LA URBAN LESSONS FROM PASADENA TO THE PACIFIC
By Steve Wright
Pity poor Los Angeles: home of gridlocked highways, a car-addicted culture, traffic-choked main roads, smog-stifled sunshine and a near collapse of the notion of downtown being the center of a region’s civilization.
But if the city of Angels is sprawled beyond any hope of redemption, how could it have some of the highest property values outside of Manhattan – the urban cathedral at which all city planners worship?
And if nobody walks in LA, how could there be so many impossibly fit and trim gods and goddesses of the West Coast there?
Surely, among all those freeways that slice and dice the landscape and all those mall rats in the San Fernando Valley, there must be pockets of good urbanism.
And that’s exactly what the 13th Annual Congress for New Urbanism looked at in 2005, titling the annual conference “The Polycentric City -- designed to explore how a region with many centers, such as Southern California, can establish a framework of development based on principles of New Urbanism."
John Norquist, president and CEO of CNU, observes that many metropolitan areas in the US have sprawled beyond their core downtown, so the Los Angeles Congress will help many cities learn how to find the strengths in multiple urban centers.
Although the 2005 Congress was headquartered in Pasadena, events took place all over metropolitan Los Angeles during the four-day meeting.
While LA can represent the good, bad and ugly of a 21st century western city, Norquist believes the good is outweighing the bad. He sees marked improvement in the decade since CNU II was held in a then-wickedly decaying downtown Los Angeles.
“LA was the most maligned city, thought of as a bad place getting worse,” Norquist said from CNU’s Chicago office. “They say `Chicago is the city that works,’ and they used to say `LA is the city where nothing works.’ Now that’s changed. You are seeing increasingly better urbanism, more sophisticated real estate agents and developers creating good design rather than cutting corners.”
In some respects, the original core of downtown Los Angeles is blessed because people abandoned it so rapidly for the tony towns to the west. That exodus left many great early 20th century theaters and buildings intact, albeit underutilized and in great need of an adaptive reuse.
“Downtown is transforming itself. Broadway and Spring are perfect original streetcar streets and the area is full of loft conversions,” Norquist said. “Downtown is really becoming a neighborhood with lots of people living in it.”
As for the $6 billion-plus, 59-mile LA subway system, Norquist said ridership might be low on some of the four lines, but “it works a lot better than the Century Freeway,” he said of the famously congested Southern California highways.
“Look at ridership on the Red Line, and you know that the San Fernando Valley will regret not extending it into that area,” he added. “The Metro Rail Line has been a very positive thing for Hollywood Boulevard. A decade ago, much of Hollywood Boulevard was downright scary. Now, the streets are full of people, the property values are way up and classics like the old Roosevelt Hotel have been completely restored.”
Nathan Landau, a land use/transportation planner for AC Transit in San Francisco’s East Bay areas, said people forget two very urban facts about LA: There are several walkable areas and the city of Los Angeles is one of the highest density cities in the United States, especially when the low-density areas of the hillside developments are subtracted.
As for walkability, Landau cited downtown Santa Monica for Palisades Park, the famed Pier, the mom and pop shops of Arizona Street and the chain-dominated but pedestrian-heavy Third Street Promenade.
He also praised West Hollywood for its high density population that supports walkable commercial streets such as Santa Monica Boulevard with its unique restaurants, bars, cleaners, grocery stores, boutiques and even some racy shops for grown ups.
“Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena has Paseo Colorado, one of the best of the mixed use shopping centers that I've seen,” Landau said. “It relates to the street as well as to itself and it reopens the Garfield Avenue civic center axis. Pasadena City Hall up Garfield is a beautiful Beaux Arts building and the whole civic center complex is striking though it's got a few `uglifications.’ If you keep walking east you'll see lots of new housing, Vroman's bookstore -- one of the best in Southern California, a two-story Target (rehab) with a front door and a back door.”
Norquist agrees that Pasadena is the perfect base of operations for CNUXIII.
“Besides being a very beautiful garden city, Pasadena is a great example of a city that has gone through several cycles,” he said. “It was fabulously wealthy in the `20s, then `50s, then Colorado Boulevard declined in the early `60s. Then they built a suburban style mall, then tore it down. Now, Colorado is urban, one of greatest shopping streets in Los Angeles County.”
“All the beautiful streets in great metropolitan areas are coming back. Los Angeles is no different,’ Norquist continued. “The Westwood Village area has been stressed, but it is coming back. Melrose has gotten so popular, the little rag tag shops and artsy spots are being replaced with upscale retail and restaurant. Rodeo Drive, although hardly typical of a normal main street, has wide sidewalks like a Midwestern town.”
While Norquist praises LA for being “a metropolitan region on the mend with a wonderful blend of culture and ethnicity,” he said there still are problems.
“The lower class, the working class can’t (afford to) live in LA,” he said. “If you are working poor, you need to be in the middle of the economy. In New York, you may live in the Bronx, but you’re a subway ride away from the greatest pile of dollars in the world in Manhattan. In LA, if you want an affordable little house, you live way out in the desert.”
Still, Norquist said CNU attendees couldn’t have landed in a better urban lab than Los Angeles.
“I’m really excited about LA,” he said. “It has gone from urban hell to being on the road to becoming one of the great international cities of the world.”
Wright is an award-winning journalist who has written about growth, development, architecture, town planning and urban issues for more than a decade. He lives and works in a traditional, walkable, sustainable community in a restored historic home in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana.
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