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Joel Kotkin
Author of City: A Global History, San Fernando Valley

		Joel Kotkin, FAIA. Photo © Steve Anderson’s Photography Studio.

AR: What does Los Angeles mean in American culture now?

JK: It originated the way cities in America and the world are evolving. A lot of cities don’t want to be “another L.A.,” but are becoming another L.A. It is absurd for Denver to try to become Boston. The fact that 85 percent of the population wants to live in a single-family house tends to lead cities in the L.A. direction. Most people continue to move out in this polycentric way, seeking affordability, good schools, job opportunities. Phoenix, Houston, and Dallas evolved in more of an L.A. style than a New York one, and so downtown has a fraction of the overall population base. L.A. is the first case study of the polycentric city.

AR: But isn’t the reason cities don’t want to “become L.A.” because of its traffic, pollution, and high costs?

JK: In many cases a city is better off embracing L.A.’s positive attributes and working against the negatives, rather than trying to reinvent itself as New York. One of the things the city should try to do is work with its polycentric nature. L.A. has historically attempted to build lots of housing and wait slowly for economic and cultural institutions to pop up on their own. That pattern creates huge stress on the freeways because everyone has to go so far. Also, the city is so huge, it’s very hard to manage, and it’s very hard to develop a sense of community because it is so many places. It does not have a strong consciousness of itself as a city. It may be better off being several smaller cities or breaking itself down to effective borough units.

AR: Does Los Angeles still incubate ideas and trends?

JK: For better or worse, Frank Gehry is among the most influential architects, and he operates out of L.A., as do Thom Mayne and others. So much of building in L.A. is privately inspired, whether the houses, the Petersen Automotive Museum, the Geffen Contemporary [gallery of MOCA], Disney Hall. They are all iconic unto themselves. They reflect what L.A. is, an individualist city, not a collectivist city, even though it has collectivist politics. You don’t have to hang out in the street or be out in public, because you hang out in private. The personality of the city, therefore, is phlegmatic and a little bit eccentric. My neighborhood is filled with Persian palaces, expressions of someone’s dream from Israel, Persia, or Armenia that they couldn’t realize elsewhere. Instead, they plant it on this strange soil.

AR: But it now seems a very different place from the city that was once filled with Midwesterners and built up with cottages with fruit trees planted in the backyard.

		L.A. will become a very ethnically and racially blended city. Some people say that we’ll all be at each others’ throats, but I don’t think that’s true. People can still realize a dream of living something close to the American way of life in a huge city. — Joel Kotkin

JK: I think L.A. is urbanizing, or reurbanizing, but in a disparate way. The Miracle Mile, Los Feliz, Santa Monica, and Pasadena are sparking a very L.A. urbanism. These districts have apartments, but they are not far from private homes. And they attract people from surrounding suburbia. Studio City and Sherman Oaks work that way for the Valley.

AR: What to you think are the implications of Robert Bruegmann’s claim in his new book, Sprawl: A Compact History, that L.A. has become America’s densest metropolitan area?

JK: That’s a little bit misleading. You don’t have density like Manhattan, not even close, nor San Francisco. Like Toronto, Los Angeles has dense sprawl, and it’s certainly getting more dense over time.

AR: What does the big change in the racial and ethnic makeup of the city portend?

JK: It’s been changing in this way for 30 or 40 years. Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, Charlotte, and Las Vegas are taking on the same characteristics. They look like L.A. 20 years ago. It’s another example of how L.A. was an original. It was the first great sprawl city to become an immigrant city, with the possible exception of Miami.

AR: Is there some place in the city that’s emblematic of its character now?

JK: It’s hard to say anything is emblematic because the place is made up of so many little cities. I’d go to a strip mall in San Gabriel or the San Fernando Valley and listen to the languages and look at the kinds of places it’s rented to. You may see a Chinese seafood place, a Filipino restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, and a clothing store catering to young Hispanics. That kind of eclectic mix is found in almost every area of city. That’s what’s emblematic.

AR: What’s L.A.’s future?

JK: L.A. will become a very blended city. Some people say that we’ll all be at each others’ throats, but I don’t think that’s true. You do not think twice about going to a Mexican restaurant or a Middle Eastern restaurant and finding blacks and Hispanics and Asians all eating there. The future is much more hopeful in that sense.

AR: What can other places learn from L.A.?

JK: To build strength from the way the city evolved, rather than to perform radical plastic surgery. In other words, if you are a multipolar city and your great asset is the weather and what can grow here, and you are spread out, then build on that and make it work. If you are New York and being compact is your great strength, you build on that. Our diversity is another strength. People can still realize a dream of living something close to the American way of life in a huge city.

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May 2006