Ayyüce also says that with governments such as Los Angeles now less financially able to maintain parks and other such amenities, big business set about increasingly co-opting -- or, picking up the slack for -- the creation and safeguarding of a bastardized brand of community commons.

"You go to The Americana, you go to The Grove, you got to the Santa Monica [Third Street Promenade], these are places that thousands of people visit," Ayyüce says. "But this is not really public space." — kcet.org

When the hotel workers released a short film a few months later that vividly made the connection between poverty and the uprising, there was a memorable freak-out in the Convention Bureau and City Hall. Instead of a comprehensive investigation that documented events, took public testimony and probed underlying causes, the Christopher Commission was coaxed to finish its superficial report on reforming the LAPD. No one wanted to hear the voices from our own intifada. — Los Angeles Review of Books

Ben van Berkel of UNStudio, along with Jonathan Cohn of EE&K a Perkins Eastman company, presented their 'Vision Board' - a conceptual rendering in the year 2050, showing Los Angeles Union Station as a multi-modal transit hub with a mix of uses, new development and outdoor spaces. The intent of the Vision Board was to explore visionary possibilities for Union Station and surrounding areas. — bustler.net

A public forum today at Union Station provided the public with their first look at conceptual visions for Union Station and the surrounding area by six architectural firms bidding to prepare a master plan for the facility.

Metro Executive Planning Director Martha Welborne told the several hundred people in attendance that the point of the vision boards was to energize the teams submitting bids to prepare the master plan, and energize the public that uses — or will someday use Union Station. — thesource.metro.net

After a short day of demolition, the Lloyd Wright-designed Moore House in Palos Verdes Estates is gone. The city council denied an LA Conservancy appeal of the demo last night and the Conservancy's Director of Communications Cindy Olnick tells us she's just heard from the city that the deed is now completely done.. the current owner bought it in 2004 and says he never even knew who Wright was. For years now the owner has been trying to tear the house down and build a Mediterranean-style house... — la.curbed.com

The house is the world’s first temple to “Acid Modernism,” the aesthetic the California-born Aitken conceived for himself and Gemma Ponsa, his companion of the last six years. “The goal was to create a warm, organic modernism that’s also perceptual and hallucinatory,” he said of the design. “We thought that would be a wonderful environment to live in.” — nytimes.com

Feeling a little claustrophobic lately? Well, it’s not just you — newly released numbers from the Census Bureau say Angelenos are living in the nation's most densely-populated urban area.

New York still has the highest population, but at 7,000 people per square mile, the Los Angeles/Anaheim/Long Beach area takes the density prize. — scpr.org

Frances Anderton came to Los Angeles via Bath, England in 1991 and like her compatriot Reyner Banham, fell in love with the city. As a longtime producer and host of radio shows Which Way, LA? and DnA: Design and Architecture respectively, Anderton has spent the last 25 years of her professional and personal life exploring the relationship between L.A.'s architecture, politics and design. — kcet.org

Los Angeles was one of the first large cities in the U.S. to adopt a kind of modern zoning to keep the industrial away from the residential.

If the city would have more mixed use, with people living closer to retail and workplaces, Los Angeles would feel like another city, with less of its land area dedicated to low density, single family residential neighborhoods, and more streets with shops and businesses on the ground floor and homes above. — kcet.org

College towns have weathered the recession and housing collapse more than the rest of America, but the neighborhood around USC is an exception. Now USC is planning what local officials call the biggest project in South Los Angeles in a generation — 35 acres, complete with restaurants, shops, a six-screen theater, faculty office space and student housing. Will gentrification push local residents out, or is the university — often accused of ignoring its neighbors — be doing them a favor? — Which Way, L.A.?

I’m just happier than heck to see this thing go.- logistical superintendent Rick Albrecht — NBC LA

[Gerhard Albert] Becker... built an 18-foot "fire trough" through the home despite being warned of the dangers it may cause. It was described as an oversize indoor fire pit.

They said the attic was equipped with plastic pipes for fire sprinklers. The fire melted the pipes, flooding the attic and filling the insulation with water. The weight of the insulation appears to have caused a large section of the ceiling to collapse, injuring Allen and five other firefighters, — LA Times