Sorry, I was just feeling perverse..

But, seriously, I want to go visit Chicago. I've never been there and it looks great. Also I've always loved Blues Brothers. But I don't have money to spend on a flight right now, and I only have one good friend who lives there...

And right now, I'm back in LA. For good. And it's good to be back, but weird to actually think about living somewhere in this great big mess that's not the town I grew up in.
Since I went to a really culturally hip school where everyone wants to live in the "it" place, all my best college friends from different places around the country are moving here in september. One of them, from Boston, is already here and can't stop talking about each new neighborhood she comes across. One day she's like "oooh I went to Venice! I want to live there!!!" and the next minute "what!! I just went Downtown. what!! How come no one ever told me about that!!" and then like "Leimert Park!! Soo cute!!"

Anyway, so I'm looking for a place to live with my friends who are all from out of town. Right now the consensus is hovering around culver city because of its general proximity to venice, where my artist friend will be working at a gallery, Marina Del Rey, where I'll hopefully have an advertising job, and it's still pretty much close enough to everything that my movie biz friends will need.

But Culver city is a little too similar to Manhattan Beach, where I grew up. I'd like to try living somewhere completely different in LA. And preferably avoid falling into hipster hell like my older friends who have already settled in echosilverfeliz. I always had my eye on Koreatown, or Boyle Heights, or even Long beach--somewhere that's still relatively cheap, with historic architecture, and near to public transportation. (I might not be living in Culver City by the time the expo line makes it there).

Just thought I might open this up to discussion, see if you guys have thoughts.


also, man, LA is great. It always takes me a while to readjust, but after a few weeks I remember what it is that makes this place so goddamn amazing. It really is like no other place on earth. I just hope it doesn't get fucked up in the next few years and become another San Franhattan.

[QUOTE=dweebo2220
also, man, LA is great. It always takes me a while to readjust, but after a few weeks I remember what it is that makes this place so goddamn amazing. It really is like no other place on earth. I just hope it doesn't get fucked up in the next few years and become another San Franhattan.[/QUOTE]



^ Trust me it won't become another San Franhattan no time soon. On the other hand this thread is going to get fucked up real soon with the heading you gave it. This will become a continuation of "Is LA a world class city" thread.......... You did read it, right?

I'd say try the arts district, but it has gotten expensive. The arts district is between Alameda and the river and First and Seventh Streets, just barely east of downtown. Converted facories and warehouses made into living spaces by artists desperate for more space. It has become legal and is beginning to gentrify, fill up with yuppies, but there is a small neighborhood feeling and alot of interesting people around (notice how I avoided the word 'hip') There are still some rentals around that are reasonable. It is centrally located, will have its own GoldLine stop in a couple of years, and you would be within walking distance of all of Downtown.

You asked for something different, this is it.

http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/9810/bus2cs.jpg

Off the beaten path but still in LA proper neighborhoods that I think are on the edge of explosion, Leimert Park, Expo Park, the Rampart district, Mac Arthur Park(not Koreatown)around the Westlake stop area and Culver City. Although Culver City at this time is perhaps the most boringnest place on Earth (I've waited for the bus at Washington and Overland) it seems to be heading in the direction of hip especially since Expo is on its way. Oh yeah and also Watts. It may still be another 3-5 years before you see any significant changes but it will be a very hip area in the future.

By the way the BBC is having a continuing presentation of the urban world, its future and problems. So talking about LA vs Chicago or Paris vs London after reading these articles makes all of this seem tripe. The density of the new cities coming up make NYC look like a quaint seaside village and their growth and projected growth make a healthy growing place like LA seem to have stagnated. Honestly, we're basking in afterglow here in these western cities. The cities of the future are in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/5094602.stm

Sorry, these articles are soooo good! Here is an excerpt from a professor at USC (I believe) articulating brilliantly what has been argued. LA is not a traditional city like Boston, SF, Chicago or Phili* but I think we know that. LA is a post-modern city, basically the model of what all of the new cities around the world (for better or worse) have based their design on.

Michael Dear is Professor of Geography at the University of Southern California. He is also author of The Postmodern Urban Condition.

One of the effects of global capitalism is the creation of an increasingly polarised world. On the one hand, you have what my colleague Mike Davis calls a planet of slums, and on the other hand, you have what we call cities of gold.

While these terms can apply on a global scale, they can also apply to cities, such as Los Angeles and Mexico city, where there is a lot of slum and a lot of gold.

We don't build a city and towns with city centres any more you add city centres afterwards as an aesthetic afterthought or as a consumption opportunity

What this polarisation within cities creates is what I call post-modern urbanisation and I think we're going to see a lot more of it by 2050.

Basically, in conventional cities - modernist cities - the norm has been for the centre to organise the hinterland.

However, in post-modern urbanism, this has been reversed - the hinterland organises what's left of the core. Look at Southern California, the Pearl River Delta, or Barcelona, there is a huge decentralised spread of urban development and no real single core to speak of.

LA, for example, has 20 or 30s downtowns - there isn't the conventional pattern of people travelling into the city and out of the city in the morning. People cross the city in a wide variety of ways and this means a lot more choices - a lot more dispersed patterns of behaviour. It also means a lack of central authority in organising a city region or its government.

We don't build a city and towns with city centres any more you add city centres afterwards as an aesthetic afterthought or as a consumption opportunity. We simply have a collage or pastiche of almost random urban spread which ultimately collides and creates cities and then we start adding the trappings of conventional cities.

So, you have an extraordinary fragmented urban region which extends in the case of LA over 14,000 square miles.

This offers up opportunities for intense local autonomies - on the one hand you have the rich succeeding but on the other, you have poorer people claiming their spaces.

Local autonomies develop in a metropolis. In our region that tends to be Hispanics, and that's one of the most important demographic trends that you can imagine.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/5094602.stm

*No one says it but I believe NYC to be a multi-polar city as well. Downtown, Midtown, Uptown, and downtown Brooklyn.