Many downtowns hold L.A.’s heart

In the movie “Collateral,” Tom Cruise’s
character spews unsolicited urban-design criticism that Los Angeles
is a fragmented city without a center. The city’s character
appears to intensify this assassin’s psychosis and make him
more interesting.

In the history of Hollywood villains who love to moralize while
on killing sprees, it’s a rare bird who complains that Los
Angeles is a product of bad design.

The screenwriter of “Collateral” is probably one of
the many who complain that downtown Los Angeles is not a real
downtown because after 5 p.m., it becomes a ghost-town: empty and
lifeless.

The Grand Avenue revitalization project is a recent answer to
these kinds of criticisms. It aims to change the perception that
downtown Los Angeles is a destination where people simply go to
work, and specifically, to give its nightlife a serious change.

The Walt Disney Music Hall is a start in changing the downtown,
but that project alone is not transformative enough.

A serious face-lift is imperative. The downtown project’s
New York-based developer The Related Cos. has enlisted Frank Gehry,
who also designed the music hall for this transformation.

Gehry’s iconic architecture makes many cultural theorists
giddy with praise and criticism about its postmodern or
neo-modernist sensibility. But whatever sensibility is associated
with Gehry’s architecture may not have much to do with how
Los Angeles thinks and views its downtown.

One needs to look a little closer at the city’s distinct
character to understand what downtown Los Angeles is or even where
it should be.

Indeed, there was a time when downtown Los Angeles felt like a
normal downtown of a major city, but immigration has gradually
dehomogenized and changed the city’s cultural character and
identity.

The neighborhoods around downtown Los Angeles changed, and so
did the downtown. As a cultural melting pot began to brew, new
subtle cultural boundaries also became apparent.

And through these boundaries, I argue that many distinct
downtowns flourished.

I feel like I’m in a downtown in UCLA’s Westwood
Village, in Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, in and
around the Glendale Galleria, the City of San Fernando mall, West
Hollywood’s club row, Chinatown, Echo Park on Sunset between
Stadium Way to Alvarado, Uptown Whittier, Silverlake’s
Sunset-Junction and many other places.

Certainly these distinct downtowns express a complex cultural
identity that isn’t solely based on race. To me, Los Angeles
has as many culturally diverse downtowns as it has cultural
identities.

The current redevelopment project will, no doubt, succeed in
building the proposed structures for downtown Los Angeles,
especially because of the deep pockets behind it along with Mayor
Antonio Villaraigosa’s moral support.

But I’m suspicious about the success of the
development’s main goal; I doubt the new structures will
create the same downtown feel that these other smaller, intimate
and vibrant downtowns already have ““ especially the kind of
downtown nightlife this project is dreaming of.

To feel that one is in a “downtown” in Los Angeles
is certainly not about being in downtown Los Angeles. Perhaps it
never will give that effect.

We belong to a city of many downtowns because we live in a car
city blessed with great weather. The city’s flat geography is
made for driving. We can create as many downtowns as we want.

Even weekend flea markets in parking lots, street festivals and
block parties all around the city become temporary downtowns.

To dream and cry that our city should have a singular, distinct
hub the way other major cities like London, New York, Paris or
Chicago have is to yearn for an identity that isn’t our
own.

Los Angeles is unique precisely because its very nature resists
being like these other cities.

A revitalized downtown Los Angeles won’t epitomize a
unified, diverse city, but simply a unification of the ideas of an
ambitious few.

And if the project’s goal does fail, Gehry’s
structures can always be used as movie sets.

Baradi is a student in the information studies
department.