Los Angeles is not sprawl after all . . .

You have to wonder if this guy has ever actually been to Los Angeles? While it may be true that the L.A. metropolitan area is dense, it certainly is NOT compact. An interesting point of view, however, and one which tries to look at So Cal more critically.

from: Bruegmann, Robert. "L.A., the king of sprawl? Not at all," Los Angeles Times, 23 October 2005.

Robert Bruegmann, professor of architecture, art history and urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago and chair of the art history department, is the author of "Sprawl: A Compact History"

ON THE FIRST page of his widely read 1958 essay "Urban Sprawl," William H. Whyte Jr. described the view out the window of a plane flying from Los Angeles to San Bernardino as "an unnerving lesson in man's infinite ability to mess up his environment."

Whyte was a young editor at Fortune magazine, already famous for his groundbreaking 1956 study of suburbia, "The Organization Man." But in describing L.A., he was merely rehashing an old argument. For many academics and intellectuals living in apartment buildings in Boston and New York, L.A. represented everything that was wrong with cities. They complained that it was unplanned and incoherent, too dispersed and automobile dependent; it lacked a definite form or true center.

In short, it was devoid of what they considered real urbanity. It was sprawl. For more than 50 years (until just recently, when it has had to share the honors with Atlanta), Los Angeles has had the distinction of being the poster child for sprawl, a settlement pattern reputed to be economically inefficient, environmentally degrading, socially inequitable and aesthetically ugly.

But, in fact, Los Angeles is not a particularly good example of urban sprawl. Take the part about being unplanned. The truth is that New York, Chicago and most of the older American cities had their greatest growth before there was anything resembling real public planning; the most basic American land planning tool, zoning, did not come into widespread use until the 1920s.

L.A., by contrast, was one of the country's zoning pioneers. It has had most of its growth since the 1920s, during a period when planning was already important, and particularly since World War II, when California cities have been subject to more planning than cities virtually anywhere else in the country.

Then there is the part about how the city is too dispersed. Although it is true that the Los Angeles region in its early years had widely scattered settlements, these settlements were not particularly low in density. Since World War II, moreover, the density of the Los Angeles region has climbed dramatically, while that of older cities in the North and East has plummeted. The result is that today the Los Angeles urbanized area, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, has just over 7,000 people per square mile — by a fair margin the densest in the United States . . . .

These trains should run under water

from: MacAdams, Lewis. "These trains should run under water," Los Angeles Times, 2 October 2005.

Don't expect to be fishing off the 1st Street bridge in downtown Los Angeles any time soon. But don't throw away your fly rod either, because last month the city finally moved closer to revitalizing its real and symbolic core: its river.

Almost two years ago, the city engineer's office presented a conceptual study on how a seasonal waterway in the channel through downtown, created by computer-operated inflatable dams, could create "El Pueblo Lake." Now Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council's River Committee have announced that a team headed by a Pasadena engineering firm will draw up plans for making 32 miles of the Los Angeles River a more beautiful and interesting part of the city. Tetra Tech and its partners have 18 months also to come up with at least five major park projects between Tujunga Wash and Vernon's city limits.

The projects will be financed by public money, including Proposition O, the $500-million storm water cleanup measure that passed last November.

Before Angelenos and tourists spread picnic blankets across verdant riverside terraces, swim or fly-fish for trout in natural-looking pools, or gallop on a horse along tree-lined trails, engineers will have to satisfy city officials' challenges to restore wetlands, hold back floodwaters and improve water quality. But the most formidable barrier is the railroad tracks that line the entire 4 1/2 miles of the river between the Arroyo Seco and the city limits, isolating the central city from its river. . . .

Gussy up that trash-strewn concrete cesspool

from: Enquist, Philip and Craig Webb. "Gussy up that trash-strewn concrete cesspool," Los Angeles Times, 2 October 2005.

FOR THE SHEER POSSIBILITIES of renewing dead-ended neighborhoods, opening fenced-off Mars-scapes and providing immense environmental, cultural and recreational benefits, few projects in the world match the potential of an ecology-minded and people-centric revitalization of the Los Angeles River.

Consider those "once-in-a-century" urban waterside projects that have defined the character and fabric of so many of the world's great cities. Daniel Burnham's Downtown Chicago Plan, which celebrates its centenial in 2008, transformed Chicago's lakeshore into one of America's most architecturally beloved and recreationally rich downtown districts.

In a similar way, the 1910 City Beautiful Plan helped Orlando, Fla., retain its downtown lakeside heart, and it gave the city an ongoing unity of architectural purpose. More recently, Tempe's Town Lake development in Arizona, Chattanooga's Riverfront District in Tennessee, San Antonio's River Walk in Texas, Hartford's Adriaen's Landing in Connecticut, Shanghai's Huangpu River redevelopment and similar plans have helped open decaying waterfronts to enlivening and civically healing uses, including the reconnection of fractured streets and isolated neighborhoods.

Truth in advertising: Our firms took part in a 2005 request for proposals to transform 32 miles of the L.A. River into what would be a multipurpose linear greenway running virtually the entire length of the city. Our proposal wasn't chosen. We were, however, so taken by the project's potential to serve as a grand civic unifier that we want to add our voices to those arguing that, with a balance of advanced engineering and imaginative planning, the L.A. River can be of comparable civic worth to, say, New York's Central Park, Chicago's Grant Park or Washington's Rock Creek Park. . . .

Eden's Need for Green

from: Waldie, D.J. "Eden's need for green," Los Angeles Times, 2 October 2005.

AUTHOR LAWRENCE Clark Powell remembered his mother arriving in Pasadena at the turn of the last century with her horticultural triumph: a geranium. It was a hard-to-keep exotic back East, a tender plant for middle-class women to hover over in the parlor. She kept her geranium on her lap on the long, transcontinental train trip, Powell recalled. And when she stepped off the platform in wintertime Los Angeles, she saw geraniums in bloom in every vacant house lot. They were as common as weeds. In humiliation (and perhaps with some relief), she threw away her pampered plant.

You might say that we've been tossing out the geraniums ever since. In its abundance, Los Angeles is a kind of garden, after all. Why would anyone need or care for more?

This is the paradox of nature in this city and among the reasons that lush L.A. also is park poor. . . .