The $1.8-billion proposal to redevelop Grand Avenue represents the latest in a series of ill-conceived schemes to revive downtown Los Angeles, and former Mayor Richard Riordan was absolutely right when he recently called it "a bunch of baloney" whose main effect will be "rich guys getting richer."
The project, like so many before it, is based on the conventional wisdom that a great city must have a great downtown. According to Eli Broad (Grand Avenue's well-meaning patron saint) and other boosters, a "great downtown" apparently means lots of big buildings -- preferably designed by trendy, expensive architects such as Frank Gehry and Thom Mayne -- meant to house appropriately trendy and expensive people and businesses. Without this, they apparently believe, L.A. is just another overgrown cow town.
This seems a bit rich, given the past, oh, 70 years, during which time Los Angeles -- without a "heart" or a booming "center" or any sort of mini-Manhattan in its midst -- has developed into one of the world's great cities. Even without an elite promenade in its historic core, Los Angeles has become the world's dominant entertainment capital, North America's largest port and industrial center, and a powerful rival to New York in the fashion business.
Los Angeles has been able to do all this without a powerful downtown because, frankly, this is how most cities grew in the late 20th century. Over the last 40 years, the most dynamic cities in terms of population and job growth -- Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, Dallas -- have all emerged with only a small percentage of their jobs and an even tinier slice of their population living in or around their urban core.
In contrast, most of the cities that fit the traditional downtown model have grown far less robustly. San Francisco and Chicago have actually lost jobs and population since 2000; the five boroughs of New York have fewer jobs today than in 1969. L.A. has added well over 1 million jobs since the mid-1970s.
Downtowns are not a long-standing feature of urban history nor are they necessary for a healthy, economically robust city. The word "downtown" appeared in Webster's for the first time only after the turn of the 20th century. It developed, as historian Robert Fogelson points out, because train travel made it both possible and desirable to concentrate functions in one place, while simultaneous advances in construction allowed for the creation of ever-taller buildings. But the heyday of the urban downtown came in the first half of the last century and has been in relative decline since, as cars have taken over from trains, and as suburban development boomed in the 1950s.
