Flying into Los Angeles one is again reminded of the dominance of the motor vehicle: car/truck, the hard surfaces. There are now so many big boxes, spanning acres, covering soil, erasing history, plants and live, erasing this place. So much of the urban fabric is devoted to individual motorized transportation. Until we are able to overcome this addiction, LA will remain brutal despite the nooks and corners where human scale manages to hold on.
Hard surfaces, hard on people, and hard on the planet. It is possible to make LA a gentler, more humane, social place. Lets narrow streets, get those bike lanes in, and make all places transit possible. Lets truncate the blocks and forbid huge warehouses and palaces. Lets turn this city into a place where people can afford to live in decent housing, we enjoy going out to be social, to see beautiful things — including other people!
Surely we were not thinking when we built. We forgot we LIVED here, beyond our dwelling.