Public Life in Los Angeles
I have been in El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Ángeles sobre El Rio Porciuncula for the past week. Although the pueblo had internet access, I used it rarely.Instead I walked and drove around alot and read (not finished) Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She had something to say of Los Angeles in 1961:
Lowly, random and unpurposeful as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city's wealth of public life may grow.
Los Angeles is an extreme example of a metropolis with little public life, depending mainly instead on contacts of a more private social nature.
True perhaps in 1961, but a lot less true in 2008. From what I saw, the street life of Los Angeles has become very rich. (An exception: the urban renewed parts of downtown Los Angeles. They are clean, modern and neat, but have few pedestrians.)
I think Los Angeles is moving from suburban sprawl towards major clusters of density based on mass-transit and neighborhood attraction. And with it is coming the strong public street life that Jacobs championed.
Memphis has much to learn from Los Angeles' transformation.
Labels: density, Jane Jacobs, Los Angeles, Memphis, placemaking
posted by gatesofmemphis at 10:56 PM
2 Comments:
I've compared the two places often--- only in their sprawling, and their car-cultishness. Last time I was there (almost 2 years ago) I noticed the same thing.
The Valley is still pretty awful.
But, as always, a toast to The Pink Dot. Jim Beam and smokes delivered to your door.
living in SF for seven years, i was "supposed" to hate L.A. SF was supposed to be the cool, progressive, hyper-urban, intellectual, edgy city and LA the flaky, superficial, image-obsessed, giant sprawling suburb.
but i never did hate LA. i think it's a fascinating place, and in some was more of a real metropolis than SF. you could explore LA endlessly and never exhaust it. sure, it's got the hollywood thing, but that means it's also got the seedy noir underbelly, which i kinda dig. i still think it's too car-dependent, and it still needs to improve its public transportation, but you're right: there are parts of town with incredible street life.
worth reading: the stuff on L.A. in mike davis' Magical Urbanism
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