Comments on: Why is Los Angeles So Ugly?

By: Neil

Neil — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 16:58:03 +0000

For some reason, the last commenter actually made Los Angeles sound more attractive to me again. Gracias!

By: Nolar

Nolar — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 15:47:16 +0000

Los Angeles is definitely the ugliest city I have lived in! I have lived in other cities and countries. Violent crime everywhere, graffiti, rude people and youth everywhere, horrible traffic, illegal immigrants by the millions, high cost of living, and snobby women. Anyone who has lived in L.A. in the last 10-15 years will agree with all of this. It is this bad all around the city. So bad that it is the only city where white families have completely abandoned the city. Even Miami is much more diverse and livable.

By: Pierre

Pierre — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:01:40 +0000

Hi,
I’m writing this from Sweden. I moved to Los Angeles in 1995 and being a young 22 year old young man, I was at first completely fascinated by Los Angeles, its vastness, diversity, and variety. However, more and more often, I feel a sense of isolation and even depression living in Los Angeles. Isolation, because you sit in your car so much, you don’t actually connect with people as in other cities, especially European cities and I can compare to European cities since I am European. Depression, because the fascination has turned into disillusionment and frustration of the extremely bad planning of Los Angeles, its traffic, which gets worse every year, its pollution, its violence, and its high cost of living. I walked through the streets of Berlin last weekend and I felt for the first time in a long time that I could breathe, connect with people on the streets, look at old beautiful buildings, sit in cafes and most of all, I could easily and quickly take public transportation everywhere. Los Angeles must be one of the worst planned cities in the world and in some parts, it’s so ugly it makes you sad. Luckily, Downtown is experiencing a renaissance and that is a good start. Also, Hollywood has been revised and it looks so much better now than 12 years ago. I would leave Los Angeles and move to a more aestically pleasing city but being married, that is not so easy to do. My brother from Germany just visited me in Los Angeles and he pointed something out that I did not truly notice before. He pointed out the ugliness of all the power lines running across Los Angeles and the ugliness of those hideous brown power line poles. In Germany, the power lines run underground. Just another good example of horrible city planning in Los Angeles.

By: Howdy T. There

Howdy T. There — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 23:01:42 +0000

Good assessment! I wish you were not correct in grading the ugliness of LA. But are your initiatives enough? How bout flower boxes on all windows, and clothing covering all 300 plus people on the beach !! Why can’t LA look more like Chicago ? Or Fresno, for that matter ? Good luck with your crusade, my friend, but hands off my donut !

By: you SUCKER

you SUCKER — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 01:44:47 +0000

you suck. you talk like you’re god or something, thinking you’re right and everyone is wrong

By: Barbara

Barbara — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 19:55:27 +0000

I visited LA once in the early 1950s and my memories of it were telephone poles and lines above ground, and living a block from the beach in Corona del Mar, actually. LA was not prohibitively expensive nor was is overcrowded. Now I am back here and saddened to find that relatively little planning was done in the ensuing half-century so that LA’s problems are immense and vitually unsolvable. (I am a trained city planner and have lived here for three years–only temporarily, however!) By the way, one of the ugliest strips is Ventura Boulevard. Boulevard? That’s a tragic joke.

By: Susan Warshauer Kahn

Susan Warshauer Kahn — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:08:57 +0000

Thanks for the article and ideas, Design Czar. To one of the respondents, Isabel Orendain, who I knew years ago in N. Carolina, if you ever read this again, hope you’ll get in touch: scw8@georgetown.edu Cheers to all. Susan Warshauer Kahn

By: Neil

Neil — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 00:34:47 +0000

Palm trees are synonymous with Los Angeles? I thought it was racial riots.

By: atley

atley — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 00:08:21 +0000

you are so bad, palm trees are synonamous to LA. if you dont, uh, like it, i believe the go to acronym is: gtfo.

By: Citizen of the Month » Arm in Arm

Citizen of the Month » Arm in Arm — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 04:49:25 +0000

[...] 2) My most popular post on Los Angeles was: “Why is Los Angeles So Ugly?” Los Angeles Blogs. [...]