Again: late hours. Better a small businessman working ’til midnight than a small businessman bankrupt and on relief.
If you can’t build a large plaza, build a small one with just one or two theaters and a dozen shops. The most important element that remains constant is the center, the conversation pit, the plaza walk-around concourse where people know, are absolutely sure if they bother to go, they will see someone they knew from junior high school, college or some neighborhood area.
Let’s start with one plaza such as this, and build more. Needless to say, the ones that follow must not duplicate the first in texture or color or sense of drama.
Just as in the great cities of the world, there is only one Eiffel Tower for Paris, one Tower of London, one St. Peter’s for Rome, so, on a lesser level, each plaza in all the 80 lost and needful Los Angeles small towns should in some way strike individual chords of the backgrounds they arise from. In West Hollywood, of course, you would let the crazy fine Greenwich Village spirit that runs wild there work your design for you.
We have been yelling for years against the Orwellian world of 1984, and at the same time have been busy building such a world and walling ourselves in.
Now we must remember that drama and theater are not special and separate and private things in our lives. They are the true stuffs of living, the heart and soul of any true city. It follows we must begin to provide architectural stages upon which our vast populations can act out their lives.
The hour grows late. We must give us back to ourselves.
For what finer gift is there in all the world?
The End
