Your Answers: 8 Questions on LA Urbanism
Los Angeles is changing. No longer a city defined entirely by its sprawl, Los Angeles is reaching its perceived boundaries. Rather than rewrite its history, it looks to rebuild its urban fabric. Clearing the city is no longer an option, and context is viewed as an advantage rather than an obstacle as the metropolis grows. The shift in focus and burgeoning transformation of LA is both cause for attention and cause for action.
Through your answers and discussion around these questions we can help Los Angeles change, evolve, and grow into a sustainable, forward thinking metropolis for generations to come; all through a simple conversation.
Use the comment section below to share your thoughts.
The Questions:
- 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?
- 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 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?
- 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?
- 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?
- 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?
- 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?
- Right here and now, for you personally what characterizes the city of Los Angeles today?
July 24th, 2010 at 7:37 am
I think that before we concern ourselves with refurbishing and gentrifying a largely hidden industrial area we need to consider that in the larger scheme of things this push to “reinvent Los Angeles” is a thinly veiled attempt to push out the working class poor in the hopes of extracting more tax dollars through higher rents. The areas being targeted for “community redevelopment” represent the last remaining affordable areas of Los Angeles that exist largely as they did prior to WWII and that alone should have any true Angeleno with a sense of history up in arms. The fact that Boyle Heights and the surrounding areas have been largely ignored by developers all these years has proven to be a blessing in disguise for historians and are an example of LA for people who don’t know that there was once a height limit for all buildings due to earthquakes. And while all these grandiose plans may make great fodder for politicians seeking election as well as greedy developers who didn’t learn their lessons from the loft disaster downtown, before blindly buying into this scheme try asking these questions of the people who actually live in Boyle Heights and need to live close to the center of town. Where will they go when the rents skyrocket? Where will they get their cars fixed when Mission is completely gentrified with franchises selling caffeinated high fat snacks? Where are all the mom and pop businesses in the targeted areas that serve the local communities going to go when their blocks are bought out and razed for big box stores? This idea was tried in a different form 55-60 years ago in a part of town called Bunker Hill. Anybody familiar with that debacle? The area that was once Bunker Hill never achieved greater than 75% occupancy at any time since the transformation from low income and working class community into an answer to a question nobody asked in the first place. The impetus for all this fallacious over building? Tax dollars and higher rents. Did it work? No, it did not. I strongly urge anyone interested in this plan who appreciates the history of Los Angeles and have a sense of preservation to DO THEIR HOMEWORK AND LEARN THE HISTORY OF THIS GREAT CITY before signing on to a ostensibly well intentioned but flawed idea. All community redevelopment really means is a wealth transfer from the hands of many to the pockets of a few. History is removed and profit centers put in their place.