LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 4.0

[edluva]

Originally Posted by Kingofthehill

While people in LA do tend to be poorer, less educated and "cultured", and more working class than cities like SF, Tokyo, Boston, or Manhattan (which of these cities is nearly 50% poor Mexican and Central American immigrants? none), I think Chicago, as a whole, is far more blue collar and ghetto than LA. The good urban planning in the Loop area is the result of top-down urban planning, not because of the people there. LA has nothing as terrible, tragic, and utterly hopeless as the South and West sides of Chicago, of which are abandoned and crime-ridden.

London, NYC, Paris, Copenhagen, etc., have tons of immigrants, many of them poor and from legitimately f'd up countries. Part of the problem is the wealthy, nouveau riche people in LA, and their garish tastes, which tends not to favor things like good architecture, civic responsibility, education, etc., or other cosmopolitan ideas. In short: we have tacky rich people. I just got back from crisis-stricken Spain and Portugal (Lisbon, Madrid, Bilbao, San Sebastián, and Barcelona), and even with no jobs - and in Portugal's case, a per-capita GDP 50% less than our poorest state, Mississippi - people there have more class, dignity, and taste than 90% of the people back home.

I agree with pretty much everything you said here.

With Chicago, while I can agree that it's at least as working class as LA in their respective city-propers, Chciago's enviable core is the product of top-down planning as well as the product of serving as an enormous singular regional employment center for the much larger educated class of Chicagoland. For perspective, 36% of Chicagoland has bachelors degree vs 29% for metro LA

We indeed have no shortage of tacky rich people, and we have a dire shortage of educated urbanites for a metro of our size. That's why we have an embarrassing downtown and core, and that's why we have embarrassingly stupid architecture in our core