WUF/SPUR Panel-Democracy and Design: How Can a City Be Both Democratic and Beautiful?

David Abel: I am pleased to moderate tonight's panel. Indeed, I am pleased to support any and all S.F./L.A. dialogues and collaborations in the hopes that someday water will more voluntarily be shared between the lush North and the arid Southland.

Speaking of tonight's program, we have two exceptionally informed and articulate urban design and architectual critics as panelists. Tonight's invite poses some very provocative questions: "How can a city be both democratic and beautiful? Is an inclusive planning process inherently at odds with excellent urban design and architecture?" Is it possible for public process to support great architecture and great urban design? How is this tension playing out in Los Angeles and San Francisco, two of the great West Coast cities? Let's begin by first hearing from you, John King.

John King (S.F. Chronicle): Let me begin by telling you what I did today. I caught the 6:35 from Oakland, flew to LAX, got a rental car, and by 9:00 I was on the road. Picking up the cue from something that Christopher has written about recently, I wanted to see some of LA's new developments to get a sense of the City's recently opened neighborhood center developments. I first drove to Vermont to Wilshire. From there, I went out to Glendale to see Americana at Brand, a new project by Rick Caruso, which definitely laps anything I've ever seen in the artificial urbanity video-not in a good or bad way, but it's just a truly transportational reality. From there, I drove out to Topanga Canyon on the 101/Ventura Freeway and had lunch in "Downtown Topanga Canyon." Then I drove to the ocean, watched the pelicans catch fish, and then drove back to my hotel on Beverly Blvd.

To me, that is very much Los Angeles: different experiences that you string together from your car. That's a very different type of experience than the norm in the San Francisco Bay Area. We have gridlock every bit as bad as this area; there are long arterials, and so on and so forth. But there is much more of a sense of dense concepts that may not be beautiful, but it is a fundamentally different type of city.

There is also a much different sense of region between the north and the south. People like to talk about the Bay Area and the need for regional planning and every good regional plan talks about the need for regional planning. In fact, San Francisco is a city of 46 square miles, which is about one-tenth the size, geographically, of Los Angeles. It is dismissed as the "Next Venice;" it's parochial; it has little, pretty neighborhoods. But it's the densest city this side of New York and Jersey.

Within San Francisco, for most decision-makers and neighborhood people, there is very little interest in the world beyond San Francisco. It's not that we don't use things outside to go hiking at Point Reyes or go bicycling down the coast, but you don't really care about the larger sense of place. And the notion that someone might drive into San Francisco to work-why should we have a job for that person if they don't live here? But if someone lives in San Francisco and drives to the Silicon Valley for work, why should we provide housing for them when they don't even work here?

It's a very insular mindset that I suspect-and I know that the Valley tried to secede a few years ago-is different in Los Angeles. L.A is ten times bigger. It's a city that plays out in all directions. It's much more of a San Jose model of sprawl, as opposed to San Francisco, which is a peninsula on three sides with a straight line across the bottom.

Both cities have a huge amount to learn from each other, but it's very tricky to not try to romanticize the one or the other. It's also very tough because there's a different sort of geography and accumulation of millions of personal land use decisions over the last century that make each of the neighborhoods very interesting. There is so much we can learn from down here, and vice versa, but there's no easy way to take that lesson and apply it.

Christopher Hawthorne (L.A. Times): There is a passage in a piece that I came across not long ago in the Conde Nast Traveler, of all places. It's a piece about San Francisco by a writer from New York. As sort of a throwaway line, the writer casually remarks that, "unlike Los Angeles, San Francisco is a real city." I don't know that it would have caught my eye before I moved down to Los Angeles, but the more time I spend here, the more time I think exactly the opposite is true...

...In terms of the comparison of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and which one isn't a "real" city, to me, it's really an issue of form versus content. San Francisco is a city, in terms of form, which looks just like a traditional, classic city. It's a city, based on the European model, which we're trained, as citizens of this country, to think of as "civic." Los Angeles really has none of those obvious signs of what the nature of the city is, but to me, it is much more interesting and full of content than San Francisco. With all due respect to San Francisco (which is a city I love and where I've spent so much time), the more time I spend down here, the more the Bay Area looks more and more beautiful and gets less and less interesting, compared to L.A.

Los Angeles doesn't strike people as a city because it's still in the process of becoming one; it's still evolving. What makes it such a great subject to write about is that it faces all kinds of very profound questions about what kind of city it wants to be and can be. We really don't have any clear roadmap to answer those questions, except for the fact that, over the last two or three decades, Los Angeles has really been figuring out what kind of city it wants to be, which makes it the most interesting city to think about and write about in this country by far.

Those of us who grew up in the Bay Area have been trained to think that a city is essentially fixed; it's finished in terms of its form, like a European city. And it was arranged around a pedestrian or human scale rather than a car scale, which Los Angeles is built around.

Then there's the question of what democracy is. There are two ways of thinking about democratic states: democracy in terms of participation in process and decisions that are made about how this city is going to be shaped, and then there is the democratic city in the sense of how we use it as a space that is available for us to gather in and so forth....And, of course, Los Angeles, for most of the 20th century, is the quintessential example of the kind of city, where the democratic opportunities available here were really about what's available to the individual, and as a result of that, we have a very anemic sense of collective purpose or collective will.

What's happening now in Los Angeles is that the city is trying to figure out how to be a collective city. It is getting denser, as we all know. There's a strong and growing constituency for public space, transit, issues of walkability, and improving the streetscapes like there has never been in this city. Unfortunately for us, that interest has arrived at a time when cities aren't producing public space; they don't have the will or the capital to do it anymore. In a post-public design age, we need and want to create public space for the first time.

In terms of new conceptions, we also get some very serious products of that mix of public and private enterprise-public space in a post-public age. Take The Americana at Brand and the Rios Clemente Hale design for the Civic Park, which is part of the Grand Ave project. You would think that The Americana is private and commercial space designed to look public. That is surely the lesson offered by The Grove, which I'm sure all of you know is a private space masquerading as public, and it's highly successful at that. Looking at the design for the Civic Park, you would think that it's an attempt to create public space in the heart of a city that really hasn't had those kinds of gathering spaces.

The strange thing, given the era that we're in now, the reverse is true to an extent. The Americana is built around two acres that's actually owned by the city of Glendale's Redevelopment Agency. It's actually public land. So, you have a very curious situation where you have a public park masquerading as a private space that is trying to look public. I'm sure there is a fascinating court case about what happens when someone tries to protest there, or even tries to bring their dog in, which is not allowed, or wears a t-shirt that one of the security guards he or she doesn't like.

The Civic Park is public land owned by the county of Los Angeles. But because of the nature of the deal that is getting the park made, the real principle client for the park is Related Cos., the project developer who is developing the commercial portion nearby, which is designed by Frank Gehry. That's the situation in which we find ourselves in L.A. now.

David Abel: Each metropolis, S.F. and L.A., by political and popular will, could be described as protecting a land use aesthetic. San Francisco appears to be protecting its urban elegance, neighborhood density, and services. Los Angeles, while constantly changing, protects its suburban form and landscape. John, could you comment upon the political cultures that guide development, planning, and urban context for each of these two cities.

John King: One thing that's true in a lot of the San Francisco Bay Area, and I can't really talk about Los Angeles except for the Malibu coast, is that there's an overlay of a lot of different utopias. San Francisco is a very expensive place to live. The decision-makers and the interest group leaders are a very self-selecting group. They've decided that this is where they want to live their lives; this is the type of place that they want for where they will live.

That cuts down on the intellectual markets and creativity because it's as if this is a finished tapestry, and this is the framework for their lives. Now that they're here, why should someone go and change it? Los Angeles has been shaped more by individual dreams, and if your dream is to have a great little house that's three blocks away from a north/south artery, maybe you don't pay as much attention to the local and regional changes that happen.

In San Francisco, a lot of people feel there should be no more towers in their view: There should be no buildings developed three stories on, say, Valencia St. There should be no housing built for anybody who makes more than 120 percent of the average income of the city, adjusted for a family of four. There's not a sense that, "This is a city; it comes; it goes; it moves; it morphs; it reshapes itself." There's more of an attitude of, "Hey, I live on Telegraph, why should you change this?"

There is a lot near Broadway and the Embarcadero, where the freeway used to come down, and the perennially cash-strapped Port of San Francisco, desperate to dig itself out of a billion dollar infrastructure debit, wanted to make a hotel out of it. This is the culmination of literally seven years of neighborhood planning. The developer comes in, and the design advisory board for the commission reports that "There seems to be a bit of a marker on the building, it's too flat." So they beefed it up to about 56 feet at the corner, not the whole thing. Telegraph Hill residents came down fighting and the developer cut it down to about 40 feet. The president of the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, who lives on Telegraph Hill, then rushed out a zoning change to lock in that piece of land at 40 feet, and the hotel ended up going away.

From the viewpoint of planning, you would say, "This is nonsense. The Embarcadero has become a defining street for the city. You want it to have a certain urban feeling. What's the difference between 40 feet and 48 feet?" From the viewpoint of Telegraph Hill you would say, "Why do you need to change it all? It's kind of neat having this shabby little waterfront, right downtown from where I walk my dog and go jogging."

There's an attitude that, and I'm sure that this applies in lots of areas here, "This is why I live in San Francisco, so why should you change it, particularly because it's my vision of how things ought to be? Why should I go along with this?"

David Abel: Over the century, San Francisco hasn't changed its total population by 10,000, while Los Angeles has gone from a pueblo to a megalopolis. It's population under the age of 18 is twice the percentage of San Francisco's. The population over 64 is half of San Francisco's. Christopher, what is the impact of such demographics on planning and urban form in both cities?

Christopher Hawthorne: It's really stunning. It's really split along generational lines, along urban lines-it has to do with how long people have been here. There is a constituency that is obviously very interested in protecting the suburban nature of the city, particularly in the Valley, but not just in the Valley.

But the reality of transit is very much telling a different story. We're going to have to deal with density. We have a mayor who personifies that split. He came into office with a lot of expectations in the planning and architectural community that he would be a more forceful voice for mass transit. It hasn't panned out that way as I, and others, have observed. He has realized, as he starts thinking about a reelection bid, that there's still a lot of political hay to be made in very old-fashioned ideas about how the city will be shaped.

The best example is the Pico/Olympic plan, which at this point is so caught up in the court system and watered down, who knows if any semblance of the original plan will make it? To me, it's a very old-fashioned idea. I don't know of any other big city in the United States where this idea is still prevalent. There's this assumption in Los Angeles that the shape of the city itself will adapt to our driving habits. Every other city's assumption is that you will develop your own habits based on the city.

Los Angeles has always had this idea that we'll just build another freeway or we'll just wring a little more volume out of Olympic and Pico, for example. Clearly, the opinion of this administration, and people like Zev Yaroslavsky, is that there is some political gold there. But among new arrivals and younger people, there is a much different set of assumptions about the city. In terms of the worries about density and development, the one thing that resonates with everybody is that until we figure out the transit piece, we're not really going to solve that problem.

David Abel: The focus of the panel tonight was whether a city can be both democratic and beautiful. Could you address the subject of the city's streetscapes and boulevards?

Christopher Hawthorne: The notion of ugliness and beauty in the city is really complicated. There's a whole L.A. school in architecture, such as Frank Gehry and Thom Mayne, who really made names for themselves by taking up the uglier parts of the city and making a new kind of architectural aesthetic around that. So, there are some very complicated ideas about even promoting the idea of beauty. It's been a difficult thing to do in this city over the last couple of decades.

But in terms of the streetscape, the fact that there aren't transit options, mobility is limited, and traffic is getting worse, means that neighborhoods are more important. And that's a double-edged sword. The positive part about it is that streetscape matters in a way that hasn't before. In the old way of thinking, L.A. is laid out for visitors as a constellation of attractions, laid out all over the city. So you go from Point A to Point B, Point B to Point C, and the arteries that took you there, whether it's the freeway or the boulevards, is much less important than the beginning and end of that definition.

Now, traffic is keeping people closer to their homes. People actually live on those arteries to a degree that they never did before. People are actually paying attention to how that streetscape is created, how it works for pedestrians, and the idea of beautiful. It's one thing when ugliness is something you see through your car's windshield and pass it, but it's another thing to see it out your kitchen window. It changes how you respond to things.

I don't know if L.A. has the political structure or the will yet, but in terms of the public, there is a constituency for paying attention to streetscape that there hasn't been. That should continue.

David Abel: Many immigrants to L.A. drive Ventura Blvd., Olympic Blvd., or Western Ave., and see only opportunity. They imagine economic dreams being realized, and they value opportunity more than aesthetics. Is there similar energy today among immigrants in San Francisco?

John King: No, but not because there aren't long boulevards where you can see things happening. But this gets back to one place being more stimulating than the other. That sense of change along the way, it doesn't register as much in the San Francisco area. It does in some parts of the South Bay and parts of San Jose, where there is much more of a kind of ethnic and racial turnover.

San Francisco is a city that where-if it's not now, will be soon-the largest demographic group is Asian. The political landscape does not register that proportion, because the Asian-American communities tend to settle into more of the western areas, in the fogbelt, with many more single-family homes that are very dense...You don't get this sense in S.F. of different immigrant communities coming in.

In terms of streetscape, having talked about the utopias, San Francisco has a very demanding political process in terms of what developers are expected to give in terms of public benefit. That often gets in the way of architectural beauty and high-quality design and the kinds of things that we'd like to write about from an architecture platform. In terms of the urban fabric, it's something that San Francisco has benefited a lot from.

I was astounded by The Americana at Brand. To go into the 2-acre public area, with the choreographed fountain that I saw outside the Bellagio in Las Vegas-I'm there at 10:30 in the morning, watching the choreographed fountain spurt to "Ain't Love a Kick in the Head" by Dean Martin, and I was thinking, "This is so not a public space."

If you've been to San Francisco and seen the Museum of Modern Art or the Yerba Buena Gardens. In addition to doo-dads, it is just an undulating grass bowl with trees, cleared out in the middle for concerts.

But if you go there, you will see homeless people sleeping there. The way it was explained to me by the manager once was, "Five homeless people can't bring in their shopping carts. But if some homeless guy comes in and goes to sleep on a bench, we're not going to hassle him." The notion that the city of Glendale didn't say, put the two acres at the corner and let's make this a public area is mind-boggling.