Downtown LA

[Guest Plastic]

It's been discusse dhere that many cities are different. There's 2 models. The urban city where people live in or close to downtown, there all squooze into a few mile radius, the towers are tall and the public tranport is beter that vehicles and private transportation.

Then there's suburban cities, cities were urban sprawl has taken the lead. These are cities where many or most peoplestay away from DOwntown,clog the highways,commute on average 15 miles or more,have a lower less dense skyline,minimal public transportion, and a very spread metropolitain area. Prime examples of urban cities would be New York and Chicago, primes ofsuburban would be LA and Houston.

Although argued Houston and LA have huuuuge central business districts. They even have minor districts far from Downtown(Greenspoint,Westchase). Like LA Housotn has sprawled out huge and it's not at all uncommont o see people commute about 30 miles to work. While so many people moved out so did many businesses,retail,entertainment sources, and jobs. That leaves the inner city to run down and Downtown becomes more or less just a place for businesses and city government.

This is primarily what happened to Houston.We all know we've got a big attempt to revitalize our Downtown.

What I want to know is are there any major or serious plans to revitalize Downtown LA. I know they built the Staples Centers inside it but is there anything else going on in Downtown LA?

[SMUrban]

I was in L.A. last November for a ULI conference and they have very ambitious, concrete plans in the pipeline as well as coming out of the ground. The area around staples center will become very urban in the next few years. It will have the same atmosphere as Victory Park in Dallas, but on steroids and done by many different developers. I went to one session where they talked specifically about the downtown redevelopment and what struck me was how many developers were working on their own projects but were complimenting each others site plan, i.e. one parcel had a plaza cutting through the middle and the developer of the next parcel continued with that plaza at the same point so there is some cohesion and meaningful open space. Very unique for competing developers. I'll try to find my notes from the conference, in the meantime here are some links:

http://www.downtownla.com/pdfs/econ_reside...alDoc_92304.pdf

http://www.downtownnews.com/

[Guest danax]

180 projects currently in DT L.A. Did SMurban answer your question Plastic? And yes, Houston and L.A. are 20th century "sprawl" type cities as opposed to the ones like Chicago and NY that grew large and dense in the 19th century. Different animals and we sprawlers still get no respect from the citizens of the older style cities. If all of the office tower clusters and residents were somehow compressed into a Manhattan-sized space, our critics would be in awe of the "real city" look and feel that would result.

What's happening to L.A. is the same that's happening here, just on a larger scale. We need to pay attention to how Angelenos are dealing with sprawl city problems like traffic, noise, pollution, housing etc and glean the best ideas for ourselves.

L.A. is a great city, rich in many ways, and one that, like ourselves, was ridiculed and lampooned by armchair experts for decades and now, after filling in and filling out, the ugly duckling, while still full of faults, is mature and world class. Houston is on the same transformative journey.

Two things that we can never have that L.A. has are beautiful terrain and tons of old residential and commercial architecture. We never seemed to have had the sophistication in the past, and even now, to appreciate our historic architecture but another reason we have so little is that we didn't have much to begin with. We weren't a huge city until recently, and our modest amount of old architecture reflects that. L.A. was booming, huge and glorious in the 20s and 30s and, once sprawl kicked in, the old buildings and homes were left mostly intact due to development elsewhere. Hopefully, we've learned our lesson somewhat and have come to the realization that all great cities have great architecture.

[Guest Plastic]

Ridiculed, I thought LA was beautiful, much mroe beautiful than New York City.

I'd think people up North would be flocking to cities like Los Angeles to be away from the concrete jungle type setting. No old decaying buildings to spoil your view. No jack hammers and rude pedestrians....just miles of endless scenic terrain.

[worldlyman]

Downtown LA re-commercialization in an upscale or more gentrified sense is still very much disjointed compared to the focus which is on the move in downtown Houston.

I've been a frequent visitor to downtown LA and it is still mostly a bargain shopping zone for Latinos. For a real attempt at a downtown core, there would have to be a wholesale transformation along Broadway which is where the Latino shopping takes place. Broadway is visually striking thus that's where a real focus would have to be and it ain't gonna happen. Broadway is the heart of classic downtown LA.

The newer and more glitzy area of downtown LA which would be along Grand is very sterile and the sidewalks are, ironically, very thin. It doesn't seem to be conducive to that many clubs or bars and such.

I see that the Staples area and the new plans nearby for are too peripheral compared to a more core effect that downtown Houston has, and what is stretched there is now being tied in with the development along Capitol, Texas, Travis, Congress, Dallas, Caroline and Main, especially Main.

The problem with Los Angeles is that the cultural mindset is still very much west of Western Avenue. We're talking the Hollywood revitalization that's been going on with a craze. Downtown Los Angeles is still too mired by vast dereliction around the periphery even if its architecture and concrete continuity are more fixed compared to downtown Houston's periphery.

Downtown Houston, on the other is not as mentally/socially isolated and enjoys a greater cultural favor among Houstonians, per se.

They can talk about developing or actually engage in putting stuff up in Los Angeles but until the mindset at-large to move away from Hollywood and back to downtown emerges, we'll just have to wait and see.

But the Sunset Strip, Santa Monica's 3rd St., Hollywood and such are going to keep downtown from seriously emerging as a rival destination. Entire blocks would have to be, ah, socio-economically re-arranged around downtown LA in order for a re-consideration among the well-heeled partyers to take place.