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What Is the Future of Los Angeles?
Does Los Angeles, which has loomed so large in the American imagination, still foretell what America will become? Does it still invent the urban future and breed architectural talent? What will the city that gave us celluloid dreams and candyflake car culture bequeath us next? — James S. Russell, AIA
With its clogged freeways and endless horizon of sprawl, Los Angeles has become what other cities strive to avoid. Its enclaves of glittering wealth contrast with flatlands of poverty. It’s immigrants, speaking dozens of languages, enrich cuisine and music, charging the city with entrepreneurial energy, but also find themselves trapped in a persistent underclass. Los Angeles is an “ecology of fear,” as Mike Davis so memorably put it, subject to earthquakes, floods, and wildfires. Joan Didion has painted a landscape of disconnection and disaffection, just as noir movies depicted a city hardened by dreams that had died. As thousands of architects prepare to visit Los Angeles for this year’s National AIA Convention (June 8 to 10), architectural record’s James S. Russell, AIA, asked some longtime local observers and participants to think about what L.A. means to American culture and to speculate on its future.
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