There's no better place to experience the intrinsically L.A. characteristic of prosperous destruction than downtown Los Angeles. There is so much building going on, so much new retail and restaurant life, and so many new yuppies sharing sidewalks with the familiar residents of the vast homeless encampment that is L.A.'s skid row, it's really overwhelming. Everytime I am there something is different. Just the other day I drove up First Street and gasped to see the ghostly old State Building reduced to rubble. When? Why? Who knows.
More is on the way. The City Council's unanimous approval of a new building ordinance for downtown basically frees up developors to build as many -- and as tiny -- housing units, as tightly together, as they can. "Incentives" are attached to the ordinance to push them to build "affordable housing," of course, but the real aim seems to be the Manhattanization of downtown L.A., only without all the subway stations every few blocks. Reaction to the changes is mixed. Gridlock, anyone?
On Monday I checked out the press conference held by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Councilwoman Jan Perry (who recently chimed in on the debate in an op-ed), and Carol Schatz, president of the Central City Association, for the signing of the ordinance. They held it at a gaping construction site on Figueroa for a planned 32-story tower by Astani Enterprises. Out of nowhere, Villaraigosa said the changes in downtown would happen, miraculously, "without gentrification," and Mr. Sonny Astani, an immigrant from Iran, admitted at one point that the particular development where we stood would not have affordable units.
* Link to map at You-Are-Here.com, and to the L.A. Times' comprehensive coverage here, here, here, here, here, and here. See this View from Loft post on the State Building demolition. Alternatives available at Livable Places.
** Photo from You-Are-Here.com.
** ADD: And just over the bridge, if you haven't studied the New York Times' article about KCET's cybermurals on Boyle Heights, check out this resourceful post also at View from a Loft.