Quote:
Originally Posted by alki
You brought up the fact that LA allowed areas around and including DTLA to deteriorate and decline. I pointed out it was an attitudinal thing; not apathy. And trust me. That attitude is alive and well today. Something like that does not disappear overnite.
Someone else on this forum mentioned that people in other cities love their city and do what they can to enhance it. Their largesse does not require city hall's intervention or the giving of financial gifts to get them to do the right thing. Its a concept that seems to be foreign to LA. More importantly, from an urbanist POV, citing an important public institution on a mountain top off to one side of the city......the Westside.......is a major fail.
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You have to get over this: everything you say is backwards. DT did not deteriorate because the city "let it". The city was pouring money into it from 1950's on, at the expense of the rest of the city. Bunker Hill, the Music Center, govt. buildings were all concentrated in DT. Dozens of companies (including Union Oil, ARCO, several banking and transport companies) were subsidized to move DT. The problem was that "people" (remember them?) didn't want to live there; they preferred less density, better schools, less crime and drugs, access to shopping, the beaches, etc.
If anything the city took the "urbanist" solution (high-rises, density, institutions, govt. intervention) rather than the "popular" solution, actually making life pleasant for people.
And, again, the center of LA is not the 10 blocks between Alameda and the 110. This is maybe 1 percent of the city's population, excluding the myriad other inner suburbs from SaMo to Pasadena, that are effectively part of the city and have their own residents who are willing to fund institutions.
Look at NY: LACMA is as close to DT LA as the Met is to Wall St.; the Getty is as close to Century City as the Cloisters is to Midtown NY.
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