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| Originally Aired: June 14, 2006 |
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Los Angeles: City of Contrasts |
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| Anne Taylor Fleming shares an essay about changing downtown Los Angeles. |
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Up the ladder
In one fell swoop, Los
Angeles jumped up the sophistication ladder, in its
own eyes and those of the rest of the country and the world.
There were other exciting downtown buildings: the new
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels; and, across Grand Avenue from Disney Hall, the Museum of Contemporary Art, a svelte, red
sandstone building; and down the hill, the smartly spruced-up Central Library.
Pinch me. Is this my city, all grownup and reinventing
itself at last as a true artistic Mecca,
a city with a true downtown? |
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City without a center
That downtown was a kind of wasteland for years, tall,
earnest bank buildings, streets deserted at night. As a city, Los Angeles displayed a kind of
inferiority-superiority complex: Yes, we may be lacking in true urban culture,
but we've got it all over the rest of you when it comes to lifestyle and
weather.
When friends came to visit, we took them to Venice Beach,
and Rodeo Drive,
and Hollywood Boulevard,
not downtown. This is such an odd place. I am of L.A. to the marrow, and I have always loved
its unsentimental centerlessness.
One day not so long ago, there were hundreds of thousands of
pro-immigration demonstrators at one end of Wilshire Boulevard, while at the other
western end, people strolled with dogs and children past expensive restaurants
and stores.
My city, a city of contradictions, a city without a center,
save that thoroughfare.
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Transformation begins
Now that's being challenged. Developers are pouring billions
of dollars into projects, like L.A. Live!, that will remake downtown. Frank
Gehry and his developer cohorts are envisioning a $1.8 billion transformation
of a nine-acre area that they see as the new
city center.
Gehry has proposed two glass high-rises to anchor the Grand Avenue
project, a kind of sleek, towering counterpoint to his signature swooping hall.
Ironically, it is Gehry himself who has always said such a center is impossible
in such an unwieldy sprawl of suburbs, that, in fact, it is the thoroughfare of
Wilshire Boulevard,
running from Ocean to download, that it the city's real center, a kind of
automotive artery connecting us all.
So, is he reversing himself? Will it work? |
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A center closer to home
I think Gehry was right the first time, even though a lot of
us here root to him to go on working his magic downtown. We just don't think it
will be our center, because we have one of those a lot closer to home.
We have our own pods, our own streets, and markets, and
shops, and restaurants, and places to work. And because to get downtown is
murderous from many parts of the city due to the traffic, it will never become
the city's true center.
Yes, people will move there and live there in their trendy
new condos and lofts, and, yes, we will probably take out-of-towners there, but
it will just be another center in a stay of many centers, another attempt to
make civically coherent a place that, by geography and temperament, will no
doubt once again defy that effort.
I'm Anne Taylor Fleming.
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