Caltrans photo: OmarOmar

This blog could be an endless screed against Los Angeles and Van Nuys in particular, and sometimes it is. Our problems seem endless, and the built environment is demoralizing. We live in the midst of a paradise of climate, that is constructed in a way that keeps us isolated in our cars, stuck in traffic, under the haze, longing to get outside for fresh air and human interaction.

Once again, I visited the website Carfree and looked at photos of European cities where pedestrians are king, and many people get around on their bicycles. There are also images of plazas, and those wonderful meandering streets with narrow walkways, that give a city a sense of mystery and delight. Where Venice has the Piazza San Marco, Los Angeles must make due with Pershing Square, or better yet, the hellish concrete nonscape of Sherman Way in the San Fernando Valley.

We keep hearing about the exciting changes that are coming to Los Angeles, but on a recent visit downtown I had the horrendous experience of seeing Thom Mayne’s Caltrans building up close: a black-glass, violently anti-social, concrete skycraper that encapsulates every negative characteristic of LA. There were no windows or doors on the sidewalk: only a blind and indifferent blankness on all four sides. Amusing in its oddness, conceptually clever, but deadly in its incarnation. Imagine an entire city constructed by Mr. Mayne, his way: architectural nihilism. Hiroshima was a tragedy, not a blueprint.

We progressives are left to imagine the city of the future only in revitalizing those sections of Los Angeles that were built in the 1920’s. I love Silver Lake and Echo Park, because here is where the pedestrians climb staircases, the shops and stores are unique, built into hills and curving streets, and one can walk anywhere.

But the vast resources of Nokia, Walt Disney, Eli Broad, and Staples, and yes, Caltrans are intent on erecting enormous ego and profit driven dreck that is praised only because the media smells dollars the way a mosquito smells blood. The LA car show, a dinosaur of design, is an example of how global warming can never compete with the sexualized come-ons of this retrograde event. Just what LA needs: more cars. They might as well have a downtown convention to recruit new gang members.

In Los Angeles, we have noble ideas, but even the idea of extending the subway to the sea, for a paltry extra $250 million (Tom Cruise’s monthly salary?) is something that must be fought (for/against) as if it were a frivolous toy, instead of a transportation necessity.

So we continue to build new lofts downtown, and tear down perfectly good neighborhoods in Studio City for condos, while much of the rest of the lower rent city languishes.

I want to live in a city where I can ride a train anywhere from Santa Clarita to Palm Springs, from Camarillo to Anaheim. I want to live in a city where Van Nuys is lined with big oak trees along Van Nuys Boulevard, and billboards and wooden power lines are gone. I want to take a breath of air that doesn’t stink of diesel exhaust, or hops from the Budweiser plant, or Woodley Park sewage, or smell of the Vietnamese restaurant down the street.

I know it’s a lot to ask, and for now it seems beyond our capacity to build, so I will be dreaming of bicycles instead.