Quote:
Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire
I first started driving around L.A. in the early '70s, and the difference between then and now is amazing. Out to the curbs--actually, these days, Los Angeles is... New York.
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Forgive me if I've already said this in the thread, but I think it can be argued that L.A. today is in much the same situation as NYC a century ago. Unlike the post WWII era, we no longer have huge tracts of vacant land ready for development, and the attractiveness of suburban living decreases in proportion to the length of one's commute. We now have a situation where a given building may well be replaced by a taller building with the same footprint and the same purpose, whereas 60 and 70 years ago building were replaced by parking lots, and at the turn of the last century private houses and farms were replaced by business districts.
Politics have also moved to the left; remember all those failed mass transit initiatives of the 1960s and 70s? People forget that in the 1960s, L.A. was a lot like the OC in terms of its political and cultural establishment.