Design Observer :: Join the Discussion http://places.designobserver.com/feature/la-day-la-night/25228/ en-us Design Observer Group 2011-05-22T22:00:16-05:00 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0
After all, what UFO cultist would go downtown when there's Hollywood?]]> g waterman http://places.designobserver.com/feature/la-day-la-night/25228/#comments 2011-05-22T22:00:16-05:00
-You cannot walk in LA at night? Really?! Been to Santa Monica or downtown Hollywood or Boyle Heights or Westwood Village or downtown Pasadena after dark lately? If you want a city where no one walks after dark (or at all), try Phoenix or Houston, but not LA.

- A "company town," totally dependent on the film industry? Long ago LA passed the New York metro area as the biggest manufacturing city in the US, and there many, many other economic activities going on there as well that don't have to do with film. Not that film isn't very important, but it is not ubiquitous, just like there are many, many other things happening in New York other than finance.

- The city is not built in a "desert." The desert begins on the other side of the San Gabriel mountains. LA has a mediterranean climate. Seasonal and sporadic rainfall, yes, but a desert? No. LA's climate and vegetation are completely and totally different from the Mojave desert, which begins about 50 miles from the middle of the LA Basin.

- The city has not extinguished everything natural in its midst. Yes, LA has a massive carpet of urbanization -- but so does New York. Meanwhile, LA has massive amounts of open space in its midst -- the top of the Santa Monica Mountains, for instance. How many cities have a major mountain range running right through them? The carpet is indeed vast and awe-inspiring, but to suggest that it is impossible to get away from it is seriously misleading.

There is a by-now long tradition of newcomers to LA commenting on what they see as its strangeness, which so often means all of the ways in which it is different from New York. It has a dry climate, and therefore it is seen as a desert. It has a well-known story about capturing water from the Owens River, and so New York's equivalent story is forgotten. It is laced with freeways (just like New York) and has only a fledgling public transit system, and therefore "nobody walks at night." And somehow New York is naturalized as the normal, default place (when in fact it is a totally unique city in North America -- you have to leave the continent to find anywhere else, i.e. London, that functions anything like it) and LA is the place that is strange and always, in the end, suspect.

I think we're long past the time where this tradition is helping us to learn anything new about Los Angeles. Reading this piece makes me think that this perspective is preventing the author from really knowing the place he's writing about.




]]> Jake Wegmann http://places.designobserver.com/feature/la-day-la-night/25228/#comments 2011-04-08T10:16:12-05:00
In 1842 NYC started "stealing" water. When did they start "stealing" water in LA? How is this any different?

If the infrastructure of the country were to shut down, and food and water stopped moving, both NYC and LA would die of thirst, and if the water worked, they each only have a 3-4 day food supply so everyone would starve to death in either place. This idea that NYC is so much less dependent on technology and outsiders is completely bunk. NYC doesn't "live within its means."

I just wanted to correct that notion.

Also, California is the largest agricultural state. How much of your NYC food comes from California I wonder, and they get what, NY cheddar?

I've lived in the NYC are for 15+ years and am making that same move to LA this coming summer. I had a Scotch; I felt a sudden burst of exhilaration, and with foresight I know I will love it...

]]> Kurt Koller http://places.designobserver.com/feature/la-day-la-night/25228/#comments 2011-04-07T10:58:27-05:00