Q&A with Christopher Hawthorne

Interviewer: Dafna Zilafro
Urban Landscape, November 2009

Christopher Hawthorne is the architecture critic at the Los Angeles Times. He was previously the architecture critic for Slate, a contributing editor for Metropolis magazine, and a frequent contributor to The New York Times, where his work appeared in the Arts and Leisure, House & Home, and Op-Ed sections. He has also written for The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New Yorker, New York magazine, and many other publications. In 2010, Christopher will be involved on a ULI Los Angeles panel discussing the future on downtown Los Angeles. As a prelude to that event, he kindly shared some preliminary thoughts with ULI member, Dafna Zilafro.

Who do you see living in Los Angeles’ revitalized downtown?

I think there has been a real influx of young residents, people in their 20s and 30s, who work in creative fields that aren’t even based downtown. In addition to those who live and work downtown, I am meeting people who live downtown and work elsewhere. I think that part of the reason for that is because among the younger generation there is a renewed appreciation for the architecture and history of downtown. Beyond the renovation of older warehouses and apartment buildings into lofts and condos, the new residential units have been pitched to that demographic.

Do you see these people continuing to live downtown as they grow their families?

There is a sort of narrow range of options that go from studios to two bedrooms, and I don’t pretend to understand the economics of this from a developer’s perspective….but people who live here, even if they love living downtown, when they begin to have kids it becomes difficult for them to make their lives work. It has something to do with the units being too small, rather than really the range or type of units being available. And there is the question of the general lack of practical infrastructure and cultural infrastructure—schools, grocery stores, etc. —things you can do without in your 20s and even 30s, but that you can’t do without as you start to grow a family.

What do you think would encourage families to stay?

There needs to be more attention paid to how to make neighborhoods work for all types of residents, in particular for families. The housing stock and the kinds of amenities that are available must be broadened. I think there is an interesting and really positive energy downtown, even with the economic crisis—in general, I am pretty bullish about it.

What in particular drives that energy?

I think the easiest way to explain it is that enough happened before the downturn that it developed a sustainable level of energy. The silver lining of the market crash is that there are a broader range of housing options available now, and that has attracted a broader range of people—ones that have a stake in their neighborhoods. As was true in many cities where there was a lot of speculation, you had a lot of people buying and flipping condos who had little to no interest in the neighborhood. Today, those who are buying are interested in the neighborhood and its future.

Do you see downtown as a hub of entrepreneurial and creative businesses?

Yes, in certain industries such as fashion, to some degree art, design, and even restaurant owners…if you are a young entrepreneur in Los Angeles, it is one of the first places that you think about now, which is a real change from a decade ago. Starting any business in the City of Los Angeles is challenging, but there is definitely a positive energy downtown.

What about the architecture in particular downtown affects the city’s revitalization?

There is definitely a historic fabric that appeals to the younger generation. I did a piece on the movie, “The 500 Days of Summer,” which is set entirely downtown. The script called for it to take place in San Francisco, but to save money they decided to film in LA. One of the protagonists is an architect who is in love with some of the buildings downtown. You never see any contemporary architecture in the movie, and in fact all of the shots of Disney, the Cathedral, or Caltrans have been cropped out, and all that you see is the historic core. It makes sense for the movie because the characters, like this generation, are really interested in vintage and anachronistic culture. There is a sense with this generation that they are rediscovering a group of buildings from the early part of the twentieth century that have been overlooked, and are now being recognized.

I think the other thing to remember is that there are a whole bunch of different downtowns, and each has its own unique architectural character. People like discovering these different neighborhoods; the bank district, the area around Sci-Arc, Bunker Hill, South Park, LA Live, and so on. I am finding that people really identify with a particular part of downtown rather than with the city as a whole. As a result things are developing in a non-linear way.

How do you see Los Angeles’ downtown development in relationship to other great cities in the U.S.?

I would say that the first thing is that the more time I’ve spent here, the more I think that LA is a unique place. It is tricky to judge its progress in relation to the development of other cities. I think that many of the challenges faced by LA are faced by other cities in the west and southwest—those cities that saw their biggest periods of growth in the twentieth century, after WWII and therefore developed around the automobile. I think there are a couple of key issues for downtown Los Angeles. First, it will always be a paradox – it is the center of the first centerless city. Downtown development here is contradiction in terms, in some ways. Second, a lot of what we are doing is trying to retrofit the postwar city that was designed around the automobile. We have to figure out how it will be used in the future as we turn away from auto dependence.

Downtown reveals a lot of mistakes that we made, but it is also attractive to a lot of people because there are these pockets that haven’t been touched since post-war development. Actually, some of the neighborhoods with the most vitality tend to be the ones with the most pre-war architecture. The challenge is to connect those pockets to each other, or to try and extend those into other parts of downtown.

How important is it to keep families downtown?

I think it is something that we should try to enable. There is probably a case to be made on the other side. In general it is important to say that the appearance of smaller housing units is a good thing, because we as Americans need to learn to live in smaller space, but there is some middle ground. What we have now is extreme. What I am arguing for is a greater diversity of options. There is a lot of controversy over the really small units. People hear about a 400-square foot studio and think of it as oppressive. I think there is an argument for the existence of studios that size, but that we also need a wider range of sizes available. To me this is not a matter of size. It is a matter of number of bedrooms. There are a lot of buildings that don’t have a single two-bedroom unit, let alone three bedroom units.

I know a lot of families who moved here either without kids or with small kids, and when their kids got to be school age, they moved away. It is a noticeable trend – people moving in for a few years and then moving out. One of the things that get overlooked in the sustainability debate is the concept of designing spaces that people can stay in over the long term, so that they are not constantly trading up, moving and rebuilding.

Are there any particular City Planning decisions that you believe will have a positive effect on the future of downtown?

Someone was telling me the other night that there is an issue with parking because more and more people are moving downtown who don’t work here, and they are expecting 2.5 parking spaces per residential unit in order to support their commute to other parts of the city for work. How parking regulations evolve will be interesting to watch and will be very telling. LA is still a city of parking minimums – we tell developers they need a minimum number of parking spaces for their projects. Other cities have parking maximums. I believe that where we go on that question will tell us a lot about where the development of downtown is going.

Dafna Zilafro is a member of the ULI Los Angeles Communications Committee, the Director of Marketing at Studio Pali Fekete architects (check out SPF:a at www.spfa.com), and a freelance writer and publicist.