Twitchell has announced plans for a new Ruscha mural, on the blind wall of the third and fourth floors of an art district hotel, not far from a popular sausage and beer restaurant and the new sales rooms of the Hauser Wirth & Schimmel gallery. Ruscha is now 78, and it’s his older face, leaner, more knowing, that will look over downtown’s askew street grid. Ruscha will appear to lean his elbows at ease on the roof of an adjacent building, his large hands prominent. They are the hands of a man who makes things with them.

These things—paintings, prints, photographs, collages, films, and artist’s books— have been coming from Ruscha’s hands since the early 1960s. Most critics locate this work somewhere between pop art (because, Ruscha says, he listens to L.A.’s “crass commercial noise”) and conceptual art (because some of it is made on order to a set formula). What Ruscha does, however, is neither pop nor conceptual. There is an art of being in Los Angeles, and that’s what Ruscha does.

Muralist Kent Twitchell with the mural he plans to paint of artist Ed Ruscha on a building in downtown Los Angeles.

Being in L.A., despite the stereotype of its laidback life, isn’t easy. As Ruscha shows, the city is sketchy, repetitive, too brightly lighted when it isn’t shadowed, and flat. He once told interviewer Gary Conklin, “It’s all façades here—that’s what intrigues me about the whole city of Los Angeles—the façade-ness of the whole thing.” The city’s two dimensionality—a quasi-desert’s grand but withholding vista—is in Ruscha’s 25-foot-long panorama, Every Building on the Sunset Strip and in his absurdly expansive landscape paintings with their wide-screen, Panavision aspect ratio. In L.A.’s light, as Ruscha captures it, things may be startlingly present but nothing is near enough to embrace.

In some of those panoramas, a line of text, small and paralleling the horizon, advertises a desire or eavesdrops on a fear to which the setting is indifferent. That indifference, in another context, used to be called the romantic sublime. Los Angeles can’t be sublime (although it evokes terror among some observers). For one thing, L.A. is too much fun. Ruscha’s apocalyptic, funny Hollywood isn’t 19th century landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church’s Cotopaxi, despite their similarities. The Hollywood sign is forever part of the conversation about the way we amuse ourselves. Other than that, he once said of the sign, “It might as well fall down.”

That’s Ruscha the deadpan humorist, craftsman of American-style Dada, accepting things at face value, even the most blatantly inauthentic, and in the process articulating what it means to see Los Angeles. Here, where much merely seems, actually seeing is an achievement. It’s also defiance. In the bleak, monochromatic paintings Ruscha called Metro Plots, where the grid of Los Angeles is rendered obliquely and as if from the air, the street names almost fade into the ashen background, but not quite. This landscape of erasure “could almost be thought of as, well, after the holocaust,” Ruscha told Christophe Cherix of the Museum of Modern Art in 2012, “or … somewhere down the line in our very deep future.” And yet, after the disappearance, by catastrophe or time, of every building on every boulevard of Los Angeles, something would remain. The stubborn facticity of the specific—its resistance—will linger. Ruscha’s conviction (not always firm, however) that something of transient, flimsy Los Angeles persists is his purest gift to being in L.A.

Ruscha’s off-kilter take reappeared in the series of paintings he called City Lights, in which the mercury vapor lamps of decades ago, their white glare making the darkness darker and washing out all details, line streets that diagonal into the edge of the frame.

That kinetic perspective—of something emerging and passing the observer—fascinates Ruscha. To be in Los Angeles is to want to be in motion. It’s part of the thrill of the Standard Station paintings, as well as Norm’s, La Cienega, on Fire, and the Hollywood studio logo in Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights.

Ruscha ties this desire to the film cliché of a speeding train entering the frame, growing larger, and crossing the screen diagonally. “That was kind of cosmic to me; and I felt … there was something sweet about it. It was a sweet spot in my thinking,” Ruscha told MOMA’s Cherix.

Cinematic diagonals animate other works: the heavenly lights of the Miracle drawings, the shaft that cuts through Picture Without Words, and the movie projector light that casts “The End” in The Long Wait.

To be in Los Angeles juxtaposes the dream state of movie watching with the materiality of filmmaking, not just with the disenchantments of the film industry but also with the scratches and skips in a movie while it’s being shown. Those errors are visual junk but important to Ruscha because they reposition the viewer in the present while reminding the viewer that each print has its own history. Angelenos may appear to be immune to history, but Ruscha isn’t. He’s blotted reprints of his Sunset Boulevard photographs from 1966. He drew similar marks through another version of “The End” in Scratches On Film. And he painted a gallery of Western movie icons as if the buffalos, wagon trains, and teepees were grainy silhouettes on decomposing nitrate film stock. The fate of marginal things interests Ruscha, prompting him to re-photograph the commonplace boulevards he first documented in the mid-1960s.

Ruscha arrived in Los Angeles in 1956, when he was 18, when the city was just as adolescent and full of new things for a kid from Oklahoma. They were “modern, sleek things,” Ruscha remembered, and “very jazzy to me, and I thought that was like some kind of new music.” The cognitive dissonances of the city gave his work the conflict he was looking for. The heroism of the city’s unremarkable, persistent things has given the work its poignancy. The steadiness of Ruscha’s gaze at the city—the integrity and moral weight of his observation—gives us the art of being in L.A.

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You might also remember when downtown Los Angeles faded into an urban ghost town in the early 1990s, as commercial real estate values dropped sharply from the 1980s when Japanese real estate investors went on a buying spree that unraveled after the country’s stock market crashed in 1987. Almost a quarter of all office space was vacant, entire buildings in the financial district were empty and office buildings in Glendale were commanding twice the rent of downtown skyscrapers. It was only a matter of time before smart developers would recognize the untapped potential of downtown’s booming daytime population, hidden architectural jewels, and ideally priced parcels of land. (For reference, a recent article in the Los Angeles Business Journal announced the purchase of a tower on Figueroa Street for $175 million, a 67 percent premium to what was paid 11 years ago.) My beliefs were confirmed when Brookfield Properties announced in 2011 that it was planning a $40 million facelift to the FIGat7th property and that Target would be the new anchor. When an iconic brand that is on the forefront of design and great brick-and-mortar experiences agrees to join a project that has been in the doldrums for decades, it makes a statement. It says, “We acknowledge the history and failures here, but we’re going to bet on downtown and we’re betting big.”

We’re witnessing an incredible movement of urban revitalization and renewal and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down. This is great news. Leasing activity is high, and new-to-market brands are streaming in trying to make their mark. Infusing a once-neglected market with new retail and restaurants is a win-win for any city and its residents.

Of course, there are critics of all this revitalization downtown. They argue that neighborhoods lose their distinct, historic character when commercial interests invest in them, long-time residents can’t afford rents anymore, and “gentrification” happens. You can’t fight progress, but it does come with a cost. Without government grants and non-profit assistance, many of the district’s artists in residence will move to other neighborhoods close by. But sometimes, that’s the nudge it takes to bring attention and money to underserved markets. Retailers and artists alike move to a more affordable area out of necessity, and create the foundation for a new district. Suddenly Boyle Heights, the birthplace of the Chicano movement, is the next market poised for gentrification after property values jumped 18% from last year.

I direct the naysayers to the High Line in New York City, a 1.45-mile public park built on a historic rail structure. Some say that because of the High Line, Chelsea has lost its character and that this once quaint artist colony has been corrupted, but that’s not the case. The High Line is a wonderful example of brilliant urban planning that mixes modern designs with a functional “product” that lubricates the flow of people going in and out of the West Village, Meatpacking District, Chelsea, and New York’s newest emerging market…Hudson Yards, a $20 billion development project.

So how does an urban real estate market, especially one that had fallen on hard times like downtown Los Angeles, catch on, take hold, and then capture the hearts and interests of its residents?

From my point of view, the true measure of success for downtown or any urban market is how well it establishes a sense of connectivity across all of the mini-districts within its borders (as the High Line has accomplished). Connectivity is the way people get from Point A to Point B, whether it’s by foot, automobile, bus, or rail. In Los Angeles, those mini-districts include the Financial District, Fashion District, Arts District, and South Park (which includes LA Live), but connectivity also applies to any city that is a car ride away. When I am in Manhattan, I can walk from my office on Fifth Avenue to any market in any direction. There’s never a lull and never a city block without something on it. In downtown Los Angeles, sure, it’s possible for someone to walk from their office in South Park to the Ace Hotel to meet friends after work. But you’re not walking past retail or dining, you’re walking past parking lots and unlabeled buildings that do nothing to invite a pedestrian in. Connectivity occurs when markets start to merge together and there are ways for people to move between them that are interesting and meaningful.

This is something that simply won’t happen, and doesn’t need to happen in other markets in Los Angeles. No one associates connectivity even with communities as close together in proximity as Santa Monica and Venice. No one is going to walk from the Third Street Promenade to Abbot Kinney. Nor is anyone is going to walk from Brentwood Gardens to the Brentwood Country Mart down San Vicente Boulevard, past a country club and residential areas. I’m confident that Los Angeles’ impressive mass transit initiative will also serve as a vital piece of connectivity between communities that once seemed impossible. If the staggering number of USC football fans riding the Metro from Culver City to the Coliseum on game days is any indication, then it’s a great sign that Angelenos are already embracing public transportation.

But to capitalize on this unique urban environment, downtown Los Angeles must also continue to expand its culinary and cultural offerings, which are ultimately what attract visitors and new residents, and keep the existing ones happy. We already have the Staples Center, LA Live, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, in addition to the Broad Museum coming in 2015 and a growing list of restaurants and luxury hotel venues; but it needs to grow from there.

As an example, nobody needs a reason to spend a weekend in Manhattan. You could go on forever naming all of the exciting museums to visit, restaurants to try and stores to shop at. But for downtown Los Angeles to reach that undisputable status, it also needs to create an area that makes it conducive to do business, and for investors and developers to spend capital and be confident that their projects can be executed. Creating a pedestrian-friendly downtown area also means addressing safety issues, like infrastructure improvements, cleaning up Skid Row, and helping the homeless population.

In Los Angeles, we’re only in the first inning. Downtown Los Angeles may experience a few setbacks and changing market conditions may affect future developments. We’re still 20 years away from boarding the proposed “Subway to the Sea.” The critics and naysayers will always be around. But clearly, with more than 80 proposed projects and developments in the works according to city records, we are on the right track for the near future, when downtown Los Angeles can take its rightful place as the cultural and culinary epicenter of the West Coast.

Again.

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And yet there’s no controversy and little conversation. No one is screaming that the Koreans are buying up America, or even downtown L.A. No one is complaining about how the Wilshire Grand Hotel has been demolished to make way for a skyscraper. If you read the online comments to the handful of news articles on the project, Angelenos say they welcome the shiny glass and steel New Wilshire Grand, and hope it will further revitalize downtown when it opens in 2017.

This reaction is very different from the alarmism of the 1980s, when the Mitsubishi Estate Company of Tokyo purchased Rockefeller Center in New York City, and Japanese companies invested in firms and properties all over America. What accounts for the difference? One obvious answer is that Japan, unlike Korea, was not an American enemy. The less obvious answer is that Korea, despite its achievements and centuries-old connections to America, has been slow to penetrate the American consciousness.

When I was a child growing up in New York City in the 1980s, the construction of a Korean skyscraper complex would have been inconceivable. Back then, Korea was virtually unknown, except when it was depicted as a poor, primitive, and war-torn country in M*A*S*H, (which, while set in Korea, was actually an allegory for the war in Vietnam). Even the actual Korean War is referred to as “The Forgotten War” or “The Unknown War.”

It wasn’t until quite recently that Korea, and Koreans, entered the American psyche. Throughout the 20th century, Korea existed in Japan’s shadow. In 1905, Korea became a protectorate (effectively a colony) of Japan and ceased to exist legally after it was annexed in 1910. The country was liberated after Japan’s defeat in World War II, divided into north and south, and then ravaged by the Korean War.

After the war, South Korea’s GDP languished in the company of sub-Saharan nations as Japan’s economy skyrocketed. By 1978, Japan had the world’s second largest economy. Japanese culture entered and established a place for itself in the minds of Americans. The 1980s were filled with all things Japanese—from comics (anime and manga) and literature (Haruki Murakami), to audio and entertainment systems (Nakamichi and Nintendo) and music (karaoke). With this onslaught on a myriad of fronts, the American fear of being subsumed by Japan was visceral.

I came of age during this period of Japan’s ascendancy, a time when Koreans were eclipsed by the scorching Japanese sun. As with many Korean-Americans, my family’s presence in America was a consequence of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which lifted many previous restrictions on immigration from Asian countries. Seeking to claim their portion of the American Dream, my parents came to New York City with just $1,000; in today’s terms, this is a little over $5,500. Times were tough. My father graduated from the prestigious Yonsei University in Seoul, but in the U.S. he was forced to take odd jobs, from night watchman in a discount department store to working in a pizzeria. I remember hearing stories of Koreans with Ph.D.s who had mental breakdowns because they could only find work in factories alongside high school dropouts.

I also remember being asked, “What kind of ‘ese’ are you? Japanese? Chinese?”

Korean invisibility in America didn’t last, however. Korea’s international profile has grown; the current Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, is Korean. Here in the U.S., Korean-Americans are increasingly visible and influential, in the arts (for example, L.A. painter and graffiti artist David Choe) and in education and development (Jim Yong Kim, the former president of Dartmouth College, was appointed president of the World Bank in 2012). Korean cuisine is spreading beyond urban enclaves to the rest of America through the popularity of Korean barbecue. In music and entertainment, 2012 was a watershed year for the international phenomenon known as K-pop (Korean popular music) with the American debut of multi-platinum group Girls’ Generation. And only those who live under rocks were unaware of the sardonic lyrics and equine gyrations of Psy’s “Gangnam Style.”

Downtown L.A.’s coming 73-story New Wilshire Grand is of a piece with this cultural arrival. It will house a luxury hotel, restaurants, retail—and a rooftop pool. Right now, it is a hole in the ground—a hole with a new foundation after last week’s concrete pour. When it is completed (2017, says the schedule), it will rise to claim the title of tallest structure in the West. In one sense, the building has been in the making for generations. For this immigrant son, it is a testament to how much has changed in my beloved city of L.A., and country. It is a point of recognition and pride. Even if you don’t hear all that much conversation about it.

The post The Koreans Are Coming! The Koreans Are Coming! appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

One thing I was fairly certain of at the outset: Nearly all our saint-streets were, counterintuitively, named neither by Spanish explorers nor Mexican settlers seeking to invoke a saint’s watchful blessings over their turf. No more than a handful of paths and trails carried the names of saints before the knolls and plains that became Los Angeles were declared American soil.

Rather, it was late-19th- and early-20th-century Anglo developers and city boosters who—in seeking to bestow some amber-cast, Ramona-esque Mission-style allure on otherwise anonymous stretches of pavement—gifted us these mostly Spanish titles.

But, as a believer in unintended consequences, this only heightened my curiosity. So, fortified by a small grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, and with my trusty spiral-bound Thomas Guide to the streets of Los Angeles at my side, I set out to see where and how the saints and streets might intersect.

The connections I mapped were as rich and varied as Los Angeles’ multitude of communities themselves. But perhaps none felt more profound than that of San Julian Street, a little-traveled corridor within walking distance of the city’s historic core, and within striking distance of its heart.

San Julian Street runs north-south for a short ways—just nine blocks, from 5th to Pico—and lies a block west of San Pedro Street, at the southeastern edge of downtown.

Formally established in 1883, it formed part of a loose-knit group of religious-themed streets in the area—Santa Clara, St. Elmo, San Leandro, and La Bondad—most of which vanished as streets were re-cut or renamed. San Julian, however, endured.

Hipsters of a certain age may recall the boisterous, contentious tenure of Gorky’s Café—a bohemian hangout and haven for coffee, conversation, and borscht—that, beginning in 1981, illuminated the southwest corner of San Julian and 8th Street for a decade until its agonizing demise in 1992.

Yet, the things that drove Gorky’s to extinction—the perception of downtown as unsafe, café patrons encountering panhandlers on their way to and from the parking lot, and homeless bundled into nearby doorways—led San Julian Street, particularly its northern half, to its rebirth as metaphor.

Another Saint Julien in a big-city labyrinth: the Church of Saint Julien le Pauvre in Paris

The name derives from one of the most popular of medieval saints, the French Saint Julien l’Hospitalier, whose life, as recounted in 13th- and 14th-century manuscripts, bears resemblance to Greek legends, in a tale worthy of Shakespeare.

Julien was of noble birth and great promise, but his life was set off-course by an awful curse—a foretelling that he would kill his parents. To avoid this fate, Julien wandered the earth “until Fortune wearied of him.” His parents, heartbroken, despaired of ever finding him alive.

Over time Julien made a new life for himself, even married, and settled down far from the land of his birth. But fate brought his parents to his door, as pilgrims; and in a terrible misunderstanding—confusing his father and mother with adulterous lovers— he killed them in the dark of night.

Again Julien set off—in penance this time—to wander in tatters and without shoes, eating bread where it was found, drinking “from many an unhealthful spring.” And again, eventually he settled down, by the side of a road, and built a little hovel. There he welcomed other wanderers, offering them a night’s meal and lodging while refusing any pay.

One night it stormed—all sleet and heavy rains—and Julien answered a cry for help from an ancient beggar, weak with hunger and festering wounds. Julien brought the feeble man inside, fed him, and embraced him through the night to warm his chilled bones.

In the morning light the stranger revealed himself to be an angel and spoke: “Julien, now may you rest. All is forgiven.”

Over the past 35 years, San Julian Street has become the central gathering place for Los Angeles’ homeless population. When I first visited, in 2000, the sidewalks would fill each evening with hundreds of men and women, jostling for a tiny space of relative warmth and uncertain safety.

Like most saints, Julien has many patronages, some of which now seem curious (circus workers, for example). But, given the presence of SRO hotels on San Julian Street, his patronage of hotel-keepers and innkeepers makes some sense.

Something more profound, however, emerges from considering Julien’s relationship to two other groups: wanderers and providers of shelter.

His noble birth had prepared Julien for a life of relative ease, but an unexpected curse altered his life irreparably. In a similar way, most of the homeless had jobs and families before crises took their toll, and fully one-third suffer severe mental illness—a curse, in its own way.

Yet the cardinal chapter of Julien’s story—the transition that gives his life meaning—is his evolution from a wanderer to one who aids wanderers. Not only does this speak to restoration and redemption, but it also provides us with a challenging template for viewing others, the homeless most especially.

Saint Julien was a homeless man who, over time, discovered empathy and put the welfare of others first, becoming a saint in the process. Homelessness, therefore, does not define him; it describes a period, a stage, in his life.

We do well to take this into consideration when next we see a homeless person, or vote on funding for housing. The condition of the people on San Julian Street represents just a moment in lives of remarkable, unimaginable potentiality.

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Hawthorne recalled arriving at the Times in 2004 and feeling like downtown was effectively empty; it was hard, he said, to find a cup of coffee after 5 or 6 p.m. Today, “we’re in the midst of a real revival that has sort of reached a real tipping point in terms of residential population,” said Hawthorne. At the same time, the recession has stalled a number of projects, leaving downtown “in something of an interesting position at the moment.”

How, he asked the panelists, have your experiences and perspectives on downtown changed in the past few years?

Landscape architect Tony Paradowski of Rios Clementi Hale Studios, who spent nearly seven years working on Grand Park, said that at the first meetings with locals, people were “just interested to see something happening with this space–anything, really.” But as time progressed, he saw people realizing that the park was theirs. At the first community meeting, only one person wanted to see a dog park in the space. By the end of the process, there were more people and more dogs in the area, and a dog park was incorporated into the design.

Architect Hernan Diaz Alonso, principal and founder of L.A.-based design practice Xefirotarch and graduate programs chair at SCI-Arc, first saw downtown Los Angeles in the early 1980s, when he was living in Argentina, on the screen in Blade Runner. “I’m disappointed because it’s becoming this clean and civilized place!” he said. He moved downtown in 2001 and touted its diversity and complexity; he loves raising a family in the area, he said. His biggest hope for downtown is that it gets denser–three or four times as dense as it is now–without losing its character. And with a young daughter at home and another child on the way, he’d like to see more schools in the area. Schools, he said, could become catalysts for all sorts of other changes, particular in the empty pockets of downtown between more developed neighborhoods.

Melani Smith, who directs planning and urban design at downtown L.A.-based Meléndrez, thinks the next challenge is connecting the different neighborhoods of downtown and making circulation among them easier. She’d hoped for an easy trip from her offices at the Oviatt building, just under a mile away to Grand Park via DASH, but had to wait 20 minutes for the bus to arrive. She believes the streetcar has the potential to make transportation easier all around downtown.

Hawthorne asked the panelists about certain neighborhoods, like Bunker Hill, that still aren’t working. Grand Avenue, he said, has not succeeded as its planners had hoped, despite grand buildings by “a murderers’ row of architects.”

Smith said that the width of Grand Avenue remains a barrier, while Paradowski said that the street lacks a sense of scale because it takes so long to walk from one institution to the next, and because so many potential public spaces remain closed off.

Panelists pointed to financial, political, and policy stumbling blocks that are keeping downtown less pedestrian-friendly. But they agreed that the Department of Transportation today is more open than ever before to making downtown a place not just for cars but also for people on foot, bicycle, and public transportation. Smith, who is working on the Figueroa Corridor Streetscape Project, linking south Los Angeles to downtown, said that the DOT has been a great ally in the effort to build what will soon be L.A.’s first separated bicycle lanes.

Hawthorne asked if centralizing city power–à la Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York City–might help L.A.’s public works become as experimental and ambitious as its private architecture.

Architect Alice Kimm of John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects said that, in designing public projects, architects have to satisfy multiple constituencies, some of whom are less aware of the value of good design. “There are many bad examples of design out there that to the public will fulfill a certain function, but that doesn’t make it a great design,” she said. But in the past decade she feels downtown residents have become more interested in ambitious architecture and design.

In the question-and-answer session, audience members and the panelists discussed supermarkets, gentrification, the possibility of a new football stadium, and the activation of expensive public spaces like Grand Park.

The panelists said that supermarkets are a necessity as well as a safe bet, pointing to the success of the Ralphs that opened in 2007. It has the highest-grossing service deli in the chain, according to Smith.

How, asked another audience member, is downtown going to grow around or through skid row–and how will skid row integrate with the rest of downtown?

“I don’t see it go away or see us wanting it to go away,” said Kimm, who works nearby and who believes that the services offered in skid row are a necessity. But, she said, downtown workers and residents also need the area to feel safe.

Will a new football stadium change the character of downtown or the culture of its residents?

Diaz Alonso said that he is an advocate of the stadium–and even of the traffic it will bring. “I think a high-density traffic jam creates different opportunities,” he said. People who come to a game may stay downtown for two or three hours after the game ends to avoid traffic; others will find alternate means of transportation. However, he could see problems arising if the city builds a suburban-model stadium–with huge parking lots surrounding it.

Smith, who participated in a recent public debate at the planning commission–which approved the project to the next step–assured him and the audience that the stadium will be an urban one, and it will be an opportunity for downtown to activate new public spaces like the Gilbert Lindsay Plaza, nearly four unused acres in front of the convention center at Figueroa and Pico.

So how can downtown activate spaces like the plaza–and Grand Park?

Paradowski said that park designers knew they’d have to rely on programming to get people in for the first time. “We kept the design simple to provide spaces that sometimes seem empty but other times like tonight are full,” he said. And, he said, addressing the audience, if you came here for the first time tonight, maybe you’ll come back.

Hawthorne surveyed the audience: Who had come to the park for the first time tonight? About half the people in the large crowd raised their hands.

Watch full video here.
See more photos here.
Read Angelenos’ opinions on what it would take for L.A. to have a world-class downtown here.

*Photos by Aaron Salcido.

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Los Angeles, a place of constant reinvention, is always reinventing its downtown. For decades, those reinventions, and various big dreams for the city center, have been dashed. But the past several years have seen perhaps the strongest, most sustained push for remaking downtown–particularly as a place to live–in a century. That progress has been accompanied by a debate over whether the changes are for the good–or whether they are unworthy of a great city. In advance of a Zócalo in Grand Park event, “Will Downtown Ever Work?” we asked Angelenos: What would it take for Los Angeles to have a downtown that’s considered world-class?

Let’s just say it already is world-class and worry about what matters

We are in the midst of another of the many optimistic cycles that have proclaimed the emergence of new bustling 24-7 downtown, this one hinging on the L.A. Live entertainment complex. Like the last two, which were so hopefully centered on the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall and the construction of Staples Center, this one will fail to meet the most ambitious expectations–even if it turns out to be profitable for its developers.

Los Angeles will never have a downtown that compares with Manhattan or Chicago. Those who think it will are probably locked into a rigid and old-fashioned model of what cities are like. They also ignore L.A.’s particular history and geography.

L.A. developed as a polycentric metropolis, never experiencing the 19th century industrial centralization that created the dense downtowns of Chicago and other eastern cities. For much of the 20th century, L.A. typified the low-density sprawling western U.S. metropolis, a collection of suburbs in search of a central city. Over the past 40 years, it has been changing in very different ways. Global migrations to the urban core created Manhattan-like residential (but not commercial) densities, and classic suburbia was urbanized to such levels that L.A. passed New York City in 1990 as the densest urban area in the country. This new process of what I call “regional urbanization” is also polycentric, so far producing as many as 40 cities with populations of more than 100,000 in the L.A. region. With densities increasing almost everywhere, why should the old city center grow rapidly? Investment can continue, but it is expectations about downtown that need to change. Perhaps we should just proclaim that downtown is already “world class” and get on with it.

Edward Sojais professor of Urban Planning at UCLA.

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We’re already on the path to “world class”

You’re asking the wrong question. “World class” is a subjective category that is in the eye of the beholder and is freighted with visions of grandiosity. Rather, I think it is fair to say that Downtown L.A. is increasingly becoming the live/work/play destination that many have long hoped for, and that characterizes truly successful downtowns.

From a statistical point of view, downtown is the largest job base in the region. It is the center of its culture, government, and professional sports (especially if one considers USC football a professional team). And its constituent neighborhoods–South Park, Bunker Hill, Little Tokyo, the Arts District, and Central City West–have experienced a surge in residential population. Indeed, the downtown residential population has increased by 159 percent over the last 13 years, and is now estimated at 48,000.

Amenities–the restaurants, stores, clubs and public spaces that bind a community together, have sprung up at a dizzying pace. In 2011 alone, more than 104 restaurants, bars and shops opened in downtown, and the 16-acre Grand Park, which connects City Hall to the Grand Avenue cultural core, was opened to the public this July. Convention business and tourism have increased dramatically. This downtown energy has spread to the north and east, to Echo Park, Silver Lake, and Highland Park.

Soon, Eli Broad’s new museum of modern art, truly a world-class venue like its neighbor Disney Concert Hall, will open soon. A new NFL stadium and expanded convention center likely will follow. The Downtown Connector subway system will improve its accessibility. But downtown L.A. is still a work in progress, and will require several more years to reach its potential. The signs are promising. Local residents are organizing to fund and start a new public charter school. The Historic Core is awash with loft dwellers walking their dogs and opening retail establishments. Farmers markets abound. Over 2500 new apartments are under construction or ready to start in the next six months. World class? Maybe not yet, but not far away…

Bill Witte is the president and managing partner of Related California.

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More investment, more green space, more schools

Downtown Los Angeles has experienced an extraordinary renaissance since the opening of Staples Center and the passage of the Adaptive Re-Use Ordinance by the City of Los Angeles, both in 1999. We are well on our way to becoming a world-class city.

The numbers tell the story. Almost $16 billion dollars has been invested in downtown since 1999, including the construction of Staples Center, L.A. LIVE, the Caltrans building, the Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Police Administration Building, Grand Park, and the Broad Museum. More than 18,000 new residential units also have been built.

Downtown’s residential population has exploded from about 18,000 in 1999 to almost 50,000 today. In addition, more than 200 restaurants, bars, nightclubs have opened. So has a Ralphs grocery store. The streets of Downtown, once dead after 5 p.m., are now busy with pedestrians, including many people pushing baby strollers and walking their dogs, morning, noon and night. Downtown is alive.

All of these advances have been supported by eight business improvement districts (BIDs) in downtown that keep our streets clean and safe, promote economic development, and market Central City. Funded by property owners through a special real estate assessment that is self-imposed through special elections, the BIDs invest some $17 million in downtown’s eclectic neighborhoods annually.

That said, to become a truly world-class city, we need more green spaces and charter & private schools for our families who live and work here. We need more investment of every type–retail, commercial, entertainment and residential–to achieve the critical mass that will make us a world-class downtown.

Carol E. Schatz is the first woman to serve as President and CEO of the Central City Association (CCA) of Los Angeles.

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More people, more assets, more transit connections. And more attitude

I have trouble deciding whether downtown needs to be considered “World Class.”
Downtown surely needs to reflect more accurately that it stands at the center of the second-largest city in the U.S., and of America’s gateway to the East and South. And it needs to be understood by all elected officials that downtown is essential to the City’s future, and that they must invest in infrastructure, support trade and tourism, and encourage investment.

Those are big, obvious things. But what has driven downtown’s recent revival is a more subtle force–a new attitude about the nature of cities in general and downtown in particular.

We are in a new age of urbanism, one that is more focused on how we live and thrive in the city. Before we become a “World Class Downtown,” my sense is we must become a “good” downtown, one that serves the people of Los Angeles.

We need to be rich in cultural, educational, entertainment, and retail assets, and diverse in our population and neighborhoods. Our existing wealth in these areas has begun to change our once dormant downtown, but more change is needed.

Downtown needs to be more walkable, greener, and better connected to the rest of the city’s important components (including its airport!) by efficient, high-quality mass transit.

Most of all, we need 200,000 more full-time downtown residents of all income levels. I expect that will happen sooner than anyone imagines.

When I see other “World Class Cities,” I am, of course, drawn to their iconic architecture and to their cultural centers. But it is the people of those cities that are most compelling. The vibrancy of populations engaged in the daily reinvention of their cities–that is what makes such cities fascinating. Downtown’s people, and their work to reinvent downtown, may not make the place “world class” but they will make it “good.”

Tom Gilmore is a Principal of Gilmore Associates, a real estate development company based in Downtown Los Angeles. He was the first developer in Los Angeles to utilize the Adaptive Re-Use Ordinance and has converted vacant buildings into more than 500 Lofts in what is now known as the Old Bank District.

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Transportation can turn a regional hub into a world-class center

Downtown Los Angeles already is the primary–but not the only–hub in Southern California. And investments by the public and private sector will strengthen its position, especially in the area of transportation.

Measure R is better connecting the region to downtown L.A. Metro is extending the subway to other major L.A. centers–Beverly Hills, Century City, and UCLA/Westwood–and the four light rail lines–to and from Long Beach, the San Gabriel Valley, east Los Angeles, and Santa Monica–finally will be connected. These will make access to downtown easier and more convenient than ever.

Much of Metrolink’s regional commuter rail service goes to downtown, and Metro is at work on a master plan to improve Union Station. California’s high-speed rail, under current plans, would stop at Union Station.

LADOT’s “Express Park” program brings real-time parking availability info to its subscribers, and uses flexible pricing so that curbside parking is at once more readily available and more often used. LADOT is building a network of bikeways in downtown Los Angeles. Bike Nation has proposed a bike-sharing program downtown and LADOT will be implementing “mobility hubs” that allow people to share bicycles and cars in certain locations. Next up is the installation of “parklets”–curbside parking spaces that can be used as public space, with seating tables, planters, and bicycle parking.

These transportation initiatives by public agencies, coupled with private investment, are turning downtown from Southern California’s primary hub to a world-class center.

Jaime de la Vega is General Manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT).

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Bigger vision, and overcoming our inferiority complex

Los Angeles is undeniably a world-class city; at issue is its legibility as such. I think there is a more complex and elaborate conversation around the question of whether a world-class city necessarily must have a world-class downtown. I would assert that the answer isn’t obvious and, in the case of Los Angeles, is yet to be determined.

Downtown Los Angeles is benefitting from renewed focus, investment and residents who bring with them the promise of the 24-hour environment central Los Angeles hasn’t seen since the clearing of Bunker Hill in the late 50s and early 60s. A few remarkable buildings have been added to the streetscape. A critical mass of residents-by-choice, restaurants and culture now exists, and the necessities of life can be obtained without a trip across the river or a freeway. What hasn’t yet gelled is the sense of this place as an authentic urban environment. All of the pieces of downtown don’t seem to fit together; the whole is not yet more than the sum of its parts.

Los Angeles is a city that has stumbled backward into its future. The driving force in new development is, and has always been, opportunism, not strategy. This tendency underlies the city’s charming patchwork of surprising urban moments, and explains why its identity continues to remain unclear to those who require clarity from their cities.

The new Grand Park provides an important example. The site was an existing cut between public buildings–a significant but problematic public space. While no one would object to the rehabilitation of the overly-paved, confused plot of land, and while there is general agreement that Grand Park presents a beautiful, badly needed green space downtown, questions remain as to how and when the park will be used. The land was available and this made the project feasible; those questions could be sorted out later.

Los Angeles continues to suffer from the combination of an inferiority complex and a love affair with the wisdom of the market. Cost-effective projects are better ones, never mind if they are stripped of their vision. This explains how we ended up with a rail line–the Green Line–that travels between two small towns, Norwalk and Redondo Beach, and stops short of LAX.

Projects won’t contribute to downtown Los Angeles as a world-class entity if we conceive them while looking only at costs and local needs, aspiring to nothing more than solving problems.

An expanded vision of downtown demands that we overcome our fear of urbanity. When presented with the possibility that Grand Park might become a site of protest (a logical assumption, since the park commands a strong visual axis with City Hall), officials initially responded that it could be closed “after hours.”

If only! If only L.A. finally had a locus for celebrations and complaint that is not privatized and sanitized. If Los Angeles aspires to a downtown that is recognized internationally, then we’ll need to welcome the complexity, the messiness and the conflict that are part of the condition we architects once embraced as “Metropolitan.” Our vision needs to transcend what Michael Sorkin refers to as “generic urban niceness” with a muscularity and fearlessness in line with a city that is “world-class.”

Chava Danielson is an architect at DSH // architecture and an Adjunct Professor at Otis College of Art and Design, teaching design studio and urban history and theory. She serves as co-chair of the Political Outreach Committee of the AIA-Los Angeles.

*Photo courtesy of waltarrrrr.

The post Is Downtown Finally Looking Up? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Despite the great view and the proximity to work–nine blocks–I was still apprehensive about the move I’d made. Back in 1995, when I first started working in downtown L.A., the idea of living there never entered my mind. Downtown was dirty and dangerous, dead during evenings and weekends, and devoid of housing options. This started to change in the years that followed, as buildings got renovated and restaurants and retail and services moved in, but I still wondered if I’d feel comfortable and safe there.

I’m feeling a similar sense of apprehension now, as I look down from the criminal courthouse at what until recently was a massive parking lot for our building. Today, it is Grand Park, four blocks and 12 acres of green lawn and park benches, trees and plants–Los Angeles County’s multi-million-dollar bet on downtown L.A. It’s a gamble that could result in an enormous payoff for not just the neighborhood but for the entire city.

“Too much is expected of city parks,” wrote Jane Jacobs in 1961. “Far from transforming any essential quality in their surroundings, far from automatically uplifting their neighborhoods, neighborhood parks themselves are directly and drastically affected by the way the neighborhood acts upon them.”

If that’s the case, then the success of Grand Park depends on how we act upon it. This is a moment of truth. Has downtown come far enough along to make a public space this big and this open a vibrant place–to keep it alive not just on weekdays when the area is buzzing with office workers but on nights and weekends as well?

We’ve seen premature optimism in the past. Pershing Square, another downtown park, once “grand,” was renovated and reopened amid high hopes two decades ago. Today it is a vision of concrete and garishly painted structures, with an interior almost hidden from the street. Inside, shady-looking characters lounge about, taking over benches, deterring passers-by from staying. Recent efforts to hold events there and bring people back have yielded minimal benefit. It still seems neglected and unsafe.

It’s easy to imagine the same fate for Grand Park. Its motto is “The park for everyone,” but in downtown L.A. “everyone” isn’t just government employees or young new residents. It’s also drug users and homeless people. The park could easily become a nighttime home for many of them. Drinking and drug activity could make the park a dangerous place. Protesters could move in and make the park a place of confrontation. Unruly overnight visitors might leave the grass littered with trash and waste each morning. It’s difficult for security to monitor 12 acres all the time.

And yet, despite these worries, I’m optimistic. Whatever the drawbacks of downtown may be, the changes for the better have been fast, even incredible. I love living there. Despite crime and homelessness, art galleries and boutiques have mushroomed. On the streets around my apartment, a multitude of new bars and restaurants have opened, one after another, several with sidewalk tables for people to eat and drink outside in the Los Angeles weather. Residents are out walking their dogs, day and night. The area is newly vibrant with people and activity, as more and more places open and more people move in. It’s a pattern I’ve seen across the neighborhood. People who come to work downtown now linger afterward, and the city is alive at night as it hasn’t been in years.

Also, design matters. Unlike Pershing Square, Grand Park has a pedestrian-friendly wide-open layout. Standing at the edge of the Music Center on Grand Avenue, I can see all the way down to City Hall on Spring Street. The park is grassy and inviting in a way that Pershing Square never will be (unless, that is, Pershing’s existing structures were demolished). Done right, public space downtown has worked. Angels Knoll, a small but abundantly green park on the hillside adjacent to Angels Flight in Bunker Hill, is reliably full of office workers, young couples, and elderly people on afternoon strolls, but also with homeless people. I pass by Angels Knoll nearly every day. It appears safe and welcoming, and I’ve never seen any problems. It’s closed at night, and a lone security officer is stationed there during the day.

All eyes will be on Grand Park–and not just because of its open design. Those who work nearby want to use it and want it to be safe. Developers want the park to be an improvement to the neighborhood. Investors–the city, the county, private interests–want returns. City Hall wants to have something at its doorstep that it can be proud of. So does the Music Center, which has events planned for the space and will be responsible for maintenance and operation, including security. While it’s true that if Grand Park “fails” it will fail big, I’d argue instead that Grand Park is too big to fail.

So I’m excited. I’m excited for the interactive dance party that’s planned for the opening festivities. I’m excited for the slate of community events promised by the Music Center. I’m excited about picnicking at lunchtime with friends. And I’m excited to see the spaces of downtown getting filled in, giving new verdure and life to the city.

If Grand Park is a success, it will breed new successes. Like other world-class cities, Los Angeles will now have a downtown park that can be a destination in itself–a space that connects the civic and cultural centers of Los Angeles to one another and to the rest of the city. Los Angeles is becoming a mature city, and now, with any luck, we’ll have a city park to prove it.

Barbara Marie Martin is an attorney with the Los Angeles County Public Defender. She attended college in New York and law school in San Francisco and has been proud to call Los Angeles home since 1995.

The post Downtown Reborn? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.