L.A. -- it's no park place
I WOULDN'T USUALLY look to Mark Twain for urban planning advice, but he was right about this: "Buy land; they're not making it anymore." And they're really screwing up what there is of it.
Look at us. We're putting in acres of 3 bdr, 2 ba subdivisions where we once put in beans (ever try to make a meal of drywall?). We behave as if there's soooo much land here that we can squander it, and then it'll grow back, like hair after a bad cut.
And when it comes to public lands, I worry that Los Angeles never, as they say, misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. We sold our river down the river. There's talk of sowing a crop of skyscrapers on the Veterans Affairs campus in West L.A., the only sizable green and pleasant public place in those parts, apart from the military cemetery.
L.A. is the nation's worst park-to-people big city. The only reason the city's pathetic park numbers look as good as they do is because of Griffith Park -- which accounts for more than a quarter of the city's park acreage. It's spectacular, but it's also just one big lumpen-park -- and it's hardly likely that someone will drive 30 miles from San Pedro for a stroll.
L.A. needs to take its green space where it can find it. I've watched the methodical dismantling of the old Caltrans building on Spring Street. When it fell, it revealed the new Caltrans building one block over -- one snazzy piece of architecture -- but I'd better look fast. In the rubble-mounded lot, the city plans to put in not a new park, as its own 1997 master plan envisioned, but a new Parker Center. The old police HQ hasn't held up as well as "Dragnet" reruns, and the LAPD needs a new hive. But must there be yet another new building downtown, where the office vacancy rate is about 16%?
The city owns almost enough real estate to open an entire 'nother city. It bought a building in the Transamerica cluster south of downtown, which Jim Hahn -- the old mayor, remember him? -- thought would be perfect for the LAPD. But the City Council says no, it's too far from the powerhouse Civic Center, which I think means that it's too much trouble for them to get there.
