How Los Angeles Polarizes

There are people who hate Los Angeles:

 Woody Allen: "Annie Hall" (1977)

In this scene, Woody Allen's character Alvy Singer, like Allen a New York enthusiast, expresses his disapproval of Los Angeles while being taken for a ride (of course!) through Beverly Hills. Singer complains that Los Angeles offers only imitation and no original traditions when he talks about the architecture. Moreover, there is no creation of intellectual culture, only the production of "garbage" television.

There are people who love Los Angeles:

Randy Newman: "We love L.A" (1983)

The narrator in Newman's song on the other side wants to leave the cold cities of the north behind and enjoys the hot Santa Ana wind when driving (of course!) through Los Angeles.

One might argue that the song contains a satirical undertone about a prevailing superficiality. Driving through the different neighbourhoods would confront the narrator with conflicting aspects of the city - but the never ending sunshine makes all worries dissapear.

From the South Bay to the Valley

From the West Side to the East Side

Everybody's very happy

'Cause the sun is shining all the time

Looks like another perfect day

Since the song is today still played at major Los Angeles sporting events when the home team scores or wins, this possibly critical voice is ignored and the song is used for the pure celebration of Los Angeles.¹

Opposing views on the city like these have been part of Los Angeles' history writing. Historians like Mike Davis offer a "noir" vision of the city:

Los Angeles represents the urban will to power, a super-city that appropriated water, built a port, and opressed labor with ruthless and implacable force. [The] metropolis was and is still led by a shadow elite that ignores ecological and social realities and concocts vast real estate schemes, manipulating the masses and transforming land and water into wealth and power.²

Others, for example Kevin Starr, see Los Angeles as a "dream": 

[It is a] metropolitan vision achieved by intellectuals, writers, and city leaders. The result [...] is a city that, despite smog, violence, natural disasters and stucco sprawl, remains to some degree a citrus-scented land of sunshine.³

We'll have to see what the future holds for Los Angeles and who will lead it there.

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1 Wikipedia: I Love L.A.

2 Culvers, Lawrence: The Frontier of Leisure. Southern California and the Shaping of Modern America. New York. 2010. p. 4.

3 ibid.

Living in L.A.: Revitalizing Downtown

Downtown Los Angeles, more precisely El Pueblo, is the place where the city was founded by Mexicans in 1781. Over the last century the city center has experienced times of rise and times of fall.

With the massive move to the suburbs especially after World War II, Downtown Los Angeles became a place where fewer people lived, fewer business headquaters were situated up to a point where it was described as deserted.

But in recent years, Downtown has returned. In 2006, a demographic study counted 28,878 residents, but in 2008 the number had increased to 39,537 inhabitants.¹

Certainly a big impact had the simultaneous establishment of major construction projects.

In South Park, the entertainment complex L.A. Live together with the L.A. Convention Center and the STAPLES Center has created a whole entertainment neighbourhood as well as stimulated the opening of further residences, shopping facilities, restaurants and cafés.²

The $ 2,5 billion L.A. Live project includes concert halls, movie theatres and the Grammy Museum.

Another major investment has been the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Bunker Hill. It was designed by Frank Gehry and with its opening in 2003 became the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. With its striking exterior it has been manifested as "an internationally recognized architectural landmark"³.

On the other hand, these new entertainment offers are not cheap to enjoy and therefore cater only to a certain part of the population.

A Lonely Planet travel guide published in 2008 with specific focus on Downtown Los Angeles invites visitors to discover the revitalized and diverse neighbourhoods of the city center in the new, progressive way:

"And subways in Downtown LA? Really? Yes, really. Despite the city’s love affair with the automobile, your own Downtown LA experience can very well be car-free – try our worldclass public transit or simply hit the pavement and experience Downtown LA’s pedestrian friendly tours and events."

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^{1  "Downtown Los Angeles Demographis Study 2008", p.6.}

2 UrbanLand

3 Los Angeles Philharmonic

Getting Around in L.A.: The Alternatives

"What if, tomorrow, everyone’s car disappeared?"

Running on Empty (Revisited) from Ross Ching on Vimeo.

While empty highways will probably stay an utopia forever in Los Angeles, different programms have been started to make ecological modes of transport more attractive:

• The Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) knows how to make use of all the possibilities the internet offers and has a website, a blog, facebook and twitter accounts that keep Angelenos in dialogue with the LADOT Bike Program and up-to-date about newly installed bikeways and cycling safety.
  

• CicLAvia: Three of these events are happening in 2011. For one day, all cars are removed from the streets and a route between seven and ten miles is opened for cyclist, skaters and pedestrians. Carefully planned, the route goes through different neighbourhoods to connect different parts of Los Angeles: "Ciclavía is not just for recreation. It is social integration."

 

• The Los Angeles Metro decided to step up its game and to market its products and services as if it were a private company. But the focus lies not on increasing profit but on convincing commuters that the metro is an smart alternative to their car. As Matt Raymond, the Chief Communications Officer for Metro, puts it: "We wanted to make public transportation cool." 

All these projects have the common goal of making the city more sustainable and simply livable. And while Los Angeles has often been a model for the rest of the world, in September it was Los Angeles' turn to ask Dutch cycling experts for help and inspiration during the ThinkBike L.A. Workshop. Of course, these measures may feel like a drop in a bucket, but with Los Angeles' special status in the United States, no one would be surprised if its inhabitants set the trend for the rest of the country once again.

The "Bicycle Stops Here"-project has installed bicycle parking racks designed by artists. (Source)

Getting Around in L.A.: Cars, Cars, Cars

Due to the widespread suburbs, the car is not just a convenience in Los Angeles but a necessity. 

The BBC documentary “Hot Cities - Surviving Climate Change” offers some numbers: The 10 million inhabitants of Los Angeles County own 6 million cars and take 20 million car trips per day. It is “the original car capital” and the first city with an urban freeway. 

 Another thing that comes with the car culture is the need for parking space. As one blogger observes, "Besides all the smog and traffic, one of the effects of the car culture out here is the amount of space taken up by parking lots. [...] Being from New York, the idea of wasting all that space on empty cars is unfathomable to me."

The band "Missing Persons", founded in Los Angeles, observed in 1983 in their song "Walking in L.A." that "nobody walks in L.A.". The only people that can be seen on the street are either a jogger or rollerskater exercising or "maybe somebody who just ran out of gas". In the refrain this idea is clerverly twisted into "only a nobody walks in L.A.".

As dramatically announced by the BBC documentary's narrator, with all the car drivers living the American dream on Los Angeles' highways it has turned into a nightmare, because of the high emission that is blamed for the climate change.

But since the growing traffic has been recognized as a severe threat to health and environment, several actions have been taken.

Coming to L.A.: "The Hills"

In March 2006 MTV premiered a new reality series about the lives of a group of young Americans working and living in Los Angeles: “The Hills”

The protagonist is 20-year-old Lauren Conrad who was already known to the MTV audience through her former reality series “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County”.

The first episode of “The Hills” shows Lauren’s move to Los Angeles.

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In the first scene of "The Hills" we see Lauren packing her suitcase and she explains via voice over that she is leaving the small town she grew up in behind because “it’s time for [her] to move on”. 

“This is my chance to make it all happen in the one city, where they say dreams come true”, says Lauren, while the viewer is presented with a long shot of Los Angeles’ skyscrapers in golden sunlight and a shot of the famous Hollywood sign. Even though the name of the city is not mentioned, everybody watching knows now that Lauren is moving to Los Angeles.

During the title sequence with its upbeat theme song, Natasha Bedingfield’s "Unwritten", the viewer sees Lauren in her car passing the beach, followed by an overhead shot of a Los Angeles highway junction and finally arriving in the city, again signaled by the Hollywood sign.

The Hollywood Hills give the show its name which is written in shiny, sparkling letters over a night shot of Los Angeles at the end of the title sequence.

( Source: All screenshots by blog author)

 “The Hills” was very successful in the US as well as other countries and continued for six seasons. The young adults portrayed became stars and kept a steady income with their book contracts, fashion lines and spin-off series. 

The impression gathered by the title sequence, that “The Hills” shows a one sided view of Los Angeles, is confirmed throughout the rest of the series.

The focus of the show lies on Lauren and her three friends Heidi, Audrina and Whitney. In the title sequence a certain life style is presented. These four white, middle to upper middle class, twentysomething women are filmed while driving their BMW, being amazed by their beautiful apartment, working, shopping, lying at the pool, attending fashion shows and enjoying the night life.

 Whitney Port, Lauren Conrad, Audrina Patridge and Heidi Montag (Source)

Considering MTV’s target audience from teens to twenty-year-olds nationwide as well as internationally, this is the picture of Los Angeles painted for them week after week. Conflicts happen only between the characters, the conflicts of the city like air pollution, traffic congestion and the divide between the extremely rich and the very poor are ignored. 
Instead Los Angeles is presented as an attractive city with many opportunities for beautiful, well off young adults, full of glitz and glamour.

Intro

"Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city." 

This famous quote by Dorothy Parker appears again and again when the City of Angels is discussed. Just like it’s missing a city center and instead sprawls for miles and miles of neighborhoods and edge cities, Los Angeles is also difficult to grasp in a theoretical approach. The sheer size of Los Angeles with an area of 1,300 km² for the city and 10,570 km² for the county and a population of 3,8 million, respectively almost 10 million people makes it difficult to offer generalized statements about or themes of the place and its inhabitants. 

"L.A. Times" Map - The Neighborhoods 

As historian Robert Fishman said, "Los Angeles was [...] the first truly suburban metropolis, in wich the suburbs became the city and suburban life was made available to a much greater portion of the city's residents."¹ 

"Moving day in the Southland, 1952. A posed picture for LIFE magazine illustrates the rapid suburbanization of Southern California in the early 1950s."²

Since it's "The Entertainment Capital of the World“, these developements in Los Angeles have been broadcasted via tv and cinema to the rest of the United States and the world.  Consequently, Los Angeles has functioned as a model for various other cities' planning in the last century.

Inseperable from the rapid spread of the suburbs is the car culture in Los Angeles that made leaving the city center possible in the first place. 
But in the last decades the disatvantages of a city's population being scattered all over the suburbs and relying heavily on their car, from segregation by race and class to pollution, has been recognized and Los Angeles needs to find new ways to deal with these issues.

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1 Culvers, Lawrence: The Frontier of Leisure. Southern California and the Shaping of Modern America. New York. 2010. p. 56.
2  LIFE