MOCA Strategic Plan Exhibit

In response to “A Display of Dreams,” editorial, June 1:

On behalf of the Downtown Strategic Plan Advisory Committee, I invite The Times to take a closer look at the Downtown Strategic Plan (DSP). Your editorial suggested “a sigh for what might have been” but perhaps might better have suggested a “sign-up” to work for what ought to be and for what can yet be achieved. The DSP is a guide to the real needs and opportunities that must be addressed Downtown.

The projects from the DSP that are portrayed at the current Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition are a selection from 16 that are included in the plan. These 16 are themselves representative of many others that deserve consideration. Each of the projects is based on four overlapping objectives: to stimulate economic recovery, to create a more just equity regarding who benefits from urban development, to improve not only access but accessibility to the opportunities of the city’s center, and to create a stronger group of neighborhoods and community.

MOCA’s “Urban Revisions” exhibition may not have provided the most compelling presentation of “current projects for the public realm.” First, it is not clear just what is being revised. Of course the exhibited projects would revise the places for which they are proposed, but deeper understandings of a revised attitude about urbanity and a revised means of planning are difficult to present visually. And second, the best planning these days is a highly integrated set of social and economic policies aimed at community building and strategically implemented by a series of acts, including some well-positioned capital projects. The MOCA show is perhaps more successful in presenting projects than a more comprehensive perspective about purposes and policies.

Criticism of the proposal for a catalytic project at St. Vibiana Cathedral because the area is now rather derelict is an unfortunate reflection of a rather pervasive sense that we are unable to make our city a better place. The truth is that we are able to be effective in this work, but only if we have purposes that inspire us, persistence and the full participation of those who live and work in local districts and neighborhoods. The catalytic projects in the DSP are visionary, as plans should be, but not “dreamlike.”

The St. Vibiana project is located exactly in the kind of leftover place to which our attention is properly directed. Here, at the center of the Catholic archdiocese and the home of the cardinal, is a major cultural institution whose presence has not yet inspired the well-being of its district. Yet its location is ideal for the creation of a lively neighborhood and for making important connections--economic and cultural linkages as well as pedestrian walkways--between Noguchi Plaza at the Japanese American Cultural Center in Little Tokyo, a new plaza and conference center at the cathedral itself and the historic core at Spring Street and Broadway. The interest of the cathedral for improvements of its own holdings, and a wider interest in providing housing, suggests that this is not so much a dream as a serious proposition for community development. This is visionary not because it lacks reality but rather because it goes beyond the status quo.

ROBERT S. HARRIS, Co-Chair

Downtown Strategic Plan

Advisory Committee

Los Angeles