Marc Salette: 8 Questions on LA Urbanism
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 scarcity of resources should encourage us to be more efficient of course, but also more essential, looking for fundamental opportunities and results, especially those that are synergetic, multivalent, and allow (or force) diverse groups to collaborate, combine their efforts to accomplish something greater than their own specialized agenda. The Piggyback Yard project is such an opportunity.
The lack of visionary leadership and the growing powerlessness of precarious institutions should urge the citizens of this city to care, to get involved and help move things forward with their opinions and ideas – which can find so many different outlets – their votes and their actions. The acute sense of uncertainty that exists today should awaken us, inspire us to think of the future and the kind of city we want to live in.
Is the city only defined by our own little piece of it, the amount of square feet we can afford to live in, the character of the street we live on, the duration of our commute… or is it a place we fully inhabit, own and participate in?
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? 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?
Los Angeles may be a city where the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. It may not make sense to try to look at LA as a whole. And how would we define it, where does it start and stop? At the risk of not finding the common trajectory that may connect us all, fixing and improving its individual parts, one neighborhood at the time, may still be the best way to evolve the city.
At the same time we cannot be satisfied with the overall state of fragmentation and segregation of Los Angeles. However instead of trying to link the entire sprawling network together, perhaps we should focus on creating as many viable nodes as possible, and in the process connect as many neighboring communities as possible.
The revitalization of the River in general, and the PBy project in particular, overlap many communities, jurisdictions, constituencies and interests, and propose to create powerful nodes, strong local stitches that soon will begin to reinforce the frayed metropolis.
The PBy project is also an immense opportunity to propose a new way of developing, of densifying the city. Because of the size of the site and its location, the master planning of PBy can explore the delicate balance between open space and built space, private and public, natural habitat and active park, buildings in which people live and buildings in which they work. The concept developed for the Mission Road corridor proposes a fairly dense neighborhood along an important artery, to preserve parkland and take advantage of the expansion of light rail. It imagines a vertical integration, as opposed to an horizontal segregation, of a variety of uses – residential, educational, cultural, office and light industrial – serving a diverse population in buildings marrying architecture and landscape, and incorporating significant sustainable features, organized along a pedestrian-friendly boulevard with wide sidewalks lined with retail and services, and a branch of the Metro Gold line running down its median.
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 river was at the origin of the city, and reconnecting with it is connecting with the city’s history. Revitalizing the river rehabilitates a part of the city’s identity that was lost. Meanwhile infrastructure in general and the infrastructure of the river itself have become major aspects of this identity, though in the case of the river it is expressed mostly through slivers of visibility, usually from another piece of infrastructure, the freeway, and much less through direct experience.
Reconnecting will establish the past and the place of the river in the life of the present city with the ability to see, walk and touch this infrastructure, and will improve its future outlook by nurturing reconciliation with nature and promoting sound water management. The river, birthplace of Los Angeles, can become emblematic of a greener future.
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? And why is public space such an important part of the contemporary city?
Los Angeles is similar to many American cities with its relative abundance of sprawling private open space compared to large cities abroad. This privatization of open space happens at the expense of the public space. At the same time, the beaches of Los Angeles have provided public space at a large scale, with near-universal access. Perhaps this has also diminished the demand for urban public space, as has our sprawling geography and its car culture, which offers few occasions to express our “urban spontaneity” and experience public space as an everyday destination.
The expansion of public transportation should continue to encourage the day to day experience of public space, as densification and the progressive reduction of private green spaces over time should increase demand for open space. Understanding these trends, we need to plan ahead and reserve public space, which will become essential in the city of tomorrow. The Piggyback Yards site constitutes a unique opportunity to do so.
Public space is the essence of the city, unless we want to inhabit our dwellings and workspaces like so many individual, hermetic cars sitting on the freeway.
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?
During periods of slower growth and greater skepticism, we can better afford the time to look at the future in an original way and consider truly transformative ideas. The laboratory of Los Angeles needs the freedom to experiment, which prosperity can enable but hard times can justify. Recognizing the need and the opportunity to evolve our view of the city and try new approaches, local design professionals should stimulate the urban discourse and engage the community with their vision and efforts, revealing what is possible and demystifying what is often wrongly perceived as insurmountable.
Spurred on by the Friends of the Los Angeles River, this is what the PBy Collaborative Design Group set out to do.
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?
Or strive for. We should endeavor to have a city that embraces its multiculturalism beyond the idea of it and creates more peaceful, spontaneous occasions to interact, rub shoulders, play together. Closer integration may temporarily create friction but over time will help defuse conflict through a better understanding of one another. Densification should accelerate this process as well as elicit a desire to have a more sophisticated hierarchy of spaces from the intimate to the monumental.
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?
We have to overcome cynicism and become interested, curious, and motivated to be informed. We have to be demanding, impatient and persistent. We have to become engaged citizens who realize the importance of our environment and connection to others in our everyday lives.
In the case of the PBy Proposal, the support and involvement of the people will keep the conversation alive, grow the degree of interest, further demonstrate the importance of making better use of this land to the point when the status quo will become intolerable; it willhelp ground and evolve the concepts we presented to one day lead to their implementation, in part, in whole or in spirit.
8. Right here and now, for you personally what characterizes the city of Los Angeles today?
I see a city facing all the challenges of today; separation, fragmentation, lack of direction, congestion, densification, scarcity of public open space, water shortage and other environmental problems. At the same time I see a city that is not burdened by the weight of history, tradition, precedent, and is enriched by such cultural diversity, with a climate and a natural environment that foster a certain gentler way of life. I see a city that represents an important milestone in our quest to build a sustainable future.
I assume that we must always remain consumers, such is the reality of our physical lives, but perhaps we can become better consumers of a collective quality of life with our buying power and our taxes; consumers of moments, of peace, consumers of nature, of light, music, avid consumers of social interaction in the public realm, living in a city with the colors, sounds and smells of a giant, fascinating market.
Tags: city, marc salette, questions, urbanism
