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Wait there's a river in LA?
LA is the only city where they have a major river running through the city, and when the question comes up. "Should we restore the river?" For people in most cities it's a rhetorical question, the river is what gave the city it's life. However in LA, the answer is "LA has a river? I didn't know that. Oh yeah, I guess we do."
Yes LA has a river running through it. Just as New York is defined by the Hudson, Boston by the Charles, and New Orlenes by the mighty Missisippi. Originally people did probably find water in this desert. LA indeed has a river, or rather more adeptly put, a concrete lined flood control channel.
People in LA simply don't care. There's no center which they congregate around and look to. While Boston is known as the city that doubles in size every day, as the workforce treks into the city, by car, bus, train and subway. And the great urban centers of Asia teem with life (and pollution)
LA is a scattered, decentralized mecha. To say that LA has a center, is to decieve yourself into believing that there is an illusion of a Downtown. LA is a city where the sidewalks are empty and most of the life occurs behind walls, in fenced in backyards. It'is simply not so. A pointilistic suburban landscape. The only thing it seems to share with the other great cities of the world is it's pollution, it's traffic, and the cars.
December 3,2003