Proposed CityWalk Mall

In response to “Like It’s So L.A.! Not Really,” Feb. 29:

California is often described as providing America with a “window on its future.” Well, if MCA’s construction of CityWalk in Los Angeles provides part of this vista, then I shudder to think what the future holds for my country. Is this how the economically privileged of our society will address the crises in our increasingly troubled multiethnic urban centers?

Tom Gilmore, leasing director for the project, laments that the streets of L.A. have taken on a “Third World” quality. “It’s not fun anymore,” complains MCA President Lawrence Spungin. So their answer is to pour $100 million into a “poverty-free pedestrian promenade with plenty of parking and sheriff’s substation on the premises” (an escapist project for the well-to-do)?

It is difficult to see the long-term economic logic of ignoring and running away from the socioeconomic problems that plague the city. The more that the rich isolate and alienate the poor, the worse the problems of homelessness, drugs and crime become.

I suggest that Gilmore, Spungin and sympathizers do some homework on the Third World. If they do, they will find that at the root of the socioeconomic problems that plague underdeveloped societies are extreme income disparities and ethnic divisions. Rather than providing an escape from or alternative to the “Third Worldization” of L.A., the CityWalk project stands to aggravate the very conditions which accelerate and deepen this process. I only pray that the rest of the country will not follow this ignoble Californian lead.

LISA HILBINK

La Jolla