Content area
Full Text
Los Angeles can satisfy your desires for high design, high altitudes, and high camp-afterall, it's all about you
By Julie Raimondi
What kind of city defines its citizens by the cars they drive and how in touch they are with their spiritual side? And how can a city generate multimillion dollar one-bedroom homes while also being the center of the Kabbalah resurgence? You may wonder how the most materialistic society in the country can at once seem so greedy and yet be on the longest quest for the meaning of life. Don't worry, they wonder too. In fact, Los Angelenos wonder more about themselves then probably any group anywhere. The Southland is the realization of the self-made, self reliant, selforiented individual, an ideal that is expressed in the city's landscape, resulting in one of most complex and perhaps ingenious built environments ever created.
What defines Los Angeles as a city unlike any other is its apparent lack of "city." Those mavericks drawn to the City of Angels have actually laid the land to remove themselves as far from downtown as possible, building instead the traditional American dream by creating suburb after suburb connected by intricately designed freeways. Built in order to move the individual into the landscape as far as possible, suburbs are supported by individualized shopping centers and commercial complexes. The freeways that connect them are the natural result of the desire for freedom. Even when they are stopped by the ocean, Los Angelenos push for room to roam.
Learning to accept and tolerate this car-- centered culture will assure a better understanding and enjoyment of L.A., and though some may find the traffic and resulting fumes unbearable, consider how it has changed the landscape. While the exceptional architecture of gorgeous homes is situated in hills and gated communities, commercial areas enlisted clever and kooky techniques to grab the attention...