The last of the Red Cars

The acid test

The anti-urbanists have recently touted the ideal of sprawling low-rise suburban growth as preferential to high-rise urban concentration, both environmentally and psychologically.

Let's cut to the chase: pick your preferred environment:

  

 It's immensely relieving to me to know that those who prefer image #2 will sooner or later probably be living there.

Sic transit

I ran across this old street footage of eastbound Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills on YouTube recently, complete with (original or fake?) puttering soundtrack.



I wish the film had continued down the Miracle Mile and into Mid-Wilshire, Westlake, and downtown Los Angeles. (I'll have to concoct the missing footage in my dreams—no problem for a dedicated sleeper like me!)

Note the intersection of Wilshire and Robertson (at approximately 1:46 to 1:52), where this lovely corner building, its shutters deployed against the midday sun, gracefully enhances the gently curving streetscape:



Not remembering having ever seen this building on Wilshire, I did a search of Google Earth and found that the lovely Spanish-style structure was replaced at some point by this piece of vapid, featureless junk:

Sick transit, indeed.