Pershing Square, downtown Los Angeles -- what a shame

Pershing Square, downtown Los Angeles -- what a shame
Originally uploaded by LA Wad

IT HAS BEEN YEARS SINCE I WAS LAST IN PERSHING SQUARE. THERE WERE TIMES IN THE LATE 60S when I had occasion to go downtown LA from Santa Monica. The entire scene was different back then. Pershing Square was one great big carnival, soap box speakers yelling out about the END OF THE WORLD, those passed out on cheap wine, a lot of humanity here and there, smoke thick and drifting, smiling people, smiling people, everywhere and hardly a problem. Shocked to see the flat-lined style it bespeaks now. Once it was a garden of Eden of shrubs and tropicals. Believe it or not, there were a few fruit trees that bloomed too. LA, downtown in the 60s was unique, for sure. And it was not unusual to see people more or less camped out beneath the bushes. Sorry to see they cut down all the bushes and trees. Editor

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TEXT BELOW BY LA Wad Photographer

Pershing Square, downtown Los Angeles -- what a shame
I recently typed up an essay on Streetsblog LA about the seeming stupidity that exists in Los Angeles and four behaviors that lead to a neologism known as "L.A.-ing up" things.

Pershing Square is a fine example of Problems 1 (rear-guard remediation) and 2 (Los Angeles-style compromise).

L.A. has a square-block park right in the heart of downtown. It also serves as a compass of sorts to what makes up downtown: civic and cultural institutions to the north, older and residential buildings to the east, smaller businesses to the south and the financial district with newer high-rises to the west.

Pershing Square itself, though, is one of the examples of how L.A. is like the dumb kid in kindergarten that just ends up eating the paste instead of creating a project.

When Pershing Square was redone, civic leaders wanted to create a space that is reflective of Los Angeles and wanted to show it off to people, but of course downtown was becoming abandoned and irrelevant and people didn't want to be there longer than they had to work. So they followed the best practices of defensible space to make Pershing Square crime- and homeless-free.

Well, in that sense Pershing Square is a success. On the other hand, nobody wants to come in here. Not even the homeless. Pershing is mostly homeless people when there's no concert or the winter ice rink, but even then, they are mostly here for short catnaps or sitting and resting. Pershing Square didn't become a shanty town.

So the defensible space comes at the expense of making a park for people.

Look at the above. Does this look like a place for a leisurely lunchtime stroll, a picnic, or any sort of spontaneous fun? No, because you couldn't love this place if you wanted to.

Most of Pershing Square has a perimeter wall, and the park is raised from street level. So there is no connection to the neighborhood around it. Structurally, there's also no metaphor. The key to any good design (graphic, architecture, etc.) is that there must be an overall theme that all of its constituent parts must serve. There's geometry, a tree section in its own corner of the park, colors mixing with concrete ... this has as much coherence as a storage locker.

This is architecture and public place by committee thinking.

This is how to L.A.-up a park.

Uploaded by LA Wad