walking around downtown los angeles is an exhausting experience. of course there is a height difference of around 50 meters between the lowest and the highest point in the intra-interstate downtown area, but that is just a small detail.
what i am talking about is that even though 'downtown' la is the center of one of the biggest cities in the world, it doesn't feel like it. besides the conglomeration of highrises around bunker hill, downtown la feels more like some second-rank industrial area that also happens to house people.
lately however, the city is trying to improve the image and experience of downtown. no more ridiculously tall skyscrapers is one thing - mike davis described the bunker hill dilemma in his book
city of quartz, more skyscrapers means more money for the city. true, but it also drives away the people and thus the spirit of the town. - bringing in more people is another one. los angeles still looks like a bombed out city in a lot of places.
and like in most other bombed out cities - detroit, philadelphia (sort of), berlin (still!) - these barren lands have been filled up with parking lots to accommodate the ever growing number of people that work in downtown. a lot of these parking lots are being demolished to make way for medium to expensive condos, lofts and appartment buildings. the city tries to attract a crowd to downtown that could possibly compete with the swank crowds of manhattan, downtown san francisco or boston.
sci-arc moved into the artist district a good 7 years ago. back then, rents were still afforable and there were still plentiful structures available capable of housing a crowd of 450+. sci-arc was on the vanguard of the re-urbanization of downtown. back in 1999, nobody wanted to go there. it smelled, there was nothing to do and it was plain ugly. a lot has changed since then. it is less smelly and there is more to do. it is, however, still fairly ugly:
this was once a parking lot. now it houses overpriced condos for people that don't mind about gentrification.
sci-arc's lease will once be over. if downtown continues to gentrify, it will probably be too expensive to continue the lease of the freight yard. we will have to move. isn't it ironic that in the mobile environment of los angeles, the architecture schools follow that same trend of mobility, only staying in every place for a couple of years, infecting the site with creativity, and moving out before it gets too boring?
of parking parks
recapture: one step of beefing up downtown is building more housing. but here, more housing also means more cars and thus more parking lots of parking structures. there are a lot of people that live in downtown but work somewhere else, in the valley, hollywood or down south. they live here however, because they can travel against the traffic. no jams in the morning, on time for dinner in the evening.
these people need a place to park. in-house parking lots are expensive - up to $ 25,000 a spot), so it is easier to build it just next door. these parking lots still spread through downtown like an agressive virus, overwhelming everything within reach. downtown now not only suffers from film shoots blocking up street and disturbing public life, it has also caught a parking fever.
plans have already been proposed to counter the inconvenience caused by film crews: convert empty structures around downtown into warehouses for film equipment, so that trailers no longer have to crowd the streets whenever bruce willis is shooting a new installment for die hard.
so what to do with the parking lots? is there perhaps a possibility to turn parking lots around downtown into parks? if we were to do that, los angeles would become one of the greenest cities in the country, given the enormous number of parking lots that already exist. don't allow anymore cars in the center, but offer a high-density public transport network, allowing for people to get around quickly and cheaply. turn downtown into a neighbourhood where you could actually raise a child without worries. if we want to repopulate downtown, and make it look like a real city, density is not the only solution. a liveable environment, where you can safely walk your dog, cross the street without having to worry about being run over by some renegade driver. make people proud of the place they live. make them live there because they want to, not only because it's easy with the traffic.
can you imagine if all this were green?
