1880's/1920's/2000's

Periods of prosperity, each with deflating finales.

The booms encouraged American weakness: love of magnitude, a penchant for land gambling, deplorable waste.

But after the love is gone?

The 1890's delivered a decade of unmatched eclecticism, exotic 

revivals, rusticism, the Chicago School, new forms of expression, the basis of modern architecture.

In the 1930's a machine aesthetic, best exemplified by the Streamline Moderne--the continued development of those ideas first engendered in the late nineteenth century, tamped the fantasy and romance that infused America's bucolic post war period.  

The late 2000's?  

To Be Continued....

The Awful Tower

While less tall than the U.S. Bank Tower or Aon Center, L.A. Live's 54-story hotel and condo complex nonetheless dominates sightlines, immodestly isolated on downtown's Southwestern edge.

The sleekly framed Q-tip mass, designed by big project poobahs Gensler, is the latest big city skyline marring "signature structure," joining the ranks of San Francisco's One Rincon.

Checkboarded in blue tinted glass, the structure rises, exclamation point like, along the 110 freeway, defying scale, defiling scale.

Valentine's Day

Super Bowl XXXX Something or Other

While I've a fondness for the Colts franchise, many things Baltimorean, I'll be rooting for the New Orleans Saints.  The Colts' furtive relocation to Hoosier land, and recent big game win (2006), make the 'Aints-no-more, my feel good favorites.

The Saint franchise, christened in 1967, and playing in its first Championship game, is led by mortal-sized quarterback Drew Brees.  The Colts are captained by pleasing pitchman Peyton Manning, the likely product of genetic engineering.

While Indianapolis has been installed as the odds on choice, significant Colt injuries may be a factor.

(Images courtesy of the writer's dog-eared sports card collection.)

Density Dogma (Part 2)

Please see Density Dogma Part 1 (12/14/2009)

Only density, charge the growth shills, can forge the new mecca: vibrant, walkable communities, like immoderately wealthy land islands Manhattan and San Francisco.  Density dendrites, linking decentralized purlieus, offer salvation, sustainability, more bakeries, a trattoria.

But what of Maywood then, I ask, to a sea of blank faces.  Maywood: California's most densely populated city.  More densely populated than Santa Monica, San Jose, or San Francisco.  Have the residents of Maywood forsaken the combustion engine, biking to nearby jobs, past corner close farmer's markets and keen shops, enkindled by vitalizing street life?

Nope.  

Are basic services, life's little necessities, nicely arrayed along the main drag, East Slauson?

Necessities perhaps, but little else, and many storefronts appear lifeless or relegated to automobile uses.  Recreational opportunities, meanwhile, are nearly non-existent for Maywood's 40,000 residents, limited to a pocket park and a thin strip of L.A. River badlands. Maywood hasn't a movie theatre, or performance space, gym, toy store, libreria, cookwares shop, art supply source, or athletic fields.  

The ideal urban construct, apparently, requires a bit more than up-zoning.