Design Observer has published another special essay on Los Angeles, this one characterizing it as attractive and “real” because of its turbulency and because of its ability to unmask potent binaries, holding them, as it does, side-by-side. One of the best parts of this article is its comments section, where disillusioned and ardent Angelinos are having it out about the city’s virtues and vices. Here’s an excerpt:
I returned to Los Angeles two years later as a permanent resident and fell back into the sprawling environment, wondering if my newly minted education in architecture would help or blunt my capacity to understand subtleties in the urban setting. Perhaps I had previously romanticized the relentless terrain of Los Angeles. But by the time of my return, my perception of the scale of the city had changed. It was now an unending conveyor belt of diversity and iteration. As I look back, I recall memories from that time of successive, lovely, serpentine journeys through and across the city. As a montage of images and impressions, the memories have no beginning or end — just the pleasure I found while riding within an unspooling stream of experiences.
