Architectural Design April 1971 ‘40p.Overseas 0p ($1.20) LLL. wrest corer, >)E Asthe structure behind the scene ‘As against the Utopian one shot plan for the ultimate community, Los Angeles represents processes of connuous adjustment, processes of apportionment of land and resources. They are not very distinguished or morally likeable processes, but plain straigh(-forward capitalist exploitation of Tand and built structures. They are substantially the same capitalist processes of land exploitation and built structures which produced, for instance, the much admired Geowgian London. They are extreme versions ofthe traditional methods by which cities have been developed and expanded within the Anglo-Saxon context, a Teast by the “normal” processes of 19th century entrepreneurial activity ‘As far as Los Angeles is concerned, the land and the use of the land are, I think, the things that need to be talked about First, not necessarily because they come first, in chronology, but because they are, from an historian’s point of view, very transparent and very obviously significant. Los Angeles {sa city where processes of development are sill very close to the surface, They constitute the basic pattern behind the Scene. However, if you wanted to study the ‘most basie processes of straight Torward real estate subdivision of land in the United States you would do better in Phoenix in Arizona, or somewhere like tha, where the pattern has run nearer toa purely diagrammatic subdivision ofa fat surface in rectangular plots. The Los Angeles situation sa good deal more complex than that, and the way in which the various parts of the city have been opened up, exploited and developed, varies a good deal. Quite apart from these 19th century proceses of lind exploitation, however, there underlies everything a peculiar type of landscape anyhow, and aso the prime diagram of land exploitation on that landscape is not only pre-USS, pre-Anglo-Saxon, it is almost pre Renaissance. The given land i really a couple of coarse rectangles; the Greater Los Angeles basin, self and the San Fernando Valley, both framed by mountains ~ except for the southem and western sides of the basin Which are ocean coasts, joined by Palos Verdes: this being a mountain whichis literally the physical support of the whole area It is thought to be the fastest sing Piece of land in the world, iting at Something like Jain. a year Inthe process of. Tiftng thas, in fac, raised the whole of the basin area, which was a huge arm of the sea the so-called Bay of Los Angeles, in fairly recent geological times. What hs come up is Reyner Banham pretty straight-forward sea bottom sand, and not far below it are the deposits of ‘compressed algae and crustaceans which eventually become petroleum ail ‘Across the sandy sea-bottom the Los “Angelos River tus, as one of the world’s joke streams, here today and gone tomorrow. Starts off ina fairly determined manner at the back of the Hollywood Hill, then turns south and heads in a vague sort of way towards the ocean. There is just enough high land to ensure that the general tendency of the river wil be to head south, but within historical times the river has changed course across the plain atleast twice, particularly after the earthquakes of 1804 and 1825, The white man's frst settlement in the area was the Spanish mission of San Gabriel and ater that the mission San Fernando, which ave ils name tothe valley, These were established not much before 1800, as the Spaniards came north from Mexico pursuing the Camino Real towards Monterey, San, Francisco and the northern forts ‘These missions were critical to the whole Spanish operation: they were its prime logistic suppliers. The sandy bottom-ands hae just enough water running down aff the ‘mountains o support a fairly simple wheat growing and horse and mule-rising economy, giving basic supplies forthe Spanish army of conquest which, together ‘withthe mission padres, was taking over this almost uninhabited territory. The Army and the Church went together as if this were last of the crusades, advancing hand in hand through almost the last noble savages left in the world, The other early settlement in the aea, inthe foothills where the Los Angeles River comes through, was the actual pueblo of Our Lady Queen of the ‘Angeles. Ths isthe bass of Los Angeles proper, and gives the location of the humorously so-alled down-town area to today. The rest of the land here was Pareelied out by the kings of Spain on dis Petition. You sent a letter by way of the {overnor of Mexico to Madrid, and (perhaps years later a reply came back awarding you 4 piece of land the sie of, say, the Duchy of Luxembourg. Pieces of the size ofan English county were given away from Spain there were so few people that demand was smal. Within the period of the Spanish rule Only twelve major ranehos were allocated, Under the independent Mexican Governors the process of eutting up the land was much quicker ~ thirty-two mostly smaller grants because there were more people, and more chance ofthe land being used and occupied, These enormous ranchos were very difficult to do anything with and their boundaries Were very hard to define. But the basis of the whole realestate subdivision of Southern California i the litigation which followed the US take-over in 1848, when every one of those ranchos had to be fedefined in terms of US lav The bisie and orginal transportation pattern, which is probably older than the Spanish occupation, was the Camino Real, and it was virtually the only line of communication. Il was not necessary to get from the pueblo to the port, because the Spaniards kept the port of Los Angeles closed, like so many others in thelr American Empire There wasa rough road down to the port after 1800, however, end by TS60, the Camino Real had an extension down to the sea at Santa Monica. By 1870 people were ‘ing down to Santa Monica from the pueblo for beach pienes. That journey, by hhorsediawn eat, took two days: itis only about 18 miles, but the roads were abominable, Within the memory of grand-tathers of people I talked to, if you were a farmer at Riverside with produce it Would take you six days to get into Los Angeles Inthe lat 1860's the city fathers decided to build ttle reway down to the port ~ the Wilmington San Pedro Line ~ and this is the real beginning of the way the city was to develop. It was done largely with public money, although there were plenty of ineresied parties like General Banning, who ‘owned the land and was going 10 make'a bomb once the port started work Nevertheless public money raised inthe city and county was put towards it, because it was quite clearly something the whole place needed i it was not to become a remote and Ineffective agricultural centre for a ranching area, But in the end the existence of the rallway proved more critical than you might fippose to other development of the whole area, By the 1870's, for instance, the transcontinental lines had come down to the ocean at Sin Francisco, and southern spurs of the railway were being extended ddown towards Mexico, The railroad could do two things; it could have gone across the high desert and then down to the Mexican border, (and that would probably have killed the city of Los Angeles completely), or it ‘could somehow be persuaded to cut down through the San Joaquin Valley across a piece of the Mojave desert into the San Fernando valley, and by a southerly route to Mexico ~ in which caso the city of Los Angeles would have it made, There were noai ich tC of Las Nes wah ho spine i et 5 i hn ends Sano ee a gine nha {nd thw fata emo of poe i Eh ont ‘fact yousamot ‘uh or papas necgovernment impossible, but in terms of ad hoc and non-ideal organisation, if something needs doing, then sooner or later a body will be created to do it. IF your elty i aot big ‘enough to police self you form a district with surrounding cites and buy services from them, Ifthe whole place ts umming Up through lack of freeways, you operate through the State Division of Highways in Sacramento, and so forth. The whole supply ‘of water in the aea is succession of| Superimposed special districts created to do this: Major governmental changes in the area are produced by the creation of instant pressure groups of interested citizens, (normally coming out ofthe business community, of course) This is the patter of development which, in coarse detall, underlies the process by which the unigue city of Los Angeles has been ‘tested. It ea city about which every seneralisation is fals, but that isin the nature of generalisations, It isan ual eity;it fea beautiful citysit isa city where people are miserable; it sa city where people are ‘miserable ata standard of living higher than exists in the English new towns. If were offered choice of living in an English new town or in Watts, then in terms of the square Footage of house I could afford and the climate I would enjoy, I would live in Watts, a disaster area by Los Angeles standards. Angelenos maintain a level of expectations of quality of life which is almost unknown in Europe. The smog in LA, for instance, is not realy all that bad, Sure it hurts my eyes, but [have never seen smog in LA as bad as 1 have seen icin London, There is not that grit in the air you got here and in New York. or Pittsburgh, But however clean that smog might be itis an affront to the proposition that Southern California has a perfect climate, The meaning of Black Wednesday in 1943, when the city was smogged in solid for three days. is not that smog is ternible, but that a myth was smashed, and the psychological trauma of this experience still burns people in the city. The climate is stil for the mast of the year, fabulous, Again Angelenos tell you the Freeways do not work, but compared with Westway in London, the freeway system is marvellous. There fa Jot to be keamed from LA, not all of it disasters, Alot oft could be helpful But the lessons are of limited value because, as should be clear by nov, LA isan lunrepeatable cgcumstance; the combination of landscape, sea, Spaniards, Anglo-Saxon, the Pacific Electric Railroad, freeways and Hollywood, which gave the place an instant culture, The combination is unrepeatable 50, when people say: “Oh God, you'te the man Who wants to make London look like LA,” 1 gan sly sy "Don't worry buds foo forthcoming boot, Ler Angel, Alen Lang. you cant design the Ordin Nikolas Habraken We all know that when architects get together, itis fashionable to doubt, We feel free to doubt almost anything, We begin to think of this asa rotten world in which nothing is possible. The Fact that we can afford to doubt is perhaps a token of our strength and confidence; because when people really think something impossible, hothing ean be done about it. They do n0t talk about it The fact that we question things i sign that we think we ean do something. We are very powerful, We must ‘not be afraid to Use this power, Environmental quality” is a much used phrase. But one can only argue about such things a8 roads running through an urban tissue sf we have some notion of what the tiseue i. In this vital area we know very little, The problems are not ofthe kind that can be tackled simply with money or ‘organisation; one has to know frst whether ‘one should do anything at all, We live in an age in which most things can be done. might be worth determining what we should nor do. There are lots of beautiful cities and there are lots of people all over the worl living ‘without the help of an architect or a specialist involved in environmental Planning, Architecture might have little enough to do with the problems of housing The profession evolved in an historical context; architects were trained, of rained themselves, to make architecture ~ that i, a special building, a church ora palace, Most people housed themselves without Echitocts, Architects have always been inclined to make symbols, to make things that have certain implications about the society for which they are building. They have focussed on special things. But one can only do that if there is something ordinary ‘against which the special thing sto be seen, During the twenties, or perhaps litle ceatier, architects discovered that there was a {otal built enviconment. People lived in houses, and they used factors: architects decided that this was also their concern. However, they approached these things asi they were architectural problems. For them, everything that was ordinary became special Inarchitectural history books you never see dwellings: you see Greek temples and Roman baths and medieval churches; itis very hard to find any documentation about housing alone, One of the reasons is that not much antique housing survives, but this is not the only reason. The most important reason is that people were just not interested. They have become preoccupied withthe special thing. In books on modem architecture, however, you find houses and factories ‘They have become architecture. But the man in the street complains ~ "You cannot see ‘whether a building is something important ‘or not; they are all the same, There are 0 ‘monuments.” Infact, there ate only ‘moriuments. The ordinary has been discarded because no one is willing to make the ordinary ~ they certainly cannot design it The architect has become a King Midas. Everything he touches becomes architecture; everything he touches becomes something special King Midas died because he could not eat; when he touched bread, it became fold, That is what we ate doing. We cannot nourish ourselves. We are making special things. There is no bread. ‘What are we going to do if we cannot touch housing? The communal places, the ‘communal buildings were once carved out of the tissue of old Amsterdam but the building ‘of the last 20 or 30 years is altogether different, All buildings are designed to assume importance. They are se like ‘monuments, The space around them is of no ‘Consequence in the texture of the city itis “unimportant. The new cty is the negative of the ld ety Tissue of old Amsterdam in Amsterdam, the canals were designed by ‘one man, but he did not touch the original Fabric; he used the complete system of relationships and co-ordinates which already existed in the typical dwellings; he did not touch them, he just organised them. He did rot invent a new kind of housing (which is impossible, he used what was there and enriched it, He was not working as an Se