Rooftops as the new Ground Floor

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The LA Times today runs a piece looking at Downtown rooftop life, saying that “rooftops have become the new ground floor.”

Residents say that sunny days and balmy evenings entice them upward, that even the most industrial-looking rooftop — crowded by pipes and air-conditioning modules, covered with asphalt — hosts sunbathing, stargazing, birthday parties and barbecues. Invitations are usually posted in elevators: party, tonight, come.

And of course, the other side:

Not everybody is thrilled. These rooftops are “private heavens,” says Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, chairwoman of the urban planning department at UCLA. “What concerns me is the increasing tendency to take activities which were for hundreds of years part of the public realm, and privatize them. Then we’ll have parks only being used by low-income and minority people, and affluent people will use private parks.

Somehow I don’t see Pershing Square offering the same kind of quiet place to hang out and grill a steak.