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The rhetoric of representation: planning Los Angeles' civic space, 1909-2009

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The rhetoric of representation: planning Los Angeles' civic space, 1909-2009

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Content RHETORIC OF REPRESENTATION: PLANNING LOS ANGELES’ CIVIC SPACE, 1909 - 2009 by Meredith Drake Reitan A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (POLICY, PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT) August 2010 Copyright 2010 Meredith Drake Reitan ii Dedication To my husband Greg Reitan, and my parents Michael and Linda Drake for all that they are and have been to me iii Acknowledgments During the writing of this dissertation I have been supported by an impressive circle of scholars, professionals, family and friends. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Tridib Banerjee who has been a mentor and friend for many years. He has been an important champion (and rigorous critic) of my somewhat idiosyncratic approach to the planning profession and the many hours spent with him en flânant through various European cities have been the highlight of my graduate experience. Other members of my committee added enormously to this project. David Sloane’s historical eye and critical perspective was absolutely essential and throughout the process, Marsha Kinder provided invaluable insights that pushed me to consider both the challenges and significance of interdisciplinary scholarship. A number of current and former faculty members of SPPD also provided indispensible advice along the way. I am especially grateful to Greg Hise, Dowell Myers, Clara Irazabal, and Niraj Verma. It was a pleasure working with all of them. Other colleagues at SPPD, including the doctoral students who participated in the Built Environment Working Group also played a key role in this project’s completion. I would specifically like to acknowledge the indefatigable Stephanie Frank. The dedicated staff of SPPD’s Student Affairs Department including Carol Rush, June Muranaka, Julieth Kim and the incomparable Christine Wilson worked diligently to make this process smoother than might be expected. iv Beyond SPPD, Vanessa Schwartz and students from the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate Program expanded my thinking in so many ways. The urban history course that I took with Phil Ethington was also an important contributor to this project and I very much appreciate his on-going support. Completion of the dissertation would not have been possible without funding from the USC Graduate School, Oakley Fellowship. The year spent in the archives was a wonderful opportunity for which I am incredibly grateful. I was also fortunate to have received research support from the Southern California Historical Society Haynes Award and the Visual Studies Graduate Program. I am indebted to the staff of a number of Los Angeles archives and repositories, including Dace Taube at USC’s Regional History Collection, Marianne Gato at El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, Robert Montoya at UCLA’s Library Department of Special Collections and all those at the Los Angeles City Records Center. I am acutely aware that this project could not have been completed without the support of my husband Greg Reitan who provided input on so many ideas, schemes and plans. Somehow he was always able to remain calm when the stress of turning in, what seemed to me, imperfect drafts overwhelmed me. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the incredible support of my parents. My mother’s encouragement along the way was absolutely crucial and since my father now claims that he cannot look at the development proposals he sees in the London newspapers in the same way, I know that, if I have done nothing else, I have apparently convinced them that images matter. v Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgments iii List of Tables vi List of Figures vii Abstract xii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: An Analysis of Planning’s Visual Tradition 36 Chapter 3: Visualizing Art and Science in Early Plans for a Los Angeles Civic Center 81 Chapter 4: A Civic Center of “Splendid Isolation” 123 Chapter 5. “A Cloud Burst Erupts”: Los Angeles’ Grand Intervention 166 Chapter 6. Conclusion 205 Bibliography 209 Appendices 220 Appendix I: Overview of Civic Center Plans Appendix II: Civic Center Boundaries vi List of Tables Table 2.1: Stratified random sample from APA’s 100 Essential Books of Planning 42 Table 2.2: Definition of variables and values for images in the random sample 44 Table 2.3: Definition of variables for images of the existing, proposed or ideal environment 48 Table 2.4: Distribution of images in the sample based on what the image depicts, its mode of presentation, intellectual tradition and function 54 Table 2.5: Distribution of images in sample based on the variables of proximity and angle 59 Table A1: Overview of plans and proposals 221 vii List of Figures Figure 1.1: Rendering of the Los Angeles Theater on Broadway Avenue 2 Figure 1.2: Overview of contextual, theoretical and methodological areas of analysis 6 Figure 1.3a, b and c: Visual conventions in planning practice 20 Figure 1.4: The earth as a fried egg on a Time Magazine cover from 2001 30 Figure 2.1: The “Image Family Tree” 38 Figure 2.2: Photograph from McHarg’s Design with Nature 49 Figure 2.3: Photograph from Clarence Stein’s Toward New Towns for America 50 Figure 2.4: Drawing from Rural By Design: Maintaining Small Town Character, 1994 51 Figure 2.5: Diagram from Kevin Lynch’s 1961 Image of the City 52 Figure 2.6: Changes in percentage of what is depicted and mode of presentation over time 56 Figure 2.7: Changes in percentage of proximity and angle of view over time 60 Figure 2.8 Burgess Concentric Theory of Urban Development 61 Figure 2.9: Stein’s plan for Radburn based on Perry’s neighborhood unit diagram 62 Figure 2.10: Overview of Sampled Graphics from APA’s 100 Essential Books of Planning 65 Figure 2.11: New York Street View from Whyte 66 Figure 2.12: Allan Jacobs street view of London’s Regent Street 67 Figure 2.13: Street view from Vuchic Transportation for Livable Cities 68 Figure 2.14: An example of the plan view genre from Bacon’s 1967 Design of Cities 69 viii Figure 2.15: Unwin’s map of Oxford High Street 70 Figure 2.16: Photograph from position “E” on the map above 71 Figure 2.17: Example of the aerial view genre from Nolen 72 Figure 2.18: Uncle Sam delivering public housing 73 Figure 2.19: The Planning Process 75 Figure 2.20: Representation of traffic from Segoe’s Local Planning Administration 76 Figure 2.21: Page layout from Design with Nature 78 Figure 3.1: Civic Center plan adopted by the City and County of Los Angeles, 1929 84 Figure 3.2: LA’s Old City Hall on Broadway, occupied from 1888 until 1928 85 Figure 3.3: Los Angeles County Court House on Temple circa 1900 86 Figure 3.4: The Courthouse looking east from Temple and Broadway circa 1930 87 Figure 3.5: Robinson’s areas of intervention overlaid on LA’s 2009 downtown street plan 90 Figure 3.6: Perspective of Robinson’s planned Fifth Street Boulevard, 1907 91 Figure 3.7: Plan of the Administrative Center prepared by Cook and Hall 93 Figure 3.8: Aerial photograph given to members of the AAA by Whitnall 97 Figure 3.9: Sketch prepared by the Allied Architects Association 98 Figure 3.10: The ideas in sketch number 69 were approved by members of the Association 99 Figure 3.11: Sketch 89 was approved at the Association’s second meeting. 100 Figure 3.12: Allied Architects Sketch Number 97 101 Figure 3.13 a, b, c and d: Preliminary sketches from the Association are drawn free hand 102 ix Figure 3.14: These three sketches use the same base map for the surrounding area. 106 Figure 3.15: Engraving of the AAA governing drawing for a Plan for an Administrative Center 109 Figure 3.16: A plan showing how AAA’s scheme relates to the Major Street Traffic Plan 112 Figure 3.17: Rendering by French painter, Jules Guerin from the Plan of Chicago 118 Figure 3.18: Perspective of Michigan Avenue by Jules Guerin for the Plan of Chicago 119 Figure 4.1: The Fort Moore Memorial Fountain under construction in 1954 124 Figure 4.2: A plan with the signatures of a number of Los Angeles planning institutions describing the location of Union Station in relation to the Civic Center, 1932 129 Figure 4.3: Image from the Examiner newspaper August 28, 1934 133 Figure 4.4: View towards Civic Center of the blocks left blank in the 1932 plan 134 Figure 4.5: Photograph titled, “Low income living quarters near Civic Center…” 135 Figure 4.6: Proposed expansion of the civic center area to include Union Station and properties between the two, 1938 139 Figure 4.7: Plan of proposed municipal auto park, 1935 142 Figure 4.8: Plan for a Concourse to New Union Station and Historic Plaza 143 Figure 4.9: Scheme submitted by John C. Austin for the Civic Center, 1938 144 Figure 4.10: Perspective of the 1941 Civic Center Master Plan 147 Figure 4.11: 1941 Master Plan with the buildings and features identified 148 Figure 4.12: Civic Center Plan officially adopted by the City and County, 1941 149 Figure 4.13: Proposal submitted to the Los Angeles Civic Center Authority in April 1947 154 x Figure 4.14: Looking north across the Civic Center to the four-level interchange under construction circa 1947 155 Figure 4.15: Model of the Civic Center Plan 1952 156 Figure 4.16: The Master Plan of the Los Angeles Civic Center 157 Figure 4.17: View of the Civic Center by Robert Lee of the County Engineers Office 159 Figure 4.18: Location of the Civic Center as part of the larger central city area, 1972 164 Figure 4.19: Boundaries in need of “stabilization” 1972 165 Figure 5.1: Aerial view of Civic Center looking west during the late 1950s. 169 Figure 5.2: Proposed parking and bomb shelter for up to 90,000 at the Civic Center 170 Figure 5.3: Initial proposal for the Los Angeles County Mall 173 Figure 5.4: Rendering of the Los Angeles County Civic Center Mall, 1954 174 Figure 5.5: Aerial perspective of Los Angeles Civic Center Mall, 1956 177 Figure 5.6: The block between Broadway and Spring on the Civic Center Mall, 1956 180 Figure 5.7: Block between Grand Avenue and Hill Street, going up the slope from City Hall 181 Figure 5.8: Block between Grand and Hope at the western end of the Civic Center Mall, 1956 182 Figure 5.9: View of the Los Angeles County Mall across the “Court of Flags” 183 Figure 5.10: The “Public Facility Network” envisioned as a complement to the downtown Civic Center 185 Figure 5.11: The original plan for the park by the Related Development Company, 2005 188 Figure 5.12: A model of the second iteration of the park plan. 189 xi Figure 5.13: “Sonic Shadows” where visitors can “remove themselves from the daily life of the city” 193 Figure 5.14: “Urban Orchard” submitted by students of Cal Poly Pomona 196 Figure 5.15: “The Meadow” 197 Figure 5.16: The “Avenue of the Sycamores” 198 Figure 5.17: Detail of plan submitted by Mia Lehrer for the Civic Park 199 Figure 5.18: In the classical amphitheater of the new millennium the audience looks at a tree 201 Figure A2a: Cook and Hall 224 Figure A2b: Allied Architects Association 225 Figure A2c: Werner Ruchti plan 226 Figure A2d: Revised Civic Center plan 227 Figure A2e: Turner plan 228 Figure A2f: Mid-century Master Plan 229 Figure A2g: Element of the General Plan 230 xii Abstract This project is about the visual practices of urban planners. It applies methods associated with visual rhetoric and social semiotics to the theories of Henri Lefebvre, Lisa Peattie and Donald Schön and focuses on the production, the nature and the reception of images in planning. The approach is grounded in an historical study of images created by planners for an administrative and cultural center in Los Angeles and explores what these images can tell us about the profession and the production of civic space in the United States during the twentieth century. While the dissertation’s theoretical framework is eclectic, at the core of the study is a pragmatic focus on planning practice as an example of an embedded social activity and an understanding of the rhetorical power of the profession’s visual representations. Specifically, the “Rhetoric of Representation” seeks to understand how the images created by planners communicate a kind of tacit knowledge about the Los Angeles Civic Center as a political landscape. The resulting narrative is not a history of the built environment per se, nor is it a history of the built environment in pictures. Rather the dissertation is an analysis of the visual tools and techniques used by planners to persuade public officials and the public at large to act. Three themes emerge in the following chapters. First, a detailed study of the images from Los Angeles challenges the conventionally-understood historical periodization of the planning profession. Second, an analysis of planning images suggests that the relationship between viewer and represented object is more complex than has xiii previously been argued. Rather than the more critically discussed aerial view, the subjects of planning images are often represented head on and at eye-level, suggesting more engagement than the profession is usually given credit for. Furthermore, the power relations embedded in these images are not always clear. The images in planning must be understood as contributors to a negotiated practice where power is shared among many individuals and institutions. Third, while not specifically an ideological critique, the analysis of images in these chapters brings the values and purposes embedded in the design of the Los Angeles Civic Center to the fore. Whether arguing for the development of a pleasing entrance for visitors to the city, establishing boundaries between the civic center and the communities that surrounded it or creating places of relaxation in the heart of the city, planners across time have unfortunately relied on a particularly narrow view of the civic ideal. These findings expand our understanding of the planning profession. The rhetoric of representation plays a significant role in practice through the use of culturally established conventions that influence the selection and arrangement of elements in an image. The viewpoint, focus and layout of planning images all combine to produce a particular message and because these messages emphasize certain perspectives over others, they have political consequences. As these chapters will show, using conventionally derived rhetorical devices, planners attempted to literally produce the social environment in their image. 1 Chapter 1: Introduction We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are. Anais Nin 1 In the fall of 1993, the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency approved a plan for the revitalization of the city’s central business district. Interspersed among the plan’s data, maps and bullet pointed recommendations were a number of renderings representing the future of this part of the Los Angeles. One of these drawings depicts a renovated movie theater on Broadway. The theater’s early twentieth century façade is bathed in light, searchlights scan the night sky and a crowd is gathered before the building (Figure 1). The text accompanying this picture argues for the establishment of a Broadway Theater Entertainment District, suggesting that the area pictured is “part of the historic Downtown in steepest decline.” The authors stress that the creation of an entertainment district has the potential both to preserve the area’s historic theaters and to “generate a source of new jobs in an industry that is recession resistant” (Downtown Strategic Plan Advisory Committee 1993 70). At first glance, this picture seems fairly unremarkable. In terms of its general subject matter and its overall style, it is similar to many other renderings found in many other planning documents. However with a second look, a viewer would see that the film depicted on the theater’s marquee, the film which this jaunty crowd has come to see, is Ridley Scotts’ Blade Runner. Released more than 10 years previously in 1982, Blade Runner is a film set in Los Angeles in the year 2019. It is both a futuristic and historic 1 Quote without cited source attributed to Anais Nin, author & diarist (1903 - 1977) 2 evocation of the city at its most dystopic, where questions of real memory and simulated humanity are jumbled together in a bleak representation of the end of human civilization. Figure 1.1: Rendering of the Los Angeles Theater on Broadway Avenue Source: (Downtown Strategic Plan Advisory Committee 1993) 3 Why would the picture’s creator have included a reference to this particular film in a document putatively about the revitalization of Los Angeles’ downtown? Was it an oversight or a deliberate reference? Was it intended as a joke, perhaps an ironic jab at the pretensions of a city trying, despite significant social, cultural and economic changes, to bring a faded city center back to life? None of these questions were addressed in either the plan’s text or its accompanying documents. Yet this picture raises significant questions and points to the need for a more critical analysis of the role of visual materials in planning and urban design. How should we think about the illustrations, maps and charts in plans? What kinds of arguments do these images make? And what can such images tell us about planners, the planning process and its effect on cities? Despite its strong tradition in practice, the study of planning’s visual elements is largely absent from contemporary theoretical perspectives. For example, John Friedmann’s (1996) genealogy of the field traces the influence of neo-classical economics, public administration, sociology and many other disciplines, but excludes all reference to planning’s visual traditions. While comprehensive and far-reaching, Friedmann’s definition reveals a blind spot with respect to the profession’s visual elements. Remarkably, this blind spot is also evident in recent reviews of the urban design literature. For example, in even the most “catholic” of summaries of what urban designers should know, Vernez Moudon (1992) describes the focus of urban design research as drawing from either “etic”, meaning written, or “emic,” meaning spoken 4 language sources (1992, 336). The images that inform so much of urban design’s daily practice are apparently not theoretically significant. Rather than focusing on the profession’s visual foundations, recent planning and urban design theory is seemingly beholden to a number of linguistic models. In their analysis of professional practice, theorists have engaged in lengthy examinations of planning transcripts, narratives, stories and debates (Mandelbaum 1990; Cuff 1991; Tett and Wolfe 1991; Fischer and Forester 1993; Hillier 1996; Throgmorton 1996; Kumar and Pallathucheril 2004) and while this research has generated significant insights about the field, the many images embedded in planning and urban design documents have received substantively less attention (although see Soderstrom 1996; Neuman 2000; Duhr 2006). Yet the choice of image, what it portrays and how it is presented, has very real consequences for the future form of cities. During the documentation and analysis phase, images contribute to the construction of particular ways of looking at the urban environment. As the distillation and practical representations of policy, graphics strongly influence the decision-making process. Additionally, through their use at public meetings, in newspapers and on-line, the images in plans often have a wider circulation than a plan’s text and they frequently become the criteria upon which a particular planning effort is evaluated by current and future generations. The growing reliance on broadly available computer and web based representations makes an understanding of planning’s visual elements even more critical. Beyond these practical applications, research into the visual practices of planning may yield significant theoretical insights. 5 The critical analysis of images has the potential to push recent planning and urban design theory beyond its preoccupation with language and may even challenge long held assumptions about the transparency of the profession’s visual outputs. To address these gaps, this dissertation focuses specifically on the visual practices of urban planners. The approach is grounded in an historical study of images created by planners for an administrative and cultural center in Los Angeles and explores what these images can tell us about the profession and the production of civic space in the United States during the twentieth century. The selection of this case study is significant. Since 1909, there have been more than 30 different plans and proposals for the Los Angeles Civic Center. Thus, while the place remains constant, the volume and relative frequency of plans allows for the identification of historic patterns and shifts. The project draws upon work in cultural landscape studies, urban and planning theory, visual rhetoric and social semiotics. An overview of how these theories intersect is presented in Figure 1.2 below and is discussed in more detail in the sections that follow. While the theoretical framework is eclectic, at the core of the study is a pragmatic focus on planning practice as an example of an embedded social activity and an understanding of the rhetorical power of the profession’s visual representations. Specifically, the project contributes to the development of the “epistemology of practice” advocated by social theorist Donald Schön (1983) and to broader conversations about the social construction of reality (Berger and Luckman 1966). 6 Figure 1.2: Overview of contextual, theoretical and methodological areas of analysis Context: Civic Center as an example of a political landscape (Jackson), with a focus on the City of Los Angeles from 1909 – 2009 Theory: Production of Space (Lefebvre) Reflection in Action (Schön) Visual Rhetoric 1. Production of the Image 2. Nature of the Image Narrative Structure Representational Conventions Conceptual Structure Contact Point of View Interactive Conventions Proxemics* Arrangement Framing Compositional Conventions Salience 2a. Social Semiotics (Kress & van Leeuwen) Modality 2b. Tropes (Burke) Metaphor (Schön) Focus of Analysis: Representation of Space (Lefebvre & Peattie) Visual Practice 3. Reception of the Image *Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (1996) description of interactive conventions related to distance and cultural space is drawn from Edward Hall’s (1966) theory of proxemics The Production of Civic Space in the United States I use the term civic center and the related idea of civic space to denote the physical collection of public buildings and places envisioned by planners for the centers of American cities. This project suggests that civic space be considered a discrete type of public space. It is a category that exists alongside, and occasionally overlaps with other examples of public space that are discussed in a larger literature, including works that 7 have addressed the significance of plazas (Low 2000; Ryan 2006); parks (Bogart 1999; Low, Taplin et al. 2005); streets and avenues (Anderson 1986; Cigliano, Landau et al. 1994; Jacobs 1995); commercial landscapes (Urry 1995; Zukin 1998; Banerjee 2001) and entertainment spaces (Boyer 1992; Sorkin 1992; Smyth 1994; Hannigan 1998; Bennet 1999; Clark 2004). However, the civic center is more than a simple example of public space. Rather, as cultural geographer J.B. Jackson (1984, 12) has suggested it is a “political landscape”; one that has evolved “partly out of experience, partly from design, to meet some of the needs of men and women in their political guise”. Specifically, civic centers are didactic spaces that “make a community a community and not merely an aggregate of individuals” (14). They serve to “remind us of our rights and obligations and of our history” and exist to “ensure order and security” (12). In the chapters that follow, two key elements of the civic space are analyzed in the images created by planners: the focus on boundaries and the idea of visibility. Boundaries are fundamental to the notion of the civic center and civic space. As Jackson (1984) has argued, while we often see boundaries as little more than the line between two spaces, there is an another view that implies a different purpose. For Jackson, boundaries “stabilize social relationships” and are a “way of rebuking the disorder and shapelessness of the natural environment”(14). In the context of Los Angeles, historian Greg Hise (2004, 548) has suggested that analyzing the methods used “in defining, securing, and maintaining boundaries and zones within the city… reveals 8 how some Angelenos thought about space, territory, and place”. The focus on boundaries informs “their understanding and their very conception of the city” (548). Tied to the marking of boundaries, is the need for conspicuous visibility in the civic center as political landscape. The idea of visibility is elaborated in a variety of ways. From the perspective of the individual, a civic center illuminates their role in the community, it is “where we reveal our identity as part of an ethnic, or religious or political or consumer-oriented society, and it exists and functions to reinforce that identity” (Jackson 1984, 12). As a visible manifestation of the values of the greater community, civic centers must be symbolically set apart from their surroundings and from other places. Their form should be easily comprehended at a glance (Jackson 1984, 22). As such, civic centers are uniquely concerned with who is, or is not, to be seen. In Los Angeles, where the civic center is ringed by a number of ethnic and multi-ethnic communities, this need for visibility led to a century-long obsession with order and clarity; to planning that would eliminate the “untidy hodgepodge,” “incipient slums” and “shocking spectacles” of disorder. 2 In a somewhat skewed application of the theories of Kevin Lynch, a recent history of Los Angeles calls this desire a search for legibility (Axelrod 2009). However, what is clear from the chapters that follow is that it is not legibility that is sought, but rather Lynch’s true target, “imageability’ or a perfect picture. Jackson’s view of the civic center as a political landscape is echoed in the work of Spiro Kostof (1992) and others who distinguish the civic center from other uses of public 2 For the Civic Center as an incipient slum see Chapter 3, for the Civic Center as a shocking spectacle and a hodgepodge see Chapter 4 and 5. 9 space, such as the place d‘armes or the site of games and competitions. Kostof traces the origins of the civic center from the Greek agora to the Roman forum, characterizing it as a place of public business and the “open-air locus of citizen’s meetings” designed to express the community’s “collective political power” (153). While commercial activities may have been present in these ancient models, commerce was considered secondary to social, political and religious uses (154). The administration of commerce was however an important element of the Roman forum. In many cities, the forum was the site of the “mensa ponderaria”, where the community’s standards of weights and measures were set. It was also the site of the courts of law and where the “magistri, grammatistae and rhetoris”, the administrators of justice, language and rhetoric were located (Kostof 1992, 154). While fundamental to the later myth of the civic center, the republican ideal of free speech and civil administration was rarely realized. The ancient civic center, as a site of collective activity often competed with the aggrandizing wishes of the emperor. Later, with the shift from republican to imperial Rome, the forum became less a site of free- flowing discussion and increasingly an “open-air museum of the city’s memories” (Kostof 1992, 155). This transition highlights the contemporary paradox of many civic centers that are admired in their ideal state, but vilified in reality. As Kostof suggests, while “the square is where we exercise our franchise” (124), this very freedom has often led ruling parties to more aggressively assert their dominance. In this way the hierarchies of power are 10 inevitably built into the physical landscape and civic spaces, more than other public spaces, serve as sites of legitimization. They are a “manifestation of the local social order, of the relationship between citizens and between citizens and the authority of the state” (Jackson 1984, 18). The focus of this project, on the representation of physical civic space, can be contrasted with other definitions that suggest that civic space is the area where civil society “thrives” with “autonomy from state and commercial interests” (Daniere and Douglass 2009). For example, the spaces that have recently been discussed by the various authors in Daniere and Douglass’ edited volume, The Politics of Civic Space in Asia, could more appropriately be described as the spaces of civil society, or perhaps as spaces of the public realm, something very different from the material urban places that are, in common parlance, known as civic centers. For as the following chapters suggest, the physical civic center envisioned for a particular city is not autonomous from state interests, rather it is an example par excellence of such interest. The civic space of Los Angeles is precisely defined by its connection to the needs of the state. The wishes of politicians and bureaucrats are written into each master plan and the study of the Los Angeles Civic Center provides a unique opportunity to explore how officials from all levels of government attempted to shape the city in their image. Civic spaces, as built spaces, serve as the material manifestations of state and elite aspirations. They are planned by elites according to the wishes of elites and while they may also be the site of 11 popular gatherings, such gatherings are often spontaneous and fleeting. Popularly organized demonstrations rarely affect the long term meanings associated with the area. 3 For much of the twentieth century, the physical development of civic centers has been the focus of formal master plans. The historiography of this type of planning is dominated by writing on the City Beautiful movement. As some of the first civic center “theorists”(Wilson 1989), this connection is certainly understandable. For City Beautiful planners, the civic center was intended to be a “beautiful ensemble, an architectonic triumph more breathtaking” than was possible through the construction of a single building (Wilson 1989, 92). City Beautiful planners relied heavily on European examples, with the important exception that while in Europe the church or cathedral frequently occupied the most significant location in the civic center, in the US, this spot was usually reserved for a public building such as a city hall or state house. It was thought that such an arrangement would provide opportunities for the development of a uniquely American civic pride (Wilson 1989). While civic center development may have peaked during the early 20 th Century, the planning of civic space went well beyond these early years. However, in some ways the idealism of the City Beautiful continues to shape our understanding and expectations of civic space. Today the civic centers of many American cities are often described as wastelands, empty spaces with stately buildings, largely occupied by the indigent and 3 My use of the term civic space can also be distinguished from more narrow, architectural explanations that have studied the political authority of individual buildings, including state assemblies in Goodsell (1988), capital buildings in Scully (1987) and courtrooms in Greenberg (1987). 12 homeless rather than the citadels of democracy that, in the popular imagination, they ought to represent. As such, civic centers have remained the focus of planning efforts in the United States and around the world. The mid-century plans for the Philadelphia Civic and Convention Center, the Boston Government Center and contemporary planning efforts in numerous other small and large cities around the country serve as national examples of the continued interest in this area. Representations of Civic Space This project conceives of civic space as socially produced and relies on the work of the French philosopher, Henri Lefebvre (1992), anthropologist Lisa Peattie (1987) and social theorist Donald Schön (1983) to articulate the various ways that professional practice has contributed to the development of the built environment. In his analysis of space, Lefebvre argues for the inclusion of specific questions that are often overlooked by those who study space, such as geographers, planners and architects. Questions such as who produces space, for what purpose and how it is shaped allow us to explore the reciprocal arrangement between human relations and the social spaces that they create (Lefebvre 1992, 69). According to Lefebvre, social relations are not inscribed in pre-existing blank spaces and more importantly, social forces do not inevitably lead to particular spatial outcomes. Rather, space is produced through the interaction of three kinds of spatial knowledge: it is physically perceived, it is mentally conceived and it is lived in everyday life. These three ways of knowing space are 13 comprehended through different means. Perceived space is understood physically by spatial practices such as daily walks through the city, conceived space is understood mentally through the use of apparently abstract spaces of representation and lived space is understood symbolically through the representational space of the imagination, in art and dreams. As spaces of representation, the images created for civic centers by planners and urban designers are examples of conceived, mental space. These spaces of representation are often the dominant space in a society and are tied to the conceptualizations of the “technocratic sub dividers and social engineers” (Lefebvre 1992, 39). With the translation of Lefebvre’s work into English, there has been an explosion of interest in spatial practice and lived space (Liggett and Perry 1995; Soja 1996), yet the dominant spaces of representation conceived by planners are often treated generically, as if by merely acknowledging their socially constructed nature is enough to diminish their power. However, one of Lefebvre’s key contributions is the idea that each representation has a specific history and that an investigation of specific representations may lead to a better understanding of the particular social forces at work in individual places. For example, in The Production of Space Lefebvre describes how the invention of artistic perspective with a single vanishing point emerged from the transformation of the feudal system in Tuscany; “knowledge emerged from a practice, and elaborated upon it by means of formalization and the application of a logical order” (Lefebvre 1992, 79). For a time, this new representation existed alongside older, symbolic representational spaces, 14 such as those associated with the churchyard or the home, yet eventually it came to dominate other representations. Like Lefebvre, anthropologist Lisa Peattie (1987) examines the images in planning and urban design as cultural artifacts that have been socially constructed. Peattie also reminds us that the term representation can be defined in a number of ways. It may refer to an image or likeness, a statement of facts or arguments, or a position of political office. At one end is an understanding of representation as a descriptive practice, while at the other the political meaning is emphasized. Peattie argues that when planners and designers represent reality in their plans they engage in both practices: description and politics. Because the images in plans are selective and emphasize certain perspectives, they have political consequences (112). More importantly she suggests that “representations were not simply the way the planners presented a world, intimately known, in order to achieve some effect on an audience; the planners to a substantial degree experienced the city through their own representations of it”(Peattie 1987, 111). In this way, Peattie recognizes that in the act of representation the institutional training of planners led them to hide or highlight local realities in favor of their own agenda. Peattie’s interest in planning images as ideological constructs is linked to what has recently been described as a broad “crisis of representation” across the social sciences (Pickles 2004). The idea of such a crisis has emerged as a central theme in various disciplines and has led to a sustained critique of the apparent objectivism of scientific representations. A key idea to emerge from this line of thinking is that images are often 15 taken for granted and that they hide the subjective nature of their creation. This is especially the case with “scientific” or “technical” representations, such as the charts, graphs and maps of planning and urban design that are often presented as uniquely “true” despite the existence of alternatives (Pickles 2004). However, since Peattie’s study, there has been a tendency to see planning representations as the manifestations of power and little else (Boyer 1983; De Certeau 1988; Dear 1989; Dovey 1996). Indeed, there is some concern that the early critiques of empiricist and positivistic representations by M. Christine Boyer (1983; 1990) and others have been replaced by an equally reductionist view that all representations are simply about the exertion of an all-encompassing, Foucauldian-style power (King 1996; Grasseni 2007). What has been lost in many of the more recent appraisals is a culturally and historically situated understanding of representations as examples of concrete practices. It is precisely this taken-for-granted aspect of planning practice that needs to be examined. Paraphrasing Geertz (1973), if you want to know about a profession you begin by examining what the practitioners of that profession do. With Lefebvre and Peattie, Donald Schön’s (1983) theory of “reflection in action” and his analysis of specific professional practices provides the third and final way for this project to accomplish such a task. Grounded in a close examination of practice at particular moments in time, Schön offers a theory of knowledge that counters the technical and instrumental rationality critiqued by Lefebvre and Peattie. “Reflection in action” is an acceptance of the often tacit knowledge that professionals employ as they go 16 about accomplishing their work. For example, when discussing planning and design practice, Schön studies the “patterns of action” (1983, 49) and the “system of norms” (1983, 99) that move the process along. These patterns and norms represent a “repertoire of meanings” that both contribute to and shape outcomes (1983, 103). Schön analyzed the process of design and planning through a record of the conversations that took place as it was happening, but since the “consumers” of planning images are rarely privy to such conversations, this project attempts to gain an understanding of planning practice from the products, or the material results, of this process. Thus in the chapters that follow, planning documents are used as the windows through which we can see how problems were identified, which strategies were employed and whose facts were treated as relevant (Schön 1983). The challenge is to document in these plans the “webs of moves, consequences, implications, appreciations” that Schön was able to analyze in his protocols. Rhetoric of Representation 4 This project examines planning as it is actually practiced. Specifically, it applies the methodologies of visual rhetoric and social semiotics to the theories of Lefebvre, Peattie and Schön and focuses on the production, the nature and the reception of images created for a civic center in Los Angeles. The rhetoric of representation seeks to 4 The term “rhetoric of representation” was initially used by Tridib Banerjee in a report written for the National Endowment for the Arts with Dana Cuff, Ken Beck and Achva Stein titled Form in Contention: Design in Development Disputes (1994). 17 understand how these images communicate a kind of tacit knowledge about the civic center as a political landscape. The resulting narrative is not simply a history of the built environment in pictures; rather it is an analysis of the representational methods and techniques used by planners to persuade their various audiences across time. Theories of visual rhetoric “highlight the communicative dimensions of images” (Foss 2005) and may be distinguished from other approaches, such as those derived from the study of aesthetics that describe the ways that an image encourages a viewer to enjoy the color, texture or forms conveyed in an image. Rhetorical analysis begins with an exploration of an image’s distinguishing features, including attention to its denotative or presented, and connotative or suggested, meanings. It is understood that the viewpoint, focus and layout of an image all combine to produce a particular message (Scott 1994). However, while a rhetorical analysis may begin with an examination of formal characteristics, to be truly rhetorical, any proposed study must go beyond simple form. As communication scholars Kenny and Scott (2003, p 23) have suggested, “the effectiveness of any appeal depends on the confluence of speaker, audience, product and history”. The communicative, and indeed specifically rhetorical, function of planning practice is well documented, but this approach has not considered planning images as constituent elements of such rhetorical arguments. However, beginning with Barthes’ (1977) analysis of the messages contained in advertising images, visual elements are increasingly understood as having the capacity to persuade. The images contained in 18 planning documents perform rhetorical work because they are created with the specific aim of influencing an audience. As such, planning images fall into the category of deliberative communication. As Barthes (1977) would say, they are “frank”, meaning that they are designed to encourage the audience to accept or reject a particular choice or view of the world. At the core of a rhetorical approach is an appreciation for socially derived conventions that are employed by members of a group to communicate ideas. The use of conventions is “intrinsically rhetorical” (Kostelnick and Hassett 2003, p 6) since users must select and adapt conventions to convince their audience. At its most basic level, a convention implies an agreement about core principles, procedures or customs. 5 A list of visual conventions ranges from the most mundane, including the left to right orientation of text in Western societies and the practice of underlying hyper links on the Web, to the development of complex representational systems, such as the standardized visual language of engineering drawings. Conventions “normalize” the practices of both the creators and viewers of images and the ability to interpret such conventions depends on shared cultural experience that is developed through a collective process (Kostelnick and Hassett 2003). However, the ubiquitous nature of conventions also renders them hard to see. Conventions are deeply ingrained habits that because of their familiarity often appear 5 “convention”. (2010). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved March 1, 2010, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/convention 19 natural. Yet as this project argues, while some images appear to be without style or artifact this does not mean that they are, in fact, without style or artifact. Conventions are malleable and variable. They are not static, but rather change over time. Their development unfolds in response to a variety of factors including new technology, changes among members of the group and shifts in the ideals of a group. For example, the century-long persistence of thick black lines to indicate traffic volumes as seen in Figures 1.3a, 1.3b and 1.3c is evidence of a visual convention commonly used in planning. 20 Figure 1.3a, b and c: Visual conventions in planning practice a. Traffic Flow Diagram from Unwin’s (1909) Town Planning in Practice The volume of rail traffic is indicated by the presence of thick black lines snaking from Charing Cross railway station to London’s outer suburban rings. As an aside, it is also interesting to note that this diagram makes a distinction between “ordinary” passengers and those using “workmen’s tickets” who travel primarily from east and south of the city center. In this way the diagram spatially records class separation in London during this period. 21 Figure 1.3 (continued) b. Traffic Flow Patterns from Segoe’s (1941) Local Planning Administration and c. Appleyard’s (1981) Livable Streets. In these two diagrams the lines have become straighter, perhaps reflecting the belief in a more mechanized system, but the width of the line as an indicator of higher volume persists. 22 Based on a number of factors, the rhetorically derived meaning of an image will always be somewhat flexible. This is an important consideration for planning images that are specifically created to inspire action. For example, as communicators in the public realm, planners craft messages and anticipate that these messages will be understood by an audience using a minimally shared set of experiences and knowledge. Planners make assumptions about the viewer’s experiences and ability to understand what is being expressed. Alternately, viewers employ a socially developed pictorial ‘vocabulary’ to interpret images. This relationship, between image producer and audience, is significant. As suggested above, rhetoric is not formalistic; rather it emphasizes the cultural and the social. In its search for the meaning of images, rhetorical analysis is linked to other methods such as those employed in semiotics that also explore the denotative and connotative features of images. Social Semiotics and Visual Conventions In attempting to explain the meaning of images, it is difficult to avoid the use of semiotics. Semiotics offers a level of “analytic precision,” in that the method draws upon a sophisticated and generally agreed upon set of terms (Rose 2001). Simply put, semiotics is the ‘study of signs’ that stand for something else as codes in a given text. The exploration of these codes allows the analyst access to the set of ideas at work in a given society. 23 While a powerful tool, there have been a number of critiques of semiotics, especially as it was conceived in its early structuralist phase. The system is often described as overly complex and the dense terminology difficult to use. In addition, most semiotic analysis examines the image alone as the primary site of meaning. Images are rarely analyzed in their broader context and this has led to a diminished focus on how images are perceived by different audiences. The significance of this audience is recovered in Barthian post-structuralist semiotics and more recent calls for a socially responsive semiotics. In particular, “social semiotics,” as it is described by Hodge and Kress (1988) distinguishes itself from the structuralist school of semiology by its focus on socially derived conventions, rather than arbitrary codes. Traditional semiotics often assumes that meanings are “frozen and fixed” in the text and that it is the job of the analyst to decode them through the use of a universal, linguistically-derived system. In contrast, social semiotics finds no such stability; “meaning is always negotiated”, it is “never imposed inexorably from above by an omnipotent author through an absolute code” (Hodge and Kress 1988, 12). Rather, all signs are conditioned by “the social organization of the participants and also by the immediate conditions of their interaction” (37). In place of codes, social semiotics focuses on conventions that create a loosely bound field of “meaning potentials”(Jewitt and Oyama 2001, 135). These meaning potentials make it possible to describe the likely interpretation given the social or cultural context in which the image was produced. 24 However, while there may indeed be multiple meanings, it is precisely because of the social nature of conventions, that the interpretation of these meanings is not unlimited. Socially derived visual conventions enable viewers to interpret what is presented based upon generally agreed upon norms. Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) describe three widely used conventions in visual texts: representational, interactive and compositional conventions. Representational conventions are conveyed by the people or things that are depicted and are indicated by two kinds of patterns: narrative and conceptual. Narrative structures frame questions about who, or what, is playing an active role in an image and who, or what, is seen as passive. Narrative structures may be recognized by the inclusion of a vector or multiple vectors that connect the depicted participants or things. Vectors can be made explicit through the use of arrows, or diagonals. They may also be determined by following the sight line or the gaze of a represented subject. Conceptual conventions visually define, analyze or classify represented objects. As a classificatory pattern, different things are brought together in one image to show that they have something in common, that they “belong to the same class” (Jewett, 144). This may be accomplished graphically by arranging represented objects on the page or symbolically. Symbolic structures define the meaning or identity of a thing, for example through the use of props. Analytic arrangements relate things in terms of a part-whole structure, such as in a pie chart or a map. Interactive conventions create relations between viewers and the image and are suggested through contact, point of view and distance, or what anthropologist, Edward 25 Hall (1966) has described as “proxemics.” In the case of contact, when a represented subject looks directly at the viewer, they “demand” to be seen. This outward gaze makes contact with the viewer and may suggest dominance or submission. Alternately, represented subjects who do not address the viewer are on “offer”. They are subjected to the viewer’s detached observation. The angle of view, whether horizontal or vertical, also has implications for the relationship between the viewer and the represented object. The difference between a scene viewed from a frontal horizontal angle and one that is viewed from an oblique horizontal angle has been described as the difference between “involvement” and “detachment” (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996). The frontal, head-on angle suggests that the viewer is an active part of the scene, while the oblique suggests the opposite. The section or cross-section indicates a third horizontal view point that aims to go deeper than what is visible to the naked eye. Ideas of power are encoded through the use of vertical angles. A represented object seen from a great height appears smaller and less significant than an object pictured from below. At a high angle the viewer has more power over the object, while objects that are seen from a low angle indicate a greater power over the viewers. The plan view, or top-down angle, is the “angle of maximum power” and is mostly clearly identified with an aim for theoretical, objective knowledge (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996, 149). Objects seen at eye level indicate no difference in power. 26 Hall’s (1966) study of proxemics contributes to an understanding of social distance in visual representations. For example, Hall suggests that personal distance, reserved for interactions among good friends or family members, ranges from approximately 1.5 to 4 feet. Social distance describes interactions among acquaintances and ranges from 4 to 12 feet. Public distance begins at 12 feet and is used for public speaking and other grand occasions. Images that depict individuals at a close personal distance imply that the viewer is close, or that the depicted person can be seen as part of ‘our’ group (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996). This distancing is linked to the size of frame shots used in film, where a close up is used to indicate close affiliation, while wider shots are used to establish context. Compositional conventions include the ways that the represented subjects are arranged and framed and what elements are considered most salient. The arrangement of depicted things contributes to an understanding of what is important. The convention of reading left to right strongly influences our visual perception. In western societies, the center is also suggestive of increased importance. Framing connects or disconnect elements. Salience describes what is most important or eye catching in an image. Salience can be accomplished in a number of ways, for example through size or color. One possible limitation of social semiotics is the strong dependence on looking at people. Representational meaning is most often conveyed by human participants and because there are relatively few images of people in planning documents, the approach has to be modified. Buildings have no ‘gaze’ to speak of and therefore, some of the 27 possible readings must be tempered. Indeed, an interpretation arrived at by an analysis of people may be in direct opposition to one derived by looking at buildings. For example, while Kress and Van Leeuwen have suggested that the frontal, head-on angle involves the viewer in the scene and the oblique suggests the reverse. Historians of architectural photography have suggested precisely the opposite. A building shown at an oblique angle is brought closer to the viewer, while one that is depicted head-on resembles an architectural elevation that is more suggestive of an “objective factual point of view” (Robinson and Herschman 1987, xii). Despite these concerns, an analysis of images from a conventionally-grounded, social semiotic perspective provides clues to Schön’s “patterns of action” (p. 49) and “systems of norms” (p. 99), allowing the viewer to see what was considered persuasive at a given point in time. Another way to analyze the rhetorical aspect of images is to focus on metaphors and other tropes. Tropes Simply stated, tropes are rhetorical elements of style that suggest that some thing is, or is like, some other thing. Since, like conventions, they are often selected from a culturally available stock of options, the purpose of tropes is essentially to render the unfamiliar familiar. As such, tropes give meaning to the larger narrative of which they are a part (Throgmorton 1993) and the process of identifying tropes is useful in establishing the underlying structure of ideas. Kenneth Burke (1945) identified four master tropes: 28 metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony. Metaphors relate two disparate objects, while metonymy is based on the combination of two closely associated, or directly related objects. Synecdoche, which describes the part for the whole is often defined as a type of metonymy. Irony utilizes the opposite meaning frequently to indicate detachment and contradiction. All four tropes play some role in the analysis of images presented in later chapters, however here I primarily focus on metaphor, the first and most significant of these tropes. Metaphors present two ideas as related to each other and suggest an understanding of X in terms of Y. Metaphors are made up of targets and sources, in which the properties of one are transferred to the other. Some metaphors have become clichés, for example the idea that ‘justice is blind’, while others are artful, such as Vladimir Nabokov’s (1966) description of time as a magic carpet that he folds up “in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip." A metaphor such as ‘history is a march of progress’ contains a double reference, the first defines history in terms of a forward movement, while progress is described as if it were a column of troops. Schön (1979, 254) productively critiqued metaphors in the analysis of public policy. As he argues, metaphor is “central to our accounting of the world.” Metaphors are frames and are important as evidence of problem setting (see also Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Schön suggests that planners and the public can be “under the spell of a metaphor” (p.255). While Schön recommends a “policy-analytic literary criticism” (1979, 267), his description of metaphors is specifically visual. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein, 29 Schön suggests that metaphor making is the process of “seeing as”. He suggests that metaphors allow the viewer to see A as B, where A and B had previously been considered two different things (p.259). However, he cautions that as a result of seeing A as B, we may not know anything more about A. In this way metaphors obscure as well as enlighten. As an example, Schön describes how, during much of the twentieth century, it was not uncommon for planners to describe a low income neighborhood as diseased. This metaphor led to a set of policies that likened the planning intervention to that of a surgeon, cutting away at cancerous growths that, if not treated, would obviously spread to other areas of the body/city. The allocation of resources, the design of programs and legislative agendas were all framed in terms of this metaphor which became an institutionalized perspective. Such institutional views can also be described with visual metaphors. The process for analyzing visual metaphors includes a number of steps. The presence of a visual metaphor is usually indicated by a “violation” of the viewer’s understanding of physical reality (Kaplan 2005), for example through distortions or other fictions. This distortion must be recognized as intentional and not simply a mistake. There may be a modification of physical characteristics, an odd or incongruous setting or function, or juxtaposition. For example, on the cover of a recent Time Magazine, the earth (with the United States prominently featured) is pictured as a fried egg in a skillet to indicate how world temperatures are rising due to global warming. The choice of the color red and yellow in the original intensifies the feeling of heat. It is interesting to examine what policy 30 solutions might be suggested from this image. Unfortunately, for the most part the image literally and figuratively suggests that we’re “cooked”, and since you cannot un-fry an egg, we are left with few options. Figure 1.4: The earth as a fried egg on a Time Magazine cover from 2001 31 Overview of Chapters In summary, this project employs the methodology of visual rhetoric and social semiotics to theories of representation in the context of a particular kind of cultural landscape to determine what the images created by planners for a civic center in Los Angeles can tell us about the profession and the production of civic space in the United States during the twentieth century. As a historically oriented case study, this research recognizes the somewhat problematic role that history plays in planning, since it is the future, rather than the past, that is the profession’s primary temporal orientation. For example, the American Planning Association defines a plan as a “statement of policy, in the form of text, maps and graphics used to guide public and private actions that affect the future” (American Planning Association 2006). This future-focus exerts an incredible force on planning scholarship and as a result, many professionals have characterized the field of planning history as an interesting, but largely unnecessary complement to an unashamedly amnesic profession (Mandelbaum 1985, 185). Part of the profession’s amnesia stems from fundamental uncertainties about the definition of planning and persistent questions about who can be described as a planner. Among historians of planning, two general schools of thought appear to reign (Mandelbaum 1985; Birch 2006). The first group describes planning in the Unites States as an increasingly specialized endeavor emanating from the tradition of Progressive-era experts. Along the path to specialization, the influence of planning’s affiliated 32 professions, such as architecture, landscape architecture and civil engineering are gradually sloughed off until the profession’s core expertise in land-use management is revealed. The scale of the planning expert’s influence varies from neighborhood unit, to district, city and region, but the result of the work is often the development of a general or master plan designed to shape an area over time. More recently, planning is understood broadly as the complex play of actors who contribute to urban development. Planning is the result of “a way of thinking” linked to the emergence and growth of modern industrial cities and regions (Birch 2006). In this sense, use of the term “planning” describes various processes associated with urban development, especially those that involve large-scale infrastructure projects, such as transportation, public housing projects or sanitation systems. Planning is undertaken by politicians, engineers, architects, landscape architects, real estate developers, civic groups, as well as individuals employed by public planning agencies. The distinction between planning as a profession of experts and as a general metropolitan activity has important consequences. The history that has emerged from the narrower understanding of planning has served as the internal record of the profession and has tended to focus on key individuals, important moments and iconic plans. The voluminous scholarship about Frederick Law Olmsted and the continuing interest in Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago are obvious examples. Historians who follow the broader approach have rejected the easy “march of history” captured in these narrow 33 perspectives (Hise 2006) and, as a group, have tended to emphasize various exogenous forces, especially political and social movements that influence urban outcomes. This project shares much in common with the broad approaches of recent planning history in that it draws attention to the activities of a wide spectrum of architects, politicians and individuals as well as to those who specifically identified themselves as “planners.” Yet it also focuses, not on large historical processes, but on the production and reception of specific planning documents. The study of actual plans, even those that have been described as failures, may serve an important role in an applied social science such as planning. A detailed analysis of planning documents allows the profession to, not only learn about particular events and places, but also to learn from them (Hise and Deverell 2000). The historical analysis of plans emphasizes the variability of the decision making process and introduces contemporary planners to the “domain of contingent possibilities” (Mandelbaum 1985, 187). With this in mind, an analysis of the various plans for the Los Angeles Civic Center serves as a reminder that currently accepted practices are developed from within different historical contexts and that there are alternatives to the disciplinary history that is so often taken for granted. The following dissertation begins with a broad overview. Through the use of a content analysis, Chapter Two empirically documents the visual tradition of planning in the United States. Its focus is on describing in formal terms the images that planners surround themselves with and rely on while engaged in daily activities. Chapters Three, Four and Five introduce the Los Angeles civic center case study. Since 1909, there have 34 been more than 30 different plans and proposals for the Los Angeles Civic Center, the most significant of which are outlined in Appendix I. The Civic Center area is just one of a number of places in Los Angeles’ downtown. In the analysis that follows, I have not included all of the plans for this larger area. Rather, I have identified a smaller sample of plans that, as a whole or in part, were specifically aimed at the creation of civic space through the systematic arrangement of public buildings and the provision of civically-oriented public open space. For example, although plans for the redevelopment of the Bunker Hill area did have a substantive impact on the Los Angeles Civic Center after the 1960s, I have not discussed them here because these plans primarily addressed residential and commercial, rather than civic uses. Furthermore in the chapters below, I have selected for more detailed analysis plans that were a source of significant debate among planners, public officials and the public at large. Thus, while the civic center plans of Lloyd Wright, William Lee Woolett and the Downtown Strategic Plan Advisory Committee are acknowledged, I do not specifically discuss them because they were not seriously considered and had little substantive influence on the development of the area. Chapter Three recounts the story of the ultimately unsuccessful civic center plans of the Allied Architects Association in the 1920s. With a focus on the city center, the use of a Beaux-Arts architectural style, broad boulevards and landscaped public plazas, the Association’s Plan for an Administrative Center clearly resembles City Beautiful planning. Yet, while some of the plan’s visual representations evoke the City Beautiful, 35 other images and much of the plan’s accompanying text highlight the use of new “scientifically” collected data and stress the ideas of mobility, practicality and efficiency. Beginning in the 1930s with the finalization of a site for Union Station, Chapter Four describes the efforts by planners to “clean up” the “untidy” areas that surrounded the Los Angeles Civic Center. Specifically, the chapter details how plans for the area drew strict boundaries between the Civic Center and neighboring ethnic districts such as Chinatown, Sonoratown and Little Tokyo. Chapter Five brings the project to the present day by comparing the images in plans for the Los Angeles Civic Center Mall from the mid 1950s, with images generated by the public in 2005 for the strategically named ‘Great Civic Park’. Like those before it, the chapter asks what “generative metaphors” emerge from these images (Schön 1979)? What values are presented? And more importantly, how is the public’s idea of “civic space” communicated in the images? 36 Chapter 2: An Analysis of Planning’s Visual Tradition Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a nobler, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever growing insistency. Daniel Burnham 6 The images that make up so much of planning and urban design’s daily practice have, to date, received little critical attention. As a result, we know very little about them. Scant substantive work has been done to define the uses to which images are put and even less scholarship has attempted to make generalizations about the meaning of images in planning. Thus as a way to initiate such an investigation, this chapter does three things. First it briefly reviews a number of scholarly works to get a sense of the academic discourse surrounding images in planning. Second, it examines the images found in a sample of books on planning and urban design targeted to planning professionals. Third, it discusses a small number of graphic examples in detail, analyzing each in terms of the work from which the image is drawn and the rhetorical use to which the image is put. Before introducing the study, it is necessary to more clearly define the parameters and perspective of the inquiry. The visual practices of planning encompass a broad range of activities, including surveying, photographing, drawing and mapping. However in the context of this chapter, and the project as a whole, the scope of analysis has been narrowed to a study of the physical manifestations of these broader practices: the images found in planning and urban design documents. The term “image” is an elusive one, with 6 Attributed to Daniel Burnham by Walter D. Moody, cited in Wrigley (1983) 37 material and non-material aspects and a multitude of synonyms. For me, the clearest definition of the term has been proposed by the literary and cultural theorist, W.J.T. Mitchell (1986). Drawing on genealogical metaphors, Mitchell introduces the idea of an “image family tree” (Figure 2.1). The graphics and optical images contained in the two groups on the left side of the family tree are often understood as material or “physical” images, while those on the right, including mental and verbal images, are understood in more “psychological” terms. Perceptual images occupy a middle ground. They are developed through the senses and combine embodied performance and mental image. Mitchell uses the example of the appearance “projected by a skilled actor” or the images created for “products and people through advertising and propaganda” to clarify his idea of perceptual images (Mitchell 1986, 10). Mitchell’s aim with this model is to counter the tendency to think of the groups on the left as examples of “proper” images, while discounting the groups of images on the right as “figurative and improper”. He argues that the images commonly thought of “proper” images are no more “stable, static, or permanent” than the verbal metaphors and mental images on the other side of the family tree and that all images require interpretation. 38 Figure 2.1: The “Image Family Tree” Using Mitchell’s “family tree” as a starting point, I reviewed a decade of articles from the Journal of Planning Education and Research and the Journal of Urban Design to get a sense of how scholars think about images in the academic discourse of planning and urban design. A total of 121 articles were identified in JPER that include the word image in the body of the text, while only 64 articles in the Journal of Urban Design used the term. Among these various articles, only 37 in JPER and 38 in JUD discuss images in any detail, accounting for approximately 11 and 18 percent of the total number of articles in JPER and JUD respectively. With few exceptions, research in planning and urban design has been focused on what Mitchell would describe as “perceptual” images, those that combine the properties of physical and mental images. Obviously drawing from the work of Kevin Lynch, the primary object of analysis has been the mental image of the city, constructed either through physical experience or the mediated lens of film, television and advertising. IMAGE Graphics Pictures Designs Optical Mirrors Projections Perceptual Sense data Appearances Mental Dreams Memories Ideas Verbal Metaphors Descriptions “Physical” “Psychological” 39 When planning and urban design graphics are discussed, they are often described as unproblematic tools or simple methods of communication. Peter Bosselmann’s (1998) work is emblematic of this tendency. In his Representation of Places, Bosselmann’s stated goal is to explore how well a variety of images have reflected reality in order to improve the images that designers currently produce. Bosselmann begins with a history of the images in plans, citing Leonardo da Vinci’s 1502 map of Imola and Giambattista Nolli’s 1736 figure ground rendering of Rome as the precedents for contemporary planning representations. For Bosselmann, the history of planning representation can be traced from Christopher Wren’s plan for London following the fire of 1666, to Juan Martin Carmeno’s straightening of the Ramblas in Barcelona in 1776, to Ildefonso Cerda’s 1859 plan for the expansion of Barcelona and Camillo Sitte’s “Städtebau” of 1870. Bosselmann’s history is continued in the 20th century by Le Corbusier, Gordon Cullen and Kevin Lynch. 7 Much of the rest of The Representation of Places describes contemporary examples of this representational history in the projects undertaken by the Environmental Simulation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. The simulations created by the lab were used to display proposed changes in urban planning controls. Bosselmann describes how the simulations were created and the effect that these simulations had on decision makers. Bosselmann’s view is truly one of a planning insider. It does not reflect any of the various critiques of ‘naturalistic” representation that are discussed in the broader urban literature and suggests that the value of planning 7 To this list we could add other authors such as Alan Jacobs and Donald Appleyard. 40 simulations is their “neutrality” (201). Bosselmann’s approach is echoed in much of the recent writings on the new computer aided design in planning, where the function of research has been to determine how to improve the model rather than an exploration of alternative ways of viewing. However, in his concluding remarks, Bosselmann does acknowledge the political nature of design and proposes an ethics of simulation that will enable planners to avoid “distortion” in the communication process. Images in Practice With the dominance of perceptual images in planning’s academic discourse in mind, the following section returns to a slightly narrower version of the questions posed at the beginning of chapter one: How should we think about the graphics in plans? What kind of work do they do and what arguments do they make? To respond to these questions, I conducted a content analysis of the graphics found within the planning and urban design canon. A content analysis provides an opportunity to apply a systematic methodology to selected samples of observable content. While the approach has a number of advantages, content analysis is best described as a “necessary, but not sufficient methodology” (Bell 2001, 13). It does not allow us to analyze individual images or specific visual texts. Rather its purpose is simply to describe the elements of a particular domain of representation, in this case the manifest content of the graphics found in planning and urban design texts. It is also important to recognize that the findings of any content 41 analysis are at best provisional. Additional qualitative and historical examination of these images in the context of their reproduction is necessary to develop more than the general knowledge achieved through this method. The analysis began with the development of a population sample directly related to the practice of planning and urban design in the United States. I used the American Planning Association’s recently published 100 Essential Books of Planning. The list was prepared by members and staff of the APA to celebrate the profession’s centennial. Beginning in 1909, the list includes books of significance to planners by decade until 2009. While there is much to quibble about the specific contents (there are some notable omissions), the list clearly represents the canon of planning and urban design as it is defined by its contemporary practitioners. This source generated a population of significant and groundbreaking books, from which I developed a smaller random sample, stratified by decade that was designed to be representative of the field as a whole (Table 2.1). The random sample totaled 32 works, approximately one third of the larger population. 42 Table 2.1: Stratified random sample from APA’s 100 Essential Books of Planning Date Author Work Image Count 1909 Richard Unwin Introduction to Art of Designing Cities & Suburbs 342 1914 Flavel Shurtleff Carrying Out the City Plan 0 1925 Park, Burgess, McKenzie & Wirth The City 6 1927 John Nolen New Towns for Old 121 1934 Catherine Bauer Modern Housing 204 1939 Homer Hoyt Structure & Growth of Neighborhoods 71 1941 Ladislas Segoe Local Planning Administration 25 1944 Frederick A. von Hayek The Road to Serfdom 0 1951 Clarence Stein Toward New Towns for America 167 1955 Martin Meyerson & Edward Banfield Politics, Planning & the Public Interest 17 1960 Kevin Lynch Image of the City 62 1962 Herbert Gans The Urban Villagers 0 1967 Edmund Bacon Design of Cities 352 1969 Ian McHarg Design with Nature 341 1971 Kevin Lynch & Gary Hack Site Planning 120 1973 E.F. Schumacher Small Is Beautiful 0 1973 Jonathan Barnett Urban Design as Public Policy 165 1974 Donald Kruekeberg & Arthur Silvers Urban Planning Analysis 131 1980 William H. Whyte The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces 109 1981 Donald Appleyard Livable Streets 229 1984 Anne Whiston Spirn The Granite Garden 75 1984 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Discovering the Vernacular Landscape 21 1988 Bruce McClendon & Ray Quay Mastering Change 19 1989 Brian Blaesser & Alan Weinstein Land Use & the Constitution 16 1993 Allan B. Jacobs Great Streets 302 1994 Randall Arendt, et al Rural By Design 359 1999 David R. Godschalk, et al Natural Hazard Mitigation 50 1999 Vukan R. Vuchic Transportation for Livable Cities 88 2000 Robert Putnam Bowling Alone 100 2000 Peter Calthorpe, William Fulton The Regional City 118 2002 Michael Brooks Planning Theory for Practitioners 0 2005 Donald Shoup The High Cost of Free Parking 122 TOTAL 3732 MINIMUM 0 MAXIMUM 359 AVERAGE 117 43 The importance of visual elements in planning and urban design is manifest in the large number of graphics included the sampled works. The books included a total of 3,732 individual images with an average of 117 images per book. Among the 32 works reviewed, only five did not include any images: Flavel Shurtleff’s Carrying Out the City Plan, Frederick von Hayek’s, The Road to Serfdom, Herbert Gans’ The Urban Villagers, E.F. Schumacher’s, Small Is Beautiful and Michael P. Brooks’, Planning Theory for Practitioners. The sample reflects the diversity of planning and urban design practice and includes works from the Social Sciences, Architecture and Law as defined by the Library of Congress Classification System. 8 Works in the architectural arena, including books by Raymond Unwin, John Nolen, Allan Jacobs and others, are primarily drawn from an area of scholarship that the Library of Congress has classified as dealing with the “aesthetics of cities”. Works in the social sciences are more diverse and address topics related to Communities, Industries and Land Use, Transportation, Urban Sociology, Economic Growth and Development. Each image in the sample was initially analyzed across four variables: what it depicted, its mode of presentation, its intellectual tradition and its function. For each of these variables, a number of values were defined. Depiction was characterized by 8 The Library of Congress Classification (LCC) was developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to organize and arrange the book collections of the U.S. Library of Congress. The system is maintained and updated by the Library's Cataloging Policy and Support Office and is currently one of the most widely used library classification systems in the world. The LCC divides all knowledge into twenty- one basic classes, each identified by a single letter of the alphabet. Most of these alphabetical classes are further divided into more specific subclasses. Each subclass includes a loosely hierarchical arrangement of the topics pertinent to the subclass, going from the general to the more specific. Individual topics may also be further broken down by specific places, time periods, or bibliographic forms. Website: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcc.html 44 whether it involved an existing environment, a proposed environment, a fantastic or ideal environment, theory or data. Its mode was described as a sketch, a drawing, a painting, a rendering, a model, a diagram, a photograph or a map. I was also interested in determining the intellectual reference point or tradition of each image and created a category to assess whether the image drew on architectural, engineering, geographic, artistic, mathematical, or sociological themes. Finally, I evaluated how the image functioned in the work. Was the primary task to document, analyze, communicate, appeal or decorate? These variables and values were developed inductively through an early review of the sample then clearly and specifically defined (see Table 2.2). Table 2.2: Definition of variables and values for images in the random sample Variable Value Definition 1. Depiction Existing Environment Image of built environment, past or present Proposed environment Un-built future or recommended plan (if image shows both existing and proposed - default is proposed) Fantastic/Ideal Un-built and unlikely or fantasy environment Theory Broad concept (not linked to specific environment), idea or position, aim for universality; may or may not be connected to built environment Data Empirically generated numbers, charts, graphs. Not tables and not “mapped” or located in a particular space. Other 2. Mode Sketch Freehand, stylized, low degree of realism, interpretive, drawn while on site, evocative of mood, soft fuzzy lines Drawing Medium to high degree of realism, primary representation through lines, may be a perspective, but not as complete or "finished" looking as rendering, lines are crisper than sketch. May include engravings Rendering Very high degree of realism, picture in perspective with an obvious vanishing point or points, may or may not be in color, primarily for presentation to non technical audience Painting Primary representation through paint and color; works of fine art 45 Table 2.2: Continued Variable Value Definition Model Physical 3 dimensional built form, may be a photograph of model Diagram Ideas, process or relationships, i.e. objects in space (no tables) Photograph Photo, photomontage, if photo and drawing (i.e. photographic base map) default is photo Map Primarily about existent physical space or navigation, tied to existing features, i.e. topography or includes street/place names; seen from above Other 3. Tradition Architecture Refers to an architectural object or tradition Engineering Refers to systems or processes, especially of traffic, ie. street, railways and freeway systems or organizational charts Geography Refers to tradition of maps, cartography or the natural environment Fine Art Refers to traditions of painting, water color, sculpture, film, literature, wood cut, may also include cartoons Mathematics Refers to numbers, algebra, statistics Sociology Refers to people Other 4. Function Document Describes, illustrates or records conditions of existing space or place, either in the past or present, especially for purpose of comparison, usually "realistic" representation Analyze Show patterns, trends, relationships or thinking process, not usually a "realistic" representation Communicate Describes future, show ideas Appeal Advocate action through the use of emotional images, evocative Decorate Without functional purpose; not specifically linked to text, i.e. no caption; enhance aesthetic quality of work Other To address the concerns raised by critical theorists about the apparent social distancing, lack of involvement and power of planning and urban design images (Boyer 1983; De Certeau 1988), three additional variables were introduced to describe the perceived proximity and angle of view for images that depicted existing or proposed 46 environments (table 2.3). An image pictured at a close, medium or long range proposes a dissimilar social relation between the viewer and the represented object (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996). At a close distance, the viewer is most intently engaged with the object shown, as if the represented object was available for immediate use. At a medium distance, the viewer has the illusion of being located within the landscape, while simultaneously being far enough away to be able to view the landscape as a whole. At a long distance, the viewer is separated and unable to participate in the activity or environment that is pictured. At such a distance the object is available only for contemplation and display (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996). The values of close, medium and far were defined based on the level of detail and the apparent proximity of the subject pictured. Images that were coded as ‘close’ show a great deal of detail and a portion of a building, person or object. Images coded ‘medium’ showed the whole person, one whole building or a single street. Images that were described as ‘far’ were taken at a great distance where large expanses of land or space predominated. As discussed in chapter one, the angle of view, whether horizontal or vertical, also has implications for the relationship between the viewer and the represented object. The horizontal angle of view was defined based on the apparent position of the image producer (and by default, the viewer) relative to the scene depicted. The difference between a scene viewed from a frontal horizontal angle and one that is viewed from an oblique horizontal angle has been described as the difference between “involvement” and “detachment” (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996). The frontal, head-on angle suggests that 47 the viewer is an active part of the scene, while the oblique suggests the opposite. The section or cross-section indicates a third horizontal view point that aims to go deeper than what is visible to the naked eye. Ideas of power are encoded through the use of vertical angles. A represented object seen from a great height appears smaller and less significant than an object pictured from below. At a high angle the viewer has more power over the object, while objects that are seen from a low angle indicate a greater power over the viewers. The plan view, or top-down angle, is the “angle of maximum power” and is mostly clearly identified with an aim for theoretical, objective knowledge (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996, 149). Objects seen at eye level indicate no difference in power. Four values were identified to describe the vertical angle: top-down, oblique above, oblique below and eye level. Examples of these views are presented in Figures 2.2 through 2.5. Finally, based on a preliminary scan of the images, it was clear that there was a strong reliance on the depiction of existing environments, so an additional step, to determine which environments were shown, was also added to the analysis. 48 Table 2.3: Definition of variables for images of the existing, proposed or ideal environment Variable Value Definition 5. Proximity Close Up Shows detail, portion of building or portion of person Medium Shows whole person or whole building, or single street, with little sky around them Long Range Shows lots of distance, large expanse of land or space is predominant, often an image of the whole city 6. Horizontal Angle of View Right Angle, Head-on The most salient (largest) feature in the scene is viewed approximately at a right angle, either facing directly at, or directly away from the viewer. Oblique (left or right) The most salient (largest) feature in the scene is viewed at an oblique angle (less or greater than 90 degrees), either to the left or right of the viewer. Horizontal Section A cross section or horizontal slice through an object 7. Vertical Angle of View Directly Down The most salient (largest) feature in the scene is viewed from a height directly above, i.e. 180 degrees downward Oblique Above The most salient (largest) feature in the scene is viewed from above at an oblique angle, i.e. from an angle other than 90 degrees. Viewer is looking down. Oblique Below The most salient (largest) feature in the scene is viewed from below at an oblique angle, i.e. from an angle other than 90 degrees. The viewer is looking up. Eye Level The most salient (largest) feature in the scene is viewed approximately at eye level, i.e. at 90 degrees. 49 Figure 2.2: Photograph from McHarg’s Design with Nature The scene focuses on a single building at a medium distance. The viewer’s eye is drawn upwards through the use of a vertical, oblique angle. This type of view positions Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water house above the viewer and is suggestive of reverence. The image illustrates McHarg’s argument that planning practice should be more mindful of natural processes and better integrated into the environment. Source: (McHarg 1969) 50 Figure 2.3: Photograph from Clarence Stein’s Toward New Towns for America, 1951 The single building, the most salient element in the image is shown at a medium distance with little sky around it. The horizontal angle is oblique, bringing the building closer to the viewer, while the vertical angle is primarily at eye level. Through these techniques the viewer is drawn into the scene and is encouraged to identify with the woman pushing the stroller (and her choice of residence). Although it seems to capture a spontaneous moment, it is important to recognize that the image is specifically posed, for example there is no baby in the pram. 51 Figure 2.4: Drawing from Rural By Design: Maintaining Small Town Character, 1994 An image of a proposed (or possible) environment is shown at a great distance from an oblique vertical angle above and from a head-on, horizontal angle. The image serves a didactic purpose. It is one of a series of graphics that systematically compares the outcomes of various land-use decisions. Source: (Arendt 1994) 52 Figure 2.5: Diagram from Kevin Lynch’s 1961 Image of the City The graphic shows an existing environment at a great distance using a directly downward vertical angle, the angle of maximum power, and a head on horizontal angle. The use of a diagram that aggregates individual data aims for an analysis, rather than a documentation of built form. Source: (Lynch 1960) To ensure the reliability of the identified categories, the variable and value definitions were tested twice using independent research assistants. During a pre-test, preliminary coder results on a sample of the images were compared and any differences in interpretation were resolved to ensure that coding would be consistent. In addition, a second test was conducted by different research assistants after coding had been completed. At this time, inter-coder agreement was determined to be 89%, a figure that 53 meets the standards established in the qualitative methods literature (Miles and Huberman 1984). 9 Findings In general, the images in planning and urban design documents are significantly more likely to depict existing (64%), rather than proposed environments (14%). Overall, authors of planning and urban design rely heavily on diagrams and photographs when presenting their work. Images are drawn from a broad range of intellectual traditions, including geography, architecture and engineering. In some works there is also an interest in mathematical, artistic and sociological traditions. The primary function of images in planning and urban design is to document the existing or proposed environment. To a lesser extent images also analyze and communicate. Very few images, less than 2 percent, serve as simple decoration with no functional purpose. At less than 1 percent, even fewer images aim for an emotional appeal (Table 2.4). 9 The reliability score was determined by dividing the total number of coding agreements by the total number of coding decisions. 54 Table 2.4: Distribution of images in the sample based on what the image depicts, its mode of presentation, intellectual tradition and function Variable Value Percentage of total (n = 3732) 1. Depiction Existing Environment 63.59 Proposed Environment 14.01 Fantastic/Ideal environment 2.09 Theory 6.38 Data 8.98 Other 2.60 2. Mode Sketch 1.63 Drawing 10.21 Painting 0.88 Rendering 1.88 3D Model 0.83 Diagram 46.03 Photograph 33.52 Map 2.30 Other 0.35 3. Tradition Architecture 30.68 Engineering 14.68 Geography 32.29 Fine Art 3.03 Mathematics 8.63 Sociology 4.53 Other 3.86 4. Function Document 56.91 Analyze 25.21 Communicate 12.89 Appeal 0.35 Decorate 2.17 Other 0.11 55 In some areas, these figures have fluctuated substantially over the last century. To get a sense of these temporal patterns, the data was grouped into three time periods: the early years of 1909-1949, mid century from 1950 – 1979 and the most recent period, beginning in 1980 and lasting until the present time (Figure 2.6). In terms of what was depicted in the sampled books, the early years of planning relied heavily on images of the existing and proposed environment (76% and 16%, respectively). This focus lessened during mid century, as more space was given to depicting theoretical ideas. However, more recently the interest in presenting existing environments has increased (to 63%); along with a new focus on depicting data (16%). These changes are linked to changes in the mode of presentation. From 1909 – 1949, 43% of the graphics were photographs. During mid-century this number was reduced to 27% as the works included more diagrams (47%) and drawings (15%). The heavy reliance on diagrams continues to the present day (48%), although more photographs are also included than during the mid century time period (34%). 56 Figure 2.6: Changes in percentage of what is depicted and mode of presentation over time Depiction 1909 – 1949 1950 – 1979 1980 – 2009 0 20 40 60 80 Existing Proposed Fantastic Theory Data Other 0 20 40 60 80 Existing Proposed Fantastic Theory Data Other 0 20 40 60 80 Existing Proposed Fantastic Theory Data Other Mode 1909 – 1949 1950 – 1979 1980 – 2009 0 20 40 60 80 Drawing* Diag Photograph Other ** 0 20 40 60 80 Drawing* Diag Photograph Other ** 0 20 40 60 80 Drawing* Diag Photograph Other ** A total of 401 places are depicted in the sample. The top ten cities, ranked by their frequency as individual images and by their distribution among separate works in the sample, include 1) New York by a wide margin, followed by 2) San Francisco, 3) London, 4) Rome, 5) Boston, 6) Philadelphia, 7) Paris, 8) Washington D.C., 9) Los 57 Angeles and 10) Radburn, NJ. The inclusion of Radburn NJ among this list appears to be a function of its prominence among the profession’s early pioneers such as Clarence Stein. It was somewhat surprising to find Los Angeles included among the top ten, since one of the key tenets of the recent ‘Los Angeles School’ of urban theory is the city’s apparent absence in urban analysis. Images of Los Angeles actually appear in nine different works. The list of cities is also significant for its absences. Less than 3 percent of the depicted existing environments are located in ‘non-western’ countries (non-western city images are also largely concentrated in just two works: Allan Jacobs’ Great Streets and Edmund Bacon’s Design of Cities). Furthermore, it is often the case that only the ruins or temples of non-western cities are pictured. Only the cities of Japan are consistently pictured in their contemporary context. Among images that depicted the existing or proposed environment, the analysis of proximity and angle suggests that the relationship between viewer and represented object is more complex than has previously been suggested (Table 2.5). Contrary to planning’s many theoretical critiques, a significant portion of images in planning and urban design represent a medium perspective rather than the more critically discussed distant perspective. In addition, the subjects of planning images are often represented head on and at eye-level suggesting more engagement than the profession is usually given credit for. These empirical findings challenge the notion that the profession is socially distant. Rather, they call attention to a range of positions from which planners view the world. 58 These various points of view are obviously related to the intent of specific authors in the sample, but there are also patterns that emerge when the examples are analyzed across various periods of time. Indeed, the final agglomerated numbers obscure some interesting trends (Figure 2.7). During planning’s earliest years, the number of views from a medium and a long distance were approximately equal (47% and 50%, respectively). At mid century the long view grew increasingly dominant, but the percentage of close ups also increased (63% long views, compared to 32% for medium distance and 6% close up). More recently, the percentage of medium distance views has become significant (54% compared to 40% long range and 6% close up). There appears to have been little change in the horizontal angle; however there have been substantive changes in the vertical angle. From 1909 – 1949 the majority of images (42%) were viewed directly downwards, a view that is considered most unequal. In addition, another 18% were viewed obliquely from above. However there is a trend toward increasing use of eye-level perspectives. In the early years, the percentage of views at eye level was 24, during mid century this number had grown to 31% and most recently this figure is 55%. This trend is suggestive of an increasingly equal power relationship between planners and the objects that they look at. 59 Table 2.5: Distribution of images in sample based on the variables of proximity and angle Variable Value Percentage of total (n = 3006) 5. Proximity Close Up 5.39 Medium 44.28 Long Range 50.33 6. Horizontal Angle of View Frontal, Right Angle 70.67 Oblique Left or Right 24.41 Section 4.92 7. Vertical Angle of View Down 37.57 Oblique Above 17.69 Oblique Below 3.01 Eye Level 41.72 60 Figure 2.7: Changes in percentage of proximity and angle of view over time Proximity 1909 – 1949 1950 – 1979 1980 – 2009 0 20 40 60 80 Clo se Up Medium Long Range 0 20 40 60 80 Clo se Up Medium Long Range 0 20 40 60 80 Clo se Up Medium Long Range Horizontal Angle 1909 – 1949 1950 – 1979 1980 – 2009 0 20 40 60 80 Front Oblique Section 0 20 40 60 80 Front Oblique Section 0 20 40 60 80 Front Oblique Section Vertical Angle 1909 – 1949 1950 – 1979 1980 – 2009 0 20 40 60 80 Down Abov Below Eye Level 0 20 40 60 80 Down Abov Below Eye Level 0 20 40 60 80 Down Abov Below Eye Level 61 Planning’s Visual Genres A few graphics circulate widely among the profession, informing practice and shaping norms. For example, while the source may not be immediately recognized, most planners are likely to be familiar with Burgess’ concentric theories of urban development (Figure 2.8) and Stein’s plans for Radburn, NJ based on Clarence Perry’s neighborhood unit (Figure 2.9). However, beyond these particular graphics, this analysis brings the various visual genres of planning into view. While typically associated with literary texts, a genre is defined as a “recurring type or category” that includes a given number of stylistic or formal devices and conventions (Duff 2000). Genres explain a collection of conventions and the development of a genre reveals significant aspects of form (Fisher 1980). Figure 2.8 Burgess Concentric Theory of Urban Development Source: (Park 1967 [1925]) 62 Figure 2.9: Stein’s plan for Radburn based on Perry’s neighborhood unit diagram Source: (Stein 1951) 63 To identify planning’s visual genres the images in this sample were sorted into homogeneous categories. This process allowed for the development of a preliminary visual taxonomy. From the more than 3,000 images reviewed, approximately 170 possible combinations of variables and values were identified. This initial set of combinations was then successively grouped into larger clusters of similar items. Like much of the analysis above, the sorting categories were developed inductively, emphasizing the similarities between images from the ‘bottom up’. Figure 2.10 provides an overview of this sorting. Two dominant visual genres are evident in this analysis. The first and largest genre in planning includes photographs of the existing environment taken at eye level: street views (Figures 2.11 through 2.13). The second most frequent visual genre is a diagrammatic representation of an existing environment looking directly down, commonly referred to as plan view (Figure 2.14). The primacy of these two bifurcated views challenges the notion that the profession primary mode of seeing is through the lens of a totalizing downward gaze. Based on this assessment, the quotidian life of the street is equally present in planning images. The dominance of street views is especially interesting and warrants additional analysis. Future research will likely reveal sub-genres and may contribute to the revision of established histories. For instance, as early as 1909 Raymond Unwin attempted to sequentially capture the visual experience of walking along city streets (Figure 2.15 and 2.16). This early example of serialized vision may be seen as a precursor to planning’s link with environmental psychology, and with authors 64 such as Gordon Cullen (1961), Kevin Lynch (1970) and Allan Jacobs (1985) who championed the method in the latter half of the twentieth century. 65 Figure 2.10: Overview of Sampled Graphics from APA’s 100 Essential Books of Planning a Proximity Angle Mode Depiction Medium/Close Range (30) Long Range (95) Vertical Angle: Oblique Above Medium/Close Range (249) Long Range (17) Vertical Angle: Eye Level Photographs Vertical Angle: Oblique Above (12) Vertical Angle: Eye Level (33) Drawings b Horizontal Section (16) Vertical Angle: Eye Level (1) Medium/Close Range (73) Long Range (143) Vertical Angle: Right Angle Diagrams & Maps Existing Environment Vertical Angle: Oblique Above (14) Medium Range (9) Long Range (4) Vertical Angle: Eye Level Drawings b Medium/Close Range (33) Long Range (52) Vertical Angle: Right Angle Horizontal Section (3) Diagrams Proposed Environment Drawings b (28) Fantastic or Ideal Environments Built Environment Diagrams (38) Data Diagrams (52) Theory Conceptual Notes: a figure does not include all possible combinations; b includes drawings, renderings, sketches and paintings 66 Figure 2.11: New York Street View from Whyte The close proximity of the figures depicted in this scene and the head-on angle position the viewer as a part of the crowd and as a participant in, rather than simply an observer of, the life of the street. Source: (Whyte 1980) 67 Figure 2.12: Allan Jacobs street view of London’s Regent Street The curve of Regent Street is a popular image for planners, appearing in the work of Raymond Unwin and many others. Jacob’s drawing focuses on the strong architectural street wall, but the lack of pedestrians and the dominance of the roadway are also indicative of his critique of the urban form. Source: (Jacobs 1995) 68 Figure 2.13: Street view from Vuchic Transportation for Livable Cities Street views are not simply included in works that deal with urban design; they are also used in many of the books with a social science perspective, such as this scene used in a book on transportation by Vuchic Source: (Vuchic 1999) 69 Figure 2.14: An example of the plan view genre from Bacon’s 1967 Design of Cities Source: (Bacon 1967) 70 Figure 2.15: Unwin’s map of Oxford High Street The arrows indicate the location and direction of the camera’s view finder. The map is followed by a series of photographs (see Figure 2.16 below) that document the visual environment of the area from the pedestrian’s point of view Source: (Unwin 1994 [1909]) 71 Figure 2.16: Photograph from position “E” on the map above Source: (Unwin 1994 [1909]) 72 Figure 2.17: Example of the aerial view genre from Nolen Often proposed as a foundational image of planning (Boyer 1983; De Certeau 1988), distant aerial views should more appropriately be understood as just one of the profession’s visual genres. The number of aerial views is significantly lower than the number of street and plan views. Source: (Nolen 2005 [1927]) Visual Rhetoric in Use The following section examines in more detail the arguments made by a number of graphics in planning and urban design. Unlike the previous section, no attempt is made to address the breadth of possibilities; rather the following examples highlight the rhetorical nature of specific planning images in context. 73 Figure 2.18: Uncle Sam delivering public housing Source: (Meyerson and Banfield 1955) 74 With the beard, top hat and stripped trousers typically associated with the figure of Uncle Sam, a monstrously proportioned figure of the federal government delivers public housing to the city (Figure 2.18). Although not as stern as James Montgomery Flagg’s war recruitment icon, the Uncle Sam of Meyerson and Banfield’s 1955 book, Politics, Planning and the Public Interest, is similarly tall and muscular. He is drawn at an enormous scale and viewed from below so that his presence is made even more forceful. Much like the figures in the Marvel comic books of the same period, the hands and legs are disproportionally large compared to the remainder of Uncle Sam’s body and the city below. He is pictured as a giant of Godzilla-like proportions looming over the buildings, with all of the monstrous destruction implied. Like Flagg’s military poster, this is a figure of obligation, but perhaps not a desired obligation (Capozzola 2008). However, while the visuals are ominous Uncle Sam’s words: “where do you want it” are those of a furniture mover who is just doing his job. Unlike other representations of Uncle Sam as a protector, in this depiction he is simply a worker, placing down the things that have been ordered by others. In McClendon and Quay’s Mastering Change (1988), cartoon figures are also utilized to critique the planning profession. However unlike the gigantic Uncle Sam above, in McClendon and Quay’s book an aging and over-weight planning director visually describes the planning process (Figure 2.19). The figure points to an apparently chaotic and random decision tree which leads to the trash can. In the book, this graphic is located adjacent to a straightforward, linear strategic planning diagram. Through this 75 juxtaposition the authors compare the planning process with the simpler strategic planning process and suggest that the establishment of simple end targets, rather than legalistic processes, should be the goal of planning action. Figure 2.19: The Planning Process Source: (McClendon and Quay 1988) Often described as planning’s first “Green Book”, Ladislaus Segoe’s (1941) Local Planning Administration sought to solidify the position of the planning profession within an institutional framework and describes the contributions of planners to local government. The diagram in Figure 2.20 is used to demonstrate the quantity of through traffic in congested areas. The lines do not follow the street pattern; they simply record 76 the entrance and exit points of this traffic. The strong black web obliterates the city below and the resulting chaos underscores Segoe’s argument about the undesirability of through traffic. The graphic contributes to the development of a “generative metaphor” (Schön 1979) prevalent at this time and makes the development of an expressway through the area seem a desirable and even inevitable option. Figure 2.20: Representation of traffic from Segoe’s Local Planning Administration Source: (Segoe 1941) 77 Figure 2.21 illustrates a page from McHarg’s (1969) Design with Nature. Three photographs depict an existing built environment from street level. The first photograph in the top left corner shows two children playing on a stoop. The children have apparently been caught on camera, innocently engaged in their daily lives. One male child looks directly at the camera, while another female child appears to be engaged in play. The direct look of the first child demands attention, but his look is also a blank, bored stare. The children are confined to a stoop and presumably live without park or other open space. A second photograph shows a residential street and the angle of view highlights the long, seemingly endless street wall. In this shot, the distinctive and particular character of each individual building is reduced. Finally, a third photograph shows a commercial strip from the pedestrian’s point of view. It is an auto dominated landscape and includes a cacophony of signs designed, not for those who are walking, but for the auto-oriented traveler. As a group, these photographs were included in a chapter that McHarg titled “The Plight”. Together they visually represent his critique of the American landscape in its present and future form. The photographs are a “visible testament to the American mercantile creed –the hamburger stand, gas station, diner, the ubiquitous billboards, sagging wires, the parking lot, car cemetery and that most complete conjunction of land rapacity and human disillusion, the subdivision”(McHarg 1969, 20). The rhetorical power of an image is made up of the selection and arrangement of the elements contained within it and by the arrangement and relationship of images on a 78 page. Following the Western convention of reading from left to right, the arrangement of these three photographs is significant. The two images of the contemporary city are located on the left, as a “given”, while the new, auto-dominated city is located on the right, suggesting a progression. Figure 2.21: Page layout from Design with Nature Source: (McHarg 1969) 79 Conclusions Images are fundamental to the planning and urban design profession, yet they remain critically unexamined. There may be an assumption that with the declining significance of comprehensive, or as Peter Hall (2002) calls it “blueprint” planning, images are simply unproblematic tools without theoretical importance. Through an analysis of the material manifestations of the profession’s broader visual practices, this chapter has described what is depicted, the mode of presentation, the intellectual references and the function of images in planning and urban design. Images document, analyze and communicate planning ideas. Most importantly, through the selection and arrangement of individual elements within the image, as well as on the page, they also aim to persuade. The heavy reliance on depicting existing environments suggests that it is important to pay attention to what is shown. Given the global nature of current practice, the current dominance of Western visual examples may not serve the profession well. However, while the absence of images from the non-Western world is a concern, planners should be less worried about an obsession with distancing views. Rather than views from above, planning and urban design images are more likely to be oriented towards the single individual, the street or the building at eye level. As an exploration of the field, this analysis has some fairly significant limitations. The population from which the sample was drawn tells us little about the visual practices of planners beyond the United States. It is also possible that an analysis of actual plans 80 rather than one that reviews books about planning might yield different results. However, given the current lack of scholarship in this area, this study may be considered a first step. Additional work, especially research that examines the profession’s broader visual development and the history of specific images beyond the US context remains to be done. With this in mind the following chapters examine the images contained in plans from a particular historical context. 81 Chapter 3: Visualizing Art and Science in Early Plans for a Los Angeles Civic Center The publication of the Plan of Chicago in 1909 marked the zenith of urban planning’s City Beautiful Movement. The Plan’s inspiring text and lavish renderings were considered paragons of the movement’s ideals and the sources of national and international acclaim. However, in the same year as the Plan’s triumph, and at the height of its popular appeal, members of the professions who would inherit its mantle pronounced the movement dead. At their respective 1909 conferences, architects and planners pilloried the City Beautiful movement. Benjamin Marsh, a New York planner and housing advocate, criticized it for making “the aesthetic an objective in itself” and architect Cass Gilbert implored his colleagues to abandon the movement, declaring “let us have the city useful, the city practical, the city livable, the city sensible, the city anything but the city beautiful.” 10 The eclipse of the City Beautiful by practitioners of a movement that came to be called the City Practical has been described as the moment when the pragmatic and technically-oriented concerns of planning replaced the profession’s aesthetic tradition. 11 The transition apparently highlights planning’s development from an artistic “craft” to a 10 Quoted in Wilson, W.H (1989) The City Beautiful Movement Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press 11 In using the terms City Beautiful and City Practical, I accept, in general, the periodization scheme initially outlined in Scott (1969) American City Planning Since 1890 Berkeley, University of California Press and adopted by many of the contributors to Corbin Sies and Silver (1996) Planning the Twentieth- Century American City Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press. Other schemes such those in Peter Hall (2002) Cities of Tomorrow Third Edition, Cambridge, MA, Blackwell Publishing collapse the distinction between the City Practical and the City Functional. 82 scientifically-oriented discipline based on the analysis of data (Scott 1969; Hall 2002). Among planning historians there have been a number of corrections to this simple narrative (Draper 1996; Peterson 2003; Pipkin 2008), yet the idea of one approach smoothly supplanting the other remains remarkably resilient. This chapter continues to challenge the easy distinctions of City Beautiful and City Practical, of art and science by recounting the story of the ultimately unsuccessful civic center plans of the Allied Architects Association. With a focus on the city center, the use of a Beaux-Arts architectural style, broad boulevards and landscaped public plazas, the Association’s Plan for an Administrative Center clearly resembles City Beautiful planning. Yet, while some of the plan’s visual representations evoke the City Beautiful, other images and much of the plan’s accompanying text highlight the use of new “scientifically” collected data and stress the ideas of mobility, practicality and efficiency. Thus, the Association’s plan represents, not a succession of art by science, but an apparent fusion of the two. The failure to adopt a plan for the civic center of Los Angeles in the 1920s is often described as one of the city’s many missed opportunities (Schuchardt 1941; Scott 1969; Starr 1990; Fogelson 1993). The conventional story of this moment is usually told as follows: at the behest of the Los Angeles City Council in 1923, the landscape architectural firm of Cook & Hall drew up a plan for a civic center. At the same time, the Allied Architects Association created a better, albeit more costly, plan for the area. When pressed to implement a plan, the County of Los Angeles and the Southern California 83 Chapter of the American Institute of Architects adopted the Allied Architects’ plan, while the Los Angeles City Council and Chamber of Commerce supported the Cook & Hall scheme. The inability of these parties to agree led to the adoption of a compromised and uninspired civic center plan developed by Warner Ruchti of the Regional Planning Commission that was essentially ignored by most of the institutions involved (Figure 3.1). In this simplified telling of the story we learn that, despite claims to the contrary, planning is, and always has been, a political activity. For example, for Robert Fogelson, the failure to implement the Association’s plan revealed the “aesthetic shortcomings of an urban policy based on the primacy of transportation and the parsimony of government” and confirmed his argument that city planning in Los Angeles was successful only insofar as its goals corresponded to the wishes of developers and private enterprise (Fogelson 1993, 265). More poetically, describing the clash of the Allied Architects Beaux Arts aesthetic with City Hall politics, historian Kevin Starr (1990) saw the failure of the more elaborate plan as the eclipse of “romantic” Los Angeles by a newer “Babylonian” city hungry for power. For Starr, the “American Italy” was irretrievably lost when the Romanesque-style City Hall and County Court House were replaced by a “modern” Art Deco building (Figures 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4). This new City Hall, an “attenuated version of the mausoleum of Halicarnasus” became a potent symbol of the city’s material aspirations, appropriately foreshadowed the death of the City’s progressive civic ideals (Scott 1969; Starr 1990, 112). 84 However, what is absent from this account is any sense of how planning as a profession was practiced in Los Angeles at this time. While I certainly don’t discount the importance of politics in this arena, as I suggested in the introduction, I am actually more interested in the processes of plan making. For me, the study of actual plans, even those that have been described as failures, serves an important function in an applied social science such as planning. Figure 3.1: Civic Center plan adopted by the City and County of Los Angeles, 1929 The plan was prepared by Werner Ruchti for the Regional Planning Commission Source: Jermain, N. L. (1934). The History of the Los Angeles Civic Center Movement. Unpublished USC Master's Thesis 85 Figure 3.2: LA’s Old City Hall on Broadway, occupied from 1888 until 1928 Source: Los Angeles Public Library SPNB Image Number 00018256 86 Figure 3.3: Los Angeles County Court House on Temple circa 1900 The photograph is taken looking west, perhaps from North Main Street Source: USC Digital Library, Dick Whittington Photography Collection, 1924 – 1987, whit-m1870 87 Figure 3.4: The Courthouse looking east from Temple and Broadway circa 1930 The old Hall of Records is on the right and City Hall is behind. A corner of the Hall of Justice designed by the Allied Architects Association is visible on the left Source: USC Digital Library, Dick Whittington Photography Collection, 1924 – 1987, whit-m985 Finding Center: Locating Los Angeles’ Civic Space Given the adamant rejection of the City Beautiful by contemporary planners and architects, it was somewhat surprising to find what appeared to be such a plan in Los Angeles fifteen years after the movement’s apparent death. The AAA’s focus on many of 88 the key tenets of the City Beautiful challenges the idea suggested by Hise and Deverall (2000) that Los Angeles had only a “brief infatuation” with the movement. In actuality, the AAA plan represents a long line of City Beautiful planning in Los Angeles, a legacy that begun with Charles Mulford Robinson’s 1909 report to the Municipal Art Commission. Robinson, a key figure in the City Beautiful, shared with other authors of the movement a keen interest in the development of civic centers. In various publications, City Beautiful advocates developed a “theory” of the civic center in which it was argued that the center should be a “beautiful ensemble”, grouped around public space or an intersection of radial streets that would allow for the “visual delights of perspectives” (Wilson 1989, 92). City Beautiful planners suggested that the architectural style of these centers should be stately and dignified in order to reflect the best traits of the city’s inhabitants and that the built environment should inspire civic pride and patriotism. Yet, while designed to promote an apparently American democratic zeal, City Beautiful plans were firmly rooted in a European pedigree. The cities of Berlin and Paris in particular were held up as models to be emulated (Wilson 1989). City Beautiful planners saw the ideal civic center as a complement, rather than a replacement of the city’s retail and commercial center. The center would defer to existing social and economic patterns of development and would be “compatible with commerce, yet convenient for the public” (Wilson 1989, 92). The aim of the civic center would be to 89 focus citizen attention downtown, a view that complemented the ideas of municipal authorities and downtown boosters. 12 In Los Angeles, conventional wisdom has suggested that progressive reformers, such as Robinson had little effect on the city’s early development. Indeed, histories of the Los Angeles Civic Center have frequently dismissed Robinson’s contributions. For example, in a report prepared for the Department of City Planning in the 1940s, planner Henry Wall suggests that the Robinson plan “was discussed and filed away.” 13 However, while Robinson’s plan was never implemented in full, it was largely responsible for fixing the geographic location of the civic center (Figure 3.5). Additionally while the plan may have sat on a shelf, many planners and public officials continued to support the idea of a civic center. Well into the 1920s, these advocates relied on City Beautiful rhetoric to argue for a central civic center. Los Angeles City Councilman Allan envisioned a center that will be a “source of pride” for the city and Gordon Whitnall, the Planning Director, stressed that the creation of a civic center will act as the “focal point of the metropolitan area.” 14 12 Apart from Burnham and Bennett’s Plan for Chicago, Denver’s City Center Plan of 1907 and the Senate Park Commission plan of Washington are particularly well known examples of City Beautiful planning. 13 Wall (1948) Historical Background of the Los Angeles Civic Center Los Angeles, Department of City Planning Los Angeles. P.1 14 Los Angeles Times. Civic Center Approval to be Asked on Ballot. March 16, 1923 90 Figure 3.5: Robinson’s areas of intervention overlaid on LA’s 2009 downtown street plan Robinson proposed the development of an Administrative Center, a Cultural Center and a transportation hub linked through a system of wide, tree-lined boulevards. The “Temple Block” on which Robinson proposed to locate the City’s Administrative Center was just a few blocks away from the Los Angeles Plaza, the city’s original administrative site. The Temple Block had also been the site of the City’s first Anglo City Hall, before the 1888 building was built on Broadway and Third Street. In 1909, the block was the location of the Los Angeles County Court House and a Juvenile Jail building. Based on Robinson’s plan, a County Hall of Records was built adjacent to the Court House in 1911. Although absent from all civic center plans because of its odd alignment, the Hall of Records was not demolished until 1974. Note: Base map adapted from Los Angeles Civic Center Shared Facilities and Enhancement Plan, 1996 Administrative Center Cultural Center, including library & museums Railway Station with boulevard connection to cultural & administrative center 91 Figure 3.6: Perspective of Robinson’s planned Fifth Street Boulevard, 1907 The graphic was printed in the Los Angeles Times. The boulevard was designed to connect the existing Arcade railway station to the city’s new cultural center at Fifth between Flower and Hill the site of the Normal School. Source: Los Angeles Times, Dec 1, 1907; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Los Angeles Times (1881 - 1986) page II1 92 In 1918 Mayor Frederick T. Woodman appointed a Civic Center Committee headed by William Mulholland, then Chief Engineer of the Water Department. The Mulholland Committee, as it came to be known, revisited Robinson’s plan and the location of the civic center. Plans were submitted for three different areas. Some, following Robinson’s suggestions considered the area around Temple and Broadway, others advocated for the area around Fifth and Olive Streets, while a third group favored southern sites near Broadway and Pico or Broadway and Washington. 15 The Mulholland Committee recommended the Temple and Broadway site. However it wasn’t until 1923 when the various options were put to voters that the precise location of the Civic Center was finally established. 16 The Allied Architect’s Plan for an Administrative Center In the spring of 1923, in conjunction with a bond request, the idea of where to locate the civic center was put to voters through a ballot initiative. As part of the promotional campaign in support of this initiative, the Planning Commission employed the firm of Cook & Hall to prepare plans for the area’s layout (Figure 3.7). 17 According 15 Wall (1948) Historical Background of the Los Angeles Civic Center Los Angeles, Department of City Planning Los Angeles 16 Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles (1924) Report of the Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles on an Administrative Center Plan for the County of Los Angeles and the City of Los Angeles, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles, Collection 1257, Box 12, Wall (1948) Historical Background of the Los Angeles Civic Center Los Angeles, Department of City Planning Los Angeles 17 Los Angeles Times, “Civic Center Approval to be Asked on Ballot”, March 16, 1923 P.111. 93 to the city’s Planning Director, Gordon Whitnall, the Cook & Hall sketch was not intended to be a final plan, but was simply to be used to give the public something to look at during the election period. Figure 3.7: Plan of the Administrative Center prepared by Cook and Hall Source: Jermain, N. L. (1934). The History of the Los Angeles Civic Center Movement. Unpublished USC Master's Thesis The Allied Architects became involved when planning commissioner and Allied Architect member Sumner Hunt, advised the Association’s president that in addition to preparing the layout, Cook & Hall were also developing “a perspective giving a concrete suggestion of the possible architectural development of the buildings that will ultimately 94 occupy the site.” 18 Hunt clearly felt that, as landscape architects, Cook & Hall could not be expected to appropriately design buildings and urged the Allied Architects to “make a study from the partly developed suggestions of Cook & Hall”. 19 At this point in time, the Allied Architects had been active for less than two years. The Association was established in the summer of 1921 by members of the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects who felt that large public buildings could best be designed by a team, rather than by individual architects. The Association described its goals as the advancement of “the art of architecture, both as a professional and public duty” but the group’s egalitarian public spirit only partially concealed a strong professional self-interest that drove the organization to seek high profile projects. As the organization’s president argued, As Architects, we admit that the public is not as impressed with us or our services as we feel it should be; we admit that the engineer, the contractor and the building company have taken away much that properly belongs to this profession to carry. 20 The number of members in the Association varied from year to year, although the figure usually hovered around 70. The work of the AAA was organized through a 18 Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles, “Letter from Sumner Hunt, Chairman Building Committee, City Planning Commission”, March 10 1923 Minutes of Special Informal Meeting March 12, 1923, Box 2. 19 Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles, “Letter from Sumner Hunt, Chairman Building Committee, City Planning Commission”, March 10 1923 Minutes of Special Informal Meeting March 12, 1923, Box 2. 20 AAA Minutes of Meetings Jan 2, 1923 Volume 3, Box 2. 95 specific occupational hierarchy with member architects supported by a team of technical and administrative staff that included draftsman, engineers and contractors. 21 The group had been given a number of large commissions and starting in December 1923, Association members met with city officials, traffic engineers and city leaders to begin their study of the civic center. To assist in the plan’s preparation, members of the Association were given statistical information about Los Angeles and its anticipated growth. Representatives of the city and the county were invited to present at Association meetings, as were various consultants working for the city. Gordon Whitnall of the planning department gave Association members topographical maps of the area and an aerial photograph (Figure 3.8). The topographical map was used as a base from which to sketch some of the proposed schemes (Figure 3.9). How the aerial photograph was used is less obvious, although I discuss its possible influence below. With this information, the Association began to work. According to their records, a total of 995 sketches were produced, considered and discussed during the plan’s preparation (Figures 3.10, 3.11 and 3.12). While described by the AAA as sketches, the images prepared during the plan’s development are better understood as “study drawings”. 22 Architectural study drawings are made early in the design process and serve 21 AAA, “Report of the President of the Allied Architects Association”, January 8th 1923, Minutes of Meetings Jan 2, 1923 Volume 3, Box 2. 22 Architectural sketches are more likely to be a form of visual note taking drawn from direct observation and alluding to a specific scene. Sketches may serve as the source for other drawings, including study drawings.Fraser and Henmi (1994) Envisioning Architecture: An Analysis of Drawing New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold 96 as generators of ideas, rather than simply recorders of information. Typically they document an active formulation of ideas and are distinct from the final drawings that are made for presentation. As “instruments of thought” (Herbert 1993, 1), the study drawings provide insights into the AAA architect’s graphic thinking process, record moments of speculation, insight or redirection and illustrate the visual culture of urban design. 97 Figure 3.8: Aerial photograph given to members of the AAA by Whitnall The yellow outlined square indicates the plan area. Source: UCLA Young Research Library, Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles Records, 1921- 1944, Call number 1257, box 2, Minutes of Meeting page 79 98 Figure 3.9: Sketch prepared by the Allied Architects Association The image shows trace lines from the topographical drawing which was used as a base map (an example is highlighted in red). Source: UCLA Young Research Library, Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles Records, 1921- 1944 99 Figure 3.10: The ideas in sketch number 69 were approved by members of the Association This sketch served as the initial point of departure for many subsequent drafts. According to the AAA report, the use of Bunker Hill as park space was seen to have turned the hill from “traffic barrier” to “scenic asset”, and the various, straightened boulevards make the area “easily approachable from every direction”. Source: UCLA Young Research Library, Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles Records, 1921- 1944, 100 Figure 3.11: Sketch 89 was approved at the Association’s second meeting. The double semi-circle around Los Angeles’ Fort Moore hill is a dominant feature, as is the symmetrical arrangement of buildings indicated by the dark squares and rectangles. Source: UCLA Young Research Library, Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles Records, 1921- 1944, 101 Figure 3.12: Allied Architects Sketch Number 97 The penultimate sketch approved by the Association, places a greater emphasis on the roadways and the site’s context. Source: UCLA Young Research Library, Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles Records, 1921- 1944 102 Figure 3.13 a, b, c and d: Preliminary sketches from the Association are drawn free hand In Sketch Numbers 1 (a), 2 (b) and 4 (c) AAA members used dotted lines to indicate the location of tunnels under Bunker and Fort Moore Hills. In sketch number 2 triangular shapes and monumental spaces are created by the intersection of two diagonal streets. In each of the sketches, shading is used to distinguish the study area from its surroundings. Source: UCLA Young Research Library, Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles Records, 1921- 1944 103 Figure 3.13 b (continued) Source: UCLA Young Research Library, Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles Records, 1921- 1944 104 Figure 3.13 c (continued) Source: UCLA Young Research Library, Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles Records, 1921- 1944 105 Figure 3.13 d (continued) Source: UCLA Young Research Library, Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles Records, 1921- 1944 106 Figure 3.14: These three sketches use the same base map for the surrounding area. The symmetrical arrangement of buildings and landscaping in emphasized. Number 36 is one of only 5 sketches that uses cast shadows to indicate the height of the buildings in the area. Source: UCLA Young Research Library, Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles Records, 1921- 1944, 107 Overall, the sketches are quite similar, obviously reflective of the members’ similar disciplinary training. A number of the Association’s members were graduates of the École de Beaux Arts in Paris, and their common education is reflected in the ways that many of the sketches focus on a monumental axis, create a hierarchy of spaces and demonstrate an overall symmetry, all elements considered typical of the Beaux Arts approach. 23 The École regarded the plan as the “indispensible basis of effective composition” (Chafee 1975, 9), so it is not surprising to find that all of the sketches are depicted in plan view. This type of view eliminates some information, in this case the dimension of height, in order to focus on the two dimensions of length and width. Highlighting the horizontal aspects of a plan emphasizes the relationships between and among buildings (Fraser and Henmi 1994) and contributes to an understanding of the sketches as steps towards the development of a complete composition; an idea that was critical to the disciplinary training of Beaux Arts architects. The sketches, like the plan’s drawings that are discussed below, are typical of the City Beautiful approach and specifically tie the AAA’s work to this tradition. On December 31, 1924 the Association formally presented their Plan for an Administrative Center to the City and County of Los Angeles. Unlike other City Beautiful plans which were often bound and professionally printed, the simple cover and 23 At least five of the architects working with the AAA trained at the École in Paris, including Robert Farquhar, Charles Cheney and David Allison who submitted drawings for the civic center. Other AAA members trained at American universities directly influenced by the École approach including: MIT, Cornell, Columbia and Harvard, among others. See Noffsinger, J.P. (1955). 108 typed pages of this draft indicate that the report was written for an internal audience of officials, rather than the public at large. The report does suggest that the AAA intended to complete another more formal report, but this document does not appear to have been produced. 24 The report acknowledges the contributions and support of various City and County officials, including members of the City Council, County Supervisors, Regional and City Planning Commissions. The input of the city’s Traffic Commission is specifically noted, as is the support of national planning consultants, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Harland Bartholomew, who were at this time, preparing the city’s Major Traffic Street Plan. In some sense, the adjectives used in the report’s text are typical of the City Practical idiom. For example, the plan is described as “logical”, “practical and efficient”. The text also suggests that design decisions were made through “scientific” means by prioritizing, quantifying and coding the information they had received. However, like many City Beautiful plans, the report continues to stress the role of the civic center as a site for the development of particularly American civic ideals. It favorably compares the plan to other cities in the US that played important roles in the nation’s founding. For example, the report frequently refers to Philadelphia and Washington D.C. as cities to be emulated. 24 AAA (1924) Report of the Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles on an Administrative Center Plan for the County of Los Angeles and the City of Los Angeles, page 5, Box 12. 109 The plan’s nine images are reproduced as large black and white fold outs at the back of the report. While it is possible to separate these images into four distinct groups based on the similarities of their visual style, here I will discuss two of the most significant of these images. Figure 3.15: Engraving of the AAA governing drawing for a Plan for an Administrative Center The engraving was created by Arthur Millier, an influential artist, critic and educator active in Southern California during this time Source: UCLA Young Research Library, Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles Records, 1921- 1944 110 The first image, called the “governing drawing” by the Association, is most like other City Beautiful plans and is evocative of a particularly humanist sensibility (Figure 3.15). This drawing shows the complete plan including recommended building locations, streets and landscaping. 25 This image draws upon the work of Renaissance masters, Michelangelo in particular, to link the overall plan with a longer artistic tradition. Specifically, the drawing includes a cartouche in the lower left corner featuring male and female nudes as decorative elements. The female figure quotes Michelangelo’s “Dawn” from the tomb of Lorenzo de Medici in Florence, while the male figure refers to Michelangelo’s Adam, painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The desire of the Association to awaken and to give life to the city of Los Angeles is made particularly clear by these figures. Unfortunately, the use of these figures also reveals the architectural conceit that underpins the Association’s grand vision for Los Angeles. In Michelangelo’s painting, Adam receives life from God as he reclines on a bare landscape. The original painting describes not only the emergence of the human race, but also the moment when “man” becomes master of the earth. Yet, as evidenced by the aerial photograph, this part of Los Angeles is hardly a barren wilderness. It is a complicated mix of existing streets, structures and open space. Unfortunately, the Association’s plan denies all of these things in favor of an image that can perhaps best be described as an homage to a Renaissance tradition of aristocratic and papal power. The AAA plan recalls Kevin Starr’s 25 Ibid, page 13. 111 Mediterranean notion of Los Angeles rather than the modern metropolis that other city leaders wanted it to become. The use of Spanish street names in these drawings also links the AAA’s efforts to a particularly romantic European ideal. The plan looks to the past for inspiration and links this part of Los Angeles to a time of “rich romance” that is reminiscent of the “Spanish period of the padres and missions.” 26 The names were actually suggested by the Landmarks Club, a group founded in the 1895 by local author, Charles Lummis and others to preserve the missions of California. Members of the Landmarks Club had been particularly successful in constructing a history of Los Angeles based on a selective understanding of its past. The plan’s treatment of the Plaza encourages the area to be seen as a “living tableau” rather than the center of an existing Hispanic community (Kropp 2001). In this way, the plan’s picturesque visual style is used to exclude the area’s inhabitants. In fact, none of the drawings included as part of the AAA plan represent any people. There is no reference to the populations or individuals living in any of the areas under consideration. However, while this first drawing evokes the past, a second group of images is very much about the city’s present and future (Figure 3.16). One of these drawings relates the Association’s plan to the Major Traffic Street Plan that was being developed at this time by planning consultants, Olmsted, Bartholomew and Cheney. The image hints at a 26 Ibid, page 50, Box 12. 112 new visual style that may have been influenced by the view presented in Whitnall’s aerial photograph. Figure 3.16: A plan showing how AAA’s scheme relates to the Major Street Traffic Plan Source: UCLA Young Research Library, Allied Architects Association of Los Angeles Records, 1921- 1944 In a passing reference, Mel Scott (1969) has suggested that the use of aerial photography by the LA planning department was an early milestone in the history of the profession. In the scholarly literature aerial photographs have typically been associated with the creation of a distant, static view (Piper 2002), but a very different sentiment emerges from the aerial used by the Association. The photograph shows the city’s street patterns and while in some sense it does encourage a separation from human activities, it 113 also emphasizes the paths that facilitated movement around the area. The aerial view, rather than freezing a particular image of the city, may have generated an increased sense of movement and possibility. Whitnall, who provided the aerial during the plan’s preparation, had discussed aerial photography at a conference attended by members of the Association in the spring of 1924. 27 Whitnall had flown with the crew responsible for producing a series of aerial photographs of Los Angeles and while his description of these flights is predictably loaded with god-like references, he also suggests that when the plane descended from 12,000 to 6000 feet he was able to see the “motion of cities”. This motion was “visible through the power of reason, aided by the sense of sight” and he likens his mobile vision to motion pictures where movement comes “out of that which did not seem to move.” From Whitnall’s comments we get some sense of how members of the Association may have understood the aerial photograph not as a static representation, but as an image that encouraged them to think about movement and individual mobility. There certainly is nothing static about the image they produced to describe how the Major Traffic Street Plan would relate to the Administrative Center Plan. The variation of thick and thin dotted lines look very much like cars on the street and the strong black lines appear to move across the page with a force of their own. 27 Gordon Whitnall, “City and Regional Planning in Los Angeles” Proceedings of the Sixteenth National Conference on City Planning 114 Reception of the Allied Architects Plan Even before the report was submitted to the City and County, the AAA had formed an “Education Committee” to generate interest in their vision for the city. With the report’s publication they hired an advertising consultant to organize a more formal publicity campaign. 28 As part of this campaign, the AAA added a model, a birds-eye view and an etching of the governing plan to the graphics that had been prepared for the report. The etching (Figure 3.14 above), by artist Arthur Millier, was given to “125 friends” as a new year’s greeting in January 1925 and 1,000 “half tone re-copies” of the etching were distributed to business men and local civic groups in the city, including members of the City Planning Commission, the Chamber of Commerce, the Los Angeles Section American Society of Civil Engineers and the Realty Board, among others. 29 AAA members also embarked on a national communication campaign. Exhibitions of the model and the plan’s graphics were organized in New York, Philadelphia and Cleveland. 30 They received press coverage in the US Chamber of Commerce’s monthly magazine, the National Municipal Review, the Journal of the American Institute of Architects and many others. 31 The St. Louis Post Dispatch even 28 AAA. Meeting Minutes November 25, 1924, Box 4 29 AAA. Bulletin January 1, 1925 Volume 1 No. 3, and Bulletin February 1, 1925 Volume 1 No. 4, Box 23. AAA. Minutes November 14 1924, Box 4 30 Los Angeles Times “Journals Laud Civic Project” July 27, 1925 pg. A7. 31 Ibid. 115 reported that, “Los Angeles points the way to the solution of the problem of planning municipal plazas and centers and the designing and building of public buildings.” 32 Yet unlike the publicity campaign that led to the adoption of the Plan of Chicago (Smith 2006), the Allied Architects’ Plan failed to mobilize either politicians or the public to act. Part of the reason may be attributed to the complicated political and institutional environment of Los Angeles. For example, AAA member and traffic commissioner Charles Cheney suggested that the plan may be doomed because of the “jealousy” between Los Angeles City and County authorities. Indeed, while officials with the County of Los Angeles were quick to endorse the plan, members of the Los Angeles City Council reacted less enthusiastically. However, there may also have been another reason. According to AAA members, the blame for the plan’s failure was the result of poor visuals. When the AAA report was initially submitted, it received the endorsement of various professional organizations including the Los Angeles Planning Commission which voted seventeen to four in favor of the plan. 33 The planning commission sent a resolution to the City Council that recommended the AAA plan but the Council took no action. 34 When it became clear that this inaction represented more than a temporary delay, the AAA was urged to take their plan directly to the tax-payers. Members felt that 32 AAA Bulletin January 1, 1925 Volume 1 No 3, Box 23. 33 A.C. Martin was among the four planning commissioners who rejected the plan at the March 1925 meeting. 34 AAA Meeting Minutes, March 6, 1925, Box 5 116 if the public demanded a coherent plan, members of the City Council would be forced to adopt the AAA vision. However, despite its wide circulation and many professional endorsements, some felt that the plan did not communicate well to the public at large. The AAA’s publicity consultant suggested that one of the reasons that the 1923 Cook and Hall plan had continued to be considered by the City Council was that it was “shown as a picture.” To win public support, the consultant felt that the AAA should also “make a picture out of their plan.” 35 According to AAA member, Harwood Hewitt, “the plan will never be sold to the tax-payer until it is visualized” and a number of professionals from outside of the organization also suggested that the AAA could do more to sell the plan visually. 36 At a meeting at the Los Angeles City Club in 1925, the plans were presented to a wide variety of civic leaders. Among the praise for the plan’s landscaping, treatment of Bunker Hill and traffic considerations, a number of speakers commented specifically on the deficiencies of the plan’s images. P.L. Noel of the planning commission suggested that the graphics that had been submitted were too difficult for his fellow commissioners to interpret and “almost impossible for the layman to visualize.” 37 As a planning commissioner it is likely that Noel had seen copies of the widely circulated Plan of Chicago which included an enormous array of visual materials. Indeed, the many views of Chicago painted by Jules Guerin for this plan are often credited with its success (Smith 2006). While some of Guerin’s perspectives have been criticized for 35 AAA, Minutes October 23, 1925, Box 5 36 Ibid. 37 Los Angeles Times “Center Not to Be Hurried” January 7, 1925 117 the ways in which the buildings dwarf the people that surround them, many of his paintings do show how space is used by the population (Figures 3.17 and 3.18). In contrast, the AAA graphics are entirely devoid of people. The principal drawings include few landmarks and even the streets have been re-named. Nothing of the familiar Los Angeles remains in these drawings and much of the local context has been stripped away. In addition, compared to the many perspectives included in the Plan of Chicago, the AAA produced only one. The AAA perspective attempts to include the entire plan in this one view. As a result, it represents the area from a very distant vantage point and is far removed from the everyday reality of the city. 118 Figure 3.17: Rendering by French painter, Jules Guerin from the Plan of Chicago The image shows a view of the Chicago River and how the river continues to function within the city’s economic system. Source: (Burnham and Bennett 1993 [1909]) 119 Figure 3.18: Perspective of Michigan Avenue by Jules Guerin for the Plan of Chicago Source: (Burnham and Bennett 1993 [1909]) While the AAA plan was pending approval before the City Council, the city’s Department of Public Works was moving forward with plans to build the new City Hall on a site that had been recommended by the original Cook and Hall scheme of 1923. There were many pleas to postpone the city hall project until a plan for the overall area had been established, but the Mayor was determined to move quickly. The City Hall 120 building site designated in the Cook and Hall plan was incompatible with the AAA’s plan and while the AAA submitted a bid to design the new building, their offer was rejected in favor of a team made up of architects John Parkinson, John C. Austin, and Albert C. Martin. 38 Martin had been a particularly vehement critic of the AAA’s work and his selection ensured that the AAA plan was not considered in establishing the final location of City Hall. In an architectural journal, Martin had accused the group of “chasing the streets of our cities to get work at the best possible figures” and then using the common drafting room to complete this work and suggested that the AAA existed solely so that those who do not have the ability “get a chance to build a big building.” 39 In the end, the principle laid out by one of the group’s early leaders, “to do no politics” did not serve them very well. 40 In his summary of the Association’s accomplishments, AAA President Bergstrom gave some hint of the difficulties the organization had faced, Though the purposes of the Association and its methods of procedure are still maligned, nevertheless the Association has continued to grow in public esteem. Those who profess not to believe in its principles have advanced no constructive criticism nor any logical arguments against the procedure of the Association. They suggest no method of awarding of public work of an architectural character, which is not based on and does 38 AAA Minutes April 8 1925, Box 5 39 A.C. Martin’s article was included in the AAA Minutes November 13, 1925, Box 5. The AAA responded to the article by filing charges of unprofessional practice against Martin with the American Institute of Architects (AIA). This prompted a prolonged period of accusations and counter accusations between Martin, his allies and the AAA which Bergstrom later referred to as the “persecutions of 1926”, Minutes November 27, 1925, Box 6. 40 AAA “Report of the President Concerning the Activities of the AAA, January 8th 1923 (for the year 1922) Minutes of Meetings Jan 2, 1923 Volume 3, Box 2. 121 not perpetuate an ability for political intrigue and wire pulling as the best qualification of fitness for an architect for public buildings…. Unquestionably the integrity of its purposes and methods and the soundness of its procedure will prevail against selfish caviling. 41 Thus, whether seen as aesthetically-dominated or scientifically generated, the AAA plan could not overcome the political maneuvering of its competitors. The plan was ultimately dismissed by business groups as too expensive and received little support from the technicians of the Public Works Department who had provided much of the early data. By the beginning of 1926, it is clear that AAA President Bergstrom had given up on the Administrative Center. In a letter to the organization’s members, Bergstrom relates a conversation with a representative of Los Angeles’ Board of Public Works who claimed that, “we will locate the City Hall as we please and anyone who wants a Civic Center can build around it.” Bergstrom sadly relates that “by such ideas is Los Angeles being made, by such is its beauty controlled.” 42 Conclusion This chapter has focused on the legacy of Mulford Robinson and the Allied Architect Association’s plans for the Los Angeles Civic Center. The AAA’s plan in particular represents not a moment of passing from City Beautiful to City Practical, but a point of co-existence between the two. The AAA’s primary visuals reflected a continuation of a European artistic tradition. Yet, at least one of the plan’s drawings was 41 AAA “Report of the President Concerning the Activities of the AAA for the Year 1924”, Bulletin February 1, 1925 Volume 1 No 4, Box 23. 42 AAA Minutes November 27, 1925, Box 6. 122 inspired by the introduction of new visual tools that the AAA associated with mobility, traffic and flight. This account makes clear the political maneuvering that occurs during the planning process, but has also argued that the AAA’s inability to capture the public’s imagination visually played some role in the failure of the Administrative Center plan. Given the intense competition for architectural commissions and incredible growth of Los Angeles during this period, it is difficult to say for certain whether any grand plan would have been acceptable to the general public. However, the inclusion of images inspired by the City Beautiful and the City Practical challenges the assumption that there was a clean break between art and science among planning practitioners at this time. 123 Chapter 4: A Civic Center of “Splendid Isolation” At a meeting with his colleagues in the summer of 1958, Los Angeles County Supervisor John Anson Ford raised an item of serious concern. Scores of young boys had apparently been spotted swimming in the recently dedicated Fort Moore Memorial Fountain (Figure 4.1). Designed to be seen by passengers exiting Union Station several blocks below, the memorial stretched 400 feet along the rise at Hill Street. At a cost of more than $600,000 the enormous structure honored the “hardy pioneers” of the Mormon Battalion who “faced privation and death in extending the frontiers of our country” and marked the spot where the “first American flag was raised” over Los Angeles in 1847. While sympathetic to the youngsters, noting that there were no other pools in the area, Ford recommended immediate action. In addition to the County who was responsible for maintaining the mechanical equipment, the Department of Water and Power who supplied the electricity and the City of Los Angeles who raised and lowered the flag each day, the Los Angeles Police Department would, in the future, be tasked with securing the site from any “unscheduled use”. 43 43 Van Nuys News (1958) Supervisors in Dither; Kids in $694,000 Swimming Hole ; Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) (1956) Mormon Group Raises Flag at Old Ft. Moore 124 Figure 4.1: The Fort Moore Memorial Fountain under construction in 1954 Among the individuals pictured are County Supervisors John Anson Ford & Herbert C. Legg; Burton S. Grant, Chief Engineer for the Department of Water & Power; City Councilman Edward Roybal and Jack Howells from the Sons of Utah Pioneers. Until it was turned off in the 1970s, three pumps sent 7,500 gallons of water over the edge of the fountain each day. 44 Source: USC Digital Archives, Los Angeles Prints Collection, late 1920’s – 1961, examiner-m18594 44 Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) (1985) Splashy Scene 125 This simple story, worthy of only a single paragraph in the Van Nuys News, a small community newspaper, offers a rare glimpse into the minds of those who were responsible for planning the Los Angeles Civic Center at this time. Specifically, it provides evidence of the struggle between the grand visions of planners and the lived reality of everyday life in the city. For while the Mormon battalion had certainly extended the frontier, upon arrival in Los Angeles the boundary between conquerors and the conquered had apparently needed constant policing. The Fort Moore Memorial, as with many other parts of the Civic Center promoted and memorialized the Anglo history of Los Angeles. 45 In this context, the city’s multi-ethnic past (as well as its very real present) was an awkward intrusion. Indeed for much of the twentieth century, the only tangible result of civic center planning in Los Angeles was the remaking of the various residential communities that surrounded it. In approaching the development of the civic center, planners in Los Angeles reflected the ideas of their national counterparts. For example, plans for LA were praised and prominently featured in a 1956 policy report on civic centers by the American 45 Like historian Phoebe Kropp (2001), I use the term Anglo as well as other terms such as Mexican, Japanese, Chinese and African American cautiously. The labels are imperfect and obscure the very real differences among and between these groups. However, as Kropp argues, during this time period, the lumping together of individuals into singularly named communities was often deliberate. Specifically for Anglos it was a way to avoid considering the very real heterogeneity of the multi-ethnic populations living in Los Angeles. Thus in this chapter, Anglo is used to describe Americans citizens and others who were generally of Northern European descent, often migrants from the Midwest or East. The term Mexican is used to describe those of Mexican descent, whether Mexican American citizens, Mexican nationals or recent immigrants to the United States. The terms Chinese, Japanese and African American are similarly generalized. 126 Society of Planning Officials (ASPO). In the report, the ASPO developed guidelines about civic centers in which they argued: Traditionally, the aesthetic effect of a civic center was produced (or attempted) by a style of architecture and a style of site design. European in inspiration, the typical center was formal, monumental, severely balanced, and often ornamented by classic columns and other architectural devices. Somehow, the belief developed that such a group, originally embodying a superior architectural concept, would remain inviolate. In splendid isolation, its beauty was permanent. Experience has proved otherwise, and today increasing interest is being shown in tackling the chief foe of civic beauty – an unsympathetic environment” 46 The ASPO guidelines counter the “traditional” or ornamental approach to civic center planning with a “functional” model that distinguishes between administrative and cultural facilities. Since a “civic center first and foremost is the local headquarters for government,” buildings that house cultural facilities and those that are to be used for government purposes are separated. 47 In this approach, the smooth and efficient workings of government are emphasized. However, while the function of the civic center may have changed since the early decades of the twentieth century, the ASPO does not fundamentally challenge the City Beautiful goal of seeing the civic center as an isolated assembly of buildings. Instead the report describes a number of strategies that can be used to address the “blighted, untidy, 46 American Society of Planning Officials (1956) Planning Advisory Service Information Report No. 83: Civic Center Planning Chicago, p. 19 47 Ibid. 127 and obtrusive neighborhoods that too often surround civic centers.” 48 Specifically, the ASPO suggests that “once the relationship between civic center appearance and a sympathetic environment is apparent, the problem is half solved.” 49 The ASPO summarizes this relationship in three ways. First, through the interaction of civic center buildings and the ground, the society states that natural landscaping and monuments are preferred to “cement, asphalt and automobiles”. Secondly, through a planned link between civic center buildings and the sky, “harmonious vistas and unobstructed views” are favored over “tall buildings and big, lighted signs” and finally through the interaction of buildings and the approach, “blighted environs” can be countered by “compatible land uses and well maintained neighborhoods”. 50 The articulation of these boundaries, between the civic center and the ground, the sky and the approach is intended to clearly separate the institutional environment of the civic center from the city at large. As suggested in this project’s introduction, boundaries are fundamental to the development and maintenance of a political landscape. In the context of Los Angeles, the boundaries of the Civic Center often served as a rebuke of the existing multi-ethnic social environment. For example, in a report responding to the recently enacted California Community Redevelopment Act of 1945, three of the eight communities identified as blighted by the City’s Planning Department were located 48 Ibid., 21 49 Ibid., 24 50 Ibid.. 24 128 immediately adjacent to the Civic Center. 51 While redevelopment of these areas began in earnest in the 1950s and 1960s, the “cleaning up” of the “untidy” areas that surrounded the Los Angeles Civic Center had actually started in the early 1930s. The various communities that bordered the Los Angeles Civic Center were the object of redevelopment much earlier than the postwar peak described in most planning histories. An early example of the way in which the city would implement its redevelopment goals at mid-century can be seen in the replacement of Chinatown by Union Station in the 1930s. The question of consolidating into one station the various rail lines that came into the city had been raised in the early part of the twentieth century. However as a result of various disagreements between the city and the railroads about where to locate the station, the debate dragged on for many years. The railroads argued for their right to maintain the three existing stations, while the city recommended a consolidated site on Alameda Street opposite the Plaza and closest to the Civic Center. The most vocal proponents of the Plaza site, including Harry Chandler, owner and publisher of the Los Angeles Times, were largely drawn from businessmen with interests in the downtown area. These commercial interests were supported by representatives of nineteen local institutions, including the mayor, the president of the city council and the 51 City of Los Angeles Planning Commission (1947) Conditions of Blight: Central Area City of Los Angeles Prepared by Department of City Planning, Los Angeles, The “worst areas” include Chavez Ravine, North Spring and Main Street, the Industrial Area west of the LA River, the area between Los Angeles and Alameda Streets and the Watts area. Areas in “the second highest category of blight” include Central Avenue, the Aliso-Mission area and the section of Watts north of 103 rd Street. Interestingly Bunker Hill is not specifically included in this list, however it was selected as the first development area in the city. This may in fact be due to its proximity to the Civic Center. 129 director of the Regional Planning Commission who (literally) signed on to a plan linking Union Station to the civic center (Figure 4.2). Figure 4.2: A plan with the signatures of a number of Los Angeles planning institutions describing the location of Union Station in relation to the Civic Center, 1932 Source: Jermain (1934). The History of the Los Angeles Civic Center Movement USC unpublished Master’s thesis. 130 Historians (Estrada 2008; Axelrod 2009) have recently described the racially charged nature of this debate over Union Station. While communicating their competing claims, opponents and supporters frequently resorted to racially-charged language to sway public opinion. Opponents of the Plaza site pointed out that the new station would face the city’s Chinatown, suggesting that communities that were currently hidden from view would be spotlighted. Supporters of the Plaza site countered that, rather than highlighting the existing Chinatown the new station provided the perfect opportunity to “beautify” the area. While the two sides disagreed on most things, all parties relied upon generally accepted booster rhetoric. Opponents and proponents of the various Union Station plans employed standard narratives of the city’s Latin past and Plaza roots. As a result, when the final decisions were made, the Plaza was maintained, while Chinatown was removed. The building of Union Station required the demolition of all structures east of Alameda Street (Figure 4.3 shows this demolition in process). Beginning in 1933 and ending with the Station’s completion in 1939, approximately 3,000, mostly Chinese residents were removed from the area (Estrada 2008, 163). While the buildings west of Alameda Street remained, their fate was a topic of intense discussion by planners and the city’s elite. Significantly, in the 1932 plan seen above, the blocks between the station and the civic center are left blank. In reality, these areas were densely packed and heavily populated (Figures 4.4 and 4.5). The view from Union Station towards the Civic Center 131 and the city was a major concern. Years later, Henry Wall of the City’s Planning Department highlighted the importance of this view: …foreseeing the ultimate construction of the Union Depot, [the Planning Department] visualized the impression this location would make upon the individual arriving in the city for the first time…There was a definite attempt in the arrangement to create the feeling that the newcomer had arrived in Old Los Angeles, for before him would be the Spanish structures with arches and tile roofs. Above this he would see buildings representing the government today -- a transition, and then in the background the ultra modern utilitarian structures silhouetted against the western horizon. 52 Wall’s idea that the visitor would see the Civic Center as a spot on a historical progression from “Spanish” past to “utilitarian” present is prominently depicted in plans from the era. However, while many of the area’s significant buildings are retained, the actual population of this area was increasingly displaced in favor of appropriately sanitized ethnic theme parks such as Olvera Street and China City (Kropp 2001; Estrada 2008). Historian Phoebe Kropp and others (2001; Hise 2004) have argued that the creation of Olvera Street transformed an existing Mexican community into an idealized relic and exemplified an ongoing reinvention of Los Angeles history. The success of Olvera Street depended on separating the “Mexican” mythic past and the “Anglo” present. This “cleaving” of the city’s history “allowed the celebration of an imagined Mexican past to support the denial and denigration of Mexicans in the present”(Kropp 2001). 52 Wall (1948) Historical Background of the Los Angeles Civic Center Los Angeles, Department of City Planning Los Angeles 132 However, in the context of the Civic Center, Olvera Street was not simply a tourist destination. More importantly, it was a stopover on the way to Americanization. Contemporary accounts suggest that in addition to tourism, the street served as a “link” between “two great North American nations”; between the immigrant past and the citizen of the future. 53 New immigrants to Los Angeles were filled with “the pride of belonging when they realized that their people were among the first settlers of this part of the United States.” For the tourist and Anglo local, Olvera Street offered “a kaleidoscope of revelry, a quaint corner for fun and forgetfulness” but for the “frightened, bewildered Mexican peon it is an oasis of friendliness, a corner filled with familiar things in a world of the unfamiliar, a spot where the pangs of homesickness are assuaged.” 54 In this way the Plaza functioned much like the Olmstedian landscapes of the Progressive Era, in which through their exposure to properly designed landscapes newly arrived immigrants would derive valuable lessons on citizenship (Fogelson 1986; Klaus 1991). In a similar fashion, Olvera Street and the Plaza area more broadly, was considered an important part of the Los Angeles civic center because it allowed for the promotion of patriotism and civic ideal. However, this civic vision was a limited one. As historian William Estrada reminds us, the introduction of tourism to Olvera Street coincided with an increased police presence and harsh restrictions on free speech at the adjacent Plaza (Estrada 2008). 53 Purwin (1943) An Old Street in a New World 54 Ibid. 133 Figure 4.3: Image from the Examiner newspaper August 28, 1934 The view shows the removal of structures at the site of the proposed Union Station. The view is looking west towards the Civic Center, the Hall of Justice and the Los Angeles City Hall can be seen in the top left corner. Source: USC Digital Archives, Los Angeles Prints Collection, late 1920’s – 1961, examiner-m3109 134 Figure 4.4: View towards Civic Center of the blocks left blank in the 1932 plan The photograph is possibly taken from the Union Station site that was under construction at this time in 1938 Source: USC Digital Archives, Dick Whittington Photography Collection, 1924 – 1987, DW-A11-28-9 135 Figure 4.5: Photograph titled, “Low income living quarters near Civic Center…” The tower on the right side is the Union Station bell tower under construction, circa 1938. Source: USC Digital Archives, Dick Whittington Photography Collection, 1924 – 1987, DW-86-76-3 With the demolition of most of Chinatown, the population of the area was forced to move. Eager to build upon the apparent success of her Olvera Street development, Los Angeles transplant Christine Sterling saw an opportunity to develop a new Chinese area. With the support of Harry Chandler and other local businessmen, Sterling initiated a Chinese-themed shopping district called China City. Building materials were donated by Metro Goldwyn Mayor from the 1937 production of The Good Earth, a film that had 136 been set in China (Estrada 2008). The completed district opened in 1938 slightly north of Olvera Street. The area was enclosed by a “great wall” that ran from Ord Street on the north side, North Main on the east, Macy Street on the south and North Spring Street on the west. Like Olvera Street, China City relied up innumerous ethnic clichés. The area was staffed by costumed merchants, visitors could tour the grounds in rickshaws while enjoying “China burgers” if the idea of Chinese food did not appeal (Estrada 2008). However, alongside Sterling’s China City, a New Chinatown was organized with Chinese American leadership. The Southern Pacific Railroad provided land north of the Plaza and west of China City to the newly formed Los Angeles Chinatown Project Association. Rather than locating in China City as Sterling had expected, many Chinese social and cultural institutions moved to this New Chinatown. The area quickly became the center of a dispersed but culturally linked Chinese community. During its ten years of operation, China City apparently complemented its neighbor at the Plaza. It closed its doors in 1948 after a devastating fire. Sterling suspected arson and apparently blamed the fire on her competitors in New Chinatown. Historian William Estrada (2008) suggests that one of the reasons that Sterling did not support the preservation of the Lugo Adobe that was slated for demolition in the 1950s was that it was being used by Chinese businessmen who were affiliated with the Los Angeles Chinatown Project Association. Over the years, due in part to the efforts of Sterling, the Plaza area, including the Mission Church and Olvera Street became a well recognized part of the Angeleno 137 landscape and its preservation was slightly more secure than what remained of the city’s old Chinatown (although Figure 4.17, discussed later in this chapter suggests that this security was in no way guaranteed). In late 1937, a Civic Center-Union Station Committee, consisting of “one hundred citizens” was formed. The committee, which included architect John C. Austin as Vice Chair and Gordon Whitnall as “Planning Counselor “argued for a coordinating agency to assure the public that a … comprehensive plan will be developed and carried out.” The committee defined itself as an “independent, unbiased, non-political, non-profit organization” in which “no public officials or any persons who have major property or other commercial interests in the area under consideration are members.” 55 This very specific language might explain the apparent exclusion of Chandler who, as described above, had a very substantial interest in the area. The committee defined its “first and major objective” as the establishment of a connection between Union Station and the Civic Center, “and to secure public acquisition of the intervening unplanned areas.” 56 To publicize their intentions, the committee developed a plan that expanded the Civic Center boundaries to specifically include their targeted area (Figure 4.6). The plan re-draws the lines of the official 1929 Civic Center plan drawn by Ruchti of the Regional Planning Commission and recommends the addition of a number of blocks between Main and Alameda. The plan also suggests that a “marginal area” be secured for “public and semi 55 The Civic Center Union Station Committee (January 25, 1938) Organization and Objectives UCLA Special Collections, California Ephemera Collection Number 200, box 161., page 3 56 Ibid. p.4 138 public development”. The plan clearly attempts to assert control over the boundaries and the use of the term “marginal area” specifically establishes a buffer between the official civic center and the city around it. This new marginal area would include the few remaining buildings of Chinatown and the area around the Plaza. 139 Figure 4.6: Proposed expansion of the civic center area to include Union Station and properties between the two, 1938 Source: UCLA Special Collections, California Ephemera Collection Number 200, box 161. Included in notes from the Civic Center-Union Station Committee 140 At this time numerous proposals from a variety of individuals and groups emerged for the areas between Union Station and the Civic Center. One proposal for these blocks recommended parking (Figure 4.7). The 1936 proposal of architect Dwight Gibbs for the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce suggested formal gardens, while a 1938 proposal, prepared by John C. Austin, a member of the Civic Center-Union Station Committee and, along with A.C. Martin and John Parkinson, architect of the Los Angeles City Hall, suggested large civic buildings. In each of these schemes the maintenance of existing housing and businesses between Main and Alameda was not considered (Figures 4.8 and 4.9). In the Gibbs plan, the pedestrian views the Plaza church immediately upon exiting Union Station. The visitor’s eye is led directly from the church to a memorial shaft and then up Fort Moore Hill to a grand convention hall and civic auditorium. With a commanding view of the area, the proposed auditorium is the dominant feature of the plan. Two large boulevards flank the hill, disappearing into the city beyond. The view from Union Station was intended to be awe-inspiring and, as with Wall’s progression, the placement of the civic auditorium symbolically announced the superiority of Anglo American business and culture over the previous Hispanic culture. The theme of Anglo supremacy is echoed in the composition of the image which, through the placement of the various depicted elements reinforces this interpretation. In Gibb’s plan, composition is not simply a matter of aesthetics, rather it marshals a number of individual elements into meaningful and socially-understood patterns (Kress and Van 141 Leeuwen 1996). For example, the civic auditorium is made to be the most salient element in this scheme. Its importance is suggested by a number of visual clues. Most importantly is the use of light. There is a strong contrast between the building and the city behind it. The auditorium appears to shine a little brighter than the other buildings depicted. The building is also emphasized through its position in the upper portion of the image and the use of the Ideal-Real convention, in which the upper section of an image tends to make an ideological or “emotive appeal,” while elements in the lower half are typically informative and practical. In the Western tradition this dichotomy may be drawn from Medieval and Renaissance religious paintings in which the earthly reality is presented as subservient to a heavenly paradise (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996). In Gibbs’ rendering, the dividing line between the Ideal and the Real is drawn at the memorial column. The column, at the center of the image, separates the city to be from the city that is. John Austin’s proposal (Figure 4.9) has some similar features. As in the Gibbs’ scheme, the “interactional system of the gaze dominates” (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996). The view is from a high oblique angle which invites impersonal scrutiny. Like Gibbs, Austin terraces Fort Moore and recommends the development of a Municipal Auditorium. Austin also recommends the inclusion of “11 exhibit buildings, representing the Western States” and the development of underground parking below the area between 142 Main and Alameda Streets. 57 The razing of the buildings situated in front of Union Station is also pictured. Figure 4.7: Plan of proposed municipal auto park, 1935 Source: USC Digital Archives, Los Angeles Examiner Prints Collection, late 1920s – 1961, examiner- m3592 57 Wall (1948) Historical Background of the Los Angeles Civic Center Los Angeles, Department of City Planning Los Angeles p.11 143 Figure 4.8: Plan for a Concourse to New Union Station and Historic Plaza The plan was drawn by Dwight Gibbs on behalf of the LA Junior Chamber of Commerce & City Planning Commission in 1936 Source: USC Digital Archives, California Historical Society Collection, 1860 – 1960, CHS-37310 144 Figure 4.9: Scheme submitted by John C. Austin for the Civic Center, 1938 Source: USC Digital Archives, Los Angeles Examiner Prints Collection, late 1920s – 1961, EXM-P-S- LOS-ANG-CIT-BUI-582 However in Austin’s work the singular, dominating vista from Union Station is less obvious. From the station a number of routes and views are proposed, either towards Fort Moore or alternately towards City Hall and the anticipated County Buildings, located between First and Temple Street. In Austin’s proposal there are two primary axes. The view to the west follows the established horizontality of earlier civic center plans. Each of the buildings has been labeled in Austin’s image. While the key to this particular image has been lost, this technique (also seen in Figures 4.11, 4.12, 4.13, 4.16 and 4.17) introduces an important analytical scheme. The use of the numbers and key relates each of these individual buildings to each other as contributing to a group and as 145 parts of a whole. This classification creates a specific taxonomy of public buildings. However the taxonomy does not of course simply ‘reflect’ a real group. Rather the putting together of these disparate entities requires selection and communicates that the buildings are judged to be similar (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996). The grouping conceals the very differences between the federal, state, county and city entities, while presenting a unified front to the public. To highlight the timeless nature of the taxonomy and a view of completeness, the buildings in the group are shown in detail, while the city beyond is depicted as undistinguished and neutral. Interestingly, Austin’s image also attempts to reproduce the feeling of a black and white aerial photograph. The image, at least of the Civic Center, shows a fairly high degree of realism and shadows of clouds are drawn over the city. The Civic Center is bathed in sunlight and almost haloed, offering an emotional appeal to the viewer. The inclusion of these clouds hints at the increasing prevalence of aerial photography in planning and design at this time. By the late 1930s, viewers were beginning to expect to see the world represented this way. The shadows also contribute to the feeling of ‘truthfulness’ that is depicted (the credibility of this truthfulness is discussed in more detail below). The image makes certain claims to legitimacy, as though it were a ‘real,’ rather than an imaginary representation. With urging from the Civic Center-Union Station citizens committee, Mayor Frank L. Shaw created a more formal Civic Center Committee in December 1937. Many of the individuals who participated in the earlier committee were included in this new 146 group, for example, architect John. C. Austin was selected as Vice Chair. 58 Two years later, the Mayor’s team was expanded to include representatives from the County of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles City Council, the City and County Planning Commissions, the State Department of Public Works, the Department of Water and Power and the Federal Government. The group, now known as the Civic Center Advisory Committee, worked with the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects to draft a Civic Center Plan that was officially approved by both the City and County on January 30, 1941 (Figures 4.10, 4.11 and 4.12). 59 58 Ibid. 59 Schuchardt (1941) The Civic Center Los Angeles, Pacific Southwest Academy Los Angeles Civic Center Development Presents a Deplorable Lack of Architectural Cooperation and Harmony (1950) Turner (1947) Proposed Los Angeles Civic Center Southern California Chapter of the AIA on behalf of the Los Angeles Civic Center Authority; Wall (1948) Historical Background of the Los Angeles Civic Center Los Angeles, Department of City Planning Los Angeles; Wall (1948) Historical Background of the Los Angeles Civic Center Los Angeles, Department of City Planning Los Angeles 147 Figure 4.10: Perspective of the 1941 Civic Center Master Plan Source: Schuchardt, W. H. (1941). "The Civic Center". Los Angeles: Preface to a Master Plan. G. W. Robbins and J. D. Tilton Ed(s). Los Angeles, Pacific Southwest Academy 148 Figure 4.11: 1941 Master Plan with the buildings and features identified Source: USC Digital Archives, Los Angeles Examiner Prints Collection, late 1920s – 1961, EXM-P-S- LOS-ANG-CIT-BUI-581 149 Figure 4.12: Civic Center Plan officially adopted by the City and County, 1941 Source: Schuchardt, W. H. (1941). "The Civic Center". Los Angeles: Preface to a Master Plan. G. W. Robbins and J. D. Tilton Ed(s). Los Angeles, Pacific Southwest Academy. See also Wall, H. V. (1948) Historical Background of the Los Angeles Civic Center Los Angeles, Department of City Planning Los Angeles The Master Plan from 1941 is one of the first to envision a Mall running east-west from Grand Avenue to Los Angeles Street. The plan also extends the southern and eastern boundary of the Civic Center to First and Los Angeles Streets. This southeasterly 150 expansion would be continued in the coming years as the Civic Center continued to push into the Japanese community of Little Tokyo located at First and Alameda. In the 1941 plan, Olvera Street, the Plaza and the Plaza Church are retained but are surrounded by new County buildings designed to include courthouses and county administrative offices. The County buildings are monumental in size and dwarf the Church in front of them. Behind the county buildings, Fort Moore is again steeply terraced but includes, not the civic auditorium envisioned in earlier plans, but rather a Central High School. While the plan was adopted by both the City and County planning commissions, funds were needed to erect the various buildings depicted. When the bonds that would have provided funding for these buildings were rejected by voters, the plan languished. The Civic Center Advisory Committee was formalized in 1945 as the Los Angeles Civic Center Authority (LA Ordinance No. 89,471 7/16/45). The following year, the Authority hired a team from the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, headed by Burnett Turner to propose a new plan for the area. 60 Burnett C. Turner was born in Los Angeles in 1902 and earned a degree in Architecture from MIT. He served as the Army’s architectural advisor in the Philippines and Okinawa and upon returning to Los Angeles set up a small architectural firm. Turner’s comments to others confirm the power that Christine Sterling continued to wield 60 Turner (1980) Chronology of Burnett Turner’s Work at El Pueblo El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument Archives and Collections, File Folder “Turner Burnett 1980 – 84”, ; Turner (1947) Proposed Los Angeles Civic Center Southern California Chapter of the AIA on behalf of the Los Angeles Civic Center Authority 151 in this area. When he was appointed by the Civic Center Authority to prepare a plan, he recalls that “Mrs. Sterling came to me and asked what was to become of her little Mexican enclave in Olvera Street.” Referring to Sterling, Turner says, “she called the plays and we all fell into line.” 61 However, despite Sterling’s efforts in Olvera Street, in the larger Plaza area Turner “saw dilapidation everywhere” and wondered how the buildings would “fit into a growing governmental administrative center?” 62 In discussing the previous 1941 Master Plan and his corrections to it, Turner marks space along class and ethnic lines. For Turner, it was clear that judges and administrators needed work space, while the Mexican community around the Plaza needed social space. Specifically he “found one major problem concerning the Plaza. The then proposed combining of County Courts and Administration in one huge building in a semicircle around the little adobe portion of the Plaza church created squeeze problems for all three: administrators and judges vying for more space…and Fr. Zapataro of the church complaining that this mother parish of all Spanish speaking people in town could not exist divorced from its housing for priests, its meeting rooms for committees and its patio for celebrations.” 63 Turner’s proposal of 1947 eliminates the C-shaped County Court building, recommending in its place a “park to include restored historic landmarks 61 Turner (February 7, 1980) Comments to the Economic Round Table El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument Archives and Collections, File Folder “Turner Burnett 1980 – 84”, 62 Turner (1980) Chronology of Burnett Turner’s Work at El Pueblo El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument Archives and Collections, File Folder “Turner Burnett 1980 – 84”, 63 Turner (1980) Chronology of Burnett Turner’s Work at El Pueblo El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument Archives, File Folder “Turner Burnett 1980 – 84”, page 13 152 and buildings,” including the Plaza Church, Olvera Street, Fort Moore Hill, the Avila Adobe, the Pico House and others that “warrant rehabilitation and retention as reminders of the City’s beginnings”. 64 Such preservation was encouraged for the “historian, the old- timer, and the inquiring tourist” 65 Fort Moore would be rehabilitated as a “site for a simple war memorial shaft”, honoring not just the Captain who died in the Battle of San Pasqual that preceded the US occupation of Los Angeles, but all of the city’s war dead. Turner’s plan was far more expansive than previous proposals (Figure 4.13). The boundaries of the Civic Center would extend deep into the communities of Bunker Hill, New Chinatown and Little Tokyo. The plan focuses on efficiency, but also never forgets beauty. The Los Angeles Civic Center “will vie with any other as a place of dignity and beauty and where the citizen and his government can transact their affairs with harmonious efficiency.” 66 The location is acknowledged as the geographic and demographic center, “no search for an alternate site will disclose a location nearer the hub of the wheel”. 67 As in the 1930s, the view from Union Station was of primary concern. Turner suggests that a “visitor entering Los Angeles from Union Station gets his first impression of the city by seeing the shaft of the City Hall rising out of the nondescript hodgepodge 64 Ibid. 65 Turner (1947) Proposed Los Angeles Civic Center Southern California Chapter of the AIA on behalf of the Los Angeles Civic Center Authority p. 6 66 Ibid. p.4 67 Ibid. p.4 153 of dilapidation and decay that now surrounds the plaza.” 68 However, while arrival in Los Angeles was still described in terms of the railway, Turner’s plan was the first to address the changes anticipated by the four-level freeway interchange that was currently under construction. As with many plans before it, Turner’s plan was never officially adopted. However it was the source of a number of new plans, especially the 1952 Master Plan that set the shape of the Civic Center for the remaining 60 years. Turner’s plan also clearly influenced the location of the future court buildings along what is now called the Civic Center Mall. 69 Finally, in 1952 a Master Civic Center Plan was officially adopted by both City and County (Figure 4.15 and 4.16). The plan scrupulously avoids the inclusion of the Times Mirror Buildings at First Street between Broadway and Spring. This plan also introduces a visual technique that will be repeated in many of the future plans. From this point forward, the Plaza area receives a special designation. It is included in the 1952 plan but its separate status is indicated by the thick lines that surround it. 68 Ibid. p. 31 69 Wall (1948) Historical Background of the Los Angeles Civic Center Los Angeles, Department of City Planning Los Angeles; Anonymous (1950) Los Angeles Civic Center Development Presents a Deplorable Lack of Architectural Cooperation and Harmony 154 Figure 4.13: Proposal submitted to the Los Angeles Civic Center Authority in April 1947 by Burnett Turner of the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects Source: Wall, H. V. (1948) Historical Background of the Los Angeles Civic Center Los Angeles, Department of City Planning Los Angeles 155 Figure 4.14: Looking north across the Civic Center to the four-level interchange under construction circa 1947 Source: Los Angeles Public Library, Photographic Collection (Image number 00058615) 156 Figure 4.15: Model of the Civic Center Plan 1952 Los Angeles County Supervisor Roger Jessup points to a model of the Civic Center Master Plan that was officially adopted in 1952, Charles Bennett, Director of the City Planning Department and Fletcher Bowron, Mayor of Los Angeles stand to his right. Source: USC Digital Archives, Los Angeles Examiner Negatives Collection, late 1920s – 1961, examiner – m4323 157 Figure 4.16: The Master Plan of the Los Angeles Civic Center The Plan was approved by the City Planning Commission in March 1952, by the Regional Planning and the County Board of Supervisors June 1954, (revised 1963). Source: Ridings, W. A. (1963). Los Angeles Civic Center Atlas, City Plan Case 631-E. City Planning Commission, Los Angeles California 158 The 1952 plan firmly established the east-west axis of the Civic Center as it is known today. However, whether the Plaza was to be included as part of the Civic Center was less settled. In 1953 the area around the Plaza was officially dedicated as the El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Monument. And yet the following year, a plan was drawn that envisioned other uses for the land. Figure 4.17, prepared by Robert Lee of the County Engineering Office, shows the area immediately adjacent to the Plaza church as a “tentative County Civil Service building”. The remainder of the area is not included in this depiction, suggesting the reduced importance of the Plaza to Civic Center planning. 159 Figure 4.17: View of the Civic Center by Robert Lee of the County Engineers Office The image probably dates from 1954 (The Los Angeles Police Department’s Parker Center which was dedicated in 1954 is shown as complete) Source: UCLA Special Collections, John C. Austin Papers, Collection Number 904, box 14, folder 1 By comparing John Austin’s 1938 view of the Civic Center (Figure 4.9) and this image prepared sixteen years later by the County Engineers Office we are able to track how representational styles changed over the years. A comparison of these two images also provides clues as to the different visual practices of architecture and engineering. The two images are seen from the air, with the city below stretched out before the viewer at an oblique angle. In addition, through the use of numbers on the buildings and a key, both images deploy a similar analytic convention. The primary difference in the two 160 images can be seen in how they marshal the conventions of modality to inspire in the viewer a confidence in the accuracy of each depiction. Conventions that are related to modality describe the claims to truth or credibility made by an image. Through the use of specific, conventionally-understood visual techniques, graphics can present places as more or less real. These markers of reality are conventionally established by social groups and image makers select from a number of indicators to align themselves with certain viewers. In the process, image makers create an imaginary “we’ (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996). Thus, what counts as a credible image is in the eye of the beholder, or as Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996, 163) have suggested, “what is regarded as real depends on how reality is defined by a particular social group” (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996, 160). Prepared by the Engineering Office, Lee’s image from 1954 is a map. It is primarily about existent physical space or navigation. It is tied to existing features through the inclusion of familiar topography and street names. Lee’s image is also diagrammatic since it reduces detail to focus on only the most important elements. Lacking street names, Austin’s image is more appropriately understood as a rendering. Through the use of perspective, with an obvious vanishing point, it demonstrates a high degree of naturalism, or rather the kind of naturalism that is realized through the photography of the day. Today, such photographic realism has become a strong marker of modality, but our understanding of this type of realism depends on the state of photographic technology and current photographic practices. 161 Austin’s image has a higher degree of modality than Lee’s diagram, meaning that it is closer to the conventionally understood naturalism of photography. However the same standard for real does not apply in every context. A technological coding system, one that values what can be known scientifically is valued in planning, especially at this point in time in the profession’s development. In this sense a technical drawing may have a higher modality than a naturalistic rendering, however faithfully the rendering attempts to reproduce a photograph. Lee’s image is a compromise between the naturalistic and technological coding orientation. It is a drawing and not a photograph, the setting is generally abstract, the details of landscape are minimized. However, the image is drawn using perspective, the details of the building in the Civic Center are included and it shows some light and shade. Through these techniques the drawing is “naturalized’ (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996). The producer of the image perhaps operates with the assumption that the audience is familiar with the natural coding orientation but also has, through schooling or regular exposure, an awareness of the technological system. The two images demonstrate different coding orientations, the sets of abstract principles that inform the way that images are understood by specific social groups or within certain institutional contexts (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996). Lee’s image represents a technological coding orientation, while Austin’s aims for a more naturalistic, non-scientific coding orientation. Lee’s drawing deliberately eschews the “emotive power of color” (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996, 169) in favor of a strong technocratic style. To the engineering audience, 162 Lee’s image probably has a higher modality than Austin’s more naturalistic image. For example, in their depiction of trees, Lee draws circles, while Austin distinguishes between various types of plant material. Austin draws different shapes and uses this irregularity to give the impression of leaves. Besides the usual round trees, there are tall cypress-like columns, flowering hedges and shrubs. Lee’s image aims for a diagrammatic and scientific realism. Other key markers of visual modality include the context, representation, depth, brightness. Context describes either the absence or the detailed presence of a background. Representation may vary from maximum abstraction to maximum representation of pictorial detail. Depth describes a scale from the absence of depth to deep perspective. Illumination describes the play of light in an image, from the fullest to the least representation of light and shadow. Finally, brightness from just two degrees of brightness: black and white to a maximum number of shades. Austin’s image contextualizes the city beyond the Civic Center through the use of individualized blocks. More detail of the city is depicted than in Lee’s drawing which simply suggests context through the use of a cluster of outlines and box shapes. Buildings that are close to the Civic Center are represented by individual boxes; those further away are shown simply in outline. In this way Lee’s drawing only provides the details of the buildings that matter. For example, the image includes patterns of fenestration on existing buildings. Buildings that have not been completed are represented in less detail. In contrast, Austin gives the same details to all of the buildings depicted whether built or 163 imagined. The play of shadows in Austin’s image has been discussed in the pages above. In Lee’s image shading, rather than shadows predominates and such shading is shown simply to model the volume of a shape (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996). Finally in Lee’s image the difference between the darkest and the lightest area is great, while in Austin’s image this difference is less, so that a more hazy effect is created. As this discussion has asserted, modality values can be complex, an image may amplify one marker while simultaneously reducing another. However, individually and in combination the modality markers are indicative of specific meanings. They give credence to some views (and viewers) over others. The fact that the background city has a lower modality in both of these images is significant. The distinction between Civic Center and city creates a barrier between the two and reinforces the existence of the Civic Center in isolation. 70 By the 1970s, the boundaries between the Civic Center and the city had become essentially inviolate and many of the plans at this time shift from the establishment, to the maintenance of these boundaries. After the 1970s, rather than establishing a relationship between the Civic Center and the communities that surround it, boundaries served to “isolate and protect, and when possible to prevent contact” (Jackson 1984, 14, italics in original). This sense of boundaries as protection is clear in the 1972/1990 Silver Book in which the final shape of 70 I do not discuss color, because unfortunately I have not been able to locate the original Austin rendering. The image was reproduced for inclusion in the Examiner newspaper and was printed in various publications; however all of these are black and white. 164 the civic center has emerged and the Plaza area is separated (Figure 4.18 and 4.19). The addition of crenellated walls makes the separation abundantly clear. Figure 4.18: Location of the Civic Center as part of the larger central city area, 1972 “Deteriorated and Underutilized” areas are indicated by a light dot patter, suggesting limited occupation. While the “renewal” areas of Bunker Hill and Little Tokyo are blank spaces waiting to be filled with activity. Source: Wallace, M., Roberts, and Todd. (1972). Central City Los Angeles 1972/1990 Preliminary Plan. Los Angeles, The Committee for Central City Planning Inc. and City of Los Angeles 165 Figure 4.19: Boundaries in need of “stabilization” 1972 Source: Wallace, M., Roberts, and Todd. (1972). Central City Los Angeles 1972/1990 Preliminary Plan. Los Angeles, The Committee for Central City Planning Inc. and City of Los Angeles 166 Chapter 5. “A Cloud Burst Erupts”: Los Angeles’ Grand Intervention In early 2000, Los Angeles philanthropist Eli Broad joined with city leaders to announce the formation of the Grand Avenue Committee. The group had come together in support of a major new initiative aimed at “transforming” the Los Angeles Civic Center area into “a vibrant new regional center.” 71 Four years later, the Committee selected the Related Development Company to design and build a $1.8-billion mixed-use development on two large parcels located adjacent to the Civic Center in the vicinity of First Street and Grand Avenue. The Related Company’s vision included residential towers designed by architect Frank Gehry, a luxury hotel and a new Civic Park to replace the existing Civic Center Mall. For a number of reasons, the larger development has stalled, however plans for the Civic Park have unexpectedly taken off. As a result, what to do with the sixteen-acres running from the city’s Department of Water and Power building on Grand Avenue to the steps of City Hall on Main Street, has become the topic of city-wide debate. Originally the forgotten sibling of the much larger project, the Civic Park is scheduled to break ground this summer and to be completed shortly thereafter. Responding to a perceived lack of transparency in the Civic Park’s design process, in 2005 Martin Kaplan, Director of USC’s Norman Lear Center, sought to expand the dialogue by initiating a call for ideas from the general public. According to 71 Grand Avenue Committee (n.d.) Project Overview Website: http://www.grandavenuecommittee.org/overview.html, 167 the Lear Center, more than 300 proposals were submitted. Many of these ideas were posted on-line at the Center’s website, while others were featured in a special issue of the Los Angeles Times’ local news section. The final chapter of this project compares the proposals generated by the Lear Center’s call to action to the images created for the Civic Center Mall by a team of architects in the 1950s. Specifically, the chapter distinguishes between the singular vistas of the Mall at mid-century and the digital, clip-art landscape produced by the public at the beginning of the 21 st Century. Like those before it, the chapter asks what “generative metaphors” emerge from the images created for the park (Schön 1979)? What values are presented? And more importantly, how is the idea of “civic space” communicated in the images that were produced? The Civic Center Mall: A “Verdant Avenue in the City’s Concrete Jungle” 72 By the mid twentieth century, the Los Angeles Civic Center had, in the popular press, become know as “Bumper Butte,” “Auto Atoll” and “that gigantic parking lot with the tower” in the middle (see Figure 5.1). 73 The image of the area faired no better among the public officials that made up the area’s daily inhabitants. Despite numerous plans, it was referred to as a “hodgepodge” and lacking any discernable “architectural 72 Smith (1956) Civic Center to be Marvel of Beauty 73 Civic Center? A Big Parking Lot, New Custom House Would Worsen Jam (1961) ; They’re At It Again (1962) 168 harmony.” 74 Years of bickering between the City and the County about where to locate which buildings, as well as the erratic nature of funding for construction had meant that most of civic center plans prepared to date had remained largely ideas on paper. It was not until the Master Plan of 1951 which finalized the location of the County buildings in the blocks bounded by Grand, Temple, Broadway and First Streets that this debate was settled. At the same time, a bond issue was approved by voters securing the funding for construction. As the final grouping of County buildings was confirmed, Supervisors began to contemplate the open space that would run between them. Between these new buildings the Master Plan proposed the establishment of a Mall with underground parking and a bomb shelter in case of nuclear attack as an added feature (Figure 5.2). 75 74 Thompson (1951) Harmony in Civic Center Architecture. ; Los Angeles Civic Center Development Presents a Deplorable Lack of Architectural Cooperation and Harmony (1950) ; Harris (1951) Will Our Civic Center Become a Hodge-Podge 75 City of Los Angeles Planning Commission (1950) Accomplishments ; Los Angeles Times (1951) New Plans Offered for Civic Center ; Los Angeles Sentinel (1951) Civilian Defense Lagging 169 Figure 5.1: Aerial view of Civic Center looking west during the late 1950s. The buildings are surrounded by cars. The residential use of Bunker Hill is still visible (center right) since the Music Center and Department of Water and Power have yet to be built. According to Los Angeles Times architectural critic, John Pastier, in 1968 buildings occupied only 24% of the available land in the Civic Center. The remaining land was used for parking. 76 Source: Los Angeles Public Library, Photo Collection Image number 00044283 76 Pastier (Nov 22, 1970) L.A.'s Civic Center: Accent on Quantity Rather Than Quality 170 Figure 5.2: Proposed parking and bomb shelter for up to 90,000 at the Civic Center 77 Source: Los Angeles Public Library, Photo Collection Image number 00036830 In 1952, the various architectural firms who had been hired to design the County buildings, including J.E. Stanton, Paul R. Williams, Adrian Wilson and the firm of Austin, Field and Fry, were asked to jointly devise a plan for the Mall. Four years later, the group was joined by F. Stockwell and landscape architect Ralph D. Cornell. This team was comprised of some of the City’s most prominent architects, many of whom had long-standing affiliations with the Civic Center. John Austin of Austin, Field and Fry had participated as a junior partner with A.C, Martin in the building of the Los Angeles City Hall in the 1920s and had submitted numerous plans for the area over the years (see 77 Los Angeles Sentinel (1951) Civilian Defense Lagging 171 chapter 4). Jess E. Stanton was at this time in the process of designing Parker Center, the headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department with Welton Beckett, who would go on to design the Music Center at Grand Avenue. Landscape architect, Ralph Cornell had, in the 1930s been a partner of Cook and Hall, who had prepared one of the first the Civic Center Plan (see chapter 3). With William Stockwell, Paul R. Williams and Adrian Wilson were responsible for designing the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration and the Los Angeles County Court House. The inclusion of Paul Williams in this team was especially significant. As the first African-American member, as well as the first African American Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Williams has primarily been recognized for his residential designs. The County Hall of Administration and the Civic Center Mall are some of his few public commissions. 78 During the 1950s, the idea of a Mall as a shopping district or street closed to vehicles was similar to our contemporary understanding. However, in developing the Los Angeles Mall, it is clear that the County Supervisors had the historic, rather than the contemporary meaning of the word in mind. The origin of the word “mall” can be traced to the European game of pall-mall in which a mallet is used to drive a ball through an iron ring at the end of a long alley. While the game was popular in Italy, France, and Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries, in England the game gave its name to Pall Mall, a street in central London running between St James's Park and Haymarket. This street, 78 Having designed houses for Tyrone Powers, Barbara Stanwyck, Johnnie Weissmuller and other Hollywood actors Williams is often referred to as the “architect to the stars”. His few public commissions include Martin Luther King Memorial Hospital in Watts and a number of buildings at Howard University in Washington D.C. The Paul Revere Williams Project http://www.paulrwilliamsproject.org/ 172 bordered by trees on either side, became an elite promenade in the 17-18th centuries. Eventually the word mall came to be associated with any “sheltered walk serving as a promenade.” 79 The initial plan for the Mall clearly references this idea of a European promenade with an area formally arranged along straight lines with an uninterrupted view from City Hall to the Department of Water and Power (Figure 5.3). In this early iteration, much of the public space is conceived of as open lawn with trees along the edges. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a team of architects, the buildings form the major features of the plan. Minimal attention is paid to the specific areas between the buildings; rather the focus is on the plan as a whole. Buildings immediately adjacent to the Mall, such as the newly constructed Police Headquarters located east of City Hall are included but certainly not highlighted. A rendering of this first plan for the Mall was shown to County Supervisors in 1954 (Figure 5.4). 79 “mall, n" The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. March 18 2010 <http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00181778>. 173 Figure 5.3: Initial proposal for the Los Angeles County Mall Prepared by the Associated Architects of J.E. Stanton, William F. Stockwell, Paul R. Williams, Adrian Wilson and Austin, Field and Fry, the Mall would extend from Spring to Hope Streets Source: USC Digital Archives, Los Angeles Examiner Prints Collection, late 1920s – 1961, EXM-P-S- LOS-ANG-CIT-BUI-593 174 Figure 5.4: Rendering of the Los Angeles County Civic Center Mall, 1954 Los Angeles County Administrator, Arthur Will points to the rendering. The image shows a sparsely landscaped space between the two county buildings. The vista is closed by a third building, presumably the Department of Water and Power (which did not open until 1965). Pedestrians walk along a tree lined avenue. Source: USC Digital Archives, Los Angeles Examiner Negatives Collection, examiner-m12386 Later versions of the Mall, perhaps due to the inclusion of landscape architect Ralph Cornell, are better articulated. Rather than the simple long lawn of the original plan, newer plans introduce a number of smaller, primarily hardscaped plazas to the scheme (Figures 5.5 – 5.8). A monumental plaza is located directly in front of City Hall, in which the political landscape of the Civic Center is literally branded by the city seal. 175 The Mall continues up along two walkways, past monumental fountains and orderly rows of trees to an outdoor amphitheater at the western terminus. Contemporary accounts suggested that the area would include, “smog-proof trees” and a “park-like area between the main new county buildings” where “shady walks will wind past cool fountains, and the trees carefully selected are to be of types known to flourish in the city's sometime smoggy atmosphere.” 80 Figure 5.5 provides an aerial view of this vision. As is typical of other aerial perspectives the vertical angle of view is high, while the horizontal angle is oblique. The oblique angle emphasizes the area’s thick triangular shape, giving the image a more dynamic appearance, with much of the action directed towards City Hall. The viewer is encouraged to regard the scene as a total vision. The buildings are represented in the gleaming white of the noon day sun, their color symbolically representing a professed modernity, orderliness and purity. There are obvious links to the white associated with Mediterranean limestone acropolises and other classical civic spaces. The contrast between the buildings and public open spaces is very high, with the buildings playing the more significant role. The buildings are distinguished from the darkness of the natural features in the Mall and the largely absent congested city beyond. The solid, rectangular 80 Torgerson (1956) L.A. Building Showplace Civic Center 176 volumes are indicative of a diluted modernist International Style that was popular at the time. 81 Overall the picture emphasizes pure shapes; the buildings are squares and rectangles, the streets are straight, the trees almost perfect circles. All of this combines to communicate a sense of permanence and rigid social relations. A few cars are visible on the streets, and the few people pictured are represented as almost indistinguishable dots. The two streets, Temple on the right and First Street on the left, have bright white sidewalks. They run parallel through the image, dividing it into thirds and drawing attention to the middle. The horizontality of the buildings is punctuated at the east end by the tower of City Hall. Although described as “verdant”, aside from a triangular lawn in the middle and stiff rows of trees in parallel lines, the area is primarily hardscaped. 82 81 The example of Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer’s Brasilia was clearly an influence on local architects. In describing the Mall, Sumner Spaulding, chair of the Los Angeles AIA Civic Center Committee comments, “it is possible that Los Angeles have the finest civic center in the world…So far in the twentieth century, Brazilian cities excel in this type of thing” Smith (1956) Civic Center to be Marvel of Beauty 82 Ibid. 177 Figure 5.5: Aerial perspective of Los Angeles Civic Center Mall, 1956 Source: USC Digital Archives, Los Angeles Examiner Prints Collection, late 1920s – 1961, EXM-P-S- LOS-ANG-CIT-BUI-550 In addition to this overall perspective, the team also submitted a number of more intimate views of each block. In Figure 5.6, the viewer is situated in a shady spot above the depicted scene, looking through a grove of palm trees. This would be the view from a spot to the south of the City Hall building. The image includes an open plaza with the city’s seal. A row of flags is positioned at either side of the area and a row of trees separates this space from the next. At this time, the proposed plaza was occupied by the Old Hall of Records. Built in 1911, before Spring Street was realigned the Hall of 178 Records was situated as an odd angle to the other buildings in the area. It had been the goal of every Civic Center plan since 1923 to raze this building. In this, and the following views, people are pictured abstractly as black rectangular shapes. As with the overall perspective, there is a high contrast between the spaces occupied by human figures and the darker natural landscape. The plaza is open to the sky and bathed in light. Fountains and waterfalls make up the backdrop of this part of the Mall. The view towards the next section is blocked by a row of trees. These trees are presumably repeated on either side of the plaza. In this way, while the space is immense, there is a sense of containment, as if the area represented one large room. However this is not a room in which to relax since there appears to be no seating. Rather, this is a space for deal making, for the work of politicians and policy makers. In addition, this is clearly not a family space since no women or children are pictured. Indeed only three women are represented in the whole series. In one of the images, two women walk together across a street and in another image a woman is depicted with a male figure standing on the sidelines of an amphitheater (Figure 5.8). Women are never pictured alone; their presence is apparently welcomed only as part of a couple. They are also clearly not part of the activity being undertaken in these images. Women are depicted simply as passers-by; figures that move through the space, but do not remain. The Mall culminates at its western end in an open air sunken amphitheater (Figure 5.8). The spot is pictured from a substantial height and at an oblique angle, as if the viewer were witness to an everyday event seen from a helicopter. The amphitheater is at 179 the opposite end of the Mall from the City Hall, so that at one end there is soaring verticality and at the other sunken round public space. The image is evocative of a classical theater. A lone individual at the center of the image appears to be reading to the crowd, while a group of three other individuals are grouped on the stage behind him. A small crowd has gathered and sits on the stone seats. Here the classical ideal of a civic center is presented in force. The amphitheater is formally laid out, but its lines are softened by the foliage that surrounds it. Indeed, while strictly designed, people are free to participate or not. The action can also apparently be seen from the street, as indicated by the two white figures in the top left corner. A woman as part of a couple is identifiable on the left. 180 Figure 5.6: The block between Broadway and Spring on the Civic Center Mall, 1956 Source: USC Digital Archives, Los Angeles Examiner Prints Collection, late 1920s – 1961, examiner- m10419 181 Figure 5.7: Block between Grand Avenue and Hill Street, going up the slope from City Hall Source: USC Digital Archives, Los Angeles Examiner Prints Collection, late 1920s – 1961, EXM-P-S- LOS-ANG-CIT-BUI-560, examiner-m11203 182 Figure 5.8: Block between Grand and Hope at the western end of the Civic Center Mall, 1956 Source: USC Digital Archives, Los Angeles Examiner Prints Collection, late 1920s – 1961, EXM-P-S- LOS-ANG-CIT-BUI-559, examiner-m11166 Over the course of the next few years, the County buildings were constructed. However, aside from the “Court of Flags” between Grand and Hill, very little of the public space envisioned in these renderings was completed. While not exactly faithful to the plans seen here, some parts of the area were landscaped with fountains reflecting the spirit of the plan. For example, in 1966 the area of the Mall closest to Grand Avenue was 183 dedicated to El Paseo de los Pobledores de Los Angeles, the 44 men women and children who in the 18 th Century walked from the Mexican states of Sonora and Sinaloa to Los Angeles. The ceremony marked the completion of the parking structure and the dedication of the Arthur Will fountain. During the ceremony Will’s widow pulled a switch to activate the fountain. Supervisor Debs made a speech, as did Mayor Sam Yorty. 83 Figure 5.9: View of the Los Angeles County Mall across the “Court of Flags” The photograph shows the old Hall of Records squeezed between the County’s Criminal Courts Buildings and the Los Angeles City Hall taken October 1, 1972 Source: USC Digital Archives, California Historical Society Collection, late 1860 – 1960, CHS-m1888 83 L.A. Mall Is Dedicated to Pioneers (1966) 184 The Grand Intervention Despite the completion of some improvements, there was then, and has continued to be, general dissatisfaction with the Mall as a public open space. John Pastier, architectural critic for the Los Angeles Times called the area “pretentiously inept” and suggested that it resembled a type of “authoritarian monumentalism” too easily associated with Hitler’s Berlin and Mussolini’s Rome. Pastier considered the area to be a “strong contender for the title of America’s worst complex of public buildings and public spaces.” While obvious hyperbole, his point that the arrangement suggested “an image of mutually hostile guests seated for a formal banquet from which the table has been removed” is quite appropriate. 84 Possibly because of its size and certainly due to the interruptions of cross town traffic through the site, the Mall never came together as a complete entity. Its interior orientation conceals rather than reveals the existing spaces and so much of the park is hidden from view that today the Mall is largely unknown to the city that surrounds it. For much of the 1970s and 1980s the Civic Center became simply one of a number of “hubs” in a city-wide “public facilities network” in which the everyday city disappeared in favor of an apparently more flexible system (Figure 5.10). 85 The new network was designed to replace the single “monumental” civic center and, as a result, planning for the Civic Center Mall was effectively halted. However, while planning 84 Pastier (Nov 22, 1970) L.A.'s Civic Center: Accent on Quantity Rather Than Quality 85 Department of City Planning (1970) Concept Los Angeles: The Concept for the Los Angeles General Plan Los Angeles, 185 efforts slowed at this time, the idea of a civic center remained strong in the minds of the city’s political leaders. Figure 5.10: The “Public Facility Network” envisioned as a complement to the downtown Civic Center Source: City of Los Angeles Planning Department. (1970). The Concept for the Los Angeles General Plan. Los Angeles, CA, City of Los Angeles In the early 1990s, the Civic Center Authority was reauthorized and in 1997 a major planning effort, represented by the adoption of the Los Angeles Civic Center Shared Facilities & Enhancement Plan was initiated to stem the apparent loss of government workers from the area. Like so many plans before it, the Shared Facilities Plan was never implemented in full. However, the Grand Avenue Project can be seen as a direct descendent of this older plan’s key provisions. Specifically, the Shared Facilities Plan introduced the idea of the civic center as an inclusive public space, rather than 186 simply an administrative area, arguing that “no other district can lay legitimate claim to the potential at least, of representing all of Los Angeles… The more the city and region disperse, the more urgent is the need for a place which maintains the idea of a shared public realm.” 86 The plan’s goals included a focus on the “character and quality” of the Civic Center and called for the development of “catalytic projects” to secure the “symbolic status” of the area. In addition, the plan claimed that open space was most desirable, since it “may prove more permanent and powerful at organizing civic ideas than individual buildings.” 87 The Grand Avenue development and, as the Committee describes it, the new “Central Park of Los Angeles” is precisely the type of catalytic project with open space that the drafters of the Shared Facilities Plan had considered (Figure 5.11). In 2000, the team responsible for the new park included the landscape architectural firm of Rios, Clementi and Hale studios, architect Brenda Levin and the cultural programming firm of Community Art Resources. The park’s design has gone through a number of iterations with the most recent version being unveiled by Rios, Clementi and Hale in the spring of 2009. Called “uninspired” and “uncompelling” by Los 86 Johnson Fain & Pereira Association Los Angeles Civic Center Shared Facilities and Enhancement Plan: Phase I Memorandum p.3 87 Ibid. p. 7 187 Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, the plan has rightly been called a jumble of brightly colored ideas (Figure 5.12). 88 The new plan attempts to break the symmetry of the existing space, yet while slightly more informally laid out, the idea of a line of trees along the outer edges with open space in the center largely repeats the plan of the 1950s. The primary intervention considered in the new plan is the development of an opening to the Mall from the Music Center. The plan retains the Will Fountain dedicated in 1966 and adds green space to the area now known as the Court of Flags. Significantly, the plan’s model portrays a lawn in front of City Hall where a crowd has gathered in front of a large screen. This is indicative of a key shift in the role of the civic center. The Mall is no longer a space for an amphitheater in the classical tradition, rather a site to watch television in public. 88 Hawthorne (2008) Critic's Notebook: A Grand Park Plan? Not Really ; Hawthorne (2009) Critic's Notebook: Civic Park's Design Has an Identity Crisis 188 Figure 5.11: The original plan for the park by the Related Development Company, 2005 Source: Grand Avenue Committee, Project Overview Website: http://www.grandavenuecommittee.org/ overview.html 189 Figure 5.12: A model of the second iteration of the park plan. The plan was unveiled in March 2009 by the Rios, Clementi and Hale Studios Source: http://www.grandavenuecommittee.org/updates.php 190 In response to the bland proposals being advocated by designers working for the developer, USC’s Norman Lear Center issued a call for proposals from the general public. The Center received 300 ideas from individuals and institutions, both professional and amateur, from which they selected 73 to be posted on their web-based “submission gallery.” The coursework of work of nineteen graduate student teams from USC and Cal Poly Pomona was also featured in the submission gallery. The various ideas for the park are communicated in writing and visually; 122 graphics are shown on the website, including drawings, plans, photographs, computer simulations, photo montages, sections and diagrams. Photomontages make up the largest number of images presented (34), followed by photographs (32), drawings and sketches (17), site plans (15), computer simulations (9), sections (6) and diagrams (4). Among the images submitted by student teams, photomontages are the preferred method of representation, making up almost half of the images shown (44 percent of all images submitted by students were photomontages). Site plans constitute 29 percent of the remaining student images, drawings 10 percent and computer simulations six percent. Non-student submissions also included a high number of montages (19 percent), but non- students submitted many more drawings than the student teams (16 percent of the non- student submissions were drawings, compared to 10 percent of the images done by students). 89 89 Non-students were significantly more likely to include photographs (45 percent compared to the 1 percent of photos in student submissions). However, most of these photographs appear to have been included as illustrations by staff of the Lear Center, rather than by the submitter. Submission gallery page 191 These numbers may be indicative of future trends. Students of design and planning are especially reliant on photomontages. They use them more than any other medium to communicate ideas about the future of the built environment. While a powerful new tool, there has been little discussion in the planning and urban design literature about the various meanings communicated in such technologies. Indeed photo montages, like GIS and other digital methods are usually described as unproblematic. For example, Al Kodmany (1999, 38) suggests that photo montages contribute to the range of planning visuals that represent a “common language”; a language that, if presented correctly, apparently offers a universally acceptable medium of communication. Illiescu (2008) analyzes design collages from an aesthetic perspective recalling their critical ability to rupture singular narratives. In her analysis of collage in architectural and planning practices, she describes a number of lost opportunities and argues that design collages frequently attempt to impose a singular narrative. Too often digital montages “succumb to the sensational— to simple flash and purely visual qualities” (Iliescu 2008, 10). However this may not necessarily be the case, since her argument ignores the ways that viewers give their own meaning to what they see. Other readings, especially those of the audience are always possible. For example, the Grand Intervention makes the reading of a singular narrative impossible. So many ideas were received, and in such different forms that it is difficult to ascribe an overarching accessed March 19, 2010 http://www.learcenter.org/html/projects/?cm=grand/gallery The Center posted 122 images on their website, 5 of which do not load so a total of 117 images were analyzed. 192 narrative. However a number of themes do emerge. In the following pages I discuss a few of these montages in detail. Technology is prominently featured among the submissions, including various plans that suggest some version of an electronic wall on which individuals can post photo and text messages via the web. Other submissions recommend that the built environment, i.e. the sides of buildings be used as the backdrop for film screenings or other visual entertainment. As part of the Sonic Shadows proposal (Figure 5.13), designers suggested that what the park needed was a “place that allows people to remove themselves from the daily life of the city, but not from its environment.” As an “iconic environment” the structure is composed of large glass panels that surround an “interactive water feature” that would emit a digitally-tuned “pitched tone”. To visually describe this proposal the creators included a number of images of the structure in plan and section view, and a photo montage to describe how individuals would relate to the structure. In the figure below the viewer sees a lone individual, dressed in a business suit using the machine. A couple walk by, engaged in conversation while an African-American family check a map as if they have come to visit the park as tourists. 193 Figure 5.13: “Sonic Shadows” where visitors can “remove themselves from the daily life of the city” Source: Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism Other submissions evoke the natural, rather than technological environment. For example, a farm landscape is hinted at in one of the photomontages submitted by a student team (Figure 5.14). The activity is set in an unknown environment, one that is not immediately recognized as the Los Angeles Civic Center. Four figures are represented: two men and two women. All four are Anglo. They are somewhat casually dressed and are involved in the kinds of leisure activities associated with the weekend. The woman in the foreground walks her dog, the man behind her looks to his right as he strolls towards the viewer; the man to her left has brought a book to read in the park, while another 194 woman in the background considers stepping off the path as she looks through the trees at something that is not pictured. The figures walk amongst a row of what appears to be citrus trees, along a path of decomposed granite. The path is located in the middle of the composition and directs the eye to the urban environment beyond the orchard. Yet the dominant motif is of a rural farm. The image includes a windmill. As a nostalgic symbol of farming, the windmill is evocative of the independent farmers of the plains destroyed by the dustbowl. While referring to a rural landscape, the figures represented are essentially urban characters – there is no suggestion of them working this land. The choice of citrus is significant as a historical marker of Southern California. It links to one of the most significant icons of the romantic “Southern California” Ramona theme and to a particularly Angeleno booster myth. The path forms a strong vector that creates a sense of deep space that pulls the viewer into the scene. The viewer is encouraged to visually travel along this path and to literally bump into the represented figures. The figures in the foreground are represented at close social distance, they may be strangers, but they are familiar strangers and are depicted as if they were just like us. However, despite this familiarity, no human gazes are exchanged in this image. Each figure is self-contained, essentially absorbed in their own individual activity. The woman in the foreground looks at her dog, the only represented figure that makes contact with the viewer. In this way we become part of a 195 scene that demands nothing from us. No contact is required, no shared experience demanded and our anonymity is assured. The Urban Orchard can be contrasted with The Meadow, an image from a different student team (Figure 5.15). In this scene there is no clear linear path; in fact the grass path is rather confused. Five figures are represented. In the foreground, the same man who was pictured in the previous montage walks towards the viewer, this time with a newspaper clearly visible in his hand. Two women swing a toddler between them, while another young woman lounges on the grass behind them. While the figures are frozen, an odd sense of movement is also depicted. The reclining young woman and the toddler directly address the viewer. However, the young woman, although demanding attention from the viewer is awkwardly posed. Her attitude appears to be clipped from a teen magazine or movie and is rather too intimate for this public space. As in the previous image, a generic urban environment appears in the background. There is a clear separation between the urban environment and the park. One is represented by buildings, the other by nature. The row of trees separating the two environments draws a strong boundary. In another student work, the Avenue of the Sycamores (Figure 5.16), we see four zones of activity, a roadway for vehicles on the far left, a walkway for pedestrians, a shady space to play seated games, such as chess and a fourth more active environment for soccer and other sports. Each space is separated by a different ground texture including asphalt, paving stones and decomposed granite. Like the Champs Elysees in Paris or the 196 Ramblas in Barcelona, the zones are separated by large trees that are formally planted in long rows forming a canopy overhead. There is a mix of activities and individuals in this image. People of color, businessmen in suits, young people playing and student types co- exist, apparently without conflicts. The viewer is positioned in this scene, as if walking along the path. Three individuals walk towards the viewer. Figure 5.14: “Urban Orchard” submitted by students of Cal Poly Pomona Source: Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism 197 Figure 5.15: “The Meadow” The work of a different team from Cal Poly Pomona during the fall 2005 uses some of the same images to populate their vision of the park Source: Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism 198 Figure 5.16: The “Avenue of the Sycamores” Source: Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism Besides these three street views that attempt to accurately show the future of the park, other images are more whimsical. In an image submitted by architect Mia Lehrer (Figure 5.17), three people and a dog sit at a table as if they were having tea. The table is set with green space, presumably the park under consideration. Each represented individual wears a building on their head. The image is an example of a visual metaphor with many possible interpretations. The image could be interpreted as 1. we are the civic center, 2. individuals have favorite buildings, 3. people are thinking about buildings in the civic center. The buildings could also represent the various institutional players that are involved in planning the civic center. Indeed, the group is generally seated as the buildings are actually arranged at the civic center; Jose Rafael Moneo’s recently 199 constructed Los Angeles Cathedral is located on the civic center’s north side, Los Angeles City Hall on the east, the Disney Concert Hall on the south and A.C. Martin’s Department of Water and Power building on the west side. This arrangement gives some credence to the “we are the civic center” idea. Figure 5.17: Detail of plan submitted by Mia Lehrer for the Civic Park Source: Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism 200 When comparing these images to those submitted by the architects of the 1950s we can see a number of differences. Nature is specifically and metaphorically invoked through the use of orchards, meadows, trees and other specific plantings. While in the 1950s the trees were more likely to be simple geometric shapes, the photo montages of today allow designers to refer to specific trees, in this case sycamores, and flowering fruit trees. The park is frequently pictured as a quite place of contemplation, an opportunity for the passive appreciation of nature and a respite from the city beyond. Indeed, from among the cacophony of submissions, the idea of the park as a “natural” environment appears to be very clearly articulated. However, the way that this space contributes to an understanding of the “civic” is less obvious. The most obvious difference between the two collections of images is the presence of women, children and people of color. Many of the contemporary submissions by the public represent the diversity of the current city’s population. In addition many of the images are presented at eye level, rather than the aerial views of the 1950s. This shift in angle suggests that the viewer is more involved in the scene. However, while these are positive trends, the social environment depicted is not as suggestive of a shared public realm as it could be. In a number of cases, the represented figures are pictured walking alone, or they are engaged in individual or small group activities. Very few, truly collective activities are represented in the more recent submissions. Even proposals that recommend the projection of web based ideas, the idea of a shared community occurs through the combined act of individual display, not through any serious dialogue between 201 or among individuals and groups. The park is a natural space, a place of leisure, but it contains none of the social values envisioned by previous planners. This idea can be succinctly summarized in (Figure 5.18). In the classical amphitheater of the new millennium the audience, comprised of lone individuals stand around admiring a tree. Figure 5.18: In the classical amphitheater of the new millennium the audience looks at a tree Source: Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism Epilogue In the spring of 1992, the trial of O.J. Simpson was held in the County’s Criminal Courts building. As the television camera’s beamed their images to the world, many Angeleno’s realized that they were not impressed with the civic environment depicted on 202 their television screens. During the trial, the Los Angeles Times interviewed architectural historian Vincent Scully of Yale University, a visiting scholar at Cal Tech in Pasadena. Scully spoke for many when he suggested that, “the fact that this tragic trial is going on in the shoddy Criminal Courts building is emblematic. The entrance…is not a community space, it's a basement space. It faces away from City Hall and could be any office building. It gives us the message that there's no dignity in our public life.” 90 Scully’s thoughts on the Los Angeles Civic Center were steeped in an awareness of the classical ideal, to which he noted “we are all in debt to this image of civic order and decency”. His comments encouraged readers of the Times to “think of the difference if the activities surrounding the trial were all happening on the steps of City Hall, going up rather than down, the sense of the dignity and the sorrow of the proceedings. Its civic implications would be so much stronger and you'd understand it more.” 91 As a newcomer to Southern California, Scully was probably unaware of the century long planning efforts that surrounded the Los Angeles Civic Center. Despite the volume of planning documents, the inability to establish and sustain a cohesive civic center has continually been cited as one of Los Angeles’ most obvious deficits and is seen as evidence of a greater deficit of civic sentiment (Schuchardt 1941; McWilliams 1946; Scott 1969; Starr 1990). The city has been described as a reluctant, fragmented and fractured metropolis (Kaplan 1989; Fogelson 1993; Fulton 1997). According to some it is 90 Spiller (Feb 4, 1995) Public Places Beaming Up the Wrong Image L.A.'s Civic Center is the setting for the Simpson trial. A historian comments on the impression it is sending 91 Ibid. 203 a provisional city (Cuff 2000), the apocryphal example of a late twentieth-century, postmodern urbanism of wealthy citadels and segregated ghettos (Davis 1990; Scott and Soja 1996; Klein 1997). For others, the city’s centrifugal forces have left the built environment devoid of a cohesive form and public identity (Steiner 1981). As Scully reminds us, these absences are felt most powerfully in the city’s civic center which is seen as lacking the physical markers of both community and collective citizenship. Descriptions of the civic center decry the “fall of public man” (Sennett 1976) and contrast the contemporary environment with an apparent golden age of bustling street life and democratically oriented public discourse. Today, private interests dominate, shopping malls have replaced city streets and comprehensive urban design has been replaced by flashy but disconnected redevelopment projects (Loukaitou-Sideris and Banerjee 1998). While true to a degree, these “narratives of loss” (Crawford 1995) and stories of the fragmented city obscure the very active participation of the individuals, organizations and institutions who shaped, and continue to shape, the Los Angeles Civic Center. Today the construction of a number of new public buildings and the heated discussions about the future of Grand Avenue all speak to the continued interest in, and viability of, this part of the city. As these chapters have shown, planners at various points in time worked to create a physical environment equal to their civic aspirations. As Kevin Starr has suggested the “Civic Center as an ideal moderates the urge toward Balkanization, which is among the supreme temptations of our post-modernist era.” 92 Whether Progressive 92 Starr (1997) Civic Center: Government Intervention May Save the City's Heart Los Angeles, Calif, 204 ideal, Modernist marvel or post-modern leisure space, the Civic Center remains an active and vital part of the City of Los Angeles. 205 Chapter 6. Conclusion Using methodologies associated with visual rhetoric and social semiotics, the preceding chapters have examined what the images created by planners for a civic center in Los Angeles can tell us about the profession and the production of civic space in the United States during the twentieth century. Two themes associated with professional practice were explored in the dissertation. First, a detailed study of the images from Los Angeles challenged the historical periodization of the planning profession. Second, the chapters recognized the complex ways that planners view the world. As we have seen, the Allied Architects’ plan of the 1920s represented a point of co-existence between the City Beautiful and City Practical; two planning movements that are often described as fundamentally distinct. The Association’s primary visuals reflected a continuation of a European artistic tradition. Yet, at least one of the plan’s drawings was inspired by the introduction of new visual tools associated with the City Practical movement. In addition, in Chapter Four we saw how the wholesale clearance of urban environments commonly associated with the urban renewal programs of the 1950s and 1960s was envisioned at least twenty years earlier in areas around the Los Angeles Civic Center. Furthermore, and contrary to the arguments of a number of critical theorists, these chapters have suggested that the images created by planners are complex. The project provides an important empirical check on the apparent supremacy of planning’s all- 206 powerful panoptic gaze. Besides the aerial oblique and plan view, planners regularly incorporate street level views into their documents. However the power relations embedded in these images are not always obvious. Upon closer inspection, it is possible to find an oblique aerial view that is suggestive of equal power relationships and a street level view that depicts a strong power hierarchy. Each image has a history that requires contextualization to establish its meaning. The images in planning must be understood as contributors to a negotiated practice where power is shared among many individuals and institutions. The rhetoric of representation is based on the use of conventions that operate within larger systems of understanding (Schön 1983). The conventions serve as a common repertoire from which planners draw as they prepare new images of the future. In this way the use of conventions provides a framework for planning practice, however this framework is not so powerful that individuals cannot also generate new possibilities. Indeed, recognizing the socially constructed nature of images should not lead to an abandonment of planning’s visual practices; rather a more sophisticated understanding of such practices is required. When practitioners become aware of conventions they also have the opportunity to work with or against them. This has important pedagogical implications. As a new generation of planners is trained in image making, will they be asked to critically understand their creations? While not specifically an ideological critique, this analysis has also brought the values and purposes embedded in the design of the Los Angeles Civic Center to the fore. Whether arguing for the development of a pleasing entrance for visitors to the city, 207 establishing boundaries between the civic center and the communities that surrounded it or creating places of relaxation in the heart of the city, planners across time have frequently relied on a particular civic ideal. For example, Chapter Four highlighted how the images in plans communicated an Anglo vision of Los Angeles. This vision relied on the selective erasure of ethnic neighborhoods to create a specifically Anglo civic space. Chapter Five distinguished between the architecturally designed mid century mall and the visions of the public at the turn of the millennium. The plans from mid century describe a public realm in which the Roman ideal of civic discourse among (male) citizens is highlighted. Later visions also employ many of these classical tropes, for example through the inclusion of amphitheaters and monumental open spaces. However, while certainly more socially inclusive, many of these images show only limited communication among different individuals. The scenes represented are most often made up of singular individuals and demonstrate little in the way of broader community ideals. Through a digital cut and paste process, the population is reduced to types and the built environment to a generic model. As these chapters have shown, images are fundamental to the planning and urban design profession, yet they remain critically unexamined. Through an analysis of the material manifestations of the profession’s broader visual practices, the Rhetoric of Representation has made explicit the often taken for granted nature of planning graphics and has highlighted the culturally and historically situated use of these representations as examples of concrete practices. 208 However, having said this, there are some important limitations to the research method. A rhetorical approach usually focuses on the production, the nature and the reception of an image. In the context of this historical case study, it was very difficult to describe the process of image production, since the availability of documentary evidence was quite sparse. Only in Chapter Three, when the preliminary sketches of the Allied Architects Association were available was a satisfactory analysis of image production possible. In many other cases, the drafts and early planning discussions have not survived through time. Despite these difficulties, the rhetorical aim of planning images is clear. The inclusion of graphic communication adds important new insights to an existing literature on the rhetorical aspects of planning practice. The rhetoric of representation plays a role in practice through the use of culturally established conventions that influence the selection and arrangement of elements in an image (or a group of images on a page). The viewpoint, focus and layout all combine to produce a particular message and because these messages emphasize certain perspectives over others, they have political consequences. 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New Brunswick, NJ Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University Press Zukin, S. (1998). "Urban Lifestyles: Diversity and Standardisation in Spaces of Consumption." Urban Studies 35(5-6) 220 Appendices 221 Appendix I: Overview of Civic Center Plans Table A1: Overview of Civic Center plans and proposals A summary of the plans and proposals for, or related to, the Los Angeles Civic Center. Plans that were “officially adopted” by the City and County, or by the Civic Center Authority are bolded. Year Plan Author Sponsor Comments 1909 Report of the Municipal Art Commission for the City of Los Angeles, California Charles Mulford Robinson Municipal Art Commission Robinson plan was adapted by Neher & Skilling, Architects in 1911 1919 Dodge Plan Jonathon Dodge Temple Block Civic Center League The Mulholland Committee considered at least 18 plans. The Dodge plan emerged as the strongest. The plan’s graphics were prepared by architect, Lyman Farewall who also proposed that the Hall of Records be made the center of a new Court complex 1923 Plan of Proposed Administrative Center Cook and Hall City & County Planning Commission 1924 An Administrative Center Plan for the County & City of Los Angeles Allied Architects Association City & County Planning Commission Circa 1925 “Acropolis for Bunker Hill” Lloyd Wright 1927 Administrative Center Warner Ruchti Regional Planning Commission Plan officially adopted by both City and County 1930 Suggested Location for the Union Terminal and US Post Office Henry V. Wall City Planning Department Circa 1935 Civic Center “Forum” William Lee Woolett 222 Table A1: Overview of plans and proposals (continued) Year Plan Author Sponsor Comments 1935 Civic Center for the City & County of Los Angeles City Planning Commission A related plan that included a Municipal Auto Park was also proposed 1936 Plan for a Concourse to New Union Station and Historic Plaza Dwight Gibbs LA Junior Chamber of Commerce & City Planning Commission Circa 1938 Scheme for the Los Angeles County Civic Center John C. Austin Austin, who along with AC Martin & John Parkinson designed the Los Angeles City Hall, would go on to serve as a member of the Civic Center Authority & to participate in the design of the Civic Center Mall in the 1950s 1941 Master Plan of the City, County, State and Federal Administrative Center for Los Angeles So Cal Chapter, American Institute of Architects City & County Planning Commission Officially adopted by City & County 1947 Proposed Los Angeles Civic Center Burnett Turner & So Cal Chapter, American Institute of Architects LA Civic Center Authority Turner served as the official architect of Olvera Street & the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Site from 1947 to 1971 1949 Master Plan of Branch Administrative Centers City Planning Commission 1952 Master Civic Center Plan City & County Planning Commission Officially adopted by the City in 1952 and by the County in 1954 1954- 1959 Plan for the Los Angeles Civic Center Mall J.E. Stanton & William F. Stockwell; Paul R. Williams; Adrian Wilson; Austin, Field and Fry; Ralph D. Cornell, Landscape Architect County Planning Commission 223 Table A1: Overview of plans and proposals (continued) Year Plan Author Sponsor Comments 1960 The Los Angeles Civic Center Today…and Tomorrow. Master Plan Restudy 1960 Los Angeles Centropolis 1980 Central City Committee 2 nd report completed 1962, 3 rd in 1963 1969 Civic Center Development Plan: an Element of the LA General Plan City Planning Department & Civic Center Authority 1970 The Concept for the Los Angeles General Plan City Planning Department 1972 Central City Los Angeles 1972/1990 Preliminary Plan Wallace, M., Roberts, and Todd Committee for Central City Planning, Inc. 1993 Downtown Strategic Plan Downtown Strategic Plan Advisory Committee Community Redevelopment Authority 1997 Los Angeles Civic Center Shared Facilities & Enhancement Plan Johnson Fain & Pereira Association et. al Civic Center Authority Phase I Memorandum completed 1996 2003 Central City Community Plan City Planning Department Currently being revised 224 Appendix II: Civic Center Boundaries Figure A2a: Cook and Hall Cook and Hall plan of 1923 overlaid on a 2009 street map. The base map for this, and each of the maps that follow is adapted from the Los Angeles Civic Center Shared Facilities and Enhancement Plan, prepared in 1996 by Johnson Fain & Pereira Association et. al. Figure prepared with the assistance of Victoria Lee 225 Figure A2b: Allied Architects Association An Administrative Center for the County & City of Los Angeles by the Allied Architects Association, 1924 Figure prepared with the assistance of Victoria Lee 226 Figure A2c: Werner Ruchti plan The officially adopted Werner Ruchti plan from the Regional Planning Commission in 1929 overlaid on a 2009 street base map Figure prepared with the assistance of Victoria Lee 227 Figure A2d: Revised Civic Center plan A revised Civic Center Plan from 1941 officially expands the boundaries to Los Angeles Street on the east and Grand Avenue on the west Figure prepared with the assistance of Victoria Lee 228 Figure A2e: Turner plan Burnett Turner’s more expansive plan of 1947 includes the area around Union Station, much of Little Tokyo and New Chinatown, as well as most of downtown’s Bunker and Fort Moore Hill. Figure prepared with the assistance of Victoria Lee 229 Figure A2f: Mid-century Master Plan The Master Plan of 1952 overlaid on a 2009 street base map Figure prepared with the assistance of Victoria Lee 230 Figure A2g: Element of the General Plan The Civic Center as an Element of the General Plan of 1969 which adds the block bounded by Main, First, Los Angeles and Second Street to the previously approved plan from 1952 Figure prepared with the assistance of Victoria Lee

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This project is about the visual practices of urban planners. It applies methods associated with visual rhetoric and social semiotics to the theories of Henri Lefebvre, Lisa Peattie and Donald Schön and focuses on the production, the nature and the reception of images in planning. The approach is grounded in an historical study of images created by planners for an administrative and cultural center in Los Angeles and explores what these images can tell us about the profession and the production of civic space in the United States during the twentieth century.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Drake Reitan, Meredith (author)

Core Title The rhetoric of representation: planning Los Angeles' civic space, 1909-2009

School School of Policy, Planning, and Development

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Policy, Planning, and Development

Publication Date 08/03/2010

Defense Date 05/30/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Los Angeles,OAI-PMH Harvest,planning history,Urban Planning,visual rhetoric

Place Name California (states), Los Angeles (city or populated place)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Banerjee, Tridib (committee chair), Kinder, Marsha (committee member), Sloane, David C. (committee member)

Creator Email drake.reitan@gmail.com,mereditd@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3263

Unique identifier UC1129261

Identifier etd-Drake-3822 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-372012 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3263 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Drake-3822.pdf

Dmrecord 372012

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Drake Reitan, Meredith

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu