From the beginning of his campaign for mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa has talked about his dream of a more livable, more attractive, more dynamic Los Angeles. But even he has admitted that this vision will not realize itself. This is why Mayor Villaraigosa addressed the general assembly of the American Institute of Architects' convention, which was held this month in L.A. In the following excerpt of his welcoming speech, Mayor Villaraigosa articulates his comprehensive vision for Los Angeles' built environment, and he implores the city's countless architects and designers to join his campaign to transform L.A.
Mayor Villaraigosa
Welcome to Los Angeles. I understand that you all haven't met here since 1994. What a year that was. We were picking ourselves back up after the riots in South Los Angeles and got rocked by the Northridge earthquake. Our urban fabric was torn asunder and in desperate need of repair. Twelve years later, you all can see that we've undergone tremendous evolution. I'd like to thank the convention organizers for bringing you all together, back here in Los Angeles, to witness our transformation.
We have some new iconic buildings: The Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angeles, and the CalTrans office building. Our City Hall has been refurbished, and Griffith Observatory will re-open this fall, having undergone years of renovations. And our downtown housing boom is hitting its stride and creating the impetus behind a new urban form here in Los Angeles. It is time for us to truly embrace this unprecedented opportunity to rethink-to re-envision-the way we live together and how we interact with one another . . . .
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How we design and construct our environment matters, especially today, when we no longer have a wide-open stage on which to enact our vision. We have reached the outer boundaries of our sprawl and now must turn back, turn inward, building up and taking advantage of infill opportunities.
In designing for these much smaller venues, we must be mindful of who already lives, works, and shops next door and across the street. We must grow up in cooperation with our neighbors. And it is your chance – our chance – to draw from the community what they want from their neighborhood – what they love, what they miss, what it should look like, what it should feel like, how they want to move within it, how it could be better.
One of your esteemed colleagues, Brenda Levin-the architect behind both the City Hall and the Griffith Observatory renovations-has said it with much more eloquence: "we must see density as having a positive influence on the form of the city." So as our stage becomes more compact and pushed up against existing neighbors, the work you all do cannot simply be a repetition of the past. This should not be seen as a restriction, but as a chance to create bold design for private space and new opportunities for public gathering-such as we do not typically see here in Los Angeles. You must purposefully enhance what exists here now to create a sense of place. This is what Jerry Brown calls "elegant density": The collaboration of public and private space to create a livable community.
Another one of your colleagues, Bill Fain, talks about "the re-emergence of urban culture here and, with that, the promise for social interaction." And that's what we're all talking about as well. We are in the midst of creating a new urban form-not only forced by the need to accommodate population growth but also encouraged by the desire to live in a community in which we feel at home, with a sense of belonging and a sense of place. We all-or, at least most of us-want a local grocery store, a coffee shop, a neighborhood restaurant-all within walking distance.
And this is the promise of elegant density: To walk beyond your front door, your driveway, your parking garage, to experience your neighborhood on your feet, and to become an integral part of its vibrancy. Every project we build must reflect this ideal – we must enhance how people live in, move through, and become part of their communities. We must take advantage of the fact that this is the most diverse city in the world and use that diversity to connect to one another, to create distinct neighborhoods with distinct flavors.
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Thus, we have begun, and must continue, to design our neighborhoods for our residents, not their cars. Here in Los Angeles, our preeminent public connector is our street system. Our streets are what draw us from one neighborhood to the next. In the coming years you will see a world-class public transportation system as well. In the next four years, in addition to the Red, Blue, Gold Line, and Green Line which goes from Norwalk to LAX, or just outside of LAX – those of you who live in L.A. know that that's a big joke on us – we're building the Exposition Line, which will one day reach the ocean in Santa Monica. And there's the Eastside Gold Line.
We're looking at the opportunity to build a subway all the way to the ocean. We just opened a busway; we thought 6,000 people would use it, and now 16,000 are using it. You're going to see this city finally come into the 21st century and understand that public transportation is the only way to connect us to one another like in other cities around the world.
At times we will traverse a dozen different neighborhoods just to reach our destination. And most of us still make that journey in our car – separate and apart from our fellow Angelenos. But we have to begin that new trek with public transportation, that new experience. Once people realize that it is faster and convenient and safer, they'll use it.
These corridors present the single most inspiring opportunity to create an urban landscape in Los Angeles – one that provides welcoming public space for every resident. Space in which individuals want to live and experience, not simply drive through.
Designing this place dictates that we embrace innovation so that each community is pushed closer to its ideal. And this is complicated design, folks-I don't need to tell you that. New construction anywhere in Los Angeles is not an easy venture because of many constrictive parameters here, like in many other cities across the nation.
Development here requires integration with the existing neighborhood fabric, cooperation with demanding residents who are oftentimes fearful of change, and working within the constraints of outmoded land use policies. Admittedly, those of us serving in the public sector are sometimes slow to embrace your imagination. And when we do, regulatory restrictions sometimes hinder our ability to advance your creativity. Adaptive reuse, small lot, artist-in-residence-all of these ordinances grew out of a collaboration between the design community and the public sector, to fill specific gaps between our lagging land use regulations and your steadfast commitment to innovation.
We must intensify this exchange of ideas as we face unprecedented population growth. I am looking to you-our design community-to be the confident voice for creativity, for how we accommodate this continuing growth into our built-out environment. It's been said many times that L.A. has more great architects and designers and artists than any other place in the world. Yet, they don't work in L.A. much. They go to other places. I've come today to say, come back home. And no matter where you may live, come to Los Angeles.
We Angelenos are going to accept this growth because we must. Our opportunity – and, quite frankly, our obligation - is that we experience it with grace and balance. The City Planning Commission – a body that I lead and onto which I appointed public members, including one of your own, Bill Roschen. He noted that in 1920 the planning commission believed, "Right from the start, we must understand that we are not the conservative branch of the city government, we are the ones who should ‘dream dreams and see visions' – visions of the better city to be." Though they were prescient, they certainly didn't follow that dictum, but we will now.
So I challenge you all here today: Show us what is possible. Help us envision, design for us, and build with us the city of our dreams.
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