U r b a n L a n d November/December 2004 79

Basic urban design

and planning

principles can

help downtown

Los Angeles

become a

pedestrian-friendly

experience.

Downtown Los Angeles is experiencing one of its largest real estate

and investment booms in years. New landmarks—from the Walt

Disney Concert Hall on Bunker Hill to the Staples Center a mile

to the south—are bringing more people and new vitality to the city’s down-

town. Run-down and largely empty office buildings, given up for dead

years ago, are being converted into apartments and condominiums.

Optimistic investors are readying plans for more new developments, like

a long-needed hotel near the convention center and the construction of

more apartments and offices near the Staples Center. Downtown land val-

ues are rising rapidly.

The long-overdue renaissance of the downtown area follows in the wake

of billions of dollars in private and public funds spent on earlier efforts

to revitalize Los Angeles, programs that raised expectations about down-

town Los Angeles’s future—but that never came to fruition. The 1950s

S E A N O ’ M A L L E Y

THE

SWA

GROU

P

THE

SWA

GROU

P

Will Downtown L.A.Become 24/7?

Los Angeles has plenty of mini-downtowns wherepeople can work, reside, and be entertained,such as Santa Monica, Pasadena, and Holly-

wood. But the city’s so-called “real downtown,” whichis central to the greater urban area, does not measureup to the urban centers of Manhattan, San Francisco,Chicago, or Boston—which all have vibrant, round-the-clock downtowns with upscale retail, hotels, residentialneighborhoods, dining and entertainment choices,and a significant inventory of office space. Evensmaller cities, such as Denver and San Diego, havelively downtowns that stay active beyond 6:00 p.m.

Despite numerous attempts to revitalize the down-town area, it has not really become the dominantnucleus of Los Angeles. Like many other Americancities, Los Angeles has evolved into a polycentric urbanentity with many competing nodes. Yet, interest in revital-izing downtown is rising. Investment in developing down-town Los Angeles has in the last few years topped $1.6billion with the recent completion of the Walt Disney Con-cert Hall. Continuing the trend is the expected develop-ment in the near future of several proposed projectssuch as LA Live!, South Village, and the Grand AvenueRedevelopment project. Besides these large-scale proj-ects, the existing supply of housing units in downtownLos Angeles is expected to increase by nearly 63 per-cent in the next few years. Parts of the downtown areahave a significant stock of architecturally rich early20th–century buildings, which could be converted tocreate distinctive residential and mixed-use neighbor-hoods. In addition, there is a plentiful supply of vacantoffice space to suit the needs of a range of tenants.What is still needed is an impetus to get people towork, live, and shop there.

Although effort has been focused on makingdowntown Los Angeles the preeminent central core,is a dominant downtown in fact a desirable goal forthe urban agglomeration that is Los Angeles? Per-haps the real objective should be to energize down-town as another significant 24-hour district in a com-plex urban system of nodes with different roles.

There are several components that make for avibrant, round-the-clock downtown: n an energetic and dominant office district;n substantial residential inventory—from affordableto luxury—to support retail establishments;

n upscale retail; andn presence of a water amenity, destination entertain-ment, and sociocultural institutions (museums, con-cert halls, sports venues) to attract visitors in theevenings and on the weekends.

Office Market. Downtown Los Angeles is thesecond-largest concentration of office space in themetropolitan area after the Westside, making up 19 percent of the entire metropolitan area’s inven-tory. The vacancy rate downtown has remained fair-ly high over the past decade and at 18.3 percent isone of the highest in the metropolitan area. Highvacancy rates have resulted in fewer office workersshopping, dining, and wanting to live there. The bigquestion is whether desirable employee housingand supporting retail and services will make com-panies flock back to downtown.

Housing. Downtown Los Angeles containsapproximately 16,400 multifamily units, includingaffordable and market-rate rental and for-saleunits. Given its regional context and scale, down-town Los Angeles needs to offer much more interms of residential choices. The ordinance en-abling the adaptive use of historic buildings hashelped in the conversion of a number of olderbuildings into loft apartments and condominiums.Several small- and large-scale projects—underconstruction, permitted, or planned—will add ap-proximately 10,000 units to the existing inventory.What downtown L.A. still lacks is the presence ofhigh-income households and neighborhoods thatwould drive upscale retail spending.

Upscale Retail. Downtown Los Angeles definite-ly suffers from a lack of upscale retail. Its shoppingvenues pale in comparison with the extensive retailopportunities offered by the Westside and Pasade-na. Although downtown L.A. offers unique shoppingexperiences such as jewelry and fashion districtsand enclaves devoted to wholesale trade, which dis-tinguish it from other areas, it is not enough to at-tract spending by high-income households.

Destination Attractions. When it comes to buildingbigger and shinier cultural institutions, little expensehas been spared. The construction of the Walt DisneyConcert Hall, Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral, andStaples Center are examples of recent activity in thedowntown area. There are other large-scale projects on the drawing board, including the second phase ofStaples Center, called LA Live! (with entertainment, re-tail, hotels, restaurants, and an outdoor plaza), Union

Station (with 6.5 million square feet of mixed uses),and the Grand Avenue project (with ongoing streetimprovements along with planned office, retail, andresidential projects).

All of this activity raises the following questions: nWill the large-scale projects infuse life into down-town L.A., bringing in hordes of tourists, culturemavens, and sports fans?nWill small-scale residential projects and -supporting retail invigorate the currently dead-after-6:00-p.m. downtown?nWill these patchwork efforts create a few thrivingpockets but no cohesive 24/7 downtown?

Downtown Los Angeles has much to offer withits existing stock of high-quality office space, culturalicons and attractions, various niche districts, trans-portation, and older office and industrial buildingsready for transformation into contemporary housing.However, there is no overall vision for the entiredowntown area. The districts are fragmented andunconnected to each other—with activity from onenode not spilling onto others.

Though the mixed-use and residential projects inthe works will bring residents in, these projects arespread out over the entire downtown area in smallpockets, making it difficult for them to have any sig-nificant impact in any one area. Downtown needs away to link the disparate districts together. To date,the South Village development by the CIM Group isone of the very few comprehensive, multiple-blockprojects that stands to have an immediate impact onthe activity level of the surrounding street network.

Empty nesters and echo boomers looking forurban or edgy environments will find downtown liv-ing attractive. And since all that is old is new again,downtown Los Angeles has a real opportunity toreinvent itself. But its ability to attract upscalehousing and retail remains in question.

It would be a lost opportunity if downtown L.A.remains an underused node within the greater LosAngles area. Investing in housing, destination retail,and lodging, and capitalizing on office and transit in-frastructure definitely are crucial to the downtown’stransition into a more vibrant center. What needs tobe recognized is that downtown will achieve greaterprominence in the coming years, but it will morethan likely never become the dominant economic,cultural, and social center of Los Angeles.—ShubhraJha, an associate in the investment research group atCB Richard Ellis Investors in Los Angeles

80 U r b a n L a n d November/December 2004

clearance of Bunker Hill’s run-down late 19th– and early 20th–century residences, for example, was intended to start the develop-ment of a new business and residential district on a hill above theexisting downtown. That urban renewal project was consideredsuch a failure that some of the Bunker Hill building sites sat emp-ty for decades. The much-touted 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s buildingboom along the Flower and Figueroa streets corridor (below BunkerHill and west of the pre–World War II downtown along Broadwayand Spring streets) never attracted the necessary mix of uses orachieved sufficient critical mass to become a regional hub. After5:00 p.m. and on weekends, the area becomes a virtual ghost town.

Los Angeles’s planners, developers, and architects have clung res-olutely to the belief that “if you build it, they will come—” and peo-ple have come.They drive into the parking garage of a downtown con-cert hall or museum, listen to the concert or view the newest museumexhibit, and then drive out of the parking garage and go home. Overthe last 50 years, Los Angeles’s government leaders, real estate owners, TH

E SW

A GR

OUP

THE

SWA

GROU

P

Over the last 50 years, Los Angeles’s government leaders,

real estate owners, developers, and architects have

forgotten the key component that gets people to stay:

a human-scaled, pedestrian streetscape that is the

physical foundation for successful downtowns.

U r b a n L a n d November/December 2004 81

82 U r b a n L a n d November/December 2004

developers, and architects have forgotten the key component thatgets people to stay: a human-scaled, pedestrian streetscape that isthe physical foundation for successful downtowns.

Unfortunately, the primary objective of the last several decadesof planning and development in the heart of Los Angeles was notto construct a traditional, bustling, human-friendly, pedestrian street-scape, but to develop a downtown that was safe and convenient forthe automobile. That focus has led to an often-intimidatingstreetscape of overly wide streets, fast-moving one-way traffic, hos-tile bunker-style buildings that turn a blank wall to the sidewalks,and barren office building plazas that look good on renderings butbreak up the street wall with vast expanses of space, all of which con-vey the idea that pedestrians are not welcome. Not surprisingly,Angelenos are hesitant to take visitors downtown, particularly vis-itors from Europe, Asia, and Latin America where their downtownsare strong, unified, and attractive public realms. Pedestrian-friendlyplaces like Old Town Pasadena and the Third Street Promenade inSanta Monica offer the kind of urban experience that the downtownarea now lacks.

Fortunately, Los Angeles’s civic and business leaders are begin-ning to come around. Grand Avenue on Bunker Hill, for example,has been one of downtown Los Angeles’s problem areas. The streetis home to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Museum of Contem-porary Art, the Music Center, and a number of other attractions,yet, on weekends, the sidewalks along Grand Avenue are almostdeserted. This past August, the city of Los Angeles selected NewYork City–based the Related Companies to revitalize Grand Avenueby developing 3.2 million square feet of mixed-income housing,retail, restaurants, offices, entertainment venues, and a hotel onfour vacant city and county parcels around the Walt Disney Con-cert Hall. The $1.2 billion project will include $300 million in pub-lic improvements, such as the renovation of a 16-acre park betweenthe Music Center and city hall, and the transformation of GrandAvenue into a pedestrian-friendly boulevard.

The goal of reinvigorating the streetscape for people needs tobe applied, not just to one part of Grand Avenue, but throughoutall of downtown Los Angeles.nRethink how people and vehicles use the streets. At its core, a

street is an extended urban room for people where they can interactface to face in front of storefronts, cafés, and offices. Cars are only ameans of transporting people to those locations; thus, the pedestri-an environment should take precedence over the car. The street canbe reclaimed for pedestrians by reducing its unnecessary width andusing the extra space to widen sidewalks and give the streets a morehuman scale.Traffic can be slowed by turning selected one-way streetsinto two-way streets, which will also allow motorists to see moreground-floor retail as they drive by.nWiden the sidewalks and use the additional space to reinvigoratean area—for example, to add cafés with outdoor seating.Wider side-

Cities in Europe offer models for ways to invigoratethe streetscape with ground-floor retail, mature

trees, and cafés with outdoor seating.

THE

SWA

GROU

P

THE

SWA

GROU

P

THE

SWA

GROU

P

U r b a n L a n d November/December 2004 83

makes them so unique. In downtown Los Angeles, pedestrians couldexperience diversity in a similar way; an alley could be used to breakup some overly large, empty blocks, like those south of SeventhStreet. Downtown Los Angeles could be reclaimed for pedestrianuse, with shops and restaurants, as has happened with some alleysnear San Francisco’s Union Square and on lower Manhattan’s StoneStreet just off Hanover Square.nLet buildings form the edge to the street, creating a wall that em-braces and gives scale to the urban room. In Paris, a building is sec-ondary to the street. Architects are required to follow a set of stan-dards that have more to do with enriching and scaling the streetexperience than structuring what happens behind the facade walls.Buildings are designed to strengthen the city fabric, not to indulgein architectural fads or innovative designs that may not even relateto the streetscape—although an occasional civic gem can be a wel-come addition. The ideal architecture for downtown Los Angelesimproves the streetscape with a street wall, ground-floor retail, andbusinesses, and provides a catalyst for pleasant outdoor spaces.n Use the proposed construction of a downtown Los Angelessurface light-rail line to link tourist, historic, and destination sitesand tie it into the existing mass transit system to create a moreuser-friendly, finely scaled, block-to-block surface transportationsystem. San Francisco, for example, has done this with its vintageMarket Street trolleys. But since Los Angeles is a city that looks tothe future, not the past, modern light-rail equipment can be used.n Look beyond transit to create other linkages—like the function-al connections between buildings and the street, and between thedifferent downtown districts. The Anaheim Resort District, for ex-ample, uses landscaping to link together the attractions—Disney-land, the Anaheim Convention Center, and hotels—within the rede-velopment area.n Identify, restore, and promote the one-of-a-kind attractions thatwill lure southern Californians and visitors throughout the day-time and nighttime hours, seven days a week. Hundreds of apart-ments and loft units have already been created in the once-ignoredpre–World War II office buildings in the old downtown. The olddowntown east of Pershing Square contains ten long-neglected 1920sand 1930s cinemas that together comprise the largest collection ofpre–World War II “movie palaces”in America. Like the rest of down-town Los Angeles, they could be reclaimed and given new life.

The goal of a better downtown in Los Angeles is not beyond reach,but it will take strong political will, significant private investment,and enlightened architectural and planning measures. Creating adowntown for people—not just cars—is an essential step in the city’slong hoped-for renaissance. n

SEAN O’MALLEY IS A PRINCIPAL IN THE LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA, OFFICE OF

THE SWA GROUP, AN INTERNATIONAL LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, PLANNING,

AND URBAN DESIGN FIRM BASED IN SAUSALITO, CALIFORNIA

walks also allow the installation of human-scaled landscaping, whichintroduces nature into the city’s center. Widened sidewalks can evenskew the streetscape toward one side of the street or the other, as onthe Champs Elysées in Paris, creating varying street functions andintensities from energetic to passive, which can enrich the urbanexperience and help the critical mass of the built environment tocoalesce into a more successful experience.nPlant trees—lots of them—and select large, mature trees—ratherthan small fledging trees. Trees help beautify the streetscape, give ita human scale, offer shade during the hot summer months, andclean the air. Paris has used trees to turn its streets into “gardenrooms”that attract Parisians and visitors alike. The city of Anaheim,in partnership with the Walt Disney Company, has used landscap-ing to help transform and revive the Anaheim Resort District—1,100acres, or 2.2 square miles, surrounding and including Disneylandand the Anaheim Convention Center—which was crisscrossed byunusually wide arterials that intimidated most pedestrians.Varioustree species were planted in medians and along sidewalks on differ-ent streets to create a distinct identity for each thoroughfare, to helpbeautify the streetscape, and to shade pedestrians.nMake essential streetscape elements—like streetlights, benches,bus stop shelters, and subway entrances—both human-scaled andattractive.Avoid the latest, trendiest designs in deference to streetscapeelements that are well made, easy to maintain, reasonably priced, andcomplementary to their surroundings—yet be sure their placementwill not clutter the sidewalks or block views into store windows.n Transform alleys from intimidating or barren truck deliverylocations into what they really are—ready-made pedestrian-scaledenvironments—by giving them attractive streetscapes and usessuch as cafés and shops. For example, behind its boulevards, Taipei,China, has a fine-grained system of little back alleys—a maze ofnarrow, one-lane streets where pedestrians can discover restaurants,art galleries, shops, and cafés shaded by immense trees. The alleys’scale is completely removed from that of the large boulevard, which

THE

SWA

GROU

P

84 U r b a n L a n d November/December 2004

A SustainableCommunity Outside L.A.

T he new town of Centennial is still just an ideaon an open landscape of barren hills and fieldsstripped of vegetation by 100 years of cattle

grazing. Located a few miles away from the traffic onInterstate 5 at the edge of Los Angeles County and 60 miles north of the city, the new master-plannedcommunity will be bounded on the north by the farm-land and small towns of the San Joaquin Valley, ex-pected to become the busiest new population centerin California over the next 30 years.

The 11,700-acre site of a former cattle ranch is welloutside the congested metropolitan area and bufferedfrom other development by millions of acres of nationalforest. The founders of Centennial—Tejon Ranch Com-pany, Pardee Homes, Lewis Investment Company, andStandard Pacific Homes—are proposing that the newtown should include the many dimensions of sustain-able design—architecture, landscaping, water and ener-gy conservation, mass transit, and even control of lightpollution. The idea, say its founders, is for the new com-munity to embrace smart growth by maximizing the ben-efits of intelligent land use such as preserving largeamounts of open space, incorporating paseos and bikepaths, offering all types and prices of housing, creatingvillage centers, and, in general, establishing compati-bility between humans and nature. Most challenging ofall is the stated goal of discouraging the urban sprawlassociated with “leapfrog” development.

Located along the historic Ridge Road, the forgot-ten highway that was the chief route between northernand southern California before Interstate 5 was con-structed in the 1950s, Centennial will be built on thesite of a historic Mexican land grant on a vast “ran-cho” that has remained intact since the 19th century.The site is adjacent to Quail Lake, a natural body ofwater that is part of a statewide system of reservoirsjoined by concrete aqueducts that snake across theland in S-shaped channels.

The planning for Centennial is based on the princi-ple that well-planned and -executed large-scale com-munities in noncontiguous areas can be consistentwith smart growth and sustainability, offering benefitsthat cannot be provided by piecemeal, small-scale de-velopment, while also fulfilling the need for workforcehousing in fast-growing urban areas. Centennial’splanning aims for a small town quality, not entirelyunlike Reston, Virginia, or Seaside, Florida, with hous-ing grouped into several villages. Each village willhave a center containing neighborhood-serving usessuch as shopping, daycare centers, and small profes-sional offices. By the time the final phase is built, itwill be a place where a significant percentage of resi-

dents can work in the same community in which theylive. Approximately 23,000 homes are planned, with a 12 million-square-foot business park and another 2 million square feet of neighborhood retail centers,accommodating 30,000 jobs. The rate of homebuild-ing will follow market conditions, with an estimated1,000 homes coming online annually.

About one-half of the site will be preserved aspermanent open space. Much of this already forms anatural ring of hills around the community, which willbe planted in native grasses and wildflowers. Naturaldrainage areas will become landscaped greenwaysserving as linear parks and pedestrian paths through-out the community—a demonstration of how floodcontrol measures can result in open space that isboth active and attractive.

Sustainability at the individual home level also isbeing addressed. The goal is for each home to lower itselectricity use by 15 to 20 percent, and its water use by20 to 25 percent, compared with most homes of com-parable size. To avoid wasting water, recycled water willbe used for watering and irrigation of parks, commonareas, public medians, and two golf courses. A satellitehookup that anticipates both temperature and rainfallwill regulate computerized sprinkler systems to preventwater waste. All homes are required to obtain “EnergyStar” certification that sets increased standards for in-sulation, heating, air conditioning, and energy-efficientappliances. The community will be landscaped withplants that are native to California and require little orno water. The plan also includes optional use of sustain-able materials, such as carpeting made of recycled ma-terials, flooring made of bamboo, and solar panels. Thearchitecture is to be regionalized for California climate,with houses including deep overhangs for shade, as wellas abundant plantings of shade trees.

The intent of Centennial is to be a self-contained,self-reliant community that achieves what Californianscall “the jobs/housing balance”—a strategy that seeksto lower traffic on regional arterials and cut the nega-tive effect on air quality by encouraging people to liveand work in the same community.

Centennial will have an internal transit system as well as two transit stations from which buses willshuttle residents to job centers and regional malls innearby cities. The buses will connect in Santa Claritawith the Metrolink train as well as with commuter busservices that run into downtown Los Angeles, Pasade-na, Burbank, west Los Angeles, and other businesscenters in Los Angeles County.

One of the hurdles facing Centennial, says Cen-tennial vice president Greg Medeiros, is the notion of building a stand-alone new community, rather thanadding onto an existing urban area. Critics of the proj-ect contend that this is leapfrog development thatfosters unplanned sprawl. Medeiros emphasizes thatCentennial’s infrastructure is “sized to the project,including the housing, the commercial development,

police and fire stations, schools, parks, a library, andmedical services.” In other words, he argues, “Thereis no excess capacity to support any further develop-ment down the road. And with a wide margin of openspace surrounding the community, it will be difficultfor sprawl to trickle over into, or out of, Centennial.”

Designed to help fill the huge housing gap in LosAngeles County, Centennial will offer homes priced tofit the budgets of teachers, firefighters, seniors, andyoung families, as well as a lifestyle built aroundsmall-town living, points out Medeiros. Two of thebiggest demographic markets for the housing, henotes, will be “echo boomers,” the children of babyboomers who are seeking affordable housing, and

empty nesters who are seeking a quiet community.Apartments also are planned as part of the project.

Currently, the partners are completing the re-quired environmental studies and taking the initialsteps in the public process. Surprisingly, Medeirosnotes, the majority of Centennial’s future neighborssay they want urbanity, or, in his words, “They wantsomething more or less like ‘Main Street.’ The proj-ect will bring a wide range of housing, jobs, shop-ping, medical facilities, cultural amenities, and edu-cational institutions to an area that currently iswithout most of these services, he adds. The part-ners will be funding the entire infrastructure, includingeight elementary schools, two high schools, two tofour fire stations, a police station, a library, two waterreclamation plants, and hundreds of acres of parksand public spaces.

While it is not possible to build a new townwithout its having some impact on the naturalenvironment, Centennial, according to Medeiros,represents an attempt to create a pedestrian-styledcommunity that provides the most benefits toresidents and does the least harm to the land, andevery attempt will be made to intelligently reconcilethose two different agendas.—Morris Newman, aLos Angeles–based writer

Centennial’sshopping districtsare modeled afterthe main streets of older towns and villages.