Sam Lubell on the Los Angeles he found and leaves

Sam Lubell is leaving as the West Coast editor of The Architect's Newspaper, and on the way out he says Los Angeles has made "astonishing progress" as a city that cares about livability, historic preservation and progressive design. In his wrap-up piece he offers some suggestions for continuing this in the future. Here's how he begins.

When I first arrived in Los Angeles eight and a half years ago I must admit I didn’t really get it. The city seemed to poke its finger at everything I had grown to love about my former home, New York. What do you mean I couldn’t walk everywhere? Why was nothing seemingly more than 50 years old? And where was the grid? The order? The organization?

But over these years I’ve come to love and respect Los Angeles and the whole West Coast to an extent that I never thought I could. Sure, LA is not as walkable as New York. But its sweeping geographic scale is less restricted, open to cultural and economic diversity, and varied types of buildings and neighborhoods. It leaves room for strange and fascinating happenings in the margins. Yes, it doesn’t have the history of the East Coast (although it has more history than most understand). But it’s also historically unburdened by eastern rules and expectations, making it a fertile place for innovators. And yes, it’s chaotic and ad hoc urbanistically, but it’s the collision of people, culture, and buildings that makes it endlessly fascinating.

But even though LA has all of this, and one of the best climates in the world, the city should not get comfortable. Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned is that we’ve barely begun to tap the potential of not only Los Angeles, but also the entire West Coast.

The new West Coast Editor is Mimi Zeiger. The paper's lead web story this morning, by Lubell, is on a development in Echo Park, Blackbirds, "a hybrid between a cluster of single-family homes and a courtyard apartment complex."

Christine Bullard/The Architect's Newspaper

Architect Barbara Bestor calls it “stealth density”: clusters of duplex and triplex townhouses and single-family residences centered on a rectangular, planted street. Some structures are dug deep into the ground to create more space and fit into the hillside landscape.

Bestor’s team overlaid several studies of the neighborhood’s local housing and topology to fit the project into its relatively tight site.

“Once you’re in it, it definitely feels like you’re in a courtyard housing situation, but from the outside it looks like it could be part of the neighborhood context,” said Bestor.