Only 11 years until Blade Runner...

...but it looks like Los Angeles won't bear much resemblance to the most famous movie about its future.

What is the Future of Los Angeles?

With its clogged freeways and endless horizon of sprawl, Los Angeles has become what other cities strive to avoid. Its enclaves of glittering wealth contrast with flatlands of poverty. It’s immigrants, speaking dozens of languages, enrich cuisine and music, charging the city with entrepreneurial energy, but also find themselves trapped in a persistent underclass. Los Angeles is an “ecology of fear,” as Mike Davis so memorably put it, subject to earthquakes, floods, and wildfires. Joan Didion has painted a landscape of disconnection and disaffection, just as noir movies depicted a city hardened by dreams that had died.... architectural record’s James S. Russell, AIA, asked some longtime local observers and participants to think about what L.A. means to American culture and to speculate on its future.

Interviews include Thom Mayne, Frank Gehry, Joel Kotkin, and Richard Koshalak.

[via Bill C.]

Technorati Tags: architecture, California, city, future

Comments

[Anthony]

forget L.A., the future of American cities is Las Vegas.