David Byrne Doesn’t Like Los Angeles
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I’m checking them out
I’m checking them out
I got it figured out
I got it figured out
There’s good points and bad points
But it all works out
I’m a little freaked out
Find a city
Find myself a city to live in.
– “Cities” by the Talking Heads
The ever fascinating David Byrne of the Talking Heads recently outlined his notion of the perfect city in the Wall Street Journal — and it definitely didn’t resemble Los Angeles:
If a city doesn’t have sufficient density, as in L.A., then strange things happen. It’s human nature for us to look at one another— we’re social animals after all. But when the urban situation causes the distance between us to increase and our interactions to be less frequent we have to use novel means to attract attention: big hair, skimpy clothes and plastic surgery. We become walking billboards…
A perfect city is where different things are going on, relatively close to each other, at different times of the day. A city isn’t a strip of hotels and restaurants on a glorious beach; it’s a place where there are restaurants and hotels, but also little stores, fashion boutiques, schools, houses, offices, temples and banks. The healthy neighborhood doesn’t empty out at 6 p.m., as most of downtown L.A. does. In my perfect city there would always be something going on nearby.
I love David Byrne and much of what he says in the piece is astute, but I don’t think he knows too much about Los Angeles. American vanity isn’t a regional existential crisis born out of Los Angelenos’ spacial isolation. New Yorkers are crammed on top of one another and share a similar proclivity for attention seeking. Instead of fake tits and tans, New York vanity manifests in power ties, Brioni suits, tattoos and Jimmy Choo shoes. Worker bees trying to stand out in a hive of 8 million.
If social isolation leads to grotesque self-promotion, wouldn’t everyone in rural America look more like Lady Gaga?
I certainly agree with Byrne that a city needs dynamic zoning — creating something more than isolated pockets of residential, office and retail spaces — but Downtown L.A. isn’t exactly an after-work wasteland these days. Broadway is one of America’s greatest urban thoroughfares, and while it isn’t nearly as packed at night as it is during the day, there are plenty of things happening all around the area.
That said, the powers that be in Los Angeles haven’t exactly done much to help dispel Byrne’s largely cliched notions. Boston and New York have recently built hundreds of miles of bike lanes in the midst of some of the densest and most trafficked neighborhoods in America. Brooklyn has dozens of new parks along the waterfront and in Manhattan the city has started setting up lounge chairs in the middle of Times Square.
What progress has L.A. made to help combat Byrne’s widely-held negative perception? Well, there are no shortage of 6-lane mega-surface streets in L.A., but I don’t know of a single one with a bike path. You’d think it would be pretty easy to steal a couple of feet from either side of the and slap down some white paint, but not in this city. Parks? Not so much. Unless you count this disaster. The city is in the midst of building a massive public transportation network, but that isn’t scheduled to be finished until 2036. In the meanwhile…?
There are plenty of fun gripes to be had with Los Angeles. Byrne just went after the wrong stuff.
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