Requiem for the Suburbs?

Los Angeles is a young city, as we all know, but one enveloped in ancient truths. I’m talking about old saws such as Los Angeles loving the automobile so much that its people will drive half a block to see a friend--as Steve Martin did in “L.A. Story”--rather than walk. Or Los Angeles being a collection of suburbs in search of a city. Or being a city that grinds history underfoot.

Most of these truths were born half a century ago, when modern Los Angeles was created by the freeways and suburbs, and there are still occasions when they retain some traction. Earlier this fall came the news that the suburban building boom was going like gangbusters again in the high desert, with the red-tile roofs now extending about 60 miles from the city’s center. I particularly loved the remark from one builder who summed up his company’s activities by saying, “There’s an infinite amount of land that can be developed.”

By happy coincidence, that news came hot on the heels of a report that Los Angeles had retained its position, for the 16th straight year, as the most traffic-congested city in the nation. A map of the freeway commute times recently showed a series of concentric circles indicating how far an average commuter would travel in 30 minutes. The circle for the year 2020 is about half as large as the circle for this year.

So it’s easy to envision a future Los Angeles where ever-widening swaths of new development surround an ever-decaying core, leaving chunks of the population ossifying on the freeways. And leading, ultimately, to the collapse of anything that resembles an infrastructure. After all, we’ve been headed in that direction for half a century.

But maybe, just maybe, an alternative future awaits some of us. This other future is suggested by a largely unheralded movement that began in the past five years and now can be witnessed in a broad sweep of Los Angeles running from West Hollywood eastward through Hollywood itself, then to Los Feliz, Silver Lake and finally downtown. I’m talking about a surprising, even startling, enthusiasm for life in the messy core of the city itself, a love for the Raymond Chandler neighborhoods and neon-lighted boulevards of Los Angeles that few would have predicted. This enthusiasm could change how many of us live and--finally--erode many of the old truths about our city.

Compared to such reborn cities as Chicago or Denver, the urban movement in Los Angeles is spotty and embryonic. While West Hollywood has hit full stride, other neighborhoods, such as Beachwood and Los Feliz, have only begun to jell. But it’s happening. Something that resembles a city is rising from the ruins. Streets where you can stroll or hang out have appeared all over the core and now, occasionally, are linked to one another. A decade ago, only Melrose Avenue, and perhaps parts of Santa Monica Boulevard, could be described as walking streets. Now you also have Beverly Boulevard, 3rd Street, La Brea Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, in addition to small stretches of Franklin, Hillhurst and Vermont avenues.

And, as in other large cities of the ‘90s, the demographics of this core appear to be changing dramatically. I say “appear” because this movement has not yet been picked up by a federal census. But the traditional denizen of the Hollywood flats--the retired hardware-store owner who peeped out of his bungalow through a torn window shade--seems to have been displaced by herds of 28-year-olds hanging out in sidewalk cafes.

My own epiphany about this development came last summer, when I stood at Hollywood Boulevard and Cherokee Avenue on a Friday night, watching hordes of people milling around. Physically, this was the Hollywood Boulevard of old, its sidewalks lined with the same sordid dives and T-shirt shops. But the crowd was different from the collection of human wastrels I had expected. Here were young people and middle-aged people, strolling the streets, peering into the windows at Frederick’s. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of them. The scene left me startled.

“See?” said my 25-year-old niece. She had dragged me to Hollywood to prove her theory that an urban night scene was evolving there. Something interesting was happening, she claimed, without the benefit of a Banana Republic or a Starbucks.

And so it was. I kept studying the crowd, trying to figure out what had attracted them. Clearly, they were mostly locals, not tourists, so the T-shirt shops had little appeal. Nor did the wax museum. I knew that, tucked away on side streets, a number of new nightclubs were pulling in the younger crowd. For the older folks, though, little on Hollywood Boulevard seemed attractive--except the fine old buildings, a palpable sense of the past, and the crowd itself.

That coincided with my niece’s theory: “They’re here because everyone else is here. They’re here to see each other, to watch each other. That’s what makes a scene.”

Or put it this way: The people had come to Hollywood Boulevard because it satisfied a barely articulated hunger for mixing with their fellow kind, which is the essence of the urban experience. The boulevard didn’t give them much, but it was better than a mall, better than cruising the freeway, better than staying home with the TV. And so they came.

The people creating this movement in Los Angeles’ core don’t constitute a majority of the population by any means. Their numbers, I suspect, are dwarfed by those who continue to flee to the high desert. And, as in other cities, the core will always prove a problematic and expensive place for families with children. By and large, those coming to the inner neighborhoods are young singles and marrieds, older couples without family responsibilities and the wealthy.

This legion is growing. A recent University of Chicago study found that the percentage of households composed of married couples with children has declined to 26%, whereas households made up of unmarried people constitute 32%. And these nontraditional households appear to have concluded that the suburban dream has little to offer them. They want to feel a community around them; they want to feel the hustle of the city sidewalk. Realtors confirm a trend in which young couples with dual incomes are moving into areas such as Beachwood Canyon and Hancock Park.

“The close-in, 1920s neighborhoods are where the big price appreciation has taken place over the last few years in big cities,” says Christopher B. Leinberger, managing director of Robert Charles Lesser & Co., a real estate consulting firm. “It’s being driven by people’s desire to get out of the traffic and their desire to live in neighborhoods that were built for walking. That’s what the old neighborhoods give them. They can leave their house, stroll a couple of blocks and meet their friends in a restaurant.”

In an upcoming article for the Urban Land Institute’s magazine, Leinberger argues that this change may signal a turning point for American cities. “Something entirely unexpected may be occurring--the beginning of the end of sprawl,” he writes. “Some signs portend a structural shift in how metropolitan areas are built and how Americans want to live . . . there is agreement that many suburbs can be described as ugly, inhuman and soulless.”

In Los Angeles, more so than with other cities, the change seems to be driven by fear and loathing of the freeways. Susan Fine Moore, founder of the Hollywood Hills Coffee Shop, which thrives on its neighborhood clientele in Beachwood Canyon, believes that the traffic paralysis is altering the way people think about the city and their lives.

“I grew up in L.A., and I remember regarding everything as being 20 minutes away. If you wanted to go to Pasadena or Santa Monica, it was always 20 minutes away,” she says. “We never thought of travel time as a barrier because, basically, the freeways were open and working.

“Then that whole idea disappeared. You couldn’t go places in 20 minutes anymore. Travel became this large barrier, and people began staying in their neighborhoods. If they had a restaurant in their neighborhood, they went there. If they had a bookstore, they went there. And the neighborhoods that had all those things, well, they were the neighborhoods that became really attractive.”

Moore, who lives in Beachwood, says she knows a number of refugees from the suburbs who have returned to live in the city. “They’re vehement now about where they live. All that stuff about the suburbs, the safety and the backyards--they regard as false promises. They want to live in a community, and there are no communities in the tracts.”

Kerry Morrison, executive director of Hollywood’s business improvement district, regards herself as one of those refugees even though her family moved from the more elegant confines of Rancho Palos Verdes. She now lives with her husband and children in Hancock Park, a neighborhood that was chosen precisely because it sits in the middle of old Los Angeles.

“When we lived in Palos Verdes, I would read the newspaper about this or that happening in Los Angeles and feel disconnected because, really, we didn’t live in Los Angeles,” she says. “When we were packing up, a number of our neighbors came to say good-bye, and I had the feeling they were envious. There’s just something enticing about the idea of life in the city.”

Soon the economic implications of this movement may also interest development companies that helped make huge successes of places such as Old Pasadena. “I think some of the so-called institutional money is beginning to recognize there’s real opportunity here,” says Wayne Ratkovich, a developer who has refurbished buildings such as the Wiltern Theatre at Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue. “People obviously are moving away from the malls. They want a more urban experience, and there’s profits to be made by giving it to them.”

As with the demographic changes, raw numbers to support Ratkovich’s instincts are hard to come by. The economic activity of small shops and cafes usually falls off the radar of commercial surveys because such surveys largely target the malls and big-time chains. But one survey sponsored by the Hollywood Entertainment District recently showed that commercial rents along Hollywood Boulevard increased 19% from 1996 to 1998. Likewise, retail and restaurant sales along the street went up nearly 20%.

“The numbers suggest a district that has come back to life,” says Morrison.

Similar evidence greets anyone strolling down Beverly or Vermont. Stores thriving on pedestrian traffic are not hard to find. “When I say I’m about to open a new restaurant in Hollywood, people sometimes ask me if it will attract customers,” says Hollywood Hills Coffee Shop’s Moore. “I laugh because, in these neighborhoods, the real problem is finding enough tables and chairs for all the customers.”

Does all this mean that life in Los Angeles is about to change significantly? I believe it does. It means that the pattern of progressive abandonment of inner neighborhoods for newer, ever-distant suburbs has been reversed. The ruined core is being repopulated and reinvigorated by thousands of people returning to the city. What’s more, the forces that brought about this change--the loathing of the freeways and the hunger for a sense of community--will only grow stronger.

The urban movement will not kill the suburbs. Rather, Los Angeles will offer its citizens, at long last, the choice of life at the fringe with backyard barbecue and pool, or life at the center with all its messiness, complexity and fascination.

In so doing, the city will also force a rewriting of its ancient truths. One of the most prominent creators of those truths was urban historian Reyner Banham, who wrote in 1970 the affectionate critique of our city, “Los Angeles, the Architecture of Four Ecologies.” Banham loved the freeway/city that evolved in the 1950s and coined “autotopia” to describe the liberating mix of car, sunshine and sand that seemed to define the culture.

“The freeway system in its totality is now a single comprehensible place, a coherent state of mind, a complete way of life, the fourth ecology of the Angeleno . . . The freeway is where the Angelenos live,” Banham wrote.

No more, Reyner Banham, no more. And what’s to regret? I always preferred Raymond Chandler’s version in any case.