The Great White Way of the West

Los Angeles is home to the largest historic theater district west of the Mississippi. The most pre-World War II movie palaces and theatres are located here in the city of angeles, even though over half of them have already been demolished. In Downtown LA on Broadway Avenue, there remains a good number of these theatres which have been put to various uses including jewelry shops, Latino markets, and museums. Many of them are still in great shape with their original architecture and artwork still in place. These buildings draw hundreds of visitors each year who seek to revisit the past on tours of historic Los Angeles such as those given by the LA Conservancy.

With so many historical gems located in one of the largest cities in the nation and one of the largest cities in the world, Councilman Jose Huizar of LA Council District 14 established an initiative to revitalize the area and start a project dedicated to the development something Los Angeles has lacked for a long time: an arts district. The Bringing Back Broadway initiative in downtown LA would create a place which would attract many large plays, muscials, and art shows serving those who live, work, and play in Los Angeles. There has been a concern about the gentrification of the area, however in the long term, this project will benefit LA's economic and community development to a great extent as it will bring in a more diverse variety of people and businesses to the city. Especially as California experienced much White Flight suburbanization and sprawl in the past several decades, the revitalization of the Broadway district would attract not just Latinos as it does now, but people of all races and incomes offering more options and places for people to spend their time and money in LA.

The Broadway corridor is home to twelve historic theatres within nine blocks. This area was once considered the "retail capital of the United States" and now carries over one million square feet of vacant commercial space. With this area located in the heart of historic downtown, politicians say this current use of space is inefficient and does not serve the needs or fulfil the utility of corridor area or its residents and patrons. This project is a ten-year public-private partnership launced in January of 2008 which aims to:

• Revitalize the historic Broadway district between 2nd Street and Olympic Boulevard
• Activate inactive theaters
• Re-active more than a million square feet of vacant commercial space
• Assist retailers and prevent further retail vacancies
• Increase parking and transit options to serve Broadway
• Encourage cultural, entertainment and retail uses on Broadway that will sustain generations
• Create a sense of place and history through urban planning, design and lighting guidelines and streetscapes
• And make the dream of riding a streetcar downtown by 2014 a reality.

Bringing Back Broadway has been receiving much support, attention, and success from local politicians and community members as the project progresses into its second year. However, much still needs to be done in downtown LA before the project can take flight. The initiative calls for a complete streetscape and infrastructure rennovation, more parking, and permanent street closure on Broadway to make way for the planned streetcar. In a way, this project is turning a piece of downtown into The Grove. There will be much traffic and construction in the years to come in order to make this project successful, but I look forward to the day when I can walk safely in downtown Los Angeles and decide whether or not I want to see The Drowsy Chaperone, Jersey Boys, Wicked, Rent, or any of nine Broadway shows here in Southern California's own Great White Way. This entertainment and arts district is long overdue and will be much loved once it is a reality.

Obama Establishes U.S. Department of Urban Affairs

In an Executive Order on February 19, 2009, President Barack Obama established the brand new White House Office of Urban Affairs. The president cites the need for a "coordinated and comprehensive approach...concerning urban America"in order to face the rapid growth of our cities which are home to over 80 percent of the population. Recognizing the importance of American urban spaces, he said "the economic health and social vitality of our urban communities are critically important to the prosperity and quality of life for Americans. "

Urban areas in the United States of America are becoming increasingly important as centers of development and growth for the entire nation. The White House has acknowledged how "vibrant cities spawn innovation, economic growth, and cultural enrichment through the businesses, universities, and civic, cultural, religious, and nonprofit institutions they attract," and they are developing the right urban policies, including taking a regional approach and promoting inclusive growth, in order to better face the shifting needs of American cities.

The hope is to foster an urban paradigm shift aimed to "lift up and revitalize urban areas holistically and invest in community development." Communty development and revitalization efforts in the past have not been the best methods of improving urban areas, but with a new federal platform to work on these issues, this may be the change American cities have been waiting for.

Obama appointed Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion as the Director of the Office of Urban Affairs. The 47-year-old New York politicain "oversaw the creation of 40,000 new units of housing, 50 new schools, $7 billion in capital and infrastructure expenditures and more than $400 million in new parks and parkland renovation" in his career so far, and he is very well qualified to lead this nation in a major urban change.

Branding Dubai: The Legacy of the Burj Al Arab

On a trip to the Middle East a wealthy American businessman makes reservations at a high class restaurant. Later that day, as the waiter takes his order off the Al Muntaha menu of contemporary Mediterranean cuisine, in a thick Arabic accent he asks the businessman how he is enjoying the view. All of a sudden the young American realizes the impressive panorama of desert and Arabian Gulf to the left of his table from 200 meters in the sky. This restaurant is located atop the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai of the United Arab Emirates, which is currently the third tallest hotel in the world standing at 1,053 feet (or 321 meters) high. This building, a major symbol of the city’s success, was only the first of many ambitious projects Dubai has undertaken in the past decade or so to create the image of a higher, faster, and stronger society. Massive amounts of development and infrastructure has been sprouting up all over Dubai without regards to historical preservation or local context, leading to a lack of social fabric connecting the buildings, both old and new; it has fostered a new culture of extreme global architecture and development based on creativity and the idea of image-ability starting with the hotel.

The completion of the Burj Al Arab began a legacy of a new, more artistic style of architecture spreading rapidly throughout the developing world. Such buildings were made to serve as luxurious status symbols rather than to perform practical functions. The Burj Al Arab, or “Tower of the Arabs,” is a self-proclaimed “Seven Star Hotel” built from the wealth the city accumulated from its past success with its oil reserves. With natural oil sources depleting, places like Dubai are turning to tourism and marketing to create a new source of income based on luxury goods and tall, extravagant buildings – places like the Burj Al Arab. The Western world has left a major impact on Dubai, a former British colony, as our greed for oil and now for luxury goods continues to drive their economy.

To get a sense of exactly how lavish the hotel is one only need hear of the ridiculous figures involved in the making of the $650 million building. Over 20,000 square feet of real gold leaf was used on interior decoration, so chances are if something looks like gold inside the hotel, it is. With 60 stories and only 202 suites, the dimensions of each room are also enormous. In addition to the major scale of the building, it was constructed on an artificial island built 919 feet (or 280 meters) off the shore of Jumeirag Beach.

To create a firm foundation for the building 230 40-meter long concrete piles were driven into the sand, holding the building in place through friction being absorbed by the sand and silt around it rather than focused at the base. The tremendous amount of wealth and opulence poured into this building was designed to symbolize Dubai’s urban transformation into a modern and developed world. The mere shape of the Burj, resembling the sail of a dhow (an Arabian vessel), was intended to be “a building that would become an iconic or symbolic statement for Dubai…very similar to Sydney with the Opera House, or Paris with the Eiffel Tower. It needed to be a building that would become synonymous with the name of the country,” according to the architect, Tom Wright. Once this Burj was completed, Dubai was successful in spreading the image of the building as the image of itself, a flourishing new urban city, across the globe.

Especially in developing nations, cities want to be valued and recognized by others in order to support economic growth in areas such as tourism. Dubai has gained global recognition with the erection of the Burj Al Arab and its subsequent developments of similar magnitude; Sheik Rashid, the Prince of Dubai, sees this as a “highly visible statement of the region’s corporate success.” With massive amounts of development, architects and developers have turned an undesirable piece of desert land into a very popular tourist destination. Having a global symbol and global recognition allows cities like Dubai to focus on developing a culture of novel luxury goods. With the success of the Burj Al Arab, the Sheik had ordered more artificial islands and more tall buildings to be developed to increase the prestige of his city. In order to keep up with Dubai, many other nations have learned from their example and cities like Beijing, Seoul, and even New Delhi are seeing massive amounts of development similar to levels seen in Dubai.

In most developing nations, architecture and development are rarely paying attention to the local context and histories of each city in an effort to quickly build a bigger, better city. However, you can only ever have two of those three elements at any one time. You can build something quicker and bigger, but it won’t be better. You can build something bigger and better, but it can’t be done quickly. You can build something better and quicker, but it can’t be large. Many nations are seeking shortcuts to advance ahead of the development curve trying to reach the levels of the Western world, and in doing so they compromise many aspects of traditional, healthy development.

While this new fast-paced, large-scaled architecture is awe-inspiring, many critics have noted the negative changes in ecological patterns surrounding major development in places like Dubai and Beijing. Going back to the Burj Al Arab, artificial islands like the one the hotel rests on and the neighboring man-made Palm Islands have disrupted the natural current of the Arabian Gulf along the coast lines which have begun to change the weather patterns and biodiversity in the area. As basic human nature constantly seeks to improve itself and its accomplishments in this era of technology and development in urban design and architecture, a higher, faster, and stronger approach does not seem to be appropriate at this time. However, there are well over 7 billion people in the world, and over half of them now live in urban areas like Dubai and Beijing and Mumbai increasing the demand for larger, faster, and better development. Creating impressive, unique buildings and places like the Burj al Arab and the islands seem to be only for show at this point in time. The culture of expediency and luxury found in the rapid development of such Megacities and mega buildings are detrimental to the global environment and show major disregard for the society as a whole.

As long as there is the demand for this new style of global architecture dedicated to creating gigantic buildings rather than more locally appropriate buildings (in terms of being more reflective of the local people and their cultures), architecture and urban design/development will continue to shift. This new global architecture remains detached from local histories and contexts and merely plays into what is best for the economy rather than the people. This is especially relevant in Dubai as the new architecture is so modern and rarely ever connects to Arabic history; the government approves buildings which look beautiful and intimidating as they want to impress the world with their ability to make something so grand and so new.

A large reason for this shift toward innovative forms and styles of development can be attributed to the fact that most architects and developers of places like Dubai come from the Western World. For instance, Tom Wright, architect of the Burj Al Arab, is a British man who infused much of his Western ideals and modern style (which was rarely, if ever, seen in the UAE before) into the design of the building. After all, a global British architecture and design firm, Atkins, was the one who backed this project. Many other major projects in Dubai have also been backed by Atkins and other Western firms like Arup as well; Dubai has sought out many Westernized cultures to create their own. However, even if they did decide to incorporate more local traditional architecture styles, there wouldn’t be much context to go off of because there is a lack of many rich styles of local architecture in the first place, due to the restrictions of being located in the middle of the desert.

More recently efforts have been made to at least imitate the looks of local architecture, such as designing the appearance of Arabic windcatchers in certain buildings. Windcatchers were originally towers built to “catch” the air above a building and circulate it as a natural air conditioning system. With the increasing use of newer technologies such as modern air conditioning, the need for such traditional designs has disappeared as well. This modern use of a seemingly traditional architectural style has changed a practical piece of urban form into the façade of genuine culture. Such hybridity is taking the place of tradition in many places, and modern technological advances are taking precedence without trying very hard to connect old and new buildings to one another. This makes development in an area like Dubai dangerous because people are attempting to create extraordinary buildings without any templates or models to test it against ensuring a building will function well in a specific setting.

For instance, the Burj Al Dubai, set to open in September of 2009, is already the tallest structure on earth at 1 kilometer high, and a lot of concern has been raised over whether or not the building will actually be safe in terms of its stability and design. Some people even argue that with the rapid construction timeline of such a building, workers (which are mostly immigrant and poorly paid) have an increased incentive to cut corners and compromise the safety of the design. Also, it doesn’t seem to bother anyone that this building will stick out like a sore thumb amongst all the other buildings in Dubai. Even the Burj Al Arab is only just over half the height of this new building. However the fact that Dubai is home to the tallest structure in the world is more important to their government than issues of connecting infrastructure and creating a sense of community, a sense of connectivity within the city.

This new global form of architecture, detached from local forms and styles, reflects the constant search for something new, creative, and innovative in human nature. With constant development and almost unregulated growth, these aspects of human nature – as represented in cities like Dubai and symbolized by buildings like the Burj Al Arab – are growing to tremendous proportions with our increasing technological abilities. Along with massive amounts of development in the area, gentrification is also becoming an issue as these major hotels and business offices cater to the rich Westerners who come to vacation rather than to the native Arabs in the city. The intended population of Dubai seems to be Western expatriates and vacationers rather than native Arabs when looking at the types of buildings being developed in relation to who they will benefit. The new global architecture does not yet focus on the needs of local populations as much as it focuses on trying to astonish the world.

Many cultures around the world are disappearing under the stress of this new paradigm in development as history and tradition give way to the new, the vibrant, and the innovative. Dubai’s mentality and architecture style has spread throughout the world as an increasing number of cities and nations are building their own tall, unique buildings like the Burj Al Arab detached from the local context of the place. Higher, faster, and stronger seems to be the maxim of Dubai as it had rapidly developed into one of the most prominent cities of the Middle East and of the world beginning with the construction of the Burj Al Arab. Anything seems possible in this world where buildings are built upon fabricated islands shaped like palm trees and where buildings often tower overhead at over one kilometer high. Such development had been unheard of in the past as it has widely been considered to be whimsical and unsafe; however it has now become a regular style of architecture in the developing world. While many still consider such development unsafe, it is clear that Dubai has undoubtedly created a place for itself in the world where no place had existed before as it sparks/rings in a new paradigm in all aspects of development that no longer focuses or ties into a historical sense of place.


References
Burj Al Arab. (2000) EgyptEng.com - engineering dictionary. Retrieved January 31, 2009 from egypteng.com/project/burj.asp)
Burj Al Arab. (2006) Forbes Traveler. Retrived January 31, 2009 from http://www.forbestraveler.com/hotel-review/Dubai/Burj-Al-Arab.html
Ouroussoff, Nocilai. (8 June 2008) The New, New City. The New York Times. Retreived January 31, 2009 from http://topics.nytimes/com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/rem_koolhaas/index.html?inline=nyt-per
“World’s tallest hotels” (March 2008) Emporis. Retreived January 31, 2009 from http://www.emporis.com/en/bu/sk/st/tp/ty/ho

Blogs in the News(papers)

When it comes to the media, countless people complain, complain, and complain about how biased each source is. While studies have been done that show a great majority of news programs are left leaning (at least strictly speaking about reporting and not opinion pieces or editorials), certain perceptions remain about each source no matter what. For instance, a report on media bias in the Journal of Quarterly Economics has found even the Wall Street Journal to be lean toward the left in its reporting, despite the fact that it will forever be known as one of the most conservative, right-winged news sources around.This figure from the report rates news programs in relation to politicians with a score of 50 being "Moderate" with anything above 50 being increasingly liberal and anything below 50 being increasingly conservative.

Because of the stigma associated with specific newspapers, I always try to be a well rounded reader of the news looking at as many newspapers as I can to get my information. Still, it can be difficult to judge whether a piece of news is truly being objective or not, and I find blogs to be a very helpful source to get information based on people’s personal experience and clear biases. In a way blogs are more informative and more straightforward in relaying information about the news because the reader knows when there may be a clear bias and can get a better, more personal understanding of a situation.

My favorite blog source to use in attaining news information whether it is for issues concerning urban planning, local policy issues, or even the latest entertainment fad happens to be the online Los Angeles Times website where many, many blogs are published daily on a wide variety of topics. I first discovered the blogs when I was doing some research in trying to make an educated vote in the 2008 elections. The LA Times is one of the nation's most credible and most read newspapers, and while I have always been hesitant about reading blogs of any kind, the ones published here have been very informative and opened my eyes to the world around me.

Of course Proposition 8 was one of the most controversial ballot issues of all time, and I wanted to be sure I was making the best decision before casting my vote. I wanted to know all sides of every part of the story, and I came across an opinion blog piece called No-on-8's White Bias written by a Black Lesbian in Southern California who thought marriage rights was a "secondary issue...at a time when blacks are still more likely than whites to be pulled over for no reason, more likely to be unemployed than whites, [and] more likely to live at or below the poverty line." Working with trafficking victim cases in LA, I could definitely identify with this personal argument more than the news articles trying to persuade me with uncertain facts and data to vote their way. Plus, knowing her bias, I knew not to take everything she said word for word. This piece opened up the world of blogs as an innovative news source; after all, blogs are the future. The internet has made this world so fast-paced and so full of information. It is only right that blogs should play a major part in the changing dynamics of news sources all around the world.

Building Blogs

There are many, many disciplines that intertwine with the planning field so closely: civil engineering, public administration, public policy, environmental studies, anthropology, geography, architecture. All these fields work closely together to develop and define the urban fabric of each city, neighborhood, and place. BLDG BLOG is a great site to follow which keeps up with these connections and relationships in places and cities all over the world as it focuses on "architectural conjecture, urban speculation, and landscape futures."

Launched in July 2004, BLDG BLOG is a website written by Geoff Manaugh, a journalist, author, and editor for several magazines. Manaugh earned his BA in Cultural Studies from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill in 1997 and his MA in Art & Architectural History from the University of Chicago in 2001 giving him the proper background to explore people and places in a critical manner, offering his ideas to the world through his award winning blog. BLDG BLOG has been prasied and acclaimed by many prominent sources including The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and The Architectural Review as a great learning tool for all people which is "in the non-rude sense of the word...promiscuous." Manaugh is awaiting the publication of his book based on his blog coming out this summer.

One of the most well-developed online resources used by anyone in the urban planning field is Planetizen, a website dedicated to all things related to planning, design, and development. It functions as a “one-stop source for urban planning news, commentary, interviews, event coverage, book reviews, announcements, jobs, consultant listings, training, and more.” I subscribe to Planetizen Newswire, their twice-weekly newsletter, and every time they do a great job of collecting and distributing a wide assortment of articles concerning a large variety of issues from a diversity of sources all over the globe.

Planetizen is considered to be “the world's most popular urban planning website.” As a self-described site of “public-interest information exchange,” you can find almost anything you need to know about planning, design, and development through their website. What’s unique about Planetizen is that it mostly points you in the right direction to millions of other websites, resources, opportunities, and guides rather than writing information on their own. They do have an Op-Ed and a Blog section of their website dedicated to articles and websites which may contain biased information, but it is clear that they keep the straightforward news information separate from the opinion pieces. It is all about organizing and distributing useful, practical information in one place with them.
Because of their role as an information exchange center, Planetizen was developed to be a very objective source. If there is a pertinent article that can be found relating to urban planning, Planetizen will distribute it, despite where it comes from or what “side” it takes. They update the site daily, and have the most current articles and links available. The site is simply formatted, and very easy to navigate and utilize, especially considering the amount of information it supplies to the public. Aesthetically Planetizen has a very basic layout with a solid blue border and a few advertisements for planning books, schools, and programs, but this plainness speaks to the fact that Planetizen’s main focus is on the information it provides.

The website is followed by “a diverse array of people interested in the built and natural environments, and their interaction…[including] professional urban planners, developers, architects, policy makers, educators, economists, civic enthusiasts and others from across the United States and around the world.” While a lot of professionals involved with urban planning utilize Planetizen as a resource for accessing news and other information, anyone can benefit from using the website as a resource for extremely relevant, compelling information about what is going on in cities across the world today.

Self-Reliance: Could It Be An Answer?

Throughout the history of urban planning, in American cities as well as in cities across the globe, governments have had to deal with "slums" and all the issues that accompany them. Slums have always had a negative connotation as they imply the presence of poverty and informal housing. Many traditional planning policies have offered solutions to these problems which require residents of the said slums to move into "better" housing and "better" areas. However, despite the change in environment for these people, it has been difficult to prove that housing projects which provide better living conditions actually foster a change in the culture and/or way of life for the poor and minority groups that have been living in slums.

One of the most infamous examples of failed housing projects was the Pruit Igoe development in St. Louis, Missouri. This project was a failed attempt to provide a more livable environment for the poor than the typical unsafe, informal slums. Unfortuantely, such housing projects were not able to prevent the types of people that lived there from continuing their bad habits such as drug use and gang violence. If anything, it fostered such crime as these types of projects have brought large amounts of people with similar backgrounds together, enabling them to continue in criminal activities on a more dense scale. Because of the extreme scale of crime, vandalism, and disrepair, the Pruit Igoe housing project was eventually demolished, and nothing became of the attempt to revitalize an impoverished, blighted urban area.

A more effective way to approach revitalization and urban slums and poverty seems to be in reshaping the individuals who reside in such areas. While the World Bank, United Nations, and other governmental and non-governmental agencies are working hard to built and develop better cities and provide better housing for the urban poor living in slums, such projects will do little to change the way the people live. The culture of poverty and of crime that exists in the slums will not simply go away with a simple change in the physical environment; there needs to be a change in the individuals' mentality as well. As modern day thinker
and prominent Christian world leader, Ezra Taft Benson, said:

"The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mild men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature."


If you ignore the religious aspects of this quote and reflect on the concepts of self-reliance that it teaches, it really is a novel way to think about change. By attempting to change human nature, by affecting change in peoples' mentalities rather than in their environments, it becomes easier for them to recognize what they need to do to fix their circumstances on their own. If people can change men to become more self-reliant, to be able to better recognize and act upon what their needs are, the negative issues (i.e. crime, vandalism, graffiti, etc.) surrounding slums would not exist to the extent that they do today.

Jane Jacobs and the Birth of Modern Redevelopment

Journalist and activist Jane Jacobs (1916 -2006) is one of the most well-known and respected figures in the history of modern day urban planning. Her efforts to battle the “urban renewal” policies of the 1950s in New York City were monumental and forever changed urban redevelopment policy. As a strong critic of government redevelopment policies, she has personally influenced the way cities and communities throughout America and Canada have been shaped over time.

In the 1950s, local governments had taken an extreme approach to attack the blight and crime that existed in major urban areas like New York City; they were simply demolishing blighted neighborhoods full of poor and minority populations in favor of projects like downtown expressways and, most infamously, Robert Moses’ Brooklyn Battery Bridge. In destroying these communities, Jacobs knew they were also destroying the rich histories and culture of the people who lived there; her efforts to stop such destructive tactics, particularly coming from city planners like Moses, has become one of the most celebrated events in the shift toward modern redevelopment.

Jacobs’ response to such policies were summed up in her treatise entitled "The Life and Death of Great American Cities", which is widely considered to be the most influential book on urban planning. Even President Obama is familiar with her work and its importance in understanding way cities function. It is amazing to see the massive impact a single person can have on the way we build, cherish, and understand our cities we live, work and play in. What really amazes me is that she had no formal background in urban planning, nor did she receive any sort of formal education beyond high school. By simply standing up for what she believed to be right and meaningful, Jacobs was able to influence a major aspect of public policy. Not many people outside the field of urban planning are familiar with her work, and yet her work has remained a staple in the study of the dynamics and functions of cities in our world.

I am very interested in community development and the way culture and social interactions play into the way urban design and a sense of place are shaped in cities, towns, and communities; Jane Jacobs was the one to make this type of analysis a priority in government taking a “place-based” and “community-centered” approach toward cities and planning. She has effected change in so many different aspects of modern day planning. One of her most notable influences has been toward the development of the New Urbanism movement which advocates infill development and denser, more walkable communities. She has always been concerned about the history and culture of places, and as she turned the public eye toward such significant and personal issues, she has paved the way for development to focus on the needs of the people making more friendly, comfortable, and practical neighborhoods.