LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 4.0

[tommaso]

I love L.A. I love architecture. I love city. I love life. I do not know how to reconcile all of these human feelings that I have. I need to feel something and yet L.A. doesn't want me to feel. It won't let me. I want city and I drive and I drive and I drive. I park and I look for activity to no avail. I am an ant in a grasshopper's shoes. I am anonymous yet I want to be known in an anonymous world. I am architecture. I am city. I am love. I am life. I don't know where to go or what to do. I feel emptiness. I feel sadness. I'm not sure how to live. I can't find my dream. I can't find my life. I can't replace activity with nothing. It doesn't work. So, I search and I search and I search. I love L.A. She doesn't love me. I am blind and yet I can see. Why oh why? Where shall I go? What shall I do? I still believe. I want to be loved. I want my home, I want my city to love me back. I want my city to embrace me and hold my hand and hug me when I need it most. Where are you L.A. when I need you? city...city...city...city...SOS

[LAofAnaheim]

Why do you drive so much? Is the Metro not reasonable to where you are?

[LosAngelesBeauty]

Originally Posted by tommaso

I love L.A. I love architecture. I love city. I love life. I do not know how to reconcile all of these human feelings that I have. I need to feel something and yet L.A. doesn't want me to feel. It won't let me. I want city and I drive and I drive and I drive. I park and I look for activity to no avail. I am an ant in a grasshopper's shoes. I am anonymous yet I want to be known in an anonymous world. I am architecture. I am city. I am love. I am life. I don't know where to go or what to do. I feel emptiness. I feel sadness. I'm not sure how to live. I can't find my dream. I can't find my life. I can't replace activity with nothing. It doesn't work. So, I search and I search and I search. I love L.A. She doesn't love me. I am blind and yet I can see. Why oh why? Where shall I go? What shall I do? I still believe. I want to be loved. I want my home, I want my city to love me back. I want my city to embrace me and hold my hand and hug me when I need it most. Where are you L.A. when I need you? city...city...city...city...SOS

You'll probably be singing the same tune until the Expo Line reaches Santa Monica, Purple Line to UCLA, and DT Connector funnels everyone in from the suburbs into the city providing the kind of energy you're searching for in a CITY.

Energy depends on walking and until there is transit, there will be no walking in this city on the level you are desiring. Perhaps you should move away and come back in 2022 when all the lines are done. I am pretty sure by then, LA will be the kind of city that "loves you back."

[Sodha]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesBeauty

You'll probably be singing the same tune until the Expo Line reaches Santa Monica, Purple Line to UCLA, and DT Connector funnels everyone in from the suburbs into the city providing the kind of energy you're searching for in a CITY.

Energy depends on walking and until there is transit, there will be no walking in this city on the level you are desiring. Perhaps you should move away and come back in 2022 when all the lines are done. I am pretty sure by then, LA will be the kind of city that "loves you back."

Why can't the person go Metro today? I do it 6 days a week and love it. Found some cool stuff I've never seen before.

Driving will always be faster no matter where you go. Just give up a few minutes to ride a bus or train and relax (play Angry Birds, check out Twitter updates, read a book, go to sleep). Is there a real reason you cannot go Metro (i.e. live in Porter Ranch)?

[LosAngelesBeauty]

Originally Posted by Sodha

Why can't the person go Metro today? I do it 6 days a week and love it. Found some cool stuff I've never seen before.

Driving will always be faster no matter where you go. Just give up a few minutes to ride a bus or train and relax (play Angry Birds, check out Twitter updates, read a book, go to sleep). Is there a real reason you cannot go Metro (i.e. live in Porter Ranch)?

The issue isn't just being able to physically ride it or not. It's developing a normalcy associated with the kind of urban characteristics we here strive for LA to eventually have. We cannot achieve that kind of normalcy until a "substantial" amount of middle class to upper middle class people ride the subway to bring that sense of normalcy to the system.

Also, tommaso laments the lack of urban pedestrian energy within our walkable neighborhoods in LA. What we need is for an area of LA that is representative of the city/metropolis to function well and feel coherent. That area obviously starts with Downtown LA which is slowly, but surely reaching some kind of normalcy, but is impeded by the glut of surface parking lots that really sever the connectivity within an otherwise potentially very walkable grid.

Until our parking lots in Downtown LA are filled in with mixed-use developments, parks, etc. and fed by a continuous supply of transit riders from the future extensions out to the suburbs, there won't be an area of LA, representative of LA, that will have the kind of urban pedestrian energy that tommaso is yearning for.

That will slowly start to change as more buildings are built concurrently with the extensions being constructed, which will culminate in a lively, coherent, and long over due authentic urban experience that will bring a sense of connection back to this sprawling, incoherent metropolis.

[DistrictDirt]

Maybe its my imagination, but it certainly seems like there's more middle-class "discretionary riders" on the 720 than there was when I first got here, a little over a year ago. Always a lot of European and Asian tourists too- for them, riding the bus is old hat.

[Muji]

The moment many of us have been waiting for has arrived. As of yesterday, CoffeeBar is now open at 6th and Spring. In my opinion, it must be by far the nicest cafe downtown, with one of the best outdoor seating areas to boot. I'm looking forward to being here often!

[LosAngelesBeauty]

That looks fabulous! We need about 500 more of these kinds of businesses in all forms (retail, restaurants, services) and DTLA will really reign supreme in the region.

[pj3000]

Was at CoffeeBar just the other day. Nice little cafe. Pricey though, considering the rather low quality brew and baristas who couldn't answer any questions.

[DistrictDirt]

I love the look of the place, except the fact that there's like 3 different types of tables, and 3 different types of chairs. Its making my OCD kick into high gear!

[Illithid Dude]

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2011/03/the_ac_martindesigned_wilshire_grand.php

So, the Planning Commission decided to let Wilshire Grand have architectural lighting, which I think is a good idea. It will add a nice architectural flourish, methinks. They denied added advertising to the tower portion of the project, but they added a little more digital advertising to the podium portion of the project. Furthermore, they are proposing to extend the 'Sign District' down Figueroa and Wilshire, which would be cool, and make part of Downtown L.A. look like Tokyo (always a good thing). May 9th (If I remember correctly) is the date that the final approval/disapproval will happen.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by tommaso

I want my home, I want my city to love me back. I want my city to embrace me and hold my hand and hug me when I need it most. Where are you L.A. when I need you? city...city...city...city...SOS

I think I know what you mean. the city has been run by ppl who've been zzzzz for too long.

here's what they & many other ppl have come across when going through dt: not much, or not enough. but think of what it was like just a few yrs ago, before 3 of the bldgs in this view didn't even exist. and in their place, nothing but alot of , which still makes up way too much of the hood.




LAB, I think you & others may be setting yourselves up for a fall if you believe that more rail transit guarantees that hoods like dt will really come into their own. the reason is that even with the arrival of the red line several yrs ago, not to mention the blue line before that, many businesses still are not setting up their offices in the hood. A few have, but not as many as we might have estimated over 18 yrs ago.

If this forum had existed in 1993---when the first leg of the red line opened---& we were predicting at that time what would happen yrs after the subways' completion, we probably would have (I know I would have) estimated that the result was going to be a greater balance in the city, between the west & east sides.

But about 2 yrs ago yahoo decided to open new offices in Burbank (or something like that) instead of dtla, & just a few wks ago google decided to expand its offices in venice.

So don't assume too much about transit making a city more $$ & more attractive. It takes a whole lot of things to move a hood in the right direction, & I say we're still affected by the way the city was put together over 80 yrs ago. IOW, too much of this....



segun


^ and all the transit in the world won't change things like that. a big earthquake, maybe , but not the expansion of the red line, unless it's stretched a hundred or thousand times over.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by Illithid Dude

So, the Planning Commission decided to let Wilshire Grand have architectural lighting, which I think is a good idea.

why was that even in doubt in the first place?! the ppl on the planning commission don't like highrises to be floodlit?!

[QuarterMileSidewalk]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesBeauty

The issue isn't just being able to physically ride it or not. It's developing a normalcy associated with the kind of urban characteristics we here strive for LA to eventually have. We cannot achieve that kind of normalcy until a "substantial" amount of middle class to upper middle class people ride the subway to bring that sense of normalcy to the system.

Also, tommaso laments the lack of urban pedestrian energy within our walkable neighborhoods in LA. What we need is for an area of LA that is representative of the city/metropolis to function well and feel coherent. That area obviously starts with Downtown LA which is slowly, but surely reaching some kind of normalcy, but is impeded by the glut of surface parking lots that really sever the connectivity within an otherwise potentially very walkable grid.

Until our parking lots in Downtown LA are filled in with mixed-use developments, parks, etc. and fed by a continuous supply of transit riders from the future extensions out to the suburbs, there won't be an area of LA, representative of LA, that will have the kind of urban pedestrian energy that tommaso is yearning for.

That will slowly start to change as more buildings are built concurrently with the extensions being constructed, which will culminate in a lively, coherent, and long over due authentic urban experience that will bring a sense of connection back to this sprawling, incoherent metropolis.

Hear, hear. A transportation system is the skeleton of a city. All the neighborhoods and buildings and institutions are dependent on the type of skeleton we build. Fortunately, we can always make the skeleton of Los Angeles better and stronger.

I love riding the Metrolink from Fontana to Union Station once in a while, in search of real urbanity. It's a longer ride, harsh on the wallet, but holy cow it's a better experience than the 10! I can look out the windows at the awesomely immense regional sprawl, read a book, take a nap, have a conversation without crashing the train. Every time I take that trip, I wish I could do it every day.

I want to see an LA someday where all these far-flung suburbs, like Fontana, are more tightly integrated into the metropolis, where in addition to the Metrolink and the freeways, you could take a light-rail network from a station near your home, or an express non-stop system of some sort (HSR?) between major stations. I want all of these systems to seem completely ordinary; used by all sorts of people, all the time!

I also think that as the whole metropolis densifies (not just DTLA), each community will become more independent and unique even while they become more easily connected to each other, as mobility improves and new businesses start up and grow.

[Quixote]

Now is your chance to weigh in and let DCBID know what kinds of businesses YOU would like to see in Downtown! Please fill out this survey!

http://blogdowntown.com/2011/03/6158-dcbid-launches-2011-demographic-survey

[JDRCRASH]

Originally Posted by Illithid Dude

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2011/03/the_ac_martindesigned_wilshire_grand.php

So, the Planning Commission decided to let Wilshire Grand have architectural lighting, which I think is a good idea. It will add a nice architectural flourish, methinks.

This could be very interesting. I wonder what the final product will be.

They denied added advertising to the tower portion of the project, but they added a little more digital advertising to the podium portion of the project. Furthermore, they are proposing to extend the 'Sign District' down Figueroa and Wilshire, which would be cool, and make part of Downtown L.A. look like Tokyo (always a good thing). May 9th (If I remember correctly) is the date that the final approval/disapproval will happen.

We can't just let billboards continue to run free without some regulation. The backlash against billboards is growing, especially among residents in areas outside of Hollywood Blvd and LA Live. Bottom line, if this issue isn't solved soon, we may not have billboards ANYWHERE in the city, which is completely unnecessary.

Why not do this?:

Keep them on Hollywood Blvd (between La Brea and Gower), and in South Park (in an area bounded by 9th, Flower, Venice, and Cherry). These billboard districts already exist, but encompass a larger area; they just need to be smaller. Then tax the billboard districts, and use the funds for arts programs and other community projects. Then ban the billboards everywhere else and fine the billboard companies after a certain amount of time when the ban is enacted, for each billboard they fail to take down that is outside the signage districts. In turn, well over 90% of the city would be ad-free.

There's no excuse why this can't be done without lawsuits. It has already been achieved in so many cities it's ridiculous that people like Dennis Hathaway think that the issue can be resolved with an outright ban of billboards.

[bobcat]

I'm curious how billboards and other digital advertising on buildings can affect their financial viability. Can the money they bring in actually make a significant difference in terms of future construction in areas where they are allowed?

[DJM19]

These are my main 3 gripes with billboards:

1. New buildings designed purposefully to incorporate billboards on the side (almost always a poorly designed building)

2. Billboards that cover up historic architecture.

3. Inappropriate size. I see some one and two store buildings with billboards that are as big or bigger than the building on top. That, or they cover up most of the floors with the advertisement.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by JDRCRASH

In turn, well over 90% of the city would be ad-free.

that will help make LA look a whole lot better.






segun


and if this thread seems like it's now getting too OT, maybe one reason DT fell apart for so long & so far to begin with is cuz too many ppl responsible for planning & devlpt, inc from the time before all of us were born, were....

[patriotizzy]

Some of the streets in LA remind me of Latin American towns.