[in-enaction] sharkitecture: the Great FoG has spoken (again) [ LA, no actually, SG ]

Los Angeles With a Downtown? Gehry's Vision

He said his goal was "to develop the beginning of a community that has 
the body language of a community and has the scale of a community."
....
Some city experts have questioned the wisdom of trying to generate a 
downtown in Los Angeles. In a commentary in The Los Angeles Times last 
year, Joel Kotkin, author of "The City: A Global History" (Modern 
Library, 2005), wrote that the city "might want to consider whether 
public resources and private capital could be more effectively channeled 
into the far-flung neighborhoods of this city where most of us actually 
live and work."

"These are the places — not this ersatz downtown, Eli Broad's faux 
Champs-Élysées — that constitute the collective heart of this city and 
epitomize Los Angeles's unique brand of civic greatness," he added. But 
Mr. Gehry said planners were striving for a design that would capitalize 
on Los Angeles's essential identity.

"It's not New York, it's not Paris — it's a different image and we're 
struggling to find it," Mr. Gehry said. "You don't have a downtown. This 
is an attempt to find one."

| it is Singapore, silly! you just found Singapore.

cont'd....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/arts/25gran.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin