7/27/2019 Urbanist Aug Sept 2012 Mott Smith
1/1
What can the Bay Area learn
rom Los Angeles?
Id rather answer the question
what can we learn rom each
other? The rst time I met (and
ell in love with) SPUR, it was
through an exchange you did with
the Westside Urban Forum in L.A.
I was blown away at how similar
our perspectives, aspirations,
challenges and complaints are. I
now believe the historical period
when a place is built determines
its orm and character even
more than its location does. The
new towns in the Bay Area have
similar issues as the new towns
in Southern Caliornia, as do
the older communities in both
places. What I have learned rom
SPUR and the Bay Area is that it
isnt just L.A. but all o Caliornia
that continues to clumsily apply
a 20th-century new-growth
paradigm to existing urban places,
with poor results. We need to
move beyond planning that cares
mostly about zoning and takes no
ownership o the city oundations
that really matter: inrastructure
and the public realm.
You talk about the value o
authentic character, which is
oten dicult to achieve in brand
new developments. What are the
advantages o adaptive re-use,
o not starting rom scratch?
American architecture, planning
and development culture is
obsessed with authorship, oten
at the expense o authenticity.
Theres an unspoken sense that
urban interventions are only
worthwhile i someone can say,
I planned that. This, however,
is narcissistic, limiting and
prooundly antiurban. It results in
the problems the great sociologist
Richard Sennett described in hisbook The Uses of Disorder,
namely
that urban planners become
too preoccupied with stopping
unplanned things rom happening
and, in the end, have no idea how
to create. This suburban ethos
has invaded our cities over the
last 100 years, leaving its DNA
in urban renewal, NIMBYism
and the highly scripted specic
planning we engage in to the
exclusion o real game changers
like investment in inrastructureand the public realm, the
places
hungriest or real planning. At
Civic Enterprise, we believe that
the best neighborhoods have
invented themselves over time
(generally on a oundation o
public inrastructure). And instead
o trying to erase that history,
as so many plans and projects
implicitly try to do, we want to
nd that value in organic places
and build on it.
So, as someone who thinks about
cities a lot, what is your avorite
Urban view: Jamestown, St.
Helena, South Atlantic Ocean.
A cosmopolitan town o ewer
than 1,000 people, built almost
400 years ago and still largely
unchanged. It is the purest
evidence I have seen that
is not about how big a plac
about how it unctions phy
and how its people decide
relate to each other.
Favorite building? Wow, s
to choose rom. The Bradb
Building in downtown L.A.
o my avorites. I love it not
because it is an urban geod
also because o its story. It
designed in the 1890s by G
Wyman, a dratsman who w
inspired to take the commi
ater consulting a Ouija bo
It sits at Third and Broadwa
downtown L.A., right in the
o the historic core. Its likequiet guest at a loud party
who turns out to be the mo
interesting person in the ro
Impressive urban inrastru
The canals o Venice, Italy.
And avorite book/flm/w
art about cities?Wings of
a lm by Wim Wenders. Its
uber-cool omniscient ange
Berlin. One alls in love with
peze artist and chooses to
his status and vantage in o
experience real lie in the
becomes a regular, schlubb
in a bad sweater. But he ge
eel the cold city air, warm
with resh cofee and touch
person he loves. We in the
use world would do well to
those things every so oten
M THE URBANIST
MEMBER PROFILE
Investingin Place
Mott Smith
In Los ngeles, a city-builder
imagines all thats possible.
Mott Smiths background doesnt immediately suggest developer.
My
undergrad degree is in linguistics. It taught me that people
ollow rules
o behavior that are completely unconscious but you can discover
them
i you watch and learn, he explains. Then I played bass in a rock
band
ull time or two years, which taught me the importance o laying
good
oundations. Ater hanging up his guitar (at least some o the
time), heworked or the government and private sector. Now, as
principal o Civic
Enterprise Associates in Los Angeles, hes able to pursue his
passion
or great neighborhoods. My partner and I do all kinds o
projects
that allow us to help make neighborhoods more vibrant,
walkable,
afordable and exciting, says Smith, both as planners and as
principals
in developments. We like to orge new regulatory pathways
wherever
possible. And i we can help make those pathways more available
or
others to use such as with the small lot subdivision ordinance
in Los
Angeles we eel like weve made a contribution, and we are
happy.
Smith recently took a visiting contingent rom SPUR on a tour
o
Los Angeles, a city he describes as so rich in culture and so
enticingly
misunderstood.
Planner/developer Mott
Smith (left) and one his
favorite examples of
successful urbanism,
Jamestown, St. Helena
