a note on downtown : editorial by vinayak bharne and alan loomis

editorial by vinayak bharne and alan loomis

“… because that is all downtown Los Angeles deserves,” wrote Reyner Banham in [i]Los Angeles: The Architecture of the Four Ecologies[/i]. Written in the halcyon years before the energy crisis or crippling traffic congestion and well after the Watts Riots, this classic survey is essentially a manifesto for the suburban metropolis. Banham’s four ecologies map a decentralized city organized by regional geography and the freeways rather than a centrifugal expansion originating from the pueblo plaza or City Hall. From his perspective in 1971, downtown was certainly not the focus of the city and nothing more than a historical footnote.

But with the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles seems to be rediscovering its center, and the rhetoric of a downtown renaissance has reached a crescendo. Following the Cathedral, Staples Center, SCIArc, and even MOCA – the hopes for downtown’s socio-political destiny as the cultural center of Southern California are focused on the Concert Hall. Los Angeles has waited sixteen years for it, and its architectural iconography can hardly be separated from the anticipation that Gehry will deliver the “Bilbao effect” for downtown. Rendered in stainless steel, the Concert Hall is the ultimate “silver bullet” project – a structure so heavily endowed with civic will and capital that (supposedly) it can regenerate downtown single-handedly.

Not withstanding the recent Grand Avenue Project, impelled by the Concert Hall’s success, the iconographic messiah building might be nothing more than a myth. While discussion during the Concert Hall’s six year construction has centered on its impressive structural gymnastics and the hope that Gehry’s architectural singularity will put the LA’s center on the map again, a steady revitalization of downtown has in fact already been happening, occurring incrementally through successive planning studies, modest projects and hidden legislative changes – some much older than even the Concert Hall. The Hall may deserve applause, but downtown’s 3000 new housing units represent not just a lucrative residential real estate engine, but also an emerging community of invested residents, who are probably the surest catalyst for downtown’s long term transformation. While the Concert Hall leaves little doubt of its catalytic influence on the immediate context, all the fanfare may be a pawn in the game of downtown’s renaissance, and one that despite all the utopias of the last century, may have innocuously found its own way to resurrection.

We have collected a few “notes” to explore the physical and planning context of the Concert Hall’s promise, with an interest in locating the rhetoric of a Downtown Renaissance. Carol McMichael Reese opens the discussion with an essay (first published in the Walt Disney Concert Hall’s official monograph) that positions the Philharmonic's new home within the historic lineage of urban visions that have sought to crystallize downtown. With this backdrop, it is possible to see the Concert Hall as the teleological end to a century of civic center plans, a much-needed “dramatic podium” for a city center “ in need of landmarks”, a symbol of the power of architecture to incite and nurture urbanism. Peter Zellner also reminds us that the recently promoted and ambitious Grand Avenue Project - an outcome of the Concert Hall’s optimism and the potential sequel to Gehry’s powerful urban argument – is but another episode in the fifty-year history of urban visions for the Bunker Hill acropolis. From one of the least utopian, yet most pragmatic plans proposed for downtown, Robert Harris, co-chair of the Downtown Strategic Plan (DSP) Committee, also sees the Concert Hall as one among the many catalytic projects the DSP anticipated. He voices the dilemmas that led to the embalming of the plans, whilst arguing that the DSP’s strategies for safer streets and better neighborhoods are coming to life through downtown’s ongoing, incremental housing and reuse boom. Likewise, the offhanded reference to the Concert Hall by Tatiana Begelman in her survey of downtown’s lofts, apartments and SROs suggests the boom as autonomous and oblivious to the hall’s myth as the “key” for downtown’s emergence as a vibrant city center. Yet for all these plans and developments, a final conversation from an event sponsored by the collaborative LAH*UB suggests that downtown’s status as the city’s center remains inconclusive. With the failure of Pershing Square and the present ambiguity of the civic center mall, the panel members – John Given, Julie Eizenberg, Roger Sherman and Doug Suisman – fail to agree on the importance of downtown as a gravitational weight to a polycentric urbanity or the object of a dubious search for “public” or “social” space. And thus we return to Reyner Banham’s thirty-year old survey of Los Angeles, where downtown is but one center among many, and not even the most important at that.

Yet, we are convinced that downtown Los Angeles assuredly deserves more than a just “a note”. With architectural monuments confirming its position in Southern California, and residences in long-forgotten commercial buildings establishing coherent neighborhoods, a downtown generated of new-found realisms is gradually becoming clear. LA’s urban core is emerging as a “collage city”, rejecting the fixation on “no-topia,” with the idea of reusing the existing city as an irreplaceable cultural and economic resource, for collective form, and multiple utopias. The emblematic struggle to define LA’s urban core has been a palimpsest, constructed and reconstructed over time, each phase displacing its predecessor and generating newer “notes” on its modernity. As we currently enter yet another era in downtown’s rebuilding, one that confirms LA’s sheer size and diversity as a challenge to any singular urban polarity, the task at hand is an unbiased, unapologetic version of downtown’s history to scrutinize the realities, possibilities and validities of its many dialogues and dialects. A note is not enough – indeed a scholarly history of downtown LA is most overdue.

all shiny and new : disney hall and downtown by carol mcmichael reese

The Walt Disney Concert Hall is a daring building and a dazzling object that the rational mind understands as inert of stone, steel, and glass. But we instinctively react to the Concert Hall as if it were energized with something akin to a life force. It bursts onto the scene with such vivacity that it creates a continual urban celebration, like a Fourth of July municipal fireworks display with a limitless supply of incendiary devices. Reflected light radiates in all directions from its stainless steel cladding, with walls that cant up and out, moving away from plumb in multiple directions and at different angles. The building pushes against the confines of its corner lot, seeming to elbow its way onto the sidewalk and into the intersection. Walt Disney Concert Hall brings life to the streets from which it rises with a shining burst of optimism in the future of Los Angeles as a city. It causes us to think, as we perhaps have not thought collectively in a long time, about Downtown Los Angeles and the ways in which it represents not only the communal joys and advantages, but also the frustrations and challenges, of living in a metropolis that is one of the fastest growing and most environmentally precarious in the world.

The Concert Hall is the result of longstanding dreams to make Downtown the symbol of the city's collective enterprise, by locating flagship buildings for government, commerce, and culture there. And, in the face of equally longstanding processes of metropolitan decentralization and disintegration, these dreams continue to drive hopes that the Concert Hall will have a regenerative effect on Downtown. To understand what the Concert Hall might mean to the hopes for the renewal of Downtown, we must revisit past proposals for revitalizing Los Angeles's urban core. Of particular interest are those schemes that have failed, been controversial, and only partially succeeded. Herbert Muschamp, architecture critic for the New York Times, recently urged readers to take unbuilt designs for the urban sphere seriously, as "special causes . . . links in the chain of causality that produces, sustains, and transforms major cities over time." [1] In the belief that public familiarity with the history of visions for remaking Downtown Los Angeles might strengthen the groundswell that the opening of the Concert Hall has occasioned, it seems an opportune moment to review the special causes relative to improving Downtown Los Angeles that have been put forward during the twentieth century and that proponents of a revitalized Downtown passionately support today.

In the early twenty-first century, Downtown is a microcosm of the "prismatic metropolis" that Los Angeles has become. [2] In the city of Los Angeles, the US Census 2000 reported a population of approximately 3.5 million, of which 40.9 percent are foreign-born and 57.8 percent speak a language other than English at home. Developing a unitary "civic center" with buildings of symbolic shared civic values is more challenging today in increasingly heterogeneous Los Angeles, or, for that matter, in any other globalizing city. Competing, or at least multi-present, centers represent a number of ethnicities Downtown. Chinatown, Little Tokyo, and Koreatown have all achieved the physical status of Downtown enclaves. The Latino population of Los Angeles, although strongly represented Downtown in an entrenched retail district along Broadway, still has not established an honorific core there - unless one counts the El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park (where the Latino Museum of History, Art and Culture has considered relocating), which is organized around the early nineteenth-century Spanish colonial Los Angeles Plaza and includes the commercialized and touristic Olvera Street district. Downtown also boasts a financial core of skyscrapers; a convention center with a relatively new sports arena; a market district specializing in flowers, produce, groceries, toys, small electronics, clothing, and other wholesale goods; a district of historic theaters and commercial structures; and several districts of new housing added over the last forty years.

Walt Disney Concert Hall takes its place in the Los Angeles Civic Center, the group of monumental government and cultural buildings that was erected after decades of struggle and controversy on Bunker Hill, Downtown's most conspicuous land mass. [3] The Concert Hall was sited very consciously on Bunker Hill in relation to a number of existing arts venues: the Central Library (Bertram Goodhue, 1926), the three theaters of the Music Center (Welton Beckett and Associates, 1964), Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA, Arata Isosaki, 1987), and the Colburn School of the Performing Arts (Hardy, Holzman, Pfeiffer, 1998). The Concert Hall stands here both as the result of a persistent consensus that Downtown should boast a concentrated, contiguous cultural district and as a new rallying point for the achievement of that urban goal. However, since the Concert Hall is prominently associated with what many see as the current resurgence of larger Downtown, it is worth surveying the urban context beyond Bunker Hill to learn what is at issue for the city's core.

Walt Disney Concert Hall's Genetic Code for Urban Revitalization

The Walt Disney Concert Hall Committee insisted in the 1988 competition brief that competing architects demonstrate an "understanding of the Walt Disney Concert Hall as a ëbuilding block' of the city." [4] Thus a genetic code for stimulating urban renaissance was written into the conception of Disney Hall from the outset. Frank Gehry won the commission, in part, because he understood better than his competitors the life-enhancing effect on Downtown that such genetic material could have.

One telling Gehry drawing vividly communicates his grasp of the urban possibilities. It is a plan drawing in black pen on white paper, worked in Gehry's full, swift line that was produced as a study during the competition stage of the project. Significantly, he drew concentric wave patterns around the hall that radiated from its welcoming lobby, which he insightfully described on another drawing as a "living room for the city." The waves are perhaps transcriptions of sound flowing over the street, and they break across the terrace and sidewalk, billowing out across Grand Avenue from the Concert Hall site toward the empty blocks. Importantly, this key process drawing signifies Gehry's conception of Disney Hall's role as a primary instigator in the urban renewal process.

However compelling Gehry's response, the mandate for the Concert Hall's urban challenge lay with the building's clients. Walt Disney Concert Hall was intended to enlarge the Music Center - officially, the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County. The construction of the Music Center atop Bunker Hill in 1964 had developed formerly "empty" land that had been razed at the end of the 1950s to address Downtown "blight." Sited on a parcel that had been cleared almost thirty years earlier, the Concert Hall continued that urban renewal trajectory. Thus, it is not surprising that the Concert Hall Committee's instructions urged not only that Concert Hall "convey a unifying theme . . . [and] compliment the Music Center," but that it also "strongly influence the quality of design and construction of adjacent projects . . . [and] create a major cultural corridor on Grand Avenue." They also joined a century-old civic discussion about the ways in which the physical environment of Downtown - its streets, buildings, parks, and landscaping - could serve as prominent symbols of aspirations to promote the common good.

Back to the Future of Downtown Los Angeles

The earliest concerted effort to rebuild Downtown Los Angeles took place in the first decade of the twentieth century, when Angelenos commissioned Charles Mulford Robinson to prepare a plan for the recuperation of the city's center. One hundred years ago, the stimulus for urban renewal in Los Angeles and other in United States cities was the enhancement of Washington, DC. The 1902 scheme, known as the Senate Park Commission Plan, reorganized the National Mall as a luxuriantly planted field that would provide a suitable ground for the classically-inspired temples of science, history, art, and democratic governance. The publication of the Senate Park Commission Plan stimulated the nascent City Beautiful movement, a national drive for urban improvement in the face of increased industrialization and immigration, and "civic improvement expert" Charles Mulford Robinson was its foremost proponent.

The progressive political and social tenor of the era is captured in the book published by Los Angeles preacher and settlement-house worker Dana Bartlett, The Better City, a Sociological Study of a Modern City (1907), which promoted addressing the needs of the city's immigrants, orphans, elderly, and working poor through organized societies and other community efforts. Bartlett's "better" or "greater" Los Angeles was to be a city that would "concentrate thought upon the ethical ideal - believing that a city may become noted for its righteousness, its morality, it social virtues, its artistic life as for its material resources." [5] In the same year that Barlett's book was published, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Commission invited Robinson to give advice about a "better Los Angeles." Robinson's published report Los Angeles, California: The City Beautiful (1909) called for the "redemption of Los Angeles, its rebuilding along splendid lines . . . to pull together for the city's good." [6] First, he recommended a transportation nexus around a new union railroad station to enhance the experience of entering and leaving the urban core. Second, he planned an administrative or civic center, to centralize the buildings housing civic government and, thus give prominent visibility to the city as the locus of democracy. Third, he envisioned a cultural center to magnify the effect of what was then known as Central Park - today, Pershing Square - by locating a new library and art gallery nearby. Each of these districts was to make apparent to all who worked and lived in Los Angeles, as well as to those who visited there, that the urban environment offered the best of modern amenities. Even more important, the symbolic value of the whole was more than the sum of these separate districts, because their aggregate effect was to persuade citizens that building the city anew was a necessary and noble undertaking.

Just as the 1902 Senate Park Commission Plan was adopted as a guide for the building the core of Washington DC, so a consensus formed around Robinson's 1909 plan for Los Angeles which resulted in the eventual development of a cultural center, a public transportation hub, and a civic center. Only the cultural center arose in the exact location that Robinson recommended. It began to take shape when Bertram Goodhue's boldly geometric Central Library (1926) was sited, as Robinson had suggested, at the southern foot of Bunker Hill. The library, which is one of Los Angeles's most important early twentieth-century buildings, sowed the seeds of the blossoming Grand Avenue cultural corridor that the Concert Hall now crowns. The library's impressive tower looked expectantly across Fifth Street toward Bunker Hill, and its eastern wing containing the children's reading room and courtyard garden stretched toward Grand Avenue. Walt Disney Concert Hall renews the currency of Robinson's plan for Los Angeles - not in its details, but rather its special cause of prominent focal points within the core linked by landscaped boulevards. The Concert Hall makes a sweeping urban gesture to the northeast with its entrance plaza that opens diagonally to the center of Grand Avenue and First Street, where the Music Center meets the Civic Center.

Greening the City's Core on Bunker Hill

Decisions about the location of the Civic Center and the Music Center in relation to Bunker Hill mark the second historical phase of Los Angeles's Downtown renewal process and opened the site that Walt Disney Concert Hall now so compellingly occupies. Although citizens who worked to improve the city were determined to build a civic center, they could not agree on its location. Their disagreements were exacerbated by the fact that the city's commercial center was developing rapidly to the south, away from the historic Plaza. One position generally favored Robinson's idea that the Civic Center should be inflected toward the Plaza, along a north-south axis. The opposing position supported a Civic Center along an east-west axis in relationship to Bunker Hill and with connections to the "new" Downtown. In 1924, the Allied Architects Association, a group of Los Angeles professionals who joined forces for the purpose of securing civic commissions, gave form to that vision, submitting a plan for an "Administration Center for the City and the County of Los Angeles," which proposed building a civic acropolis atop Bunker Hill.

In the minds of many early twentieth-century urban improvers, Bunker Hill, a once leafy, prosperous Victorian neighborhood, was ripe for redevelopment, since it had been effectively strangled when prestigious downtown commercial development moved around its perimeter to the south and west, and as early as 1900 tunnels were cut beneath it to carry traffic to burgeoning West Los Angeles. By the mid 1920s, the predominant image of Bunker Hill was as a zone of increasingly derelict, degraded buildings and entrenched poverty. The basic concept of the Allied Architects' plan was the greening of Bunker Hill. It envisioned wide swaths of multi-block parks stretching west from the Plaza up the slope of Bunker Hill and covering its crown - from the Central Library on the south to historic Ft. Moore (dedicated 4 July 1847) on the north. The perimeters of these parks were then designated as sites for buildings in which the public business was to be conducted. The plan thus predicted the razing of Bunker Hill as the potential site for buildings that would embody the city's metropolitan image, and it envisioned that the Los Angeles City Hall would be built at the crest of Bunker Hill. Although City Hall (John C. Austin, John and Donald Parkinson, and Albert C. Martin, 1928) was built instead at the bottom of the hill on Main Street, the Allied Architects' plan had an important urban legacy in the development of the eastern slope of Bunker Hill, where, today, public buildings line the terraced Civic Center Mall between Main Street and Grand Avenue.

The Allied Architects' special cause was that of a landscaped "heart of the city," through which key institutions, monuments, and destinations were to be linked by pedestrian-friendly greenways. It is a goal that is still promising today, but remains incompletely realized. At either end of the Civic Center Mall, two stirring works of civic architecture are situated. Below, City Hall opens broadly toward the Bunker Hill acropolis through its celebrated bronze doors, its walls emblazoned with the quotation, "The city came into being to preserve life; it exists for the good life." Brought back to prominence in 2002 through the citizen-sponsored Project Restore, this gleaming, off-white Beaux-Arts civic skyscraper boasts a 452-foot tower in the ancient tradition of a lighthouse - the symbolic beacon of a port city. On the ground level, it is a crossroads building, as its portals, which open to the four streets surrounding the city block that it occupies, symbolically gather to it all comers from the urban territory it surveys. Above, the John Ferraro Building of the Department of Water and Power (DWP, Albert C. Martin, 1964) is an almost pure exercise in mid-century modernism, with horizontal reinforced-concrete slabs and vertical steel supports. Its open-bay floors emit light through at night, and it shines out above downtown like a gigantic lantern. Yet both the DWP and City Hall preside over a Mall that is largely used only from nine to five, Monday through Friday. Understandably, the growing numbers of homeless in Los Angeles have found their way to the public landscape of the Civic Center, and makeshift fencing and routine purges by law enforcement officers are a deplorable response on the part of the city.

Walt Disney Concert Hall promotes the resuscitation of the Civic Center Mall and encourages the opening of its green spaces to the city beyond. Brilliantly, Gehry struck the hall's axis diagonally through the block, pointing its open-cornered entrance toward Grand Avenue and the Civic Center Mall, rather than orienting it exclusively toward the Music Center. Here, the Concert Hall's volley takes aim at the defensive dike that urban accretions such as entrances to underground parking garages and various measures against encampments of the homeless have thrown up around the mall. Cognizant of the promise of the Concert Hall's urban position, the Music Center sponsored a workshop in December 2000, in which architects Frank Gehry, Arata Isosaki, and Rafael Moneo, landscape architect Laurie Olin, and real estate developer and Music Center Board member Stuart Ketchum participated. As a result of the workshop, the Grand Avenue Committee, a public/private partnership, was formed in 2001. They propose to transform the twenty-acre Civic Center Mall into a lively, twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week public space, which Committee co-chair Eli Broad refers to as Los Angeles's new Central Park. Their plans connect the Civic Center Mall at long last with Grand Avenue, from which it is currently screened by a drop in elevation and a massive retaining wall that contains spiral ramps leading to the County's parking garage under the Music Center and Mall itself. In the scheme, a wider sidewalk on the Music Center side of Grand Avenue, created by shifiting the roadbed to the east, offers an improved environment to pedestrians. A pedestrian bridge over the garage ramps mitigates their obstructive effect until the time when funds may be available to move the ramps to the edges of the park. An outdoor amphitheater sited between the County Hall of Administration (Stanton, Stockwell, Williams, and Wilson; Austin, Field, and Fry, 1956) and the County Courthouse (J.E. Stanton, Paul R. Williams, Adrian Wilson; Austin, Field, and Fry, 1958) accomplishes a visual and physical passage from the Music Center plaza into the park. However, unless Downtown housing provisions are made - whether homeless shelters, or single-room occupancy and low-income units - and commensurate social services are provided, the promise of City Hall's message is empty, and the Central Park that the Grand Avenue Committee has mobilized to achieve will fail.

Accommodating Rapid Transit and Making Places for People on Bunker Hill

Another scheme for the Los Angeles Civic Center - also produced during the period when its location was under consideration - advanced special causes that are pertinent today as well. This was the 1925 project of Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright's oldest son, who lived and practiced in Los Angeles from 1919 until his death in 1978. [7] Like the Allied Architects' plan of the previous year, Wright's plan emphasized the symbolic resonance of public buildings sited atop the Bunker Hill. Wright's plan presciently devoted sites along Grand Avenue to buildings housing the fine arts, from the Central Library grounds to the crown of Bunker Hill that is now newly occupied by Rafael Moneo's dramatic - and yet serene ñ Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (2002). However, the contribution of Wright's plan that is relevant now lies in the realm of transportation planning. In suggesting complex, layered, and separated movement systems for vehicles (including airplanes!) and pedestrians throughout the Civic Center site, Wright's plan acknowledged that increasing congestion were deeply problematic issues for cities. His excavated, rapid-transit throughways predicted the freeway troughs that would be cut around Downtown in the 1940s and 1950s, but Wright discretely buried his vehicular "speedways" under broad terraces where pedestrians had the rights and pleasures of passage.

Wright's concept of three-quarters of a century ago holds out hope today, and the Concert Hall provides the impetus for redesign and remedies for the discontinuities of the Downtown street fabric created by freeways and tunnels. Yet, the Concert Hall itself requires accommodation along Grand Avenue, which the Grand Avenue Committee's proposals have also addressed. Their plans for curving Grand Avenue and enlarging the sidewalk aprons at the Music Center and the Concert Hall would not only enhance pedestrians' experience of the street but would also give the Concert Hall additional breathing room.

Sweeping north from the Central Library, past MOCA, the Colburn School, the Concert Hall, the Music Center, and the Civic Center, Grand Avenue reaches the Cathedral and the ignominious freeway crossing that separates Downtown from one of Los Angeles's most magnificent urban vantage points - the outcrop on which Fort Moore once overlooked the Plaza. Buildings formerly housing the Los Angeles Metropolitan High School and, most recently, the Board of Education currently occupy the site. Visionary efforts spearheaded by Eli Broad are afoot to create a new magnet high school devoted to the arts, on the model of the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York. A limited competition recently named the Viennese firm Coop-Himmelb(l)au the winner of the commission to develop pieces of the project tangential to Grand Avenue. According to plan, the whole site will be returned to a more public use, which will include exhibition and performance spaces. It is expected that tens of thousands will be attracted every year to this spectacular overlook, with its most impressive panoramic view of the Cathedral and the city.

Anticipating this project, the Grand Avenue Committee has explored designs for widening the Grand Avenue bridge over the Hollywood Freeway to complete the extension of the arts and culture promenade from one side of the Bunker Hill acropolis to the other. In tandem, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) has commissioned a public arts project for the bridge. The price of realizing these dreams is dear. The Metropolitan Transit Authority and Caltrans have contributed funds have contributed funds for improving Grand Avenue between Second Avenue and Temple Street ñ from the Concert Hall to the Cathedral ñ and work is underway, but no one knows where financial support will be found for reworking the street beyond this two-block event.

The Concert Hall's urban prospects along Grand Avenue are also dependent on the critical "empty" lots on Bunker Hill that are its immediate neighbors. These lots - County-owned Q and W2, directly east of the Concert Hall, and City-owned L and M2, on its south - were razed by the CRA in the late 1950s. Since Lots Q, L, and M2 all border Grand Avenue, they are of crucial concern to the Grand Avenue Committee, whose goal is to initiate and guide their development. Millions of square feet will be devoted to multiple uses. Lots L and M2 are zoned by the City primarily for housing, with some entertainment and retail functions. While offices are expected to predominate in the 1.5 million square feet of mixed use space that has been permitted on Lot Q, it will also support residential, cultural and entertainment spaces. A workable team approach is needed - rather than cutthroat real estate practice and fractious City/County politics as usual. The CRA's wholesale destruction of the historic residential district atop Bunker Hill has long been the subject of controversy, and housing activists have demanded an accounting for the lost when Bunker Hill was demolished - 10,000 were left without homes ñ and the addition of new housing in any redevelopment scheme. Indeed, it is possible that civic pride in the Concert Hall will help lay this controversy to rest, but only if the issue of providing affordable housing downtown is finally addressed.

Master Planning and Organic Redevelopment

If there has been almost a century of consensus regarding the desirability of the clustering of public institutions around a cultural center and a civic center in Downtown Los Angeles, there has been far more ambivalence about the urban fabric that supports such building groups and endeavors. The decision to create an acropolis of monuments on Bunker Hill can be traced to master-planning schemes of the City Beautiful era. It was furthered by planners who shared visions of a downtown characterized by a monumental center and notable ensembles of business buildings. This was the prominent position advocated in planning documents such as the Preface to a Master Plan (1941), but also by citizen task forces - such as Greater Los Angeles Plans, Inc. and the Central City Committee - and by Calvin Hamilton, the City's Director of Planning from 1965 to 1985. However, these initiators and their initiatives recognized the necessity for regional planning on a metropolitan scale, and they also furthered the "centers concept" of multiple, high-density centers dispersed from the core, to which lower-density residential neighborhoods would be tethered. The builders of the Music Center, for example, accepted that its theaters would rely on patrons, who would commute Downtown to events. While the persistence of this "acropolis complex" may have produced the Concert Hall at its site on Bunker Hill in the late 1980s, it is widely understood almost fifteen years later that the hall's long-term survival as a cultural nexus depends in large measure on the vitality that will swirl around it twenty-four hours a day. Walt Disney Concert Hall is a rallying point rather than a solution.

The seeds of revitalized Downtown housing were sown in the master-planning days of 1970s, when CRA's "Central Business District Redevelopment Project" (1972) - known as the "Silver Book Plan" because of the color of its cover - guided renewal. The plan emphasized the achievement of a "balanced environment" through political and economic provisions for low- and moderate-income housing, which has been the CRA's mandate since its founding in 1949. Detractors of the Silver Book Plan have argued, however, that although it guided the clearance of "blight," it saw too little below-market-rate housing replaced, leaving downtown more housing-poor and income-segregated than ever.

If voters are to be engaged in planning and architectural issues, they must be presented full documentary portfolios that include images as well as words and numbers. Intelligently and persuasively, the two committees who undertook major planning efforts for Downtown in the wake of the Silver Book Plan published comprehensive sets of images of their proposals. The special cause of the packaging of both these plans was the dramatic illustration of the gains for Downtown that they could achieve. Robert Harris, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Southern California, co-chaired the committee that produced the first, the "Downtown Strategic Plan," which was unveiled in 1993. This plan originated in initiatives undertaken during Mayor Tom Bradley's administration (1973-1993), and emphasized a newly invigorated street life in the core, born of residents who would be attracted by the renewed and more appealing cityscape. It emphasized connectivity among ten mixed-income Downtown neighborhoods and districts, establishing an improved pedestrian environment through the greening of streets and the expansion of open space and parks. It further proposed sixteen catalytic projects in order to create focused nodes in these districts. Not to be forgotten for his support of the Downtown Strategic Plan is developer Ira Yellin, a member of the plan's steering committee who died in September of 2002. A passionate advocate of Downtown and its historic architecture, Yellin renovated key buildings that strengthened the plan's redevelopment nodes, including the Bradbury Building (1893), the Million Dollar Theater (1918), Grand Central Market (1987-1995), and Union Station (1939). A prime example of the plan's proposed interventions was the renovation of the Broadway Spring Arcade Building (1923). The seductive perspective drawing published in the plan showed the arcade with renovated loft floors providing a live-work environment in the midst of historic buildings and theaters, transit networks, and nearby cultural activities.

Downtown developer Tom Gilmore, who arrived in Los Angeles in 1989, when the Downtown Strategic Plan committee began its work, has been both the beneficiary of their pictorial bible and the prophet of their dogma. From his company's offices in a sector that he has christened the "Old Bank District," Gilmore works to replace housing that was lost in the razing of Bunker Hill and other Downtown neighborhoods with loft conversions of commercial structures. He practices what might be called "organic redevelopment," urban renewal that differs from that of an earlier era of master-planned redevelopment not only in its incremental approach, but also in the types of projects undertaken, which focus on infusing existing viable industrial and commercial districts with housing. He calls for "indigenous retail" and "full-spectrum housing," as well as the coherent, enlightened social policy planning that is necessary to achieve it. Yet he struggles to produce the legislated affordable housing quotas without the massive subsidies that were at the CRA's disposal during the Silver Book era. If he is successful, his consuming dedication to the creation of residential space in the northeast quadrant of Downtown will transform that area, which may well become a model for other sectors of the core.

In 1995, during Richard Riordan's administration (1993-2001), the Civic Center Authority, which had been dormant since the 1980s, was revived and, perhaps inspired by the Downtown Strategic Plan, returned to an intense study of the heart of the heart of the city. This committee produced the "Civic Center Shared Facilities and Enhancement Plan," which the authority issued in 1997 (and reissued in 2000). Its crowning achievement was a richly visual document that relied on brilliantly concise and revelatory imagery to convey its vision and a "marketing" synopsis of sorts cleverly named the "Ten Minute Diamond." Chief among the visionaries were Doug Suisman, architect and urban designer, who served on the consulting team, and Daniel Rosenfeld, who as the City's assets manager was conducting a study of City-owned real estate for the Department of General Services. The Ten-Minute Diamond took City Hall as a compass point and drew an imaginary diamond-shaped perimeter around it, such that any point on that perimeter would be no more than a ten-minute walk from its rotunda. The sine qua non of the Ten-Minute Diamond plan was the creation of a system of variously designed public open spaces for pedestrians - linear garden paths - that encouraged habitation. It sectioned the Civic Center into four quadrants - Hillside, Old Pueblo, New Town, Riverbed - and detailed what ought to be done to bring each into being. This idea of naming Downtown districts was a stroke of genius, since it created a framework for making places where, essentially, there were none. It was a corporate identity campaign for the body politic. Suddenly the city became knowable; the planners' goal, however, was not signage per se but signage used as a tool for sensitivity training. Cynically, one could make an analogy to the mapping of Disneyland - Main Street, Frontierland, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland - and Suisman acknowledged that he worried about "coaxing reluctant imagery" from the city's history and its system of corridors. [8] Yet the Ten-Minute Diamond forged a Civic Center zone of intensity and focus in which many of Downtown's most prominent public buildings and historic sites were located, providing nodes of intrinsic utility and interest to Angelenos and visitors alike. It brought Downtown into relief and, with intelligent sincerity, countered what French sociologist Jean Baudrillard found in Los Angeles in 1986: "no intimacy or collectivity, no streets or facades, no centre or monuments…an extravaganza of indifference." [9]

The Ten-Minute Diamond clarified the locations where new projects of civic import might best be sited. The Caltrans District 7 Headquarters building - designed by Thom Mayne and his firm Morphosis - is rising on the block bounded by First, Second, Main, and Los Angeles streets, directly across from the site proposed in the plan. Mayne diagonally juxtaposed the building to City Hall, incorporating to the design a public gathering space that enjoins the open-arms embrace of City Hall. The California Endowment's new headquarters designed by Rios Associates, Inc. (now Rios Clementi Hale Studios) will articulate a neglected zone on Alameda Street between Union Station and City Hall in the Old Pueblo Quarter. Anchoring the Riverbed Quarter, the proposed Children's Museum designed by Morphosis and Central Avenue Art Park designed by Michael Maltzan will fill the block in which the MOCA Geffen Contemporary and the Japanese-American National Museum now float in a sea of parking lots. These new interventions would, in turn, create a transitional zone to the emerging Arts District near the Los Angeles River. Just outside the Ten-Minute Diamond, this more bohemian district - in contrast to the "high" cultural district atop Bunker Hill - is coalescing around the independent architecture school Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), which took up residence there in 2001 in a former freight depot. SCI-Arc's director, architect Eric Owen Moss, and Dan Rosenfeld, currently Principal of Urban Partners, LLC, which he co-founded with Ira Yellin, are contemplating the construction of housing, which would return a sense of urbanity to the area and would involve the school as a key player in the development of Downtown.

Another major ground swell of revitalization on the edges of the Ten-Minute Diamond is the establishment of a new state park - as yet unnamed - in the area just north and east of Chinatown and Union Station, which the plan identifies as the Alameda District. Formerly known as the Cornfields, this thirty acre parcel on the western bank of the Los Angeles River represents the triumphant acquisition in 2001 of open space for notoriously "park-poor" Los Angeles. Led by the Friends of the Los Angeles River, a consortium of activist organizations dedicated to the special cause of reclaiming the river along its fifty-one-mile path through the metropolitan area achieved this landmark goal. From Charles Mulford Robinson's plan of 1909, which proposed to link the disparate sectors of the city by planted parkways, to the Ten-Minute Diamond of 1997, which made the heart of the city legible through the green weave of a Civic Garden and landscaped paseos, the purchase of the Cornfields marked the culmination of a century of movement toward a Downtown humanized by the interweaving of the built environment and parklands.

One of the largest contiguous metropolitan areas in the world, Los Angeles is immense. Its built fabric is ubiquitous. Given the sweep of the landscape across which Los Angeles spreads, any building that would have a fighting chance of contributing to a sense of urban identity must assume a powerful form equal to the staggering beauty of the conjunction of ocean, plain, and foothills. Downtown Los Angeles is visibly marked on the skyline by an impressive cluster of skyscrapers and clearly circled by a ring of intersecting freeways, so that, from afar, the center of the city is palpable. Within the heart of the city, however, this clarity and cohesion dissipate. Mindful of French philosopher Henri Lefebvre's assertion that urbanity demands a center, we can observe Angelenos struggle to promote a shared urban consciousness through the last century's failed or only partially successful attempts to create a strong image of the core. [10] The center is not only in need of landmarks but also of sustained planning and building that will make it a place where the city's diverse population can live, work, and take their leisure. This is the socio-topographical imperative of Los Angeles, which Frank Gehry understands. It is also why the Walt Disney Concert Hall is so important to Los Angeles both as a singular form and as a refractive lens through which the needs of Downtown are brought sharply into focus. Wrapped in raised gardens and balconies, the Concert Hall provides a dramatic podium for surveying Downtown Los Angeles and its breathtaking setting. Yet Gehry also believes in the power of civic architecture to strengthen human connections, not only to places but also to one another. Gehry's desire that the Concert Hall be a "living room for the city" takes shape particularly in the billowing lobby so open to Grand Avenue, where passersby can stroll at will in and out during many hours of the day and night. In Los Angeles, Gehry has achieved the social diagram that he found compelling in his chief precedent for Walt Disney Concert Hall, Hans Scharoun's Berlin Philharmonie (1963): "It's a wonderful place to be because the place puts people together and makes it easy . . . the building allows and engenders and encourages in some miraculous way, a kind of interaction." [11]

Notes

[1] Herbert Muschamp, "A See-Through Library of Shifting Shapes and Colors," New York Times (19 January 2003): section 2, p. 35.

[2] Lawrence D. Bobo et al., eds., Prismatic Metropolis, Inequality in Los Angeles (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000).

[3] William H. Gass, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories (Boston: D. R. Godine, 1981, rev. ed.).

[4] Carol McMichael Reese and Thomas Ford Reese, "B–hm, Gehry, Hollein, and Stirling in Los Angeles, Zodiac 2 (1989), p. 157.

[5] Dana W. Bartlett, The Better City, a Sociological Study of a Modern City (Los Angeles: Neuner Company, 1907), Preface.

[6] Charles Mulford Robinson (Report of the Municipal Art Commission for the City of Los Angeles), Los Angeles, California, The City Beautiful (Los Angeles: William J. Porter, 1909), n. p.

[7] See "Notable Civic Center Scheme," Los Angeles Times (30 August 1925): pt. 5, p. 4; see also Los Angeles Examiner (26 November 1926): Calendar Section, p. 2, for Wright's "City of the Future."

[8] Interview with author, 6 December 2002.

[9] Jean Baudrillard, "America," in Neil Leach, ed., Rethinking Architecture, a Reader in Cultural Theory (London: Routledge, 1997) p. 224.

[10] Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities (Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1996), p. 208.

[11] Mildred Friedman, ed. Gehry Talks: Architecture + Process (New York: Rizzoli, 1999), n. p

This essay is dedicated to Ernest Fleischmann, Managing Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, 1969-1998, and lifetime member of the Board of Directors, and Frederick M. Nicholas, Chair of the Walt Disney Concert Hall Committee, 1987-1994. Without their devotion to the arts, artists, and Los Angeles, Disney Hall might well not have been built.

Adapted/edited from the original publication Symphony: Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Los Angeles Philharmonic, 2003)

Carol McMichael Reese is associate professor of architecture at Tulane University. Her books and articles focus on contemporary architecture and urban planning in the Americas. In 1985 Reese was commissioned by the Getty Research Institute to document the building of Walt Disney Concert Hall.

downtown ... again by peter zellner

downtown... again

peter zellner

Spectacle

The future of Downtown Los Angeles is in play again. The Grand Avenue Project is the biggest public re-development spectacle to come to town in a long while. Under the banner "Re-Imagining Grand Avenue, Creating a Center for Los Angeles", the newly invigorated push to revitalize LA's center is once again focused on Bunker Hill, the area around the recently completed Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The Grand Avenue Project is being promoted and organized by the Grand Avenue Committee, a public/private partnership that has aims to "…transform the civic and cultural districts of downtown Los Angeles into a vibrant new regional center which will showcase entertainment venues, restaurants, retail mixed with office buildings, a hotel, and over 1000 new housing units." Directed by the Los Angeles Grand Avenue Authority, a joint power entity formed by the union of the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles (CRA/LA) and the County of Los Angeles, the Grand Avenue Committee has the singular agenda of creating no less than a new 3.2 million square foot regional center. Also planned for redevelopment is the existing County Mall, a little used public space that stretches from the Music Center at the top of Bunker Hill to City Hall at the bottom of the hill. Ingenuously, the enhanced park is being promoted as "LA's own Central Park." The fact that the County Mall it is neither central to Downtown Los Angeles - or greater Los Angeles or for that matter - nor at 16 acres anywhere close to Olmstead and Vaux's 843 acre urban oasis seems beside the point. What matters most is that the entire project is hinged on the premise that Downtown LA's dead-after-5 pm curse can be finally vanquished. Eli Broad, billionaire tract house developer, patron of the arts and architecture, and vice chairman of the Grand Avenue Committee said recently, "We're hopeful we'll be able to create a street where people will stay after work and one that will be a draw for the entire region." Bringing foot traffic to Downtown LA after dark should cost $1.2 billion. Of this approximately $300 million will be required for public infrastructure, and approximately $900 million will be needed for real estate development. If successful, the project will generate 16,000 long-term jobs and raise $85 million annually in local, county and state taxes.

Circus

Eight teams of developers and architects, comprised of some 60 individual firms, responded to the RFQ issued for the project. The Grand Avenue Committee's County Supervisor Gloria Molina, Councilwoman Jan Perry, the CRA's Bud Ovrom and LA County CAO David Janssen reviewed the submissions and announced in late January 2004 that five teams had been short-listed to compete for the job:

Grand Avenue Development Alliance, a consortium led by Australian property giant Bovis Lend Lease with Arquitectonica of Miami, Manhattan-based Gary Edward Handel + Associates, MVE & Partners, and RTKL;

Forest City Development of Cleveland, owners of the 42nd St Retail and Entertainment Complex in Times Square and developers of the recently unveiled Downtown Brooklyn Basketball Arena designed by Gehry Partners;

J. H. Snyder Company, the LA based developers of the local Water Garden business park, with private equity real estate investment group Lubert-Adler Partners and the Jerde Partnership, Johnson Fain and the recently re-formulated Rios Clementi Hale Studios; and

The Related Companies, backers of the $1.7 billion Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, with architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill under partner David Childs, and Elkus Manfredi.

Operating as Bunker Hill Ltd., only one other team is primarily LA-based - Weintraub Financial Services with the Bronson Companies, Apollo Real Estate Advisors, and the Vornado Realty Trust. The local consortium counts Gehry Partners, LLP as their architect with landscape architects the Olin Partnership and the promising LA firm Daly Genik Architects.

Curiously, Gehry, who would seem to be Bunker Hill Ltd's trump card, has down played his role, publicly announcing that he is not so much interested in the design of the project as its potential for urbanism. "For me, it's not important if I do a building - I've got Disney Hall. I'm more interested in the urban planning," Gehry recently stated. Nevertheless rumors of all-star designer involvement have spread with Jean Nouvel and Zaha Hadid pegged to join the Gehry led team. Earlier yet, Sir Norman Foster was temporarily aligned with Donald Trump's team, which has since fallen out of the bidding process.

Notably absent from the redevelopment frenzy is the local dream team of Ming Fung, Craig Hodgetts, Thom Mayne, and Eric Owen Moss who have joined together in discussions with a number of potential developers, but for the moment remain [strangely] on the sidelines. Should that team ultimately join the Grand Avenue fray it could also include Wolf Prix / Coop Himmelblau, designer of the new Central Los Angeles High School # 9 and Steven Holl, architect for the new Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. Also conspicuously out of the running in this redevelopment frenzy is Dutch urbanist and iconoclast Rem Koolhaas, whose last two ventures in Los Angeles, a scheme for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's new facilities on Wilshire and headquarters for Universal Studios over the hill in the San Fernando Valley both fizzled after losing funding.

Amnesia & Erasure

Despite, or perhaps because of the optimism surrounding the project, there seems to be a state of amnesia about the number of "ground-breaking" and largely unsuccessful fresh starts Bunker Hill has been given over the last five decades.

The view that many Los Angelenos hold of downtown as one of the city's final redevelopment frontiers seems endemic, and its power wards off any bad flashbacks associated with the numerous failed efforts to redevelop Bunker Hill. Granted, LA is coming off a blissful decade of major civic achievements - Richard Meier's Getty Center, Rafael Moneo's Cathedral, and of course Walt Disney Concert Hall. Additionally, Angelenos have witnessed an overhaul of the city's infrastructure, including a $2 billion Alameda Corridor transport conduit, a new subway system, a linked light rail network, and an "intelligent" metro bus line. So perhaps accordingly, the city's dismal record downtown has yet to spark any questions about the viability or the reasoning behind the latest attempt to revive Bunker Hill. Indeed, the redesign, promotion and marketing of Bunker Hill's future are something of a local tradition in line with LA's infamous skill for manufacturing the future while destroying its history.

As early as 1950/51 the newly established CRA tagged the then down at its heels Bunker Hill as "Redevelopment Area Number One." Overlooking the downtown of the 1930s and '40s - the LA that Raymond Chandler called "that old whore" - Bunker Hill was a community of reportedly 10,000 low income, largely immigrant and minority residents living 10 to a room in squalid, disintegrating structures. The initial Master Plan developed by the City Planning Authority called for the complete clearing of the area. In its place the study proposed a series of 20 story high public apartment blocks arranged around octagonal shaped courtyards. The scheme, widely pilloried, was scrapped and by 1959 the firm of Charles Luckman and Associates was retained to develop a new master plan. Luckman, former CEO of the Lever Company and later partner with William Pereira, planner of Irvine, one of this nation's largest master planned communities, put forward a new scheme that envisioned for some 11 million square feet of office and retail space, 2,000 hotel rooms and 3,000 residential units. Not coincidentally, Luckman's plan also proposed that Bunker Hill be scraped clean, graded, and neatly divided into a series of gridded zones connected by overhead walkways and moving sidewalks.

It would be 15 years before the Luckman plan for Bunker Hill could begin to be fully implemented. In the intervening years, amendments were made for cultural facilities and significant height variations. The master plan was refined again in 1968 by Bay area firm WBE - Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons - by which time the Bunker Hill High Rise Apartments, the first new structures on the Hill, were completed. By 1970 Bunker Hill was shaved clean. Save the 40 story Union Bank tower there was very little new construction completed or in the ground. Aerial photographs from the period 1973-74 look less like Los Angeles than images of Rotterdam after it was bombarded in 1940. Aside from those few lone towers, Bunker Hill was effectively the largest construction site in North America.

Deja Vu

From 1975 until the mid-Eighties close to twenty housing, retail and office structures were erected in and around Bunker Hill. These included five major buildings - the Bonaventure Hotel, the Security Pacific National Bank (now the Arco Towers), the Arco parking structure, the Los Angeles World Trade Center and the Figueroa Courtyard. The construction boom that emerged in the early Eighties drove the development of the Angelus towers, the Citicorp Center towers, the Marriott Downtown, and the Wells Fargo Center. This active new city core would lead the CRA to conduct a nationwide competition for a mixed-use 11-acre development to be situated at the top of Bunker Hill.

In February of 1980 the CRA announced that proposals from five North American developers had been accepted for the 11.2-acre L-shaped site between the Music Center and the Central Business District. Projected for the site was a mix of office and commercial space (70%) and residential (30%) with 1 ½% of the cost of the project earmarked for the construction of the Museum of Contemporary Art and a related park on 1.5 acres. Additionally the CRA had stipulated the reinstatement, Disney style, of the “restored” Angel’s Flight funicular. The short list included:

Metropolitan Structures Inc., with Fujikawa, Conterato, Lohan and Associates, the successor firm to Mies van der Rohe;

Olympia York / Trizec Western with SOM;

Cabot, Cabot & Forbes with A.C. Martin and Davis Brody Bond;

Bunker Hill Associates with Arthur Erickson, Kamnitzer, Cotton, Vreeland and Gruen; and

Maguire Partners with Harry Perloff, Barton Myers, Edgardo Contini, Charles Moore, Lawrence Halprin, Cesar Pelli, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, Ricardo Legoretta, Frank Gehry, Sussman Prejza, Carlos Diniz and Robert Kennard.

By June of 1980 the competition had come down to pair of final competitors - Arthur Erickson’s team and the super group led by Harvery S. Perloff, Dean of the School of Architecture at UCLA, that would come to be known as the All Stars.

Arthur Erickson vs. the LA All Stars

Canadian Erickson’s winning scheme, the so-called California Center, presented a composition of several towers connected by a plinth arranged around a swirling center at the site’s “city-end”, the California Plaza. Essentially its ‘parti’ developed from an established, homogeneous Modernist gesture unified by an unremittingly banal language - tower blocks and excavated courtyards.

The All Stars’ scheme, by contrast, abandoned the singular Modernist gesture in favor of a sort of Post Modern orchestrated chaos. In the place of a unified nod to the master plan developed by Luckman, the All Stars presented an ‘exquisite corpse’ - 9 projects approximately connected by a variety of public spaces developed by Moore and Halprin. Emblematic of Moore and Gehry’s adventurous and often outré public work of the period (Moore’s Piazza D’Italia or Gehry’s Loyola Law School) the entry was rejected.

Criticism of Erickson’s winning project came fast and sharp. Invited to comment on the competition process, Rem Koolhaas declared that the Erickson scheme “…poignantly evokes what is no longer there: conviction, seriousness, invention.” He continued to add that ”…for lovers of Los Angeles’ ‘no-topia’ both schemes are disappointingly alien to locale mythology. In fact the images they offer are similarly removed from the LA myth of the freeway, of low intensity etc. Granting it would be another kind of nostalgia to condemn LA to a perpetual life without a center of gravity, it is surprising that the image of downtown is presented here as merely an East Coast one seen through rose-tinted polaroids.”

Equally scathing, Michael Sorkin wrote of the winning entry, “…the Erickson presentation, instead of actually supplying any evidence of good design, sought to overwhelm by a mass of visual codes signifying good design. Instead of architecture, one was exposed to a banal lexicon of renderer’s icons for urbanity: flapping banners, balloons, push carts with mustachioed vendors…” Sorkin added, “…one would expect a cogent expression about the particular character of Los Angeles, one of the world’s wonder cities. This requires an act of imagination, an act which unfortunately proved unnatural to most of the entrants.”

Hope

Given the increasingly celebrated re-emergence of Downtown as a bona fide residential and cultural center, and the entrenchment of LA more generally as a center for contemporary architectural experimentation, it seems vitally important now to re-examine the future imagined for Bunker Hill yesterday as a way to sharpen our ideas about Downtown today. One wonders if the current excitement building around the Grand Avenue Project will spark an interest in a genuinely new discussion about Downtown’s prospects or we will be treated yet again to the usual, quotidian developers’ exigencies that are too often passed off as urbanism.

“We want a great mixed-use project that works economically,” says David Malmuth, real estate consultant with Robert Charles Lesser Co. and a board member of the Grand Avenue Committee. Malmuth, who helped conceive the recently completed Hollywood & Highland mall, brought Michael Eisner to Times Square while at Disney Development in the early 1990s. He claims that the need now at Bunker Hill is “… to move more towards a process that’s about urban planning ideas and a financial approach, as opposed to a pro forma that’s not going to be accurate – and that everyone knows is not going to be accurate." What remains to be seen is what the current definition of “urban planning ideas” means. If the notion of bringing a miniature version of 42nd Street or a Central Park to LA seems to define the outermost limit of what the Grand Avenue Committee is willing to picture as urbanism, then one is forced to wonder how far we have come since the CRA announced its first set of plans for Bunker Hill some 50 years ago.

The journey Bunker Hill has made from tabula rasa to Walt Disney Concert Hall hardly seems like a coherent trajectory. However, somewhere in its history Bunker Hill presents a case for the return to something akin to urbanism or at least the will to experiment with our accepted ideas about Los Angeles. “It’s difficult within the public environment not to ask for something that is so specific” Malmuth remarks. “But then you’re locked into disappointment, and you’ll build gradually toward failure. I want to get a great project built here.” While Malmuth may be correct in terms of any assessment that could be made about Bunker Hill’s lost opportunities and erased history, Walt Disney Concert Hall creates a powerful argument for innovative urban form and it must be said here that its success has been entirely dependent on its specificity and the clarity of its vision for LA’s future.

In the twenty four years that have passed since the last major competition held to determine the future of Bunker Hill it seems as if Los Angeles has devolved from being the subject of wonder - think of Banham’s paean to this city - to a being a center increasingly concerned with simulating the picturesque urbanisms of the East Coast or 19th century Europe. The intricacy and complexity of the development process not withstanding, one hopes that what remains of LA’s distinctiveness as a contemporary city- its history of architectural experimentation, idiosyncratic forms and cultural diversity- will provide the Grand Avenue Committee with enough impetus to back a motivated team with a courageous scheme for Grand Avenue. This city deserves a proposal for Grand Avenue that is unapologetic about exceeding our present demands of urbanism or the litany of disappointing plans that have been foisted on Downtown Los Angeles.

Special thanks to Mauricio Munoz for research assistance and archival image sourcing.

Peter Zellner is an architect, author and curator. He is a Faculty Member at SCI-Arc and Visiting Critic at Miami’s FIU School of Architecture. Along with Jeffrey Inaba, he is the co-founder of ValDes, a non-profit organization dedicated to researching suburban conditions.

hope or hype: a residential community downtown by tatiana begleman

Beyond the concept of buildings containing living space, housing embraces an idea of a community environment in which the streets of the city and the space between the housing become as important as the units themselves. This idea is particularly potent when exploring the neighborhoods that Downtown Los Angeles currently offers, and how the city government, developers, residents and others hope that the city will evolve into a community. Downtown housing ranges from new loft renovations, older condominiums and artist lofts to senior housing, shelters and people sleeping in boxes. The juxtaposition of neighborhoods and mix of people within the framework of housing in downtown creates a complex urban situation unlike any other in Los Angeles. The disparate communities within the confines of downtown also reveal that the notorious fragmentation of the megalopolis as it spreads across the Los Angeles Basin is not necessarily due to geographical distance. Overcoming this disconnectedness and creating a more cohesive community is at the heart of many plans for downtown. Many new housing projects pick up on this theme of developing community and reach beyond the building setbacks to create micro-neighborhoods, while other developments fill in smaller pieces within the transforming city.

Attention on new projects often overlooks long-term residents and residential districts of the downtown community. This may in part be due to the piecemeal way downtown is perceived, both from within and without, as distinct districts visited with a purpose rather than a collection of neighborhoods that one wanders between. The Arts District lofts, Little Tokyo, Chinatown, Bunker Hill high-rise apartments, Historic Core hotels and earlier loft conversions (such as the Canadian Building adjacent to the Old Bank District project), South Park low-income housing and even a few houses scattered in the Industrial District comprise an existing residential base, as of course does the more well-known Skid Row District. These areas are contained within what is termed Central City and Central City North, each approximately three square miles. The 2000 Census puts populations of the Central City and Central City North at 18,040 and 12,817, respectively. (The Census tracts for Central City North actually extend across the Los Angeles River to include Aliso Pico but the City Planning Department places the boundary at the Los Angeles River.) Whether these numbers accurately reflect the very-low income population is questionable, but these numbers indicate the density of the resident population, which continues to increase as more people move downtown.

The vagaries of boundaries displayed in the differences between the Census Bureau and the City reflect the difficulty in defining downtown and its neighborhoods. The policies, desires and perceptions of residents, developers and the City all determine how a specific area is represented. The Downtown Business Improvement District (BID) delimitation of the western downtown border at Bixel Street, beyond the 110 Freeway is a benign example of economic interest. Although the freeway cuts off neighborhoods traditionally associated with Downtown, the BID’s interest is to include the high-end Medici apartment complex and Los Angeles Center Studios, but by default this includes the low-income Dome Village project. With three city council districts (One, Nine and Fourteen), five Business Improvement Districts, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), the Central City Association business group and the Los Angeles Conservancy working on visions for downtown, various community groups need to have a strong voice to ensure that residents’ needs are heard and acted upon.

The Los Angeles River Artists’ and Business Association (LARABA) has long represented the Arts District, which has somewhat malleable boundaries and may perhaps become part of adjacent Little Tokyo if CRA plans come through, although how this serves the neighborhoods is unclear1. The Arts District decided to join the newly created Historic Cultural Neighborhood Council (HCNC), a group that also comprises Chinatown, El Pueblo and Little Tokyo. Formed due to perceived differences in the goals of the relatively new Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC), boundary disputes between the two, as well as city procedural requirements, have held up progress. A more established group, the Historic Downtown Community Association (HDCA), began as a virtual community via the newdowntown e-mail group as a way to exchange ideas, information and complaints; borders have more to do with resident participation than street demarcations. The HDCA has been successful in obtaining funding for a variety of improvement projects, including additional beds for the homeless at the Midnight Mission. All these groups represent and create a forum for downtown residents and portray an active downtown resident population willing to devote a great deal of time to improving downtown neighborhoods.

Housing and Developments

Housing in Downtown Los Angeles has undergone a tremendous redefinition with a number of new, mainly market-rate developments that fill-in and fill-out existing neighborhoods. The City’s adoption of the Adaptive Re-Use Ordinance in 1999 made it possible for older buildings to be more easily converted from office space to live/work space and opened up a new avenue for the renovation of the city. Developers taking advantage of the ordinance have concentrated on the Historic Core because of the availability of under-used and architecturally unique buildings in this district. Older buildings does not necessarily mean historic, however since the ordinance pertains to buildings “constructed in accordance with building and zoning codes in effect prior to July 1, 1974”. The ordinance also makes it possible for tenants to combine living and working space, thus the tendency towards “loft-style” projects. These provide a distinct counterpoint to previous Bunker Hill and South Park apartment towers, although these have also been successful in recent years.

The Old Bank District development by Tom Gilmore garnered a great deal of attention as it was the first project to test out the new ordinance. Although financing was more difficult to obtain, and the hurdles in being the first were tremendous, at least Gilmore was able to buy buildings cheaply. After lenders and everyone else sat back to see how the Old Bank District project would fare, Gilmore’s success has spawned about forty new projects and building costs for developers have more than quadrupled. Part of Gilmore’s success was his extremely friendly pet policy and the inclusion of parking. Even though the Adaptive Re-Use Ordinance allows developers to keep parking requirements at pre-1999 levels, it is accepted that adequate parking is necessary to attract residential tenants downtown. Gilmore’s project is a testament to his vision for a neighborhood in a neglected section of downtown: the 230 units in the Old Bank District are almost full and the corner of Fourth and Main Streets has the feel of a neighborhood. Although resident solidarity existed before Pete’s Restaurant, the coffee shop, yoga studio and markets, these elements enliven the streetscape and expand the community into the city.

Now that one development has proven the viability of creating new life downtown there will soon be a myriad of options for people who want to live there. Four projects have recently been completed, nineteen are under construction, eight have been permitted, seven are in plan check and fifteen more are searching for financing. These projects represent buildings that take advantage of the Adaptive Re-Use Ordinance (thirty-eight) as well as new construction (fifteen) and are mainly market-rate, with a smattering of affordable and mixed-income housing. Financing has become somewhat easier for newer projects downtown, especially as rentals go quickly and for-sale units sell out. Of approximately 1000 condominiums available downtown, only two are currently for sale. The Toy Warehouse Loft condominiums in the Arts District sold out within months and the Flower Street Lofts in South Park ($300,000 – one million) sold eighty-two of ninety-one units before the project even opened. According to local realtor Stephen May, there has always been a quick turnover of condominiums in the past decade, regardless of what outside perceptions may be, and prices have been rising in the past few years.

Marketers define the new projects as lofts, loft style apartments and traditional apartments, depending on the perceived client base, although this nomenclature is somewhat fluid. Stylistic differences between projects as well as amenities and the micro-neighborhood ultimately make living styles a personal choice, with economics further influencing decisions. Developments contain forty units to four hundred, depending on the size of the project and the number of buildings involved. Rents generally run from $1000/month at the low end of the market for a 500 square foot studio, to $2500/month for a 1300 square foot unit, with rents for some places as high as $4000-$6000 depending on the location of the unit in the building, views and other features. Life in Los Angeles (for market-rate tenant budgets) depends on having a car to such an extent that there is often a higher than one-to-one ratio of parking spaces to units and these are available either on or off-site, with various payment scales. The bottom floor of most developments offers retail and restaurant space that at the moment usually joins the neighborhood after the tenants. Pet policies vary as much as other features, but none so far can match the Old Bank District’s generous stance. Current advertising and a recent Saturday Downtown Housing Tour (jointly sponsored by the Downtown BID and the LA Conservancy) reveal a number of different housing conditions geared to shades of difference in the projected market. A brief look at a few projects provides a window into current trends:

Little Tokyo Lofts have wood floors instead of the requisite concrete and higher price units have the option of fireplaces. This project is remarkable for opening the interior central area of the original structure to create an outdoor courtyard for tenants. Little Tokyo Lofts also offers a swimming pool, barbecue and “rowdy” area adjacent to the complex, plus a bridge between parking and housing so that the resident does not have to encounter the street.

The Pegasus, on the high-end of recently opened projects, is a renovation of the General Petroleum Building, notable for its beautiful windows. Proclaimed a loft development, the low ceilings have the sensibility of more traditional apartments. On-site parking is $300/month on top of already high rents, with the option of a two block walk to cheaper off-site parking that was constructed for the original building. Cats are allowed if they are de-clawed.

The Higgins Building (“New York Lofts, LA Style”) has a unique rent-to-own scheme that could be an incentive to renters: fifty percent of rent paid, up to five percent of the purchase price, can be used as a down payment. Other features of this building include interior decorator assistance, roof top private areas for those who can afford it and a proposed nightclub in the basement.

Individual projects such as these gradually enrich the current housing stock downtown, as opposed to the kind of urban idealism required for creating micro-neighborhoods within a few blocks. The full-block Santee Court Development, composed of a number of buildings undergoing renovation along Los Angeles Street in the Fashion District, is another example along the lines of the Old Bank District. Rental units are offered in the first phase of the project and there will be for-sale units in the next stage, for a project total of 545 units. Plans for Santee Court focus on the alley running the length of the block: this holds the potential to create a retail/restaurant walkway that could diversify and enhance the already lively neighborhood and extend activity into the evening hours. A slightly different community ideal promotes instant neighborhoods on a large scale both in the number of units and city blocks. Communities such as the 1200 unit South Village, under construction above and adjacent to the heralded Ralph’s Grocery, the 800 unit Alexan Savoy on the edge of Little Tokyo or the 3000 unit housing project proposed to replace the football stadium in South Park, invest heavily in downtown’s future. Some projects are close to the Metro Line system, but the increased loads for projects of this scale will seriously impact downtown traffic unless more new residents can be induced to take advantage of the Downtown Dash and extensive bus systems, as well as the Metro Line.

The Arts District neighborhood, with relatively equivalent numbers, provides a counterpoint to the staggering developments planned in the South Park area. Originally illegal, artists’ live/work spaces were accorded legitimacy in 1981 with the Artist in Residence Ordinance and this mainly industrial area now holds approximately 1500 housing units. This district has developed over a number of years and new projects may benefit from looking at the qualities of this unplanned neighborhood and its variety of housing types. Residents have a strong sense of community, but many artists have recently left the district in search of more affordable housing. Restaurants, retail spaces and the peaceful quality of the neighborhood, combined with the appeal of artists’ studios, have all caused rents to increase. Joel Bloom, owner of Bloom’s General Store, has been working on a proposed craft overlay zone in this industrially zoned district to enable buildings to be converted more easily to artists spaces, but unless the city commits to some sort of affordable housing in this area, there might not be many arts and crafts people left.

There are exceptions to an idea of extending to the community, most notable in the fortress-like Medici and Orsini complexes. Built adjacent to the freeway in those interstitial spaces normally reserved for a few homeless encampments, these are purposefully insular units, promoting a luxurious, resort-style living. The Medici, which contains 632 units, has been extremely popular, probably due to its position near Bunker Hill and the Financial District. Although surprising, the recently opened/still under construction Orsini (297 units) which has nothing in the area except a walk of a few blocks to Chinatown, also appears to have tenants, so there is definitely something downtown for every taste.

Affordable Housing and Skid Row

One of the other surprises with the introduction of more market-rate housing downtown is the success of developments on the edge of Skid Row, where residents seem willing to pay premium prices for spaces adjacent to a homeless population of 3000 – 3500 people. Skid Row has come more into the limelight recently due to its proximity to new development projects and while some of this attention could be beneficial to those on the low end of the economic scale, it has also raised concerns about the direction of affordable housing downtown. Although historically this part of the city has been connected with single men on the lower tier of the economic scale, the demographics have shifted and families, women and children are becoming an increasing statistic of the approximately 11,000 very-low income individuals. The numbers downtown create a community situation unlike any other area of the city, especially because the Skid Row community and services are all contained within a small area. Officially bounded by Third, Seventh, Alameda and Main Streets, the effects of large numbers of homeless, residents of low-income housing and a concentration of social service and rehabilitation facilities is felt much further afield.

The current profile downtown reveals 8502 affordable units (of which 2640 are senior housing) and 6161 market-rate units, although this will change in the next few years if a majority of the planned developments come on the market. There are about three hundred affordable housing units under construction or in plan check, with another fifty possible. The numbers are paltry compared to market-rate projects, however, compared to other parts of Los Angeles the existing ratio is inverted and market-rate parity with affordable housing is considered necessary for downtown to become a viable community. Concerns that market-rate developments will actually displace some affordable housing could be addressed by the proposed “No Net Loss” program out of the Mayor’s office, which aims to maintain the number of affordable units downtown. Most people agree that affordable housing on the scale necessary for Los Angeles needs to be addressed by government rather than private interests. The Santee Court Development and Gilmore’s next project, the renovation of the Rowan Hotel take advantage of the State Low Income Housing Tax Credit; a program for rental housing projects that contain a minimum of twenty percent affordable units. The City does not have a similar program and developers need more incentives to commit to affordable housing, because at the moment it is not a good investment for them. The CRA’s latest attempt to address this issue, The Community Impact Report, does the opposite since it requires more work on the part of developers.

New residents and homeless advocates do not collide on the issue of affordable housing, but on the problems between rights of residents to be able to use the city and what are perceived as rights of homeless to block sidewalks, defecate in the streets and conduct illegal activities. The City has struggled with making public urination and sleeping on the sidewalks illegal, but even solutions such as public toilets have their problems. There is a general sentiment that it will be better for all residents, especially those on Skid Row, if services and affordable housing are more evenly spread throughout downtown, as well as the rest of the City and County. This is obviously contingent upon providing new affordable housing stock and support facilities, which could take years, plus there has already been a huge investment in new facilities downtown. The voter base downtown has partly created the current situation, and it is likely that as more middle to upper class voters come to live downtown that they, as well as developers, will agitate to see things change on Skid Row and the surrounding area.

Living Downtown

As new housing attracts more people and increases traffic between neighborhoods, fragments of the downtown community slowly become woven together. The effects can be difficult to discern at the moment as the demographics of the streetscape, especially in the core of the city, have changed very little with the recent influx of people and projects. Distinct neighborhoods are part of the appeal of living downtown, but neither feeling like a tourist where one lives, nor creating a neighborhood that cannot accommodate a variety of people are solutions for a community.

Many people question the longevity of the current housing boom, which seems to be the key for downtown’s emergence as a vibrant city center, and estimate that it will years before downtown becomes the viable residential community that everyone envisages. Only time will tell whether the number of market-rate housing units under construction will be successful, but there is a demand for housing all over the region and prices downtown are equivalent to other areas up until the higher end of the market, which is probably the most dubious investment. Compared to other parts of the city, however, downtown has unique possibilities in terms of culture and environment and many residents choose to live there to avoid commuting. Hopefully this option will remain available to all workers and not simply the high-income households.

Downtown Los Angeles cannot be characterized as a suburb, as Amy Anderson suggests in Issue 3, but she accurately assesses the tremendous potential for downtown. To realize this potential, the City must commit to filling in the urban space between the new housing and micro-neighborhoods. Oftentimes film production makes downtown residents feel as if they are living in a studio backlot, but occasionally it has its advantages: sections of the city appear as residents would like to see them, with flower stalls and markets filling empty street corners. Walking from work to home to an evening out or to friends a few blocks away needs to be a more pleasant experience in more parts of downtown. There are not very many attractive routes from the Historic Core up to Bunker Hill and the Disney Concert Hall. The Grand Avenue Project needs to spread throughout downtown, and preferably for those people who could enjoy a pleasant promenade or park the most: the residents.

The time and thoughts of a number of people helped in preparing this article:
Amy Anderson, Hal Bastian, Patti Berman, Joel Bloom, Angie Brooks, Marie Condron, Tom Gilmore, Stephan May, Kent Smith, Ian Trivers and Mark Weinstein.

plans come and they go, or downtown is almost OK by robert s. harris

plans come and go, or downtown is almost ok

robert s. harris

Almost a decade ago the Los Angeles City Council unanimously endorsed the Downtown Strategic Plan (DSP). Within a short time, Mayor Bradley completed his final term of office, the District Councilwoman apparently forgot her own participation in the development of the plan, the General Manager of the Community Redevelopment Agency was replaced, the principal of the Central City Association retired, and the planning consultants completely departed, taking up their next assignments elsewhere. Despite all of this, the DSP influenced the review of new projects, the development of follow-up plans in South Park, the Ten-Minute Diamond Civic Center plan, and more recently a plan sponsored by the Central City Association. Fundamental objectives regarding the production of housing are being implemented at an astounding rate. A series of major projects appear to have the catalytic impacts the plan encouraged. And downtown is no longer considered forlorn and hopeless.

Of course, the irony is that few people actually refer consciously to the DSP, and it is actually out of print so that copies are hard to obtain. Thus development interests go forward without knowledge of the plan and CRA staff may have forgotten its existence. Staff in the city?s Planning Department may have forgotten its existence as well. Yet the shape of downtown mirrors closely the intentions and strategies of the DSP. How can this be?

The Downtown Strategic Plan Advisory Committee took several key positions early in the planning process. The first strategy was to understand what already existed and build from existing strengths rather than to begin with the imposition of bold ideas. The Committee realized that downtown had a number of distinct and thriving districts, but they were disconnected from each other and not well enough known either by downtowners or by the general public. The second strategy was to expect development from the private sector instead of from government leadership or funding. Los Angeles is not well known for great civic leadership, but has been built largely by private initiative. And the third strategy was to build a downtown residential base since otherwise the working population of downtown had homes, interests, voting rights, and ambitions elsewhere. Every great downtown enjoys the energy and enthusiasm of its own residents, and the economic base such a resident population provides for the everyday life of shops and restaurants, services and entertainment, high culture and fringe experience.

The three central strategies were accompanied by a series of other basic proposals for a safe and clean, economically competitive, and socially just downtown. Perhaps all of this has had only marginal influence. Yet what if the plan had followed the usual course of recommendations for sweeping change. There have been numerous such proposals for downtown. The prior Silver Book suggested such changes. Other plans by individual architects and groups have heroically postured the possibility of rebuilding downtown with bold strokes. Had the DSP proposed such a future, who would have carried it out? What mega-companies would have been recruited to own large pieces of downtown? And how many small properties would need to be assembled into the megasites of modernist centers? It is possible, then, that the DSP has been influential in two ways: first, it made good sense about central issues and has been used to good advantage, and second, it didn?t embroil downtown in adventures for quick fixes of the bold and glamorous kind. Its shelf life may be a rather long one, stimulating thoughtful initiatives from time to time. In any case, Downtown is off and running again whether the DSP has been a force or not.

Now the new concert hall is open, and the music is glorious, and it is good that such a great thing happens where it should, at the center of the city. And yes, there is a center among centers where such places are especially welcome and appropriate. Downtown Los Angeles has for a very long time now been an economic engine for the rest of the city, providing revenues for services everywhere, employing hundreds of thousands in jobs of a wide variety of types and rewards. And it is where more and more people live. And a few heralded projects bring attention to the place not just to themselves.

Some of those projects are disappointing. The Staples Center offers little urban amenity, and is entirely ordinary within. Pershing Square appears to have been forgotten by everyone who could enrich its life and quality, especially the Recreation and Parks Department. On the other hand, people from throughout the city continuously inhabit the Central Library, and its children?s programs are always popular and oversubscribed. The Cathedral has enough great qualities to overcome the Cardinal?s decision to put it at the edge of the town, almost alone in its place. The Asian American Museum and the transformations occurring in Exposition Park are now off the radar screen, but are excellent additions to our lives and to their places. Most of all, the many districts of the downtown are coming to life as people move into apartments and lofts as fast as conversions of older buildings can be completed and new housing constructed.

As people move into Downtown, everything begins to change. The stores stay open a little later. The streets become safer. The hangouts, respectable and otherwise, are more numerous and enjoyable providing a social life that should be expected in a downtown. Small projects abound, including remodelings and refurbishings and fill-ins. Everyday life is better supported with markets and schools, even supermarkets and music schools, even architecture schools, and a barbershop. Several stores, not part of a global economy franchise chain, may actually stay in business.

Such then is the context in which Disney Hall takes a place. It will not save the setting that needs no such salvation. We had heard that Staples Center would save downtown, and then it was the Cathedral, and now Disney Hall. And now we are told that some new Grand Avenue project is finally just the ticket for complete downtown resurrection. But downtown is actually thriving already. It is an unusually large downtown with many distinct districts, and of course, all are not equally thriving. But sensitively designed shelters and other supporting programs are transforming even skid row. The problems of society that are not addressed in Washington or Sacramento or in City Hall, and are left to volunteers, inhabit the places of density and diversity more than the places that are more exclusive. And so downtowns everywhere are the settings for both extraordinary wonders and for desperate plights. Perhaps there has never been a time in human history when this was not the case.

The big projects seem to get all our attention. Every mayor and council member, all the prominent reporters and critics, and the men and women of means and influence love them. Architects do too, for professional business reasons, perhaps ego, because such big projects just seem so important. Yet in every good year there are only one or two such projects, and meanwhile there are many average size projects, and an even greater number of small ones. So while we were focused on Staples Center, the Cathedral, and Disney Hall (for 16 years!), downtown was being transformed by projects here and there and everywhere, remodeling the city center. As an empty retail space was leased, the shops on either side are bolstered. A few street improvements provided a sense of care where there was none before. Twenty projects supported by the CRA, over a period of at least as many years, each included attention to pedestrian walks and amenities until there was a continuous, fascinating, and well-supported path that connected Pershing Square to the Central Library, and up the steps to a mixed-use zone of offices, housing, shops and restaurants, and MOCA and the Colburn School (about to be further expanded) and to Disney Hall and the Civic Center (also in expansion mode) and the Cathedral and perhaps soon to El Pueblo and Union Station and along a hoped for Alameda greenway to Cornfield Park and the River. On another front, so-called artists lofts are a burgeoning commodity, generating more of their kind, and suddenly downtown appears to be rebuilding actual neighborhoods instead of stand-alone residential towers. Such neighborhoods are formed and forming on Bunker Hill, in the historic core, in the financial district, in South Park at last, and in Little Tokyo and Chinatown.

And in this context Disney Hall is welcome. MOCA was its predecessor in having a path that moves right through its plaza, making public a museum setting that would normally be more monumentally separate like LACMA?s. And so Disney Hall allows entrance up and over itself from the corners west on 1st Street and south on Grand Avenue. It is a new public park downtown, a perch of a park, up high, looking out over the urban landscape. Busloads of children on school field trips will soon arrive, the children clambering up the steps and over the building and through the garden to the amphitheater in which to hear music from a position high atop the city. How unforgettable will that be as they find themselves among the shiny metal panels in the rooftop park hearing the unfamiliar sounds of the orchestra? Of course, others will be there as well, having brought their lunches, or their love interests, or their grandmothers from one of the valleys. It is unusually provocative and intensely urban, not conventionally urban with little shops and stores, and soft places, rather more challenging - urbanity to stand up to rather than to sink into - no place for faint hearts.

But downtown depends more on small and medium size projects everywhere than on a few blockbusters, though the big ones do have a role. They provide the settings big enough and prominent enough to allow us to shout our emotions: a Cathedral in which to mourn Ira Yellin?s passing, and to celebrate what he helped us start; a Staples Center in which to gather for the rituals of sports that are so integral to our culture in which we can be fanatic fans. The big projects have the potential to enlarge how we feel.

And so downtown is the lively place of Biddie Mason?s Park, and of a remarkable fashion district, and of amazing Broadway theaters that may well come back to life any day soon. It is the downtown of experimental theater at the Mark Taper Forum, of noontime and evening concerts throughout the summer, and ice-skating throughout the winter holidays. And it may also be known as the world headquarters of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale housed in a hall of such quality that the bar has been raised for every project to follow, both large and small and medium sized.

It takes a long time to create a great city, and Los Angeles is still young. But every project counts, and we are beginning to add them up into places and neighborhoods and districts.

Robert S. Harris, FAIA, is a professor and urban design consultant. He directs the University of Southern California graduate programs in architecture, was dean of the schools of architecture at USC and the University of Oregon, and has been named a distinguished professor by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. In Los Angeles, he has co-chaired the Downtown Strategic Plan Advisory Committee and the Mayor's Design Advisory Panel.

whose turf is this anyways? julie eizenberg, john given, roger sherman, doug suisman

On June 17, 2003 the collaborative LAH*UB [Los Angeles H* Urban Bureau] sponsored a panel discussion at Gallery 727 on the subject of public space in downtown Los Angeles, in conjuction with their Civic Park Proposals competition/exhibit (see Issue 5). The following conversation is an edited extract from the panel transcripts. For the full transcript, including audience comments, contact www.lahub.net.

Doug Suisman : We talk interchangeably, and I think mistakenly, about open space, public space, civic space. They’re not the same thing. They're also other problems of terminology in our discussion that we should address, which is that the notion of civic is also sometimes equated with government. Government is often interchangeably spoken of as bureaucracy. Civic is not government, government is not bureaucracy. Civic fundamentally has to do with the city, and in particular with the citizens of a city. It may have to do with self-governance and democratic institutions, but not necessarily. Now, the reason I raise this is because my experience was as a member of the team that developed the master plan for the Civic Center, known as the ten-minute diamond.

There have been many, many plans for the civic center. One of the confusions of our downtown is that we don’t know whether we’re a north/south downtown or an east/west downtown. And partly that’s because of Bunker Hill - we’re always trying to get around it. Some of the plans have said that the main civic spine would run north/south along Main and Spring. That was early. Sometime around the forties, fifties, or sixties, there was an idea that actually the main civic axis should swing east/west up Bunker Hill. What is there now is a kind of failed mini Washington Mall - the National Mall. It’s very clear that at some point that was the conception - the Department of Water and Power is where the Capitol is, City Hall is the Washington Monument, and, I guess, City Hall East is the Lincoln Memorial? I don’t know what’s at the other end but there was clearly an idea of an axis and of a big open space. Right now it’s incomplete. There is a public space between the two county buildings that is owned by the county. It is public but it’s totally walled off, unlike the Mall in Washington, which is visible and accessible from all sides. Unless you’ve been a juror recently for a county trial, you probably don’t even know that that space is there. One block down, between the Archives Building and the County Law Library, there’s another space which is optimistically called El Paseo de los Pobladores de Los Angeles [The Route of the Settlers of the City of Los Angeles], and it is as mean a public space as you are likely to find in any American city. Hot, concrete, unused, unloved, but on axis. And finally, at base, right in front of City Hall is, well, perhaps it’s symbolically appropriate that there’s actually a private parking lot. That is what is currently arrayed along that axis. That’s what’s there now - a part of downtown that is uniquely dedicated to the functions of government, and particularly the bureaucratic functions of government - a government ghetto.

My particular task was to develop a concept for framing the Civic Center conceptually, that would tie together open space, public space, linkages for pedestrians. We came up with the name of the ten-minute diamond. The ten-minute diamond says: at least let’s finally complete the vision and create a continuous public green space up the hill. Some see it as a great lawn; some see it as a botanical garden. The idea was to link time and space: the diamond was the shape of the space that is defined by walking ten minutes in any direction from the rotunda of City Hall. It’s an enormously elaborate space - truly a civic space. It’s a symbolic space, symbolic of government and symbolic of representative democracy. And it sits directly underneath the tower of City Hall, which is our Washington Monument, our obelisk, our marker in space of some central point of meeting.

We debated long and hard, well, is the civic center a government center? It’s been in the historical plans and it was referred to as the administrative Center. Is it administration, is it government, is it civic, is it cultural? And while it is monumental in scale, and enjoys some attractive open space and green space, in my view it is deadening to civic life. Not just public life generally - animation in the streets, cafes, stores, hotels, all the excitement of urban life - but is also deadening to civic life, to the responsibilities of citizenship.

Why is that? Well, there’s almost no place for the citizens to gather and express the views and responsibilities of citizenship. And what we have in a representative democracy, instead of spaces for citizens to gather, are rooms in which laws are made. That is the City Council Chamber. The one truly significant space, in all of the Civic Center, is the City Council Chamber. Many of you probably have never even been in it, you probably don’t know where it is within the city hall structure, yet that is the space where your democratic representatives make the laws which affect civic life. So, the idea of a civic square is enshrined in the ten-minute diamond plan. We can talk long and hard about where it should be and what it should be, but it was always seen as part of a pair.

The idea is that civic gardens would go up the hill to the music center, along the axis from City Hall, past the county buildings, and terminating with the Department of Water and Power. That is a symbolic space of enormous power: city government at one end, water and power at the other. There are very few European cities or Latin American cities that have such an absolutely clear statement of where power is concentrated as in the metropolis of Los Angeles. Electricity, water, and government. Oh, by the way, on the corner is the Los Angeles Times. So, the idea was that that much space was appropriate for civic gardens because of the topography. We talk about locating a civic square on the west face of City Hall, but in the history of the building itself… from the opening day of City Hall, the south face, the narrow south face - if you look at City Hall from the west, it’s wide and massive, but the view from the south is tapered (much closer in form to an obelisk) - that’s where the opening ceremonies of City Hall are. That is where mayors are inaugurated, on the steps. That is where janitors, who feel they are unfairly paid, gather to protest, and where other groups protest.

So, there is already a civic space and it’s called City Hall Park, unofficially. I assume you all know about City Hall Park. It’s that little space directly south of City Hall. And it is supposed to function in ways that I think the civic square is intended to function. Let me close and let others talk and we can come back to this in our discussion. But for the idea of the civic square, that space was insufficient. One, it’s mostly grass; two, it’s blocked by trees; three, there’s a statue right on the axis - and it’s completely unused as civic space except on rare occasions. The idea was that by taking the block south of City Hall where the Caltrans building is now, and removing it, we could open up the space that would truly serve as the central, symbolic, and civic space of Los Angeles for all Angelinos. This isn’t just any civic space, the idea is that this would be the civic space… where New Year’s Eve is celebrated, where Presidents come to visit and address the public.

Julie Eizenberg : I’m not sure if that’s being really characteristic of LA… the idea of authority and belonging to that big a group… isn’t a compelling way for how I see myself in the city. So, I never saw the civic layer until you mentioned it, Doug. I’m completely confused by what the purpose of this “park” as a zone is, and what you were talking about as public space. Because I feel that a lot more of this place belongs to me, no matter what the actual ownership is.

I don’t know if anybody looks at those 1789 Nolli maps when they study architecture anymore - what they did was they colored all the space that was considered public space black, and everything that was considered private space was white. And black space included the streets and it extended into the churches. Now, I would extend that into the stores, into the libraries, I would extend it into a number of things like that - but for me that’s what public space is. So, that’s my response to “what do you mean by public space?” I think it’s everywhere. It’s not to do with who owns it, it’s to do with if you’re allowed to use it, and there’s a sort of implied contract that you can go in there and use it… that’s public space.

John Given : I’m going to focus my initial remarks to my own journey in public space in Los Angeles. As a native Angelino, my first introduction to Los Angeles, truly, was a walk down Broadway and Spring Street in 1980. I just was blown away, because there was this amazing city and an amazing public space, which was Broadway. That a native could grow up here and completely miss it - was a tremendously new perspective on Los Angeles that has fueled me ever since.

One of my next ventures was in ‘80s, trying to figure out the framework for a residential community originally conceived in 1972 by The Silver Book [a plan for downtown sponsored by business leaders and the precursor to the central business district redevelopment plan]. The Silver Book proposed South Park as a community formed around a nine square block park with a lake in the middle of it. It’s that same area that the football stadium was being talked about, this last year. That was an impetus to the central business district re-development project, and an impetus to the concept of creating a community in downtown. It dwindled to what I think was a very real and practical concept of Hope Street as a great civic space. It’s this wonderful street that ties all the way up to one of the most beautiful buildings in Los Angeles, which is the library.

Later on, Roger Sherman and I met, trying to create a grand civic space for the West Hollywood Civic Center in West Hollywood Park. It was fostered by the vision that a city needed to have a great space, a very great space. So, what do you do when you build a park in a city that’s starving for open space, and everybody wants to use it, and everybody wants to use it for purposes that probably are going to drive another group of people crazy? And how do you deal with a small amount of space, given those constraints? And yet the need to use it and have it be a success? What we learned is that perhaps that no matter how grand the vision was, that really wasn’t where the people of West Hollywood were at and the project didn’t go forward for a number of reasons. But I think it does raise that question of open space being Mom and apple pie for everybody. One can promote endless projects and endless visions around the need to have more. You can always have more of it, there’s never enough. We can do studies about whether there’s a need for it or not, and there’s never enough. We never really quite know what it is we need the open space for, and it’s often civic space that’s attached to that. We all conjure different ideas about what civic space is.

about the contributors

Tatiana Begelman is a designer who is currently collaborating with studioTBD. She is also pursuing independent research on the historic development of downtown Los Angeles and has been a resident of the Old Bank District since 2000.

Vinayak Bharne is a senior urban designer with Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists in Pasadena. A contributing editor to Urban Ecology, he has also written for Urban Design Quarterly, Congress for the New Urbanism, LA Forum and Asian Art. A former Presidential Fellow at the University of Southern California, he is the author of the afterword to the Japanese classic In Praise of Shadows (Koda Press).

Julie Eizenberg is a Principal of Koning Eizenberg Architecture and holds degrees in architecture from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and UCLA. Recent projects include the winning designs for the Pittsburgh Children's Museum Expansion and the Chicago Public Schools competitions, and in downtown L.A. the design of the first new single room occupancy hotel on "Skid Row" and the new Standard Hotel.

John Given is Senior Vice President, Development of CIM Group, and is responsible for acquisition, structuring and planning development activities for the CIM California Urban Real Estate Fund, L.P. Mr. Given is an active member of the Urban Land Institute, the International Conference of Shopping Centers, and the American Institute of Certified Planners. He has served as a founding board member of the Hollywood Entertainment District and chaired the City of Santa Monica Housing Commission.

Robert S. Harris, FAIA, is a professor and urban design consultant. He directs the University of Southern California graduate programs in architecture, was dean of the schools of architecture at USC and the University of Oregon, and has been named a distinguished professor by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. In Los Angeles, he has co-chaired the Downtown Strategic Plan Advisory Committee and the Mayor's Design Advisory Panel.

LAH*UB [www.lahub.net] is an artist/architect collaborative comprised of Ken Ehrlich, Liz Falletta, and Avi Laiser.

Alan Loomis is a senior urban designer with Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists in Pasadena, where he has led planning projects for UCSB, Pomona College, the City of Azusa, and various locations in Monterey and San Luis Obispo Counties, in addition to participating in charrettes and research projects throughout California and New Mexico. He is the director of the LA Forum’s web publications and the creator/editor of the DeliriousLA architecture events calendar.

Carol McMichael Reese is associate professor of architecture at Tulane University. Her books and articles focus on contemporary architecture and urban planning in the Americas. In 1985 Reese was commissioned by the Getty Research Institute to document the building of Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Roger Sherman is the Principal of Roger Sherman Architecture/Urban Design in Los Angeles and a faculty member at SCI-Arc. He was a finalist in the Railyard Park (Santa Fe, NM) Design Competition, 2002, and the FreshKills Landfill to Landscape Design Competition, 2002. He is the author of "Things in the Making: Contemporary Architecture and the Pragmatist Imagination," Museum of Modern Art, 2001, and the forthcoming Under the Influence: Negotiating the Complex Logic of Urban Property.

Doug Suisman is the founder and principal of Suisman Urban Design. An urban designer and licensed architect, he has gained national recognition for his ideas and designs of public space in U.S. cities. In 1999 he was made a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. The focus of his work is on downtown revitalization, public spaces and buildings, and street and transit design, with a strong emphasis on public participation. He is the author of Los Angeles Boulevard published by the LA Forum.

Peter Zellner is an architect, writer and curator, and a Studio Faculty member at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He is the author of Hybrid Space: New Forms in Digital Architecture and along with Jeffrey Inaba, co-founder of ValDes, a non-profit organization dedicated to researching suburban conditions. His architectural projects have been published and exhibited internationally - most recently as a part of Experimental Architectures 1950-2000, in Orléans, France.