are raised, and suddenly they could build skyscrapers! There was such promise at certain times; as wikipedia notes, developers sought to match other levels of the city. But then, of course, shortly after the construction of 2 c. plaza, (52 stories, which is not very high), city officials were discouraged when commerce didn't move in; they reached a national vacancy high and then just settled into a torpor for years, making it "the longest redevelopment project ever."
Which is largely their own failure. They hadn't done the careful research and planning to put residencies of the skyscraper into effect; when this didn't take place, they went, "Ugh. The skyscraper was a terrible idea," and then sat around feeling futile, constructing a few low-level buildings for commercial development. While sending out press releases to city council that redevelopment was, in fact, still under effect: this is what I meant by PR (public-relations, which sends out press releases).
And Bunker Hill of course knows this; this torpor was a detriment to all of its redevelopment plans, which of course it didn't want, as were its public statements that redevelopment was fine, because that just put a gloss over the entire crisis. Without actually studying and responding to facts that advisement and critique would point out, and being too sensitive about the fact that their 52-story skyscraper was empty, they set themselves back. Which they know now. Fortunately Bunker Hill has recognized and addressed that in more recent years, which is why they've finally got their funicular running again. (Following a similar torpor, when an accident on the tracks convinced them it was too flawed to rebuild, delaying transportation for several years). Their skyscraper vacancy has, seemingly, gone down recently as well, although we can only judge that from statistics. They have their highest skyscraper ever under construction: the opening date is 2015, but who knows. After longest-redevelopment-ever, they may be hitting a renaissance.
One key point that differentiates their situation from downtown is critique, however. Downtown LA has been flooded with mass-media coverage and made the worse for it in general, since this has largely been fire-filled op-eds along the same caliber of the terrible developments: like cardboard houses, tackily painted, with vague and unsolidified ideas behind them made the worse for their ramshackle construction. Less, I think, out of "fear" as much as their own general irrelevance; partially because the downtown landscape has so many towers, and some of them seem so solidly constructed that Times writers have thought they don't need addressing (though at this point it seems clear that this is not the case).
In the case of Bunker Hill, a sense of irrelevance may also have been a factor; their city council's difficulty with media coverage was the reverse, but had equal flaws. Bunker Hill is difficult to research in a different way; you have to dig around deeply on the internet, through popular culture, and old texts to find any commentary.
The fact it is so cryptic is what makes the stories of Bunker Hill so fascinating to research. The devotion of those who have researched Bunker Hill makes it monumental and incredibly significant to the city council; however, the fact it is so cryptic is also what made it then very difficult for them to respond to. It certainly wasn't about their care for the unity and development of Bunker Hill; even if they responded less to outside perspectives, and perpetually misunderstood suggestions of residents or sought cues from cities elsewhere. Bunker Hill city council screwed up all over the place, we're clear on that, but there's a lesson to take from this also in redevelopment elsewhere. When information is buried in certain ways: as lovely as this is as a testament, it's also difficult to decipher. If city council is now keeping a careful eye on every bit of detail that might aid them, chances are the past lessons they missed buried in there will sometimes escape them, not to mention the language, and as much as they might try to show their dedication by researching, the researchers may misunderstand when council officials respond in the wrong way; perhaps in the same way they've misinterpreted facts they've uncovered in the past.
This is all a matter of mirrors, you understand, which ties in to redevelopment in general. And it's very applicable to downtown LA too: it's likely gotten nothing but damage out of the fiery, non-constructive op-eds broadcast recently in the news. Better would have been carefully thought-out essays by architectural critiques, that would have pointed out aspects where development has slowed to prevent those in the future. I know news writers have been featuring op-eds to indicate as certain passion about downtown LA's future to make up for it being hidden in the news for awhile; more recently to signify their utter dedication and love for LA. But the most important thing is to make downtown LA redevelopment really, really happen, and have it surpass every city in the global exterior.
Apparently LA Times writers have been working on this, though they haven't published. Sorry if this posting digresses a bit...
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