Historic Redevelopment, Economic Preservation?

This Saturday, Nate Berg and I will be taking part in LA
2.0: Refresh, Reinvent, Re-Imagine, an event hosted by GOOD Magazine, Sheridan/Hawkes Collaborative and The Public Studio.  The goal is to brainstorm innovative
solutions to improve the physical environment of Los Angeles. I'm still
somewhat new to LA, so I've been turning over in my head what ideas I might
bring to the table.  Here's one.

Lately, my bedside reading has been Ada Louise Huxtable's The Unreal America: Architecture and
Illusion.  As a meditation on
the themed environments of America, Huxtable actually turns the discussion on
its head to talk about authenticity and preservation. Using Colonial
Williamsburg as an example, she illustrates how historic preservation can be as
guilty of sanitizing the past as places like the Luxor pyramid in Las Vegas.
"Of course, we like our memories better all cleaned up," she writes. "The
gritty and sometimes unlovely accumulations that characterize cities are the best
and worst of what we have produced; they exert a fascination that no neatly
edited version can inspire To edit life, to sanitize the substance of history,
is to risk losing the art, actuality, and meaning of the real past and its
intrinsic artifacts."

While I agree with Huxtable that true urbanity is greatly
preferable, I don't think we have the luxury of waiting for it to happen. Our
cities have a lot of "broken teeth" that need repairing in order to stay viable
in the near future, both economically and environmentally. And I believe that
architectural references (theming) and historic preservation techniques are
levers that can be used, with skill and moderation, to create a sense of place in
these new buildings without endangering our sense of memory.

Part of the problem with new development strategies over the
past several years is that they fail to use these tools properly.  In Los Angeles, it results in places
like the new LA Live Entertainment Center, which is cold and forbidding; or The
Grove, which is a very effective public space but overtly false and rejecting
of its surroundings. Major redevelopments have long been accused of erasing
history and building out of context, and rightly so.

Historic preservation and economic redevelopment have
traditionally maintained separate camps. But what if instead they combined
forces? Instead of ignoring history, redevelopment could use the
preservationist view to enhance the existing history of a location and
incorporate it into new construction. Preservation, on the other hand, could
pry itself out of its reactionary niche and be proactive in helping build places
that advance the historical throughline of cities rather than trashing it.  

Los Angeles, so often misunderstood and even vilified by the rest of the world, is a city with many
wonderful neighborhoods and a strong identity. The problem is that in between
these healthy nodes is a lot of underused land, stuffed with badly-constructed
minimalls and warehouses. An Historic Redevelopment team could be involved in
identifying new nodes in underused areas, digging into the history, and then
enhancing that area with strategic new development. West Los Angeles around the
intersection of the 405 and the 10 is an area desperately in need of an
identity and a gathering place.

It only takes a little scratching on the surface to find
fascinating stories here in Los Angeles. A strategic approach to redevelopment
and preservation could be a way to bring those stories forward organically and
turn them into viable landmarks and new, smart neighborhoods.