Busy Street Life Makes a City Livable

William H. Whyte is a courtly man with smiling eyes and a gentle voice, the sort of person you would not hesitate to ask directions of on the downtown streets of an ostensibly alien city, such as Los Angeles and New York.

And Whyte would not disappoint. Besides enthusiastically giving correct directions, he most likely also would suggest scenes and landmarks to take note of along the way that lend the particular city a special character.

Whyte sees city and landscapes as few other people do, having studied and written about them for nearly 40 years.

His “The Organization Man” (Simon & Shuster, 1956) was a penetrating look at the emergence of suburbia in the post-World War II years, and “The Last Landscape” (Doubleday, 1968), a brilliant plea for more environmentally sensitive, communally oriented planning.

His most recent book is “City: Rediscovering The Center,” (Doubleday, 1989), which examines with wit and wisdom the shaping and misshaping of public spaces--the sidewalks, street corners, shopping malls, parks and plazas of our downtowns. It is required reading for all those concerned with the future of the city.

Ever since sharing the same book editor at Doubleday 25 years ago, Whyte and I have been exchanging ideas when meeting at conferences and going on excursions together in such diverse cities as Detroit, San Francisco and Charleston, S.C.

Holly, as he is known to friends and acquaintances, also has been my mentor, always provoking me and other incipient urbanists to question planning shibboleths and urging that in the final analysis, it is the people who count, not the places.

When I heard Holly was to be in Los Angeles last Tuesday to address the Westside Development Breakfast Club, I was delighted to join him the day before on a tour of the city and for dinner.

With Jamie McCormick, an aspiring developer, at the wheel and planners Mark Winogrond of West Hollywood and Jane Blumenfeld of Los Angeles in the back seat, we cruised the Westside.

The tour included driving most of the length of Sunset Boulevard, from Brentwood through Beverly Hills and Hollywood to Echo Park, skirting downtown, viewing the Wilshire District, having coffee at the Farmers Market, bouncing along Beverly Boulevard, getting caught in traffic in Westwood, and ending up on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

Along the way, Holly noted with pleasure people sitting in outdoor cafes at Sunset Plaza in West Hollywood; derided the chaotic commercial strips of Hollywood, marked by mini-malls and sprawling parking lots; admired the setting of Echo Park Lake and the view there of the downtown skyline; shuddered at the scale of the Beverly Center and the siting of the buildings in Century City, and wondered why there weren’t more benches and trees along the commercial strips.

“Life on the street is the the best measure of whether a downtown is working, not the size and style of its office towers,” observed Holly, over dinner at the Broadway Bar and Grill on the Promenade.

The views of the street, and the brick and mirrored decor of the restaurant, as well as the martinis, reminded him of New York, his home for nearly the last half-century. It was a compliment.

Whyte added that Los Angeles should worry less about traffic congestion and parking, stating there never will be enough open lanes and convenient spaces for cars, and anyway, “those things tend to sort themselves out and life goes on.”

Rather, Whyte urged that the city worry more about tightening its urban fabric to stimulate pedestrian congestion in select areas, in short, how to increase density with style and sensitivity.

“What attracts people most is other people,” added the self-taught urban sociologist. “This communal feeling, people standing around talking, having a bite to eat or a drink, checking out the scene, just as they did in in the agoras of ancient Greece, is what cities are all about.”

Whyte used the observations to punctuate his talk to the development group the next day at the DC-3 restaurant overlooking the Santa Monica Airport. It was yet another call for cities to put aside their sweeping master plans and work on fine-tuning the streets and public places where the life and death of cities are played out.

You had to be quiet and listen very carefully to hear Holly, who was competing against planes taking off and landing at the airport and developers sidling up to city officials at tables. In addition, Holly’s voice has thinned; talking above the increasing din of traffic for seven decades has taken its toll. But his words continue to be music to urban planners.

Also at the gathering the group’s now annual prize for a project advancing sound land-use practices on the Westside was awarded.

The winner was the Venice Renaissance project, an ambitious mix of 66 luxury condos and 23 low-cost senior citizen rental units atop a block of upscale stores and offices, and the obligatory parking garage--all built on a narrow 600 foot strip of an abandoned railroad track.

As if this wasn’t enough, the project was decorated with an oversized, animated pop sculptural piece of a garishly painted clown in a tutu.

The concept of the project, and the developers’ perseverance in getting the needed approvals fo the project, certainly deserve recognition. But the execution, aggravated by the sculpture erected in the name of public art, is excessive. One would think the detailed massing and the site at the northwest corner of Rose Avenue and Main Street was enough.

To the group’s credit, the $3,000 prize money was diverted for a scholarship to a aid a UCLA architecture and planning graduate student, Shirl Buss, involved in the design and construction of tot lots in the Nickerson Gardens public housing project.

Now there is a project that would test the durability and viability of public art, and delight Holly.