Photos: Mike Thelin
One of the things that gets people’s blood boiling is to compare and contrast two different cities. I have written about Paris and Van Nuys and compared Barcelona to LA. I’ve showed the refinement of Paraty, Brazil to filthy,decripit Kester St. When I praised Zurich, Switzerland and criticized San Bernardino, CA I was told to “get the hell out of LA” and “Zurich is depressing and gray.”
Part of it is understandable: people have pride in where they live. I was born in Chicago, and I know of no city on Earth (other than Paris) where people are so partisan and full of braggadocio and bluster. Pizza, sports teams, steak, architecture, parks, museums—the Windy City takes second place to nowhere else.
But Los Angeles only seems to take pride in the mirror. The rear view mirror or the bathroom mirror, whatever the reflection of civic honor, we seem to go back to our own self-image as a measurement of how wonderful a place to live LA is.
Could there be an architectural reason why LA doesn’t get up and beat its collective chest?
Photos of Madrid, Spain show a city in a similar climate to LA, but one where fountains, arches, public squares and an ensemble of harmonious buildings create a civic identity and pride. Narcissism is turned outward in an admiration for the collective social good.
The tall building with the turrets seen above, reminds me of that fake European street on the SE corner of Wilshire Blvd. and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Both the European and American buildings are gateways and noble in their own classic formality. But the Beverly Hills structure is just a fake without residential or 24 a day use. The Spanish Building is a living, breathing organism of architecture.
The Madrid fountain photo also shows how a water sculpture is part of a city. It is not stuck into a corner like the Beverly Hills fountain at Wilshire and Santa Monica. It is a device to announce that one has entered a distinct district. It isn’t put up for mere vanity.
So many projects planned for LA are developed with a larger civic meaning. That is why we have “The Grove”, and Madrid has…… well Madrid.
Here in Van Nuys 
Anonymous-
That’s right. Criticizing something means you don’t care or love it. On that basis only propagandists or publicists would have a right to write.
My point is that LA could adopt some ideas from other cities to make it more liveable.
Does that mark me for deportation?
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Andrew.
Why do you even live in Los Angeles, much less maintain a blog on one of its districts, if you despise it so much? Could you do us all a favor and just stop?
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Not to mention that Madrid has a HUGE subway system, AND they recently built a 41 km extension (all underground), longer than our “Subway To The Sea” would be, for some insanely low price, in less than three years.
http://urbanrail.net/eu/mad/madrid.htm
But that’s not even POSSIBLE here, now is it?
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History shows that cities rarely were designed for, or with input from, its residents.
City form primarily accounted for why the city was formed (such as proximity to water for trade) and how the cities adapted to geology, climate and warfare.
As anonymous said, beauty of a city was for the self-aggrandizement of monarchs. But, equating property rights with democracy is an Anglocentric affectation. Most mainland European societies have treated property rights as an element of national identity, and less reified than under English law.
And if L.A. is a terrible place to be poor, what is it about our city that attracts the Mexican maid, Guatemalan street vendor, Nigerian taxi driver or the Pakistani convenience store clerk? They’re going to be poor, but they left countries where they have no economic prospects.
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It may be true that totalitarianism can build better cities than just the free assertion of democracy. But it would also be wholly dishonest to claim that Southern California, whose vast land areas were owned by single owners like ranch and development companies, had any sort of individual democratic influence in creating our city. In many ways, LA is a far worse place to live for the poor, than the dictatorships of Nazi Germany or Fascist Rome. Which should also make us ashamed.
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It sends chills down my spine when people fetishize continental urbanism where grand and just blindingly opulent style predominate. Madris, Paris, Lisbon, etc., they were imperial cities. What you see isn’t a city formed under any kind of democractic auspices, but through blood and plunder of materials from the rest of the world. Hausmann of Paris fame bulldozed entire neighborhoods whose citizens have no recourse to claim they’re property rights. When these cities do enter the democratic age, when rights are more established and claimed, the urban form isn’t at all different from the states. Witness the banal suburbs of Paris, London, Lisbon, and yes, Madrid.
It’s unfortunate that you present examples of good continental planning outside the context of which they were made. Having the citizenry assert its rights is a laudable development in civic involvement. Everytime a post goes up of some imperial monument tied to urban planning, I can’t help but be worried about the subtle anti-democratic impression it presents.
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