On the grand plan

Mr. OUROUSSOFF seems disconsolate that the same Frank Gehry who designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall did not also design every other major building in downtown Los Angeles since 1960. That’s about the only sense I could make of his article.

He complains about a selection committee that is somehow not competent or not in tune with the city’s culture and values. Yet the sidebar discloses a membership replete with relevant competency and deeply representative of every major constituency. Where is the developers’ cabal that Mr. Ouroussoff is so afraid of?

I wonder why your critic disdains the Champs-Elysees as a possible source of inspiration but embraces Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao as salvation for a cultural backwater. Does he think we are a backwater in need of such salvation?

V. Shannon Clyne

Los Angeles

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Nicolai Ouroussoff’s article got me thinking about which city centers I’ve enjoyed most as I’ve traveled around the country.

The two that came to mind are: Savannah, Ga., with its quaint squares amply distributed around the old part of town; and Portland, Ore., with its north and south park blocks full of mature elms among the high-rises. Both have wonderful riverfronts of which they take full advantage.

I know that we in L.A. don’t have a lot of the natural attributes that these two locations have, and we have a lot more people as well as traffic to deal with, but I hope that those on the selection committee will reflect on ideals like these as a goal to shoot for. And I hope that they may come to the conclusion, as I have, that often it is the space between buildings that makes a downtown area desirable and not just the magnificence of the architecture of those buildings.

Jay Jiudice

Marina del Rey

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The process that the selection committee is following is not providing for a visionary master plan that can make a difference in this part of Los Angeles. I believe that any relevant master plan should make a connection to the bustling and vibrancy of Broadway, which Bunker Hill lacks at this moment. Any proposed plan should become a destination for Angelenos as well as tourists to come to downtown for an actual city experience that is not fabricated.

Edgar Sandoval

San Fernando