Los Angeles' major public spaces remain broken works in progress

For the next mayor, advice on how to fix the worst examples of L.A.'s faulty civic vision: LAX, the L.A. River, Pershing Square, the subway to the sea and Grand Avenue.

If the subway to the sea is an expensive dream worth sticking with, the same can't be said of the city's fantasies of turning Grand Avenue into our Fifth Avenue or Champs-Élysées.

For more than 50 years we've used the section of Grand that runs atop Bunker Hill as a petri dish to test new theories of city-making. In the 1960s it saw widespread demolition in the name of urban renewal. Then it became a kind of murderers' row of buildings by famous architects, with only Walt Disney Concert Hall living up to expectations.

Now it features an attractive but hidden green space, 12-acre Grand Park. A museum holding Eli Broad's collection of modern and contemporary art, a $130-million building atop a publicly subsidized parking garage, will open next year. And when Metro's underground Regional Connector is finished by 2020, Bunker Hill, with a station at 2nd and Hope streets, will be tied fully into the mass-transit network.

What has all that investment added up to on Grand Avenue? A street that barely has more urban vitality than it did two decades ago.

The next mayor should drop the pretense that Grand Avenue deserves lavish subsidy and extra political attention. If the city does sink more money into Bunker Hill, it shouldn't be earmarked for more parking structures or trophy buildings. It should pay for direct improvements to public space — redesigning the sidewalks along the edges of Grand Park or adding public art along the avenue itself, perhaps in a program overseen by curators from Broad's museum or the Museum of Contemporary Art.

It would be easy to conclude that these problems will always seem intractable, or that the chance to solve them has come and gone. But the city charter gives the mayor more power than many realize. Through a combination of legislative savvy, smart appointments and canny use of the bully pulpit — along with an effort to give the planning department here the same broad, effective authority it enjoys in other cities — the next mayor could make headway on every one of these issues.

Cities around the world are now in direct competition with one another, for employers and employees, for tourists and investment dollars. In an age of globalization, it's easier than ever to see what improvements other cities are making to their parks, transit networks and infrastructure.

And easier than ever to measure all the ways Los Angeles is falling behind.

christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com

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nps_ca at 5:58 PM March 08, 2013

The biggest problem with LAX is the long term leases paid by the airlines on MANY of the terminals, (e.g United with T7/8, Delta with T5 and AA with T4). The city needs to have the guts to use Airport revenue (not city coffers) to buy out the airlines and do a full leap forward on terminal design in the existing building footprint of the legacy Domestic Terminals. Having interconnected Terminals Airside (e.g. don't need to exit security and go through TSA again when connecting from one terminal to another) and having sufficent room to manouvre would be ideal. The LAX domestic terminals are stuck in a 1960's design band aided again and again. Simple things like segragting arriving and departing passengers on different levels just to make existing walkways and building footprints usable would be a big step. Moving concessions to upper or lower levels away from gate boarding areas would free up space. Agree with others here, Tom Bradley will be a great terminal but when the rest of the Airport has the charm of a Greyhound bus terminal have you really improved anything?

Don't get me started on the lack of Rail access. Using Existing Right of Way and minimal encorachment on LAX propertly would allow for express light rail from LAX to Downtown. Why do we need that? Convention dollars/events - get those users off the freeways...

I want to drive at 1:04 PM March 04, 2013

The problem with LA public transit improvement.

Even after the completion, people still need cars to access those subway,.

You don't see that in WMATA or BART

Even if train stations are locate right at the airport

What is the point that people have to drive to train stations and take train.?. May as well drive all the way to LAX

For people who don't drive, they ahve to take lousy buses to catch train.

LA loves to mimic European train styles, but they still love cars. They don't want to mimik true pubcli transit public, a system that does not require cars.

The author, like many others rail writers, lack of common sense

BJToepper at 10:34 AM March 04, 2013

In a century of dithering, I don't know that it will ever be possible for us to implement the efficient transit hubs that some European cities have installed at their airports. For instance, Amsterdam's Schiphol has a full blown train station in the "basement." Upon arrival, you collect your luggage, go through passport control and customs, and then stroll directly to the rail ticket window for destinations anywhere in Europe. It's not a spur, not an extension, but a train station. Meanwhile, we can't even figure out how to to connect the Gold line to the Red at Union Station.

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