Is Los Angeles A World Class City?

The Los Angeles Times Magazine’s architectural reporter, Christopher Hawthorne, writes an interesting article about Mayor Villaraigosa’s role as a mayor of a world-class city. (Hawthorne also did a piece on the PATH Mall a couple of years ago.) The cities that are highlighted around the world as top-notch are London, New York, and Shanghai. These cities have led the world in innovative architecture, excellent transit systems, and a progressive movement to take their massive cities into the future.

Los Angeles, however, is not part of that world-class city level. The struggles that our mayor has encountered are massive urban problems—education, crime, gangs, traffic, homelessness, housing, etc.--as well as encounters with his own personal battles.

The solution that Hawthorne proposes is simple… Mayor Villaraigosa should solve Los Angeles’ gridlock problem—mass transit. I partially agree that traffic is a significant problem. I travel to work 3-4 days per week on the Metro train. Mainly, because traffic is a significant barrier on the quality of one’s life. If we are to be a green city, we need to embrace mass transit. If we are to have a healthy quality of life, we should not have to fight traffic 2 to 3 hours per day.

However, Hawthorne should’ve included the issue of homelessness. A world-class city does not have thousands and thousands of its citizens languishing on their streets. That is more in line with a Third World city, not a world-class city.

If our Mayor is to proudly tout Los Angeles as a world-class international city, he must show how he is reducing homelessness significantly. Until that happens, we are just a sprawling international urban hive struggling to become a London, or a New York, or a Shanghai.

(Pic from LA Times Magazine)