The Faux-Tuscan-ization of Downtown Los Angeles

The recent approval of Geoffrey H. Palmer's "Lorenzo" development, at 23rd and Flower just south of Downtown L.A., will see the the Italophile real-estate tycoon's empire of apartment complexes grow to a total of 9 in the area. With nearly identical cheesy aesthetics to match their Tuscan-inspired names, I got to wondering whether we were actually starting to hit a point where they make up a large enough proportion of new residential properties in and around the financial district that the Palmer aesthetic is a noticeable aesthetic for the whole area!

I threw this together in Google maps (click for link to interactive map):



Of course, there are far more Downtown residential properties of both the converted historic bank building variety (seen throughout the Historic Core) and the new-build-loft glass and steel variety (as has come to define the South Park neighborhood). But Palmer's properties are arguably doing something similar in the north and west periphery of the financial district - especially as viewed from the 110 Freeway! Add to this some other similarly-styled developments like the ultra-cheesy "City Lights" complex opposite the Convention Center and a number of new buildings near USC (including the so-identical-and-aptly-named-I-assumed-it-was-Palmer "Tuscana") and you really have a theme going.

I've long had a sort of love-hate relationship with Palmer's buildings, ever since the "Medici" went up with great fanfare around 2000-2002 while I was living nearby, and soon became resort-style home to a many of my fellow USC students. On the one hand, Palmer was arguably pretty important in promoting the residential resurgence in Downtown L.A. - which has on measure been a good thing for the city. And certainly relatively dense apartment buildings are better than the surface parking lots most of his projects have replaced. But Palmer has been a less than caring community member, long dragging his heals about including low-income units, and the buildings themselves are lousy neighbors for their immediate surroundings, the largely lower-income streets north and west of the financial district where they have been plopped down (see this 2004 Downtown News piece for more on Palmer's controversial past.) And regardless of how one feels about the luxurious grounds and interiors or the cheesy Italianate design, many are fortress-like at street level, closed in on themselves and primarily accessible through their underground parking garages.



Even Lorenzo, despite concessions to community demands made to win approval and explicit claims of a transit- and pedestrian-oriented design - all certainly good signs - may still be headed for disappointment in this regard. (See this thorough, if now somewhat outdated, Streetsblog LA dissection of the project's T.O.D. potential). At best I suppose we can hope for something not unlike USC's Tuscana, somewhat oriented toward the street, with (unfortunately bland corporate) commercial use below the apartments. Aesthetically, probably no hope. At least Tuscana matches the Italianate explosion that is the rest of USC's central campus. Another hanging garden-inspired tropical Tuscan paradise at Lorenzo on 23rd Street will really be odd.

DIY Urban Design at the L.A. Eco Village

Among the first instances of do-it-yourself urbanism that I became aware of a few years ago were the projects of the Los Angeles Eco Village, and learning about them was a big influence on my decision to pursue my research on these and similar activities in cities around the world.

I was fortunate to go back again this week to meet with Joe Linton and other residents of this cooperative living 'intentional community,' near Vermont and Beverly in central Los Angeles. Over the years they have reclaimed their intersection with street art (à la Mark Lakeman and Portland City Repair), painted their own crosswalks, and placed seating and trees in a beautiful bulb-out to calm traffic on the street. They've also been known to calm traffic a little more actively, by closing their street with street parties and family dinners. Here are some more recent pics:

The Spatiality of Protest... Coverage

One fascinating side-story to come out of the ongoing revolutionary uprising in Egypt has been the spatial emphasis in the media’s coverage. That the protests themselves have been quite essentially spatial (and urban) is unsurprising of course. As Lefebvre, Sassen, and others have long argued, political struggle in the modern era is in many respects fundamentally a struggle over space, with the urban the primary site of expression and contention (see also my post from last year on the link between urban space and "everyday" resistance). What is perhaps more surprising is the degree to which the media – especially, it seems to me, The New York Times online, in addition to Al Jazeera of course – has taken a street-level perspective and embraced the value of spatial data in covering and communicating the news.

From the beginning, right alongside the influential and eye-opening live coverage streaming from Al Jazeera’s website has been an emphasis on mapping the locations of the uprising. The NYT had similar information up almost as immediately. Op-Ed pieces with titles like "The View From Tahrir Square" quickly appeared. Particular spaces became the subject of coverage, such as the Kasr al-Nil Bridge, in the battle for which the Times declared "Egyptian hopes converged."

More recently, as government-organized supporters clashed with opposition demonstrators in the streets, the Times featured this striking graphic:

See also the one used atop this post. Meanwhile a Nicholas Kristoff op-ed piece in today’s paper captured the revolution from the micro-space of a few people in a few tiny corners of the square. And on television it has become quite common even on cable news for the desk anchor of the moment to throw it back “live to Tahrir Square” for an update. Hard to know what to make of this - it is certainly partly explained by the fact that these protests have in fact been largely focused on the particular and iconic space of this square, much like the Berlin Wall and Brandenburg Gate a generation ago. And the sheer amount of information of all types being made available by media outlets is the bigger story overall. But it is fitting that, with "the Arab street" having long been an important concept in political science, international affairs, and even foreign correspondence, the uprising in Cairo has welcomed an especially urban spatial consciousness in the media that now has the technology to visualize it as well.

UPDATE: one more nice map from the New York Times summing up 18 days of protest: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/12/world/middleeast/0212-egypt-tahrir-18-days-graphic.html?hp