LA Grows Up: How Do YOU Feel About it?

We’d love to hear about how you feel about LA’s upward climb. Please fill out our survey via Which Way, LA? During the many hours we spend inching through LA’s highways, the character…

We’d love to hear about how you feel about LA’s upward climb. Please fill out our survey via Which Way, LA?

During the many hours we spend inching through LA’s highways, the character and landscape of Los Angeles is undergoing a transformation with many large building projects, on hold during the 08 recession, are now moving ahead. Several developments are very tall, for example the Millenium Towers in Hollywood, which at 55-stories will dwarf the 13-story iconic Capitol Records building (shown above).

From the time it was completed in 1928 until 1964, the

32-story City Hall was the tallest building in Los Angeles. Soon, the planned

Wilshire Grand – all 73-stories of it – will be the newest record holder,

and the tallest building on the entire West Coast (see image below, from

Curbed LA). The city of Santa Monica also has a slew of applications on file for towering new buildings, one of which could be as tall as 120 feet.

This ongoing transition from a “horizontal” city to a vertical one is arousing passions, exhibited in the reaction from listeners to a recent Which Way, LA? about Millenium Towers.

One listener wrote, “Once we have a decent transit system, then we can talk about bringing in more people.”

Another hailed the plan as step toward easing Angeleno dependence on cars, “I love the ability to live in LA without driving. Very few neighborhoods in LA have the infrastructure and social amenities to support a high-density, car-free lifestyle – but Hollywood does.”

Now we are going to delve further into public opinion about the changes taking place around us. On next Wednesday’s Which Way, LA?, we are going to talk in depth with listeners and LA historians and urban experts, about what it means for LA to leave behind a car-based lifestyle and sprawling urban form, whose optimistic heyday in the 1950s is currently the topic of Pacific Standard Time Presents shows like Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, at the Getty.

Do we want to be a weak-tea version of New York? Can one have density without height? Are soaring towers a sign of urban status? Despite all the problems created by sprawl, were there benefits to lower density that we should try and hold onto?

We’d love to hear from you; go to this link and respond to our survey.

Further reading:

Developer TsunamiSam Lubell in The Architect’s Newspaper; Urban L.A. Has ArrivedBill Fulton; Threatened by Its Own SuccessEric Avila;Is There a Demand for This? Cori Clark Nelson; We’ve Seen This BeforeSusan Morgan in The New York Times: Room for Debate: Should Los Angeles New Yorkify?; Elon Musk hates 405 traffic, offers money to speed widening, Martha Groves in The Los Angeles Times; Standing TallCarren Jao in The Architect’s Newspaper