Archive: Urbanism

The CicLAvia organization will conduct a national search for an executive director.

The latest issue of LA Weekly takes an interesting approach to the hot topic.

A former storefront in place since World War II has been removed on 6th Street to expose a courtyard between wings of the Pacific Mutual Building. Pain Quotidien and Tender Greens are coming soon.

The design firm Gensler, which will be taking the lead on a project to remake Pershing Square, has posted a video that shows what can be done — and why it should be done. They even keep the parking garage beneath the park.

Forget Downtown. Gehry still agrees with his pitch of ten years ago: MOCA and the cathedral should be on Wilshire Boulevard and his signature Walt Disney Hall should have been built in Westwood (or further west.)

On Saturday morning I'm taking part in an LA Conservancy panel on suburbanization and sprawl in Woodland Hills. It's part of the Curating the City: Modern Architecture in L.A. series, which itself is included in Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. Info inside.

These new towers would be built on the parking lots around the Hollywood Palladium near Sunset and Vine. "Holy shit," says Curbed LA, "there have been rumors about some kind of development at the site of the Hollywood Palladium for ages now, but here they finally are, for real....two big-ass towers."

On Thursday morning I moderated a panel on the future of Los Angeles at the Getty Research Institute's symposium, Urban Ambition: Assessing the Evolution of L.A. The participants included Christopher Hawthorne, the LA Times architecture critic.

Many fans are loath to say anything negative about Ciclavia, but USC physics professor Clifford V. Johnson — as enthusiastic a supporter as there is — has some constructive criticism after Sunday's mass turnout across the Westside. One, there were too many bike traffic jams. More inside.

LA Times architecture Christopher Hawthorne continues his survey of changing Los Angeles area boulevards with Wilshire — a street that he writes "has always stood apart from the city it slices through." Let's see what he says.

Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne observes that the candidates for mayor have been short on future vision for the city. That's too bad, he writes in a front-page critic's notebook, since there are "some major holes in the civic fabric." It all starts with the mess that is LAX.

Nice line: Harbor Boulevard's architecture, "largely anonymous and inward-looking, is marked by a studied blandness...that recipe has produced on Harbor a feeling of unnatural civility — the architectural equivalent of a forced smile."

A New York Post real estate editor and travel writer have written a very readable travel piece on the "new" Los Angeles that transcends enthusiasm. It's actually savvy about some of the shifting cultural currents here.

Like with Hawthorne's earlier pieces on Atlantic and Sunset, the theme isn't much deeper than him enthusing that some Angelenos are embracing a shifting style of boulevard and city defined by mass transit, bicycles and walkable neighborhoods. But hey, rail lines are being built and a guy can dream.

Interesting exercise on the New York Times website, with six writers or experts from Los Angeles taking part.

They're calling it Viadoom, the massive urban traffic breakdown some fear from the nine-day closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct along the Seattle waterfront.

The L.A. Times architecture critic announced today that he will read and post brief blog essays over the next year on "25 of the most significant books on Southern California...

My KCRW column tonight wades into the big divide in Los Angeles between those who see L.A. as a car culture city and those who crave a more transit-fed urban culture. There are no winners in the debate, only a need for co-existence.

Chase, the author of several books on urbanism and Los Angeles, died Friday of an apparent heart attack. He was the godfather to the daughter of Frances Anderton, host of...

In today's column on KCRW, which just aired at 6:44 p.m. (new day and time), I muse on some of the differences between New York and Los Angeles via public...

The Amateur Enthusiast is a blog devoted to drinking and dining in Downtown by political strategist Glenn Gritzner. In today's post, he struggles to bring his fellow Enthusiasts around on...

My four-minute segment today (back after two weeks off) veers from a weekend train trip up to Santa Barbara to confess why I don't care whether the Century Plaza Hotel...

Investor Charles T. Munger's latest plan for the Barry Building in Brentwood is to tear it down, build underground parking, then put in a shopping center that shares the courtyard...

The Planning Report, the monthly about Los Angeles and So Cal planning and development published by David Abel, is letting its readers vote online on which of the following "in-progress...

With seven residential projects containing 900 units already under construction — and another two dozen projects approved — the most upscale shopping street across the Valley is evolving. But the...