Quote:
Originally Posted by fhammon
As of now after 25,670 posts and 7,318,064 views....
What makes Los Angeles so special?
Why not San Francisco or Chicago or N.Y.C. or even New Orleans?
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My $.02:
I think it's because those and similar cities have been justifiably regarded as historically and architecturally interesting for so long that they've been done a thousandfold, already. They've long boasted a wealth of buildings and neighborhoods which have been allowed to remain largely unchanged, although as in all cities individual houses and buildings do occasionally get replaced.
By contrast, throughout the mid 20th century, say from 1930 to 1980, so much of our historic architecture and so many neighborhoods were wiped off the map to make way for freeways, urban renewal projects, and the odd massive infrastructure project (i.e., Union Station). Even where such projects weren't implemented, the economics and geography of the city made the destruction of dozens of Victorian and even Georgian structures virtually inevitable--often to be replaced not by new and possibly better buildings, but by parking lots. In perhaps no other time and place on Earth were conditions so favorable to suburbanization, especially as in those days "suburb" could mean Culver City, North Hollywood, or even Santa Monica, instead of West Valley, SCV, or the Inland Empire.
As if that weren't enough, the miserable smog of the postwar era was a metaphorical black eye which probably impacted not only how outsiders and potential artists and photographers perceived the city, but also the attitude of locals about whether any of its physical history was worth preserving. Tourists might have come here for the attractions in the region, but they definitely weren't coming for the scenery.
What's changed now is that we have survived the era of urban renewal and freeway construction, and suburbanization has pretty much run its course. What older buildings we still have are more likely to be allowed to remain, and as time goes on more and more buildings achieve a semblance of historical value just by their age. How old is "old"? Granted, the bar is pretty low here, but just from this thread the abundance of 80 to 100 year old buildings is impressive. I couldn't have made that claim in the mid 1970s, when I first became interested. A 100-year old building then would have been built well back into the 19th Century, but most of those structures were gone.
And we have digital cameras, and the internet, and so on...
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AlvaroLegido, I don't think there was a loop at the end of Lamar.
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