Michael Maltzan: 8 Questions on LA Urbanism
1. Given the current climate of economic crisis, governmental turmoil, and a general sense of stasis in the community, how can the city of eternal optimism take advantage of such a historic moment?
At a moment like this you need to be realistic about the challenges facing the City, but we also cannot afford to be overtaken by a sense of pessimism because of the particular moment we find ourselves in. Times like this are exactly the moments when planning, forward thinking, and progressive ideas can and should be proposed. By putting our energy into comprehensive, visionary proposals; we can challenge the static ways that we think about the city in its current form and begin envisioning the City of our future. Not only for ourselves but for successive generations.
2. As large- scale interventions in the city decline and as urban issues are solved more and more at the micro level, how can we begin to look at the city as a whole again? And as the last, largest single-owner parcel of land in such close proximity to Downtown Los Angeles, what are the opportunities the Piggyback Yards provide?
As planners, architects, landscape architects, and designers, we should always be thinking about the city in the most comprehensive ways, but we should also understand that Los Angeles is an urban environment of specific characteristics that make it different from other, more traditional cities.
In the past, cities have typically imagined large scale development as the agent of urban change. As one of the last underdeveloped pieces of the urban fabric, the Piggyback Yards are indeed large, but imagining it as a stand-alone or isolated development would be missing its real urban opportunity. Surrounded East Los Angeles, the River, the Cornfields, Downtown, and the potential Cleantech corridor to the south, the Piggyback Yards’ greatest potential is in its capacity to connect a series of disparate districts into a much larger, integrated part of the city that would represent a radical shift in thinking in this city. We can’t afford for this site to end up another silo-ized precinct in the city; instead it can become a model for the way a new Los Angeles can interact and connect physically, socially and culturally.
3. As a city constantly defined and redefined negatively by its infrastructure, how does reconnecting the city to the Los Angeles River change the identity of Los Angeles?
The design work that has already been done around the river makes it clear that the Los Angeles River is an essential resource in its ability to create real connections within a dispersed and divested city. Infrastructure in Los Angeles, and in many cities, is central to the goal of creating a cohesive city, not only because of its pragmatic and technical necessity, but because in sprawl cities like Los Angeles, infrastructure is the singular, cohesive characteristic in the urban fabric. Thinking this way you can imagine that the river has the ability to strongly shape the future identity of Los Angeles.
4. With 365 days of sunshine and a diverse landscape of terrain, Southern California and Los Angeles have a variety of landscapes and ecological environments, why do you feel that the city lacks diverse public space? And why is public space such an important part of the contemporary city?
Many people have said that because Los Angeles is a city of single family houses with individual, private lawns and backyards, that there is not a need in the city for public space. I think that this indicates a confusion between public space and open space; they are two very different things. The city as a whole has grown up forgetting how to make real public space. It is our responsibility as architects, landscape architects, and planners to find new ways to reinvest in public space, public amenities and public infrastructures that speak to our time as well as to the future. We must continue to find a way to produce space that is not just ‘open’ but that fosters and creates real connections between people. The viability and sustainability of the culture of Los Angeles depends on its ability to produce real interaction at a public level, and to create the space for our collective life to grow and be sustained.
5. The Piggyback Yards/Mission Yard area is just one of the zones of investigation in the city which is rich in geography, community, and political economy. With projects and development on hold, how can the laboratory of Los Angeles find momentum?
Los Angeles has always been a city about making; it is a city based both on its optimism and its creative spirit. In times like these, when building projects have slowed down, it is exactly the right time to make forms and ideas that will guide the building of the city when building projects intensify again. The Piggyback Yards represents a model example of collaborative minds coming together to make ideas to produce an achievable vision of the city’s future, and how powerful that vision can be at this moment, and to help build a movement and momentum for that future.
6. As Los Angeles continues to evolve, issues of housing, density, and community surface as populations begin to form relationships in new and unplanned ways. Emerging interaction can also result in friction and unforeseen conflict. With such a diverse population, what kind of community must Los Angeles anticipate?
I think it is a reality that Los Angeles and the region will continue to become denser and that that condition will create unforeseen conflicts, frictions, and intersections. Those are all good things. Any major collective culture must negotiate those issues; they are the terms of social and public interaction and debate. Importantly, though, it is the way in which a city collectively faces those challenges that in the end defines what kind of city we want, and of course, what kind of city we actually get. Up until now, Los Angeles has cultivated a culture of separations. We should encourage interactions and frictions as motivation to face this reality, and constructively plan for a more inclusive, sustainable future for Los Angeles.
7. Grand urban issues can seem insurmountable when viewed by the everyday person. What can you and I do to change the city in a positive way?
The expertise and the ambition to create productive plans in cities like Los Angeles already exists, but it is important that all of us in the city recognize, believe in, and support that creative energy. Most importantly, we need to be motivated as citizens to implore those who are responsible for making and implementing plans in the city to help sponsor and support creative approaches to planning our future. Collectively we must hold both ourselves and our representatives to the highest standards and refuse to accept half-hearted, mediocre planning solutions.
8. Right here and now, for you personally what characterizes the city of Los Angeles today?
To me, the characteristic that defines Los Angeles is the reality that we are at one of those rare pivotal moments in a city’s history when new opportunities and potential change appear on the immediate horizon. That horizon is approaching whether we are ready for it or not, and the way we navigate these next years from a planning perspective will result in the city that we, and our children inherit.
Tags: city, michael maltzan, questions, urbanism
