Another Boring Swipe at Downtown

Well said Eric. I too find much potential for the LA Live project. While I do believe that Times Square is a completely different animal, LA Live brings that same electricity delivered in an Angelino manner. Aside from the general traffic in and out of LA Live that is expected, I believe that its success will rely on linking the main components of downtown. That includes not only staples, convention and la live, but also the Grand Ave. project, Walt Disney, Park up north etc... I've heard talks of the red car or possibly a shuttle running along fig, such an endeavor would catapult LA in its entirety.

To me, that part of LA is much like down a few blocks from Times Square---it's like Chelsea before Giuliani; it's like the area around Madison Square Garden, Penn Station and the old Statler Hilton. Hank's bar, the girls from FIDM, the Hotel Fig, the Pantry, etc. It can easily absorb a big hotel, even as the Statler has never left Chelsea, only changing names every now and then.

Kevin also neglects to note that LA Live will be within a reasonable walking distance from not one but two different rail lines - the Red/Purple Line at 7th and Fig and the Blue Line at Fig and Pico. And if the Moinian project across the street goes in as planned, that will add almost as much retail as LA Live - directly across the street.

OK - being originally from NY, I could maybe speak with a little "authority" on this... but I won't. Instead, I'll leave NY out of it, and say that the problem I have with this comment is that I, among many others, am getting real tired of hearing how everything is "just like" somewhere else. To me, an architect, THAT is the real shame about the American built environment of the past five decades. The homogenization of America (from architecture to food to entertainment) has been devastating to local vernacular styles and uniqueness. LA Live is LA... not anywhere else... and if I know anything about this city that is my adopted home, it is that we will take these huge projects and fold them into the "LA thing".

Leave NY on the other coast. I love NY, but there are big reasons I don't live there. 75 and sunny two weeks before Christmas is one of them!

What unfolds across the tables of redevelopers is this need to create an environment that is based on the myth of what LA is, primarly because that's what is seen as an attractive retail base. All flash for cash. And it hardly works because the environment defines L.A. is at it's worse––a superficial facade, rather than an organic growth of functional buildings, design, walkways. L.A. is reinvented again and again.

There can be successful pedesterian activity Downtown as long as the source of destination supports lifestyle rather then just be retail. Even now, the Historic Core and Broadway are not always teeming with local loft dwellers unless there's an Arts Walk. There has to be participation after dark. Or the daytime. As much as we bemoaned the taping of Pershing Square, walking there often before the ice rink was up, there wasn't a lot of locals hanging out other than homeless.

The only NY comparision I would make is how the "new and improved" parts of Downtown still looks empty at night, just like no one wanting to linger around a pre-Disney Times Square.

Even as LAO is dead-on with many subjects, the observation that the "artificial" Universal City Walk is ignored. It's as only as artifical as Santa Monica Walk or The Grove and it a matter of taste. In a LA Times Article dated December 10, 2006, Virgina Postrel (columnist for the Atlantic) wrote about CityWalk: "A few people carried shopping bags, but most seemed just to be hanging out. Contrary to the prophets of a decade earlier, they were generally locals, and I was about the only pale-faced blond in sight. CityWalk wasn't separate from the real Los Angeles. It was emphatically part of it. It seemed less like a mall this time and more like a city."

Hi Eric,

Thanks for the info, but I knew about the Staples visitors, office workers, transit lines, etc. Thanks to AEG and friends, L.A. Live hype is readily available. Unless you've got something new I'm sticking with what I wrote.

For a "throw-away comparison" that can't be backed up, it's hard to beat the Forest City spokesman comparing L.A. Live -- still just a hole in the ground, after all -- to a thriving, raucous, mature Times Square. No amount of homework, as you say, makes that boosterism credible. Times Square is vital to Manhattan's energy, a 24/7 hub that hundreds of thousands of people inhabit daily. L.A. Live won't be a district or a 24/7 anything -- just a corporately designed destination complex that people must go to (or not: it could bomb like Hollywood and Highland.)

I don't see your evidence that one hotel tower, some restaurants and movie screens and a cable TV studio will make one block of downtown suddenly vital in the daily life of Los Angeles. Probably not even for most downtown office workers, which I was for 20 years -- it might offer another option for lunch and occasional drinks and dinner, unless the environment is so controlled as to be less inviting than all the more fun spots downtown. Those conventioneers and Staples Center visitors already visit the corner of 11th and Figueroa without hinting at turning it into anything like the transit and nightlife nexus of Manhattan.

I don't deny that L.A. Live might be good for you who live downtown (yes yes, I know, a growing number.) That's great, but localized. CityWalk is a highly popular destination too, filled with visitors to Universal Studios, but a lot of people feel it's sterile and never go there. Profitable as it must be, life in Los Angeles would go on just fine if CityWalk ceased to exist. (And it has the far better name.) I'll be surprised if L.A. Live rivals CityWalk or The Grove among the majority of Angelenos who don't hang out downtown. I also feel fairly certain that no one from NYC, or for that matter anyone not part of the downtown booster effort, will ever compare it to Times Square.

The larger question is what's with these specious New York/Los Angeles comparisons anyway? That kind of sad search for validation has been going on here for a hundred years. (Wilshire Boulevard, for example, was going to be "the Fifth Avenue of the West Coast.") There's hardly anything about L.A. that is "just like New York." If L.A. Live does work, it will be because it's a hybrid Los Angeles phenomenon that clicked. I love New York and I love L.A., but I don't regard their souls (or London's or Paris's) as anything alike. They are different at the DNA level, and it has nothing to do with skyscrapers, subways and corporate entertainment villages.

Bottom Line:

Los Angeles is Los Angeles. We need to stop trying to emulate another city. We should be ourselves, and we're proud of that. Our streets are much safer than you think, if you just walk on them.

Our museums, cultural centers, and art galleries are very diverse if only people saw them.

This is an exciting city if you look for the less than obvious attractions.

Citywalk, Santa Monica Pier, even Hollywood and Highland are fine, but they do not represent the true essence of Angelenos.

Echo Park, Silverlake, Old town Pasadena, Westwood, Melrose, these are the windows of our city soul.

We have culture, entertainment, and sophistication if you open your eyes to it.

Los Angeles will never be Manhattan. But what's so wrong about wanting to take the best things about New York and apply them to Los Angeles?

There's a reason why New York is so popular, and there's a reason why Los Angeles is coming up right behind it.

Why not take the gorgeous climate of Los Angeles, its glorious and at times tragic history, and its spirit of reinvention, and add to that the urban bustle and vibrancy that is New York's life blood?

What's so bad about decrying a downtown that closes up at Six P.M. That's awful! Toronto doesn't even do that anymore. Fortunately, L.A. is moving away from that paradigm, slowly. What's so bad about wanting vibrant night spots right here at home, without having to drive to Las Vegas for them? What's so bad about striving to create walkable neighborhoods with thriving and interesting retail centers? What's so awful about creating a usable mass transit system? And, by the same token, what makes doing any these things mean that we're trying to be more like New York?

Los Angeles will always be its own city. Just adding a "Times Square" like neighborhood won't turn L.A. into New York, and it shouldn't. It's not about emulating anywhere else, it's about taking what we like from other places to create and recreate the crazy patchwork-quilt landscape that is, and always will be, Los Angeles. Amen.

More thoughts here

What I find most interesting about Mr. Roderick's comment is the mindset it reveals. I call it westside fuddy-duddy.

First off, his commentary is lazy. He comes to the story with a preconceived notion of what L.A. ought to look like. These new developments are different, so he makes a facile and inaccurate comparison to CityWalk (!?) and dismisses these new places. As a resident who lives within walking distance, I eagerly look forward to these changes.

He also seems to have difficulty getting his head around the idea that the future will look different compared to L.A.'s past. Again, he dismisses the developments as impending traffic disasters as if it is an obvious point. (Really?) It is fascinating how discussions of urban density and public transit provoke some Angelenos.

I also find the comment reveals a cynacism about the city and its ability to adapt and grow in the future. There is a seeming presumption there is nothing the city can really do except attempt to stop all development; that efforts at creating density are foolish; that the city's best days are behind it. His apparent role is to point out this foolishness.

Hmm, I then turn to Mr. Roderick's site this morning as he extolls the unearthing of a cache of personal papers of Warren Beatty as if this is historically significant and of interest to Angelenos. Rest easy, Mr. Roderick is on the case! Westside fuddy-duddy, indeed.

The difference to me, and the reason I think K. Roderick is right in someways is because for most people LA Live, just like City Walk and The Grove and Santa Monica Promenade and Old Town Pasadena and Any Other Place In Los Angeles, will be a destination they will drive to. The reason it won't be like Times Square has nothing to do with it being artificial, anyone who has been to the new Times Square knows it's pretty damn artificial. But, it's so tightly woven into the fabric of the city that you can't help but feel like you've wandered into some amazing place when you get there. You don't get that with City Walk or The Grove because this city is made for cars. People drive to City Walk, pay to park in a garage, and then walk out into this Times Square-esque amusement park. It's no more "fake" or "real" that Times Square, I mean if you've ever been to City Walk you know it's incredibly popular (even with locals)and that the "streets" are filled with Times Square amounts of people. If Los Angeles wasn't home of the car culture, and the fabric of the city was connected by mass transit and foot traffic, City Walk might already hold the title "Times Square of the West". Yes, City Walk is reachable by the Red Line, but as we all know the Red Line certainly is not the life blood of this city... but even still, visiting City Walk via Red Line certainly "feels" more New York than driving there. The feeling that you get in New York or London doesn't have as much to do with the destinations being "real" instead of attractions, because those are tourist towns filled with attractions, but those attractions are so tightly woven into cities where the car doesn't rule and the attractions are tightly integrated into the environment instead of separate and isolated to ensure traffic is mitigated and that there is ample parking. Even a place like San Francisco "feels" more like New York or London, not because it's more "real" than Los Angeles, but simply because it's more cohesive. To get that New York "feel" (which is also the feel of any big city that is transit and pedestrian oriented) instead of that Orlando Florida "feel" Los Angeles will have to focus on creating comprehensive rail transit system and more importantly, convincing Angelenos to embrace it. Unfortunately, this has to be done properly, with planning and foresight, with more than simply short term (25 year) interests in mind, and that's something I don't think Los Angeles is very good at.

Fred:

You should know as well as anyone (as someone who runs a site about mass transit) that Los Angeles was NOT "made for cars," it was REMADE for cars.

The reason L.A. is so expansive is not freeways, it is trains. Specifically, the Pacific Electric, and secondarily the Los Angeles railway.

There were no freeways here until 1952 (except for the Pasadena and a small bit of the Hollywood), and L.A.'s density and development patterns were set long before then, mostly between 1890 and 1930, when the Pacific Electric was at its peak.

I actually am on your side, but my only point is that L.A.'s "car culture" is not necessarily a permanent feature of our city. There was a time before it existed, and there well may be a time in the future when the private automobile (and the gas-sucking SUV) is much less important and fetishized than it is today.

Scott...

Right. PE and etc did establish the basic geography of our urban area here... with Downtown as a hub, there were outliers at the ends of lines, places like Whittier, Long Beach and Santa Ana. The time of the automobile saw two huge developments - the infilling of the spaces along and between the old interurban lines, and then the gigantic spillover of "sprawl" into places as far-flung as Lancaster, South OC and Moreno Valley, Temecula and even now the Coachella Valley. OK, nobody on this site needs a history lesson, but it is interesting to see how so many "blame" LA sprawl on the auto. If LA had developed in the 1700s it would have been horse-based, as the old parts of Boston, NY and Philly are. Well - here we are, and we have all these cars (I drive freakin' everywhere as my projects are scattered all over SoCA) - yet since I've lived Downtown I have started walking more, even taking Metro and Amtrak or Metrolink. If I, a man who used to drive 40-50,000 miles per year, can do this, almost anyone can. Bring on the mass transit. If we can dump 200 BILLION into an ill advised political travesty in Iraq... we should be able to get somewhere with real good, modern, well planned mass transit. If the gov't must subsidize it, well, go ahead - after all, that's one of the things gov't is SUPPOSED to do, IMHO.

On the flip side:

In many European cities, like in Paris, the central city is the nice part, whereas the suburbs are the places you find housing projects: high unemployment, crime, violence, and immigrant unrest.

We're lucky to be in a situation where Downtown can potentially be just as safe, dynamic, and scenic as the outlying communities.

I agree with Whitman. When I was in Paris this past August, I stayed in a place called Juvisy and it wasn't as high class and clean as central Paris.

Although, Paris' RATP system was so great and easy to get anywhere you needed to get.

Whitman's comment is quite prescient... the major European cities (i.e. Paris) have been around a whole lot longer than anything here. We seem to be in a cycle of "getting back to the city", as the costs of commuting - financial and otherwise - and the lack of community in so many of our suburbs have inspired people (like me) to go back to the center of things. Who knows - in 50 years we may well have a similar situation here, where the dynamic, interesting, economically viable areas are in places like Downtown LA. The examples of many of our farther out suburbs are less than inspiring... no offense to anyone there, but Palmdale, Lancaster, Moreno Valley - these places have serious social and economic issues, some of which make Downtown look pretty together by comparison.

BTW - the oft-repeated boring swipe I hear about Downtown is "why did you move THERE? Nobody goes to Downtown!"... Well - I'm looking out the window and I see that the parking lot is full - as always on a weekend. I just walked 30 blocks for lunch hour and crossed paths with probably well over a thousand people... Nobody goes down here??? Well... maybe we don't get too many beach adjacent socially phobic image obsessed types... but hey, that's OK by me! Looking around, I see all kinds of people - and a whole lot of them. After all, isn't that what a major city SHOULD be?

I'm an LA native true blue and I've seen the city in a commercialized freefall for what seems like forever. Now, For the past several years I've been reading and hearing chatter about downtown and how the powers that be are attempting to induce some sort of cultural center there. LOL. By "culture" they seem to mean - as the person above so rightly characterized it - as "Creating another City Walk", or as I say "Shitty Walk." Downtown might likely be a profitable endeavor. Especially if what I suspect is true, that city tax payers are putting in on it. (without our vote as usual.)

But let's cut to the chase.... what really makes a great "city center" is a community spirit, small independant and unique businesses (that give a city it's identity like it or not) and good city planning. All of which LA has none of and or is losing rapidly. Let me guess what shopping experience is going to be implanted in this complex.... hmmmmmm Starbucks? Burger King? Imax theatre? ESPN / FOX sports Bar........ oh wait that's already across the street.... whatever I'm sure it will be plenty plasic and plenty cookie cutter and plenty "focus group tested." but it won't have the life blood of what a great city actually is.... and that is years of struggle and thought by independant and creative entrepeneurs who invent their own culture or used their own brains and risked their lives to create something that people want. All we get these days in LA is a robot with money franchising a Subway. It's not just LA though dont fret.... drive up the coast and all the small town USA spots look exaclty the same. It's a trend that is sadly gripping the entire nation.

The harsh reality. Rent in downtown is RIDICULOUS. Ain't nobody who pays that amount going to fall for a new Shitty Walk. Shitty Walk depends for the most part on tourist dollars and visitor dollars from the San Fernando Valley, LA, Orange County and San Gabriel Valley who have no imagination, low income and little knowledge about the world. They are the TV generation. Easily amused. These are the people that downtown biz developers are hoping to court lets make no mistake about it. They are easy to market to. More importantly these people won't live downtown they live in the same places that Shitty Walk customers live and have the same mentality that Shitty Walkers have. Meaning, traffic will be even sicker than it was before.......... can't wait!

At 31 with an annual income of approx 90k I think I represent something like the target age and audience of consumers for which the developers hope to attract. Unfortunately for them I'm not buying it. I'm quite SICK of places like shitty walk where it feels like some sort of carnival created by out of touch money hungry business men who want to induce commercial culture on people. I know I know, build it and they will come.... and indeed many people go to Shitty Walk..... but if you guys are thinking on the level of Paris and New York I laugh in your faces. If I saw you I might even spit in your face. Those cities took literally centuries to develope. LA has none of that and with the lames who managed to block production on the Redline or sap funds from actual people oriented community planning (transportation parks etc etc) vs. re-directing funds to "consumer" oriented city planning I have one last thing to say. I'm not buying your crap.

"Shitty Walk depends for the most part on tourist dollars and visitor dollars from the San Fernando Valley, LA, Orange County and San Gabriel Valley who have no imagination, low income and little knowledge about the world."

The Watcher,

Point well taken (and I believe well articulated), but I think the bit about these low-income ignorant yahoos from surrounding areas somehow corrupting an otherwise flowering culture is a bit loaded. First, some of these yahoos don't visit the City Walk or the Grove--they visit Broadway or Chinatown or Koreatown. In my case, we visit the MOCA or the LACMA. I've always thought places such as the Grove and yes, Pasadena, Santa Monica and Hollywood are for people who have enough money to spend but little taste to discern between quality and label. Admit it or not, Starbucks may be a brand of joe, but it's a pretty fucking pricey cup of joe. Point? The "quality" always advertised as attached to new, upcoming LA "things to do" have never been a bait to hook poorer apparently "tasteless" tourists but middle-class or upper middle-class who have enough spare cash to pretend culture.

Also, it may be true that it is tourism that is slowly turning New York into the the glorified Disney park that it is, and specifically tourists from surrounding areas who harbor ideas of what New York look like. But it is also true that it is a very contemporary phenomenon to actually stick to these preconceived ideas of place; New York prior to this was still very much the wild unidentifiable place that it is, despite the popularity it has with tourists (even from surrounding areas and counties) even then. Blaming tourists for changing taste for the worse seems to be dictated by the very "build it and they will come" attitude you deride. It isn't tourist ignorance that keep things the shitty way they are, it is the businesspeople that have encouraged the infantile tendency to prefer ignorance of the world as an acceptable form of being.

Lastly, at 31, I'm glad that you consider yourself mature enough to comment on these poor and ignorant people. Yay. But of course, who am I to say anything: I'm 22 and a LA-traitor and a New York refugee.