1992 Suisman AC 1992

Doug Suisman American Boulevard: "The Wilshire Project" Architecture California14. no. 2, November 1992, p. 46

     [p. 46] ". . .

     "Suisman: When Los Angeles first burst out of downtown because of the automobile, Wilshire Boulevard was where the city went . . .

     "Phelps: I assume it originally had a trolley car down it?

     [p. 47] Suisman: Actually, in Gaylord Wilshire's founding agreement with the city, which concerned only a few blocks of what is now Wilshire, it was stipulated that there never be trucks or trains on the boulevard. The street was intended to be elegant and residential. When the city later brought in the Olmsted firm to study the city's traffic patterns, they recommended that: 1) Wilshire be widened to 200 feet; 2) become a monumental residential parkway . . . the developers had to take it the state Supreme Court to overcome the original zoning restrictions against commercial use.

     ". . .

     [p. 48] Phelps: "It also exemplifies what Robert Venturi called hyper-proximity, which means things being closer together than they're supposed to be. On Wilshire in Westwood, you can go into the backyard of a one-story house and find yourself within a hundred feet of a twenty-five story apartment building on the boulevard. When you approach from the side streets, it's almost as if you turn the corner and enter a fantasy set of a big city.

     ". . .

     Lotery: ". . . It has continuity with respect to transportation, but is discontinuous with respect to communities. And I think the discontinuities may finally be more important.

     ". . .

     [p. 50] Holston: ". . . L.A. is one of the most segregated cities I have ever lived in.

     Robbins: By class.

     Holston: By class, and by race.

     Phelps: I believe that statistics show it as the most racially segregated city in the United States.

     [p. 51] Holston: The linear boulevards contribute to it. Their dimensions create a cordon effect, cordoning off particular areas. L.A. has been incredibly successful at keeping groups apart.

     Suisman: We discussed the popularity of Westwood and the Third Street Promenade. And they are pretty ethnically mixed, albeit not particularly mixed by class.

     ". . .

     Phelps: In terms of neighborhood identification, it took me a long time to realize that many people in Los Angeles really didn't have a civic consciousness beyond their local neighborhood. You tend to know only five or six blocks on either side of where you live or work. The growing infrastructural problems of Los Angeles-air, water, traffic-are so big, people are terrified. They will do anything to not think about it. And one of the great ways of not thinking about it is to get very excited about your own neighborhood, or you own street. You get really protective, form an organization, and get very nasty about your neighborhood's future, because that you can see, that you can control. But who knows where the sewage is going? So the new energy behind the 'neighborhood' movement is, I believe, essentially paranoid.

     Suisman: Yes, such neighborhoods can become like medieval enclaves.

     Caldeira: I think what these people don't want to think about is the heterogeneity and multiculturalism of the city, because most of those local identities are pretty homogeneous. A neighborhood is the largest area that you can keep homogeneous. This creation of segregation occurs in many big cities . . .

     ". . .

     [p. 51] Suisman: Let's assume for the moment that people will almost universally segregate themselves in cities by class, race, or ethnicity. Two questions then arise. What is the scale of the segregation? . . . In L.A. one of the reasons segregation is so complete is because of the city's scale, meaning that most interactions require a trip in a car . . . isn't the goal than still to encourage contact with 'the other,' the other class, the other ethnic group . . .?

     Phelps: Does this situation give new importance to symbols of shared under- [p. 52] standing? I would propose that Wilshire Boulevard is a monument. And a useful and necessary monument, because it allows for a shared understanding of the landscape of the city . . .

     [p. 52] Holston: Because of the freeway system, Los Angeles really doesn't have a visual identity as a city. The unity of the boulevards is really what the city is  . . .

     Phelps: I have to say I disagree with you rather ardently, in your limited definition of the city. I don't see the word city as having been so defined that there are no new chapters in its existence. If you start with the development of the American landscape, the Jeffersonian grid; the idea of wholesale ownership of small pieces of private property, and the temporariness of the landscape-which is perhaps the distinguishing American characteristic: 'trash it and move on-you produce this kind of city. Our older cities were generated by non-American imprints. But Los Angeles offers the biggest collection of 'typical traits' of the American city of the twentieth century . . .

     ". . .

     Phelps: ". . . What is the origin of this street? I think you have to go back to the nineteenth century French boulevard, which is primarily a symbolic divider of a city, and which is clearly understood in its use that people know what to wear on it and which way to walk when they are there. it is successfully policed, every house has a number on it, it's a totally [p. 53] controlled environment. This became something that all cities had to have. This is what J.B. Jackson would call the Renaissance landscape, with its clear division of public and private . . . So the question that faces us is whether the boulevard is a monument that gets preserved-a historic relic of some value or something else to be used differently. For example, when people start to sleep in it, we must acknowledge that it has been taken over again and becomes part of what you might call the public realm.

     Suisman: You mean the way the homeless sleep there?

     [p. 53] Phelps: No. I mean in the medieval sense where life is lived on the street.

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 Kelyn Roberts 2017