Building From Within

Redevelopment theory and practice are changing. A purely one-dimensional approach to community renewal cannot do the job. Cities, especially the inner city, also must be recovered from within. Indeed, without attention to the inner, subliminal life of a neighborhood, no community can be truly renewed.

In times past, theories of urban renewal centered on urban design, socioeconomic redevelopment and crime. Other aspects of community creation and sustainability--religion, culture, ethnicity, and ethnocultural interactivity--were only secondarily considered. Religion as a social and cultural force was especially underregarded, with the possible exception of the continuing role of the African American church in black communities. The inability of urban theorists to deal with religion as a force for renewal did not necessarily imply prejudice or hostility. It came, rather, from the long-held notion that the best way to honor the First Amendment was to ignore religion entirely.

Yet, if we consider the renewal, say, of the Pico-Union district adjacent to downtown, can we afford to ignore the fact that each Sunday morning hundreds and hundreds of residents, Latino in the main, leave their homes and walk to the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle? Can we ignore as well the equally impressive procession of automobiles snaking its way into the parking lot of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sophia nearby?

No theory or practice of urban renewal in Pico-Union can afford to ignore the compelling presence of Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy in the district. Fortunately for Pico-Union, residents and commuting parishioners, Catholic and Orthodox, have a more sophisticated way of doing things, which offers a paradigm for the rest of the city and its communities struggling to come back.

Last Sunday, the sun streamed down upon the mosaic of a crowned double-headed eagle of Byzantium embedded in the plaza of St. Sophia Cathedral at Pico and Normandie. His Eminence Metropolitan Anthony, a high church official, sprinkled holy water on the 185,000-piece plaza mosaic by artist Sirio Tonelli. It was the Sunday of Orthodoxy, celebrating the restoration of sacred icons in the churches of Byzantium in the year 843. The metropolitan, accompanied by the Very Rev. John S. Bakas, dean of the cathedral, and assistant priest Paul Paris, had just led a long procession of parishioners and guests bearing icons around the outside walls of the great domed Byzantine cathedral.

It was a religious event rich with the liturgical pageantry of Hellenic Christianity: golden vestments, the odor of incense, stately and sonorous chanting. But that was not the only reason the crowd included state Treasurer Phil Angelides, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, Councilman Nate Holden, Tom La Bonge, special assistant to the mayor, Cpt. Robert Hanson of the Los Angeles Police Department and a half dozen or so other public officials.

It was a day about urban renewal as well as religion. What Metropolitan Anthony was blessing, along with the restored plaza, was the revitalization of what the Greek Orthodox community is now calling the Byzantine-Latino Quarter in Pico-Union.

Faith-based urban-renewal groups have multiplied in Los Angeles in recent years, stepping in where governmental efforts have fallen short. In South-Central Los Angeles, for example, 37 small to medium-size African American Protestant and Latino Pentecostal churches, organized as the Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches (LAM), are working directly with the state of California, probation officials and the University of Southern California supervising parole programs requiring ex-offenders to work toward a high school degree or GED certificate as condition of their parole.

Such groups unite church members, university researchers and community activists and often work through existing government programs or elected officials. Their funding comes from a hodgepodge of governmental and private sources. These nonsectarian coalitions mark a move away from single-church-based ministries, such as West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Crenshaw or First African Methodist Episcopal Church in South-Central’s West Adams neighborhood.

The Byzantine-Latino Quarter is in its infancy. A half-dozen years ago, this portion of Pico-Union exhibited all the signs of inner-city neglect: graffiti, paper-strewn streets, rundown properties and, most of all, neighborhood gangs. This zone is also a sacred space for the 50,000 and more Greek Orthodox in the L.A. metropolitan region. It was here in 1952 that the Hellenic community constructed its cathedral, consecrated in the name of Holy Wisdom. The Greek community is, by and large, prosperous, to say the least, which means that it could have decamped from Pico-Union and rebuilt its cathedral elsewhere. But the decision was made to stay.

“We based ourselves on the broken-window theory of James Q. Wilson,” notes Father John. Wilson, a UCLA professor, argued in a 1982 article that broken windows, weed-filled lots and vandalism foster lawless behavior. His theory formed the basis for community policing, which initially targeted petty criminals. Father John, 53, a priest for the past 23 years, came to his vocation in part because of his experiences witnessing the human condition as a policeman.

Three years ago, community leaders and local institutions in Pico-Union area--among them, St. Thomas the Apostle parish, Jesuit-staffed Loyola High School, the Bishop Conaty Girls’ High School, and a number of smaller African American and Latino Pentecostal churches--formed an organization called Genesis Plus. Their first commitment was to walk the streets of Pico-Union, meet people, note property damage, clean it up when possible, fix broken windows, paint over graffiti, and, of equal importance, lobby, lobby, lobby at City Hall on behalf of Pico-Union. “Pico-Union had been left behind,” says Father John, “it had become a forgotten, hollow core.”

Money was raised to repaint the cathedral and to repaint St. Thomas the Apostle Church next door. The fixed broken windows generated additional repair of broken glass. Following the repainting of the two churches, a repainting movement spread throughout the neighborhood. Pico-Union clergy made a special effort to make contact with members of a local gang, the Playboys, on a one-to-one basis, just to talk, just to find out who they were, sometimes even for a bit of impromptu counseling. The Rampart division of the LAPD intensified an effective community-policing program. Local youth at risk were given free summer vacations at Camp Axios in the San Bernardino mountains. Today, according to Father John, “the fear element has left the community. At 8 or 9 o’clock in the evening, people are walking the streets, and the restaurants are open. Crime has gone down 40% in this area.”

A year or so into its campaign, Genesis Plus struck pay dirt: a $500,000 federal Department of Transportation block grant, channeled through the city’s Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative program. Looking for help to design a redevelopment plan to spend the federal funds, Greek leaders turned to Michael S. Dukakis, the former presidential candidate who lectures each year at UCLA’s public-policy school. In 1997 and ‘98, 19 UCLA graduate students in urban planning drafted a plan, created a web site and encouraged merchants, some of whom had never spoken to each other, to form a multiethnic business association.

The grant meant money to improve street lighting and bus stops, to repair sidewalks and plant trees, to create a network of “pocket parks” with eight to 10 trees and a couple of benches; and to stamp corner crossings with brick-style tiles to convince people, as Father John puts it, “to believe that their neighborhood has value, just as they do.”

Out of Genesis Plus emerged the idea of the Byzantine-Latino Quarter, centered on St. Sophia Cathedral, a blending, that is, of Latin and Hellenic traditions in a recovered neighborhood. The great plaza blessed by the metropolitan will not be only for the use of the cathedral community. It will also be a civic space, open for appropriate public use.

“We are trying to develop an enterprise zone,” notes Father John, “that blends the ancient Byzantine tradition with the Latino traditions of Los Angeles. We want to attract new business development to this neighborhood keyed to these two communities.” In 1994, St. Sophia constructed senior-citizen apartments adjacent to the cathedral that is repatriating senior Hellenes to the neighborhood. In 1997, the cathedral community joined St. Thomas the Apostle parish for a Byzantine-Latino Las Posadas, the traditional Latino procession in which Mary and Joseph search for shelter on a cold winter’s night.

In his sermon following the liturgy that began the day’s festivities last Sunday, the metropolitan also struck the Byzantine-Latino motif. Driving to St. Sophia that morning, His Eminence noted, he saw streams of people coming on foot from throughout Pico-Union toward St. Thomas the Apostle Church for mass. The procession reminded the bishop of similar scenes on Sunday morning in his boyhood village in Greece.

The Byzantine-Latino connection, in other words, was for Bishop Anthony not just a rubric or an urban-renewal metaphor. It is a sign of a living continuity, a cross-cultural reference point: a reassertion of the fact that the peoples of the world--Latino, Hellenic and hundreds of other groups--have come to Los Angeles in search of a better life and have brought with them their fundamental values of family, culture and religion.

True, we have a tradition of separation of church and state in this nation; and it must be preserved. But as federal judge and legal theorist John Noonan argues in his highly praised new book, “The Lustre of Our Country,” the Founding Fathers did not intend the separation of church and state to mean that Americans cannot acknowledge religious value in public life--only that one religion or another cannot be established, and no religion can be suppressed.

To talk about renewing cities without reference to the powerful forces embodied in their church, synagogue, mosque and temple communities; to seek to awaken values of community and self-renewal without reference to the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and other religious traditions, is to deal with only society’s surface.

Where do we find the fresh waters of our renewal, the great Booker T. Washington was once asked? He replied: “Lower your buckets where you are!” The renewal of Pico-Union is being found where the people are, hence the metaphor, the dream, of a Byzantine-Latino Quarter and a renewed Los Angeles.