Four Ecologies (Revisited)

In the late 1960s an English academic named Reyner Banham began studying Los Angeles and was impressed enough and fed up with with the dismissal of LA, that he wrote a book. Released in 1971, Los Angeles: the Architecture of  Four Ecologies, was more than just a book about architecture. It was a new way to contextualize urbanism, in this case, the context of Los Angeles.

Banham divided up the Los Angeles metropolis into a series of geographic, historical, cultural, and spatial  regions (his four "ecologies"). He placed Los Angeles architecture, art, movement, lifestyles, and patterns into the context of these regions: Surfurbia, Foothills, Plains of Id, and Autopia. To these he supplemented chapters on exotic pioneers, history of transportation, the fantastic (in architecture and everyday life), the exiles (European modernist architects), a note on Downtown LA, and enclaves.
<-- a map I doodled. Green is foothills, blue is surfurbia, brown lines are Plains of Id and the pink diamond is Downtown LA. Autopia is excluded.

Banham also starred in a BBC documentary called Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles in which he drove around LA enjoying the Watts Towers, loathing gated communities, and generally discussing the concepts in his book.
In the 1980s, Reyner Banham's book and documentary arguably launched the LA School of Urbanism, which included the avant garde designs of LA architects (Gehry, Mayne, Moss, etc) as well as many theories coming from post-modernist thinkers in LA (Soja, Davis, etc). This LA School would deconstruct the Los Angeles metropolis in a darker more desperate manner than Banham, dwelling on its crime, ethnic and economic polarization, and spatial presence but would still view LA as an extraordinary place.

More than 40 years later, I have recently finished reading Banham's book for the third time, cover to to cover, and I was inspired to reflect on his work as well as build upon it.

I will go in order of ecologies as they appear in the book and then discuss some of  the supplemental chapters, viewing things in the context of the late 1960s/early 1970s as well as today, 2012.

Surfurbia-
Banham wrote that the coastline of the Los Angeles area was one of the finest available to a major metropolitan area in the world. Miles of sand and sea running for many continuous miles and accessible to the populace (with the exception of beaches in Malibu that had been rendered inaccessible due to development of beachfront housing). In the early 1970s, areas such as Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Redondo Beach were still relatively affordable to middle income households, and even home to young students and people of more modest means. These twenty-somethings spawned the surfing and skateboarding cultures and later the hardcore punk scene. Today, these areas are extremely expensive. If in the past they were associated with easy going leisure and sunny lifestyles of Southern California, they are today both the former and yet many visitors must travel from many miles inland where housing is more affordable. The "Surfurbia" of Los Angeles is one of the world's strongest collective images of LA. To this day many people are surprised that the beaches of the LA coast are not lined with high-rise hotels and condos, in fact the only tall buildings are a small cluster of office buildings in central Santa Monica. Development laws in California make it exceptionally hard to develop along the coastline and these tall buildings only get away with it because they are on a mesa on the inland side of the Pacific Coast Highway. The community of Venice is an anamoly. It is an old (over 100 years) development meant to mimic Venice, Italy. Over the years it fell into decay and the drilling for oil in the 1920s signaled the decline. In the 1950s Venice was home to the Beat Generation of LA, equivalent to San Francisco's North Beach or New York's Greenwhich Village. When Reyner Banham visited in the late 60s and early 70s, Venice was a "funky" hippie haven with its carnival of humanity along the old boardwalk, as well as a few stinking canals in a sorry state lined with vacant lots and crumbling small bungalows. It was the spawning ground of The Doors, and home to many artists working in the Light & Space Movement, Pop Art, and Finish Fetish.  Today Venice continues to have its  Oceanfront Walk with tattoo studios, head shops, fortune tellers, art vendors, etc but the beachfront homes now cost millions of dollars. The canals have been revitalized and the homes around them are all modern and millions of dollars.


Foothills-
Mountains are a major feature of the Los Angeles landscape on a macro scale. In fact, LA is one of the only major cities in the world to have a large mountain range running through the city limits. As in Banham's day, the foothills are full of the homes of the wealthy. The wealth seems to rise with the altitude. These are the Hollywood Hills, Bel-Air, Brentwood, Holmby Hills, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, etc. world-renowned as being home to the rich and famous. But they are also the location of some of LA's most beloved landmarks and venues, all of which are accessible to the general public. These sites include the Griffith Observatory, the Getty Center museum, and the Hollywood Bowl. These mountains also include miles of public recreation area, hiking trails, and camping sites. The foothills are the location for spectacularly destructive wildfires each year. Here also are some of LA's most curious homes, the locally famous "homes on stilts"- housing that juts out horizontally over the hillsides and is held up by vertical braces. South of the main foothill communities, is a curious anamoly- the Baldwin Hills/Ladera Heights area. This is a predominately African-American residential area- though predominately wealthy African-American. From the numerous public overlook observation points in the foothills, an observer can look down and across at the sprawlscape of the following ecology:

Plains of Id-
Freud wrote of the "id" as being the part of the human psyche that is personality structure with basic drive-the pleasure principle. Here in the flatlands between the mountains and the coastline are two large flat valleys (The San Fernando and the San Gabriel) as well as the broad plain of the Los Angeles Basin. these areas can be rendered in the geometric spatial forms of Euclidean Plane. Here is where the world recoils in horror at the cityscape of LA. Banham wrote (sarcastically ) of the "endless plain endlessly gridded with endless streets peppered endlessly with ticky tacky houses, clustered in indistinguishable neighborhoods slashed endlessly across by endless freeways that have destroyed any community spirit that may have existed, and so on...endlessly". It is true that the flatlands of LA seem to be a daunting horizontal mess punctured here and there by small clusters of high-rises-seemingly at random. The average fearful philistine will also see this area as a vast teeming dystopic nightmare land of black and hispanic street gangs, smog, and traffic in addition to the monotany of the seemingly uniform cityscape. These opinions are not unfounded but they are not all inclusive nor allowing for celebrating the subtle and delving into depths that require open minds. In Banham's day, the LA flatlands were a binary city- the White/Anglo middle and upper income Westside and Valley, and the poor black and Latino South Central and Eastside. Today this is not nearly as true. The San Fernando Valley is 60% non-white. South Central is majority Latino, and Asians (a group that was not really found in large numbers in the LA of 1971) make up almost 15% of the total LA population, including the "ethnoburbs" (suburban ethnic communities) of the San Gabriel Valley (Chinese) and the South Bay (Japanese), and enclaves in nearly every part of the metropolis. In fact, LA is much more integrated than ever before. Along one block on the street I grew up on in the San Fernando Valley was home to people of Japanese, Peruvian, Puerto Rican, Afghan, Bolivian, Asian Indian, and Mexican descent, including several mixed-race households. Koreatown, seemingly non-existant in 1971, has grown from being a few blocks along Olympic Boulevard to being a self-contained mini-city in the Wilshire Center area-heart of the 300,000 people of Korean ancestry in Los Angeles (the most outside of Asia). Today the Plains of Id are in the midst of a new appreciation (gentrification, art scene, nightlife, trends toward urban lifestyles, etc), and concepts such as "Everyday Urbanism" prevelant in the immigrant communities: Latino street food vendors, Asian unlicensed taxis, bicycle subculture, etc. In addition, Banham, postmodernism, philosophy, and the LA School taught us to appreciate the sublime qualities of the Plains of Id- the most "normal" part of LA and also the most extraordinary.


Autopia-
Reyner Banham learned to drive so he could better explore Los Angeles and was both fond of cars and celebratory of their infrastructure in LA. The freeway system to him was a work of art as well as civil engineering. They allowed Angelenos to be fully mobile and have access to all the bounty of the LA region. He celebrated the horizontal landscape of LA, being particularly fond of Wilshire Boulevard as a linear downtown lined with high-rises and cultural amentities (such as LACMA) that could be easily accessed by homes and apartments that were mere blocks away on either side of the boulevard for miles. And to him, the smog simply made for beautiful pink and orange sunsets aided by particulate matter. In 1971 the traffic was probably not nearly as bad as today and densities were lower, parking easier, and cheap gasoline available. Autopia ecology also included car-centric spaces and developments like drive-thru restaurants, drive-in movies (and churches), etc. I wonder how Reyner Banham would feel about the LA Autopia today expecially in relation to the:


Transportation Palimpsest-
A palimpsest is a manuscript or guideline that is re-written. He used this to refer to the changing method of transport in LA. Until the 1950s, Los Angeles had the world's largest rail mass transit system- both the Red Car trolley lines, and the Yellow Car lines. Many theories (including conspiracies) account for why Los Angeles made the switch to the most auto-centric metropolis the world had ever known. Banham was fascinated by this but believed automobiles were re-writing the methods of movement and lifestyle in urban environments such as LA. But the car centric LA manuscript has been re-written again. Los Angeles began building a modern rail mass transit system in the 1980s and now has a subway, light rail (modern day trolley), commuter rail, and bus rapid transit. Bicycle subculture has also been on the rise with events such as CicLAvia where the streets of central Los Angeles are closed to cars and opened exclusively to bikes and pedestrians. Circulator shuttles like DASH, express service from "park n' ride" lots, etc along with carpool/HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) lanes are all transportation solutions conceived and carried out right here in Los Angeles. And the Red Cars still run- along a small stretch of San Pedro's waterfront (photo above).


The Fantastic-
Reyner Banham urged people to marvel in the mundane and celebrate the subtle. He found beauty in a hamburger, which he viewed as a work of art. He also was enamored with the fantastical structures that dotted the Los Angeles landscape. Today I would aproach a taco as a work of art and seek out buildings such as the fairy tale structure on Roscoe and Tampa.


Enclaves-
An enclave is more than just a community united by ethnic or racial characterisitcs. Banham wrote that Beverly Hills was a "wealthy ghetto". He also had the foresight to write about the enclaves of Los Angeles that people sought out for lifestyle choices. West Hollywood is an enclave for gays, lesbians, and transgendered people. Silver Lake is an enclave for "bohemians" and "hipsters".
And Downtown LA is ...


A Note on Downtown Los Angeles-
Reyner Banham did not to seem to hold Downtown Los Angeles in very high regard, believing Olvera Street to be pleasant but a tourist trap, the DWP building to be a work of art viewed from a moving vehicle on the freeway, and seeing the new crop of skyscrapers as simply giving the observer the impression that LA had a downtown like any other big city. He didn't have much else to say except  that other regions of LA were more important and interesting. It is easy to see why he would have more fun at the beach or looking at modernist houses in the mountains than Downtown LA in 1971. In Banham's time Downtown LA was little more than a collection of crumbling vacant old buildings, a large and visible skid row, and the empty patches of sad land where the Bunker Hill Victorian neighborhood had been demolished. Downtown in his day was of winos, drug peddlers, and shady characters, with the fortified Music Center opera house accessible only through its parking garage and adjacent to the DWP building and City Hall like an acropolis above the masses. To Banham (and to many people) Downtown LA just seems to be a vague collection of large shapes on the horizon, and within these shapes just seems to be a generic modern shiny plaza. It is much to the same effect as La Defense in Paris or Canary Wharf in London. Seen Below is California Plaza on Grand Avenue in Downtown LA.

Three decades of redevelopment in Downtown Los Angeles have produced shiny new skyscrapers, museums, and sports venues but two factors have contributed to its reemergence as a thriving urban neighborhood. In 1999, the LA City Council passed the Adaptive Re-use Ordinance, allowing developers to spruce up the old buildings and turn them into high-end lofts. Cafes, art galleries, and other "chic" urbanite businesses followed. In addition, new attitudes toward urban communities have emerged. Mine is the first generation, the 20 and 30-somethings who en masse like gritty urban areas, art galleries, walking, taking the subway, theatre, street art, etc. Downtown has been saved by becoming a new lifestyle enclave- an enclave for "urban-philes".

Banham might today hold the same over all opinion of Downtown, as just another fascinating part of a very large fascinating area, and would realize its value as an enclave and cultural powerhouse. I'm sure he would see the Walt Disney Concert Hall as emblemetic of Downtown the way he was enamored by the DWP Building in the past.

Much of what Reyner Banham wrote holds true-at least the basic structures of organization. But Los Angeles 40 years later is more diverse, more urban, and more complicated.