1. Given the current climate of economic crisis, governmental turmoil, and a general sense of stasis in the community, how can the city of eternal optimism take advantage of such a historic moment?

The city can take advantage of the moment by rethinking, reinventing, and redefining perception of a place and understand what makes for a rich city experience. Acknowledging that this Los Angeles is an unconventional place where people thrive in a special setting. The mountains, the ocean, and the vast blue sky is the stage for multiple villages that thrive amidst the economic turmoil. Food, music, and artistic pursuits generate an extremely lively milieu. Amidst the multiple crises the younger generations are resourceful, less materialistic, more civically engaged, and ready to make a difference.

2. As large- scale interventions in the city decline and as urban issues are solved more and more at the micro level, how can we begin to look at the city as a whole again?

Before Los Angeles was defined as a city, it was defined by its mountains and its river and the abundance of natural resources. Recognizing that natural resources are the lifeblood of people and cities should propel new urban interventions that recognize natural cycles and allow for low impact development strategies.

And as the last, largest single-owner parcel of land in such close proximity to Downtown Los Angeles, what are the opportunities the Piggyback Yards provide?

This site offers fantastic possibilities to create a mixed-use development in the heart of the city. The site is in a unique location, both physically and visually connected to existing and extremely diverse neighborhoods. The Piggyback Yards offers an opportunity to bridge the east and the west side of downtown across the river while reclaiming the river, the lifeblood of the city. With river revitalization as a goal, the majority of the site becomes publicly accessible while performing important environmental functions. This neighborhood will offer social, ecological, and economical sustainability connecting to its immediate surroundings through a multitude of physical interventions. By engaging with the arts community at The Brewery, the light industrial tenants on Mission Road, the USC School of Medicine and the East LA communities the place will become a rich hub with housing, commercial, office, and recreational facilities. In addition connections to Union Station, Chinatown, and Elysian Park are proposed. The transformation and recalibration of industrial/underutilized sites has to be a major part of the agenda to reinvigorate the urban fabric.

3. As a city constantly defined and redefined negatively by its infrastructure, how does reconnecting the city to the Los Angeles River change the identity of Los Angeles?

The Los Angeles River is perhaps the single largest coherent and most important public space in LA, which has been fenced off to the public since the 1940’s. The urbanized portion of the Los Angeles basin is park poor and existing parks are fragmented and dispersed, with public resources inequitably distributed with relation to need.

We see the River as a vital work of civic infrastructure that has the potential to integrate a divided city making the crucial first step towards a Regional Open Space network for Los Angeles. The River has the potential to integrate the many varied jurisdictions, communities and habitats. It is a latent open space void, space that has the potential to accommodate multiple environmental and social functions.

A robust network of streets and public facilities offer an opportunity to reengage the river corridor with the communities that it traverses. WATER must be at the heart of the ambition to reconnect people to the river, learning to value our natural systems and becoming stewards of the environment.

4. With 365 days of sunshine and a diverse landscape of terrain, Southern California and Los Angeles have a variety of landscapes and ecological environments, why do you feel that the city lacks diverse public space?

The obvious answer would be bad planning and policy but it’s more than that. There were decades of freeway construction and extreme suburbanization where planning for certain public services like schools and parks were not taken into consideration. A lack of coherent planning for multi-benefit solutions that would have included parkways, trails, and parks to knit different communities together was not a part of the modus operandi which led to the California Dream for everyone (most everyone) a garden. The private Eden was given priority and set up the DNA and expectations for generations of immigrants that arrived in sunny California over the last 6 decades.

Of course there is public space in Los Angeles of many scales, some of it hard to find. For example the gardens at the Walt Disney Concert Hall downtown are public property but most of the public perceives this area as private. Los Angeles is large, diverse and disconnected. Many of the extensive public areas such as the beaches and the mountains are difficult to access by public transportation making these amenities inaccessible to a large segment of the population.

And why is public space such an important part of the contemporary city?

Public space in a contemporary city takes on many different forms. We have to go beyond the preconception that Los Angeles will ever behave like San Francisco or Rome. The public can take advantage of small and large incidental spaces. Streets and alleys are repurposed for many different types of public activities. The new generation of urbanites is finding extremely creative ways to inhabit the public arena and engage with their neighbors, friends, and their community through larger community gatherings in these unconventional spaces and smaller organized activities like Critical Mass, Silver Lake Jubilee and Sunset Junction all proliferate in these spaces that in no way reflect the Plaza Navona nor Union Square. We must recognize that the city is densifying and the private garden Eden is not viable for everyone so public space is important to consider offering recreation, cultural, and social benefits to the community. Public spaces allow for critical social interaction which bridge multicultural multigenerational communities.

5. The Piggyback Yards/Mission Yard area is just one of the zones of investigation in the city which is rich in geography, community, and political economy. With projects and development on hold, how can the laboratory of Los Angeles find momentum?

By continuing to design projects like the Piggyback Yards and reimaging similar projects in highly urbanized areas the momentum will continue to grow and enrich the dialogue amongst developers, stakeholders, and the political leadership.

Design professionals have the opportunity of engaging political leadership in important conversations about planning and design that during good economic times are less likely to occur. There is a proliferation of community design centers in other parts of the country, a venue for creative design work that should be considered as part of the menu of options in engaging stakeholders in this dialogue.

6. As Los Angeles continues to evolve, issues of housing, density, and community surface as populations begin to form relationships in new and unplanned ways. Emerging interaction can also result in friction and unforeseen conflict. With such a diverse population, what kind of community must Los Angeles anticipate?

The Live Local, Work Local ideal, and all its incumbent benefits, cannot happen by itself – it can only occur when the public is weaned off its dependence on the car. The car serves as the great obstacle to multicultural interaction and true melding. Projects like Piggyback Yards/Mission Yard seek to extract Angelenos from behind their dashboard and insert them in new urban situations of street contact, cultural exchange, and joint recreation.

7. Grand urban issues can seem insurmountable when viewed by the everyday person. What can you and I do to change the city in a positive way?

Transparency and engagement are critical. Individuals can change the city in a positive way by understanding and following the issues, as well as interacting with politicians. The City Council is very open and along with their city staff they are ready to conduct a dialogue with the public.

Good collaboration and communication between public agencies, elected officials, and the private sector is really important, so that everybody sees the benefits of these projects. Neighborhood groups can be the conduit for improvement. The citizenry are starting to understand smart growth and sustainable living practices. There is growing community support for change.

Designers have the power, the vision and the ability to give 3-dimensionality to urban design solutions. They can educate the public and help them understand how the choices that individuals make regarding transportation, housing, and open space uses impact their everyday lives. By understanding the complexity of the issues, the community (voters) can be empowered to be civically engaged.

8. Right here and now, for you personally what characterizes the city of Los Angeles today?

Los Angeles is a dynamic place that defies conventional attitudes about places. Los Angeles is made up of many unique villages that make up a larger city. When you’re building in areas that are repurposed, using land that was originally industrial or commercial, you really have to start thinking of the big picture and how to knit these new developments into the community.

The opportunities for exploration that many villages create is one of the best characteristics of Los Angeles. When a resident of Echo Park goes to Beverly Hills, Venice Beach or Santa Monica it is an event, an occasion to experience a different community; when a resident of Marina Del Rey goes downtown for the monthly Art Walk they are experiencing a different Los Angeles community, one that operates on a more urban scale. Los Angeles can be your individual neighborhood or a completely different one within a short drive/bus ride out of your neighborhood. It’s a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure for residents – it’s what one makes of it. An example – in the movie “What’s Up Rockers”, a group of South Central skate kids go on a day-long adventure to Beverly Hills to skate a pool.

The creative spirit in Los Angeles is palpable. Art, design, and music permeate the city in strange and wonderful ways.

Tags: city, mia lehrer, questions, urbanism

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