Postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who passed away last month, must be chuckling in his grave. In a flattering LA Times profile this weekend, LA's promising new chief planner Gail Goldberg waxes poetic about her experience in San Diego, where she helped spearhead the movement to reinvigorate San Diego's downtown. After she left the comforts of suburban Del Mar for a condo in downtown SD, Goldberg says, "I loved it from day one. I remember sitting on the terrace and the streets were all lit up and carriages were going by and I said, 'I think I'm in Disneyland.'"
Much like the blissed-out vacationer who stares at a sunset and swears it looks just like a postcard, Goldberg has succumbed to the power of the imitation -- or the simulation, as Baudrillard describes it. In his landmark essay on simulations, Baudrillard reserves a special place for Disneyland, which he regards as an imaginary world that manages to usurp the real one:
Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation.
So isn't it just dandy that the future of Los Angeles, the capital of fakery and cinematic dream-weaving, has been placed in the hands of a city planner who believes that a successful urban landscape is indistinguishable from Disneyland's Main Street, USA? If you're wondering what Baudrillard might say about this, I suggest you ask him -- well, his avatar -- in Second Life.
Goldberg's not the only one who thinks that a little Disney-fication can do a town good. During the Lear Center's park design competition, known as the Grand Avenue Intervention, Lear Center senior fellow Neal Gabler proposed a heady mix of Walt Disney and Frederick Law Olmstead for the Grand Avenue Park. Personally, I can't wait to see what LA's new imagineer will do with Skid Row. Rollercoaster ride, anyone? The final dip's a doozy!
Comments (1)
Goldberg is the magician at the sell of a product "smartgrowth" and slickly markets it to innocent angelenos. She has the gift of gab...she makes a good PR on the smartgrowth ideas, but sadly she (and her ideas) are empty suits. The press won't touch her and are giddy to write verbotem anything she mouths as if she has the lock of bridging LA's urban delimmas facing angelenos. In reality, Goldberg pushes smartgrowth, a bankrupt and thoughly debunked land use theory (emphasis on 'theory') by the likes of the cato institute and a ton of other scholarly works. Even if the ideas played out elsewhere, actually met the loft goals of those urban idealist who embrace it, why push a theory before you get to the city and take stock of it's infrastructure, needs and wants of it's citizens? Did you venture to Portland at least ONCE to see how it's a total failure there? House prices skyrocekted, pollution increased, public transportation lies idle, and Portlanders hate it! It's shown to gentifiy the area and push miniorites outwarrd to burbs. And yet, dispite having any knowlege of the city and dispite the evidence to the contray she rides on her hours carrying water for the smartgrowthers. It's one size fits all and realtity be damned. Goldberg if anythign be said is her stubborn dorgmatic myopic view that smartgrowth is the oNLY answer. She's going make angelinos swallow smartgrowth. What's wrong with a more prgamatic with circumspect using sysetmeic approaches from all fields and experts to first what works for the urban landscape of los angeles. Heck why do that when you just have a PLanning director makert an failed idea.
If this isn't patronizing BULLSHIT I don't know what is . I would laugh at her own narcissitic tendicies and the press' tacit mythologizing of her, but really, it's not funny conidering if she succeeds in her warped one-size-fits-all vision of the city heaven help the city becasue it will need it. And once it's destroyed like Portland there is NO going back. It's been nice knowing you los angeles.
Posted by plan awry | November 4, 2007 2:05 PM
Posted on November 4, 2007 14:05