Rich Mintz  

“A funny thing happened on the way to the Cheesecake Factory,” writes Christopher Hawthorne, the Los Angeles Times architecture critic, about the gentrification of downtown Los Angeles. “The economic collapse has also managed to freeze downtown’s transformation from sleepy to energized — and freeze it at a particularly appealing spot.”

Like most positive assessments of LA’s urban scene throughout my life (including some that have come out of my own mouth over the years), this one seems like it’s reaching a bit — in particular, I don’t think the spaces among all those downtown microneighborhoods are so “easily [navigable] on foot or on a bike” — but the fundamental point he’s making is right on:

Gentrification has decelerated in several parts of downtown into a kind of limbo, leaving them sufficiently changed to feel newly vital but not enough to seem overexposed. At the same time, plummeting housing prices and the conversion of several ill-fated condo projects into rental buildings means not only that the area is continuing to attract new residents but also that it may see a more compelling mixture of people — more teachers and designers, fewer real-estate speculators — than it did when forgettable two-bedroom units were selling for $800,000.

Something similar is happening in New York. Nevermind the neighborhoods that shouldn’t have been gentrifying at all, and wouldn’t have been if the market hadn’t gone crazy. Whole desirable swaths of the city — including parts of Manhattan, like the Financial District where I live — have become living choices again for people whose means are within the range of “ordinary.” And the projects representing the worst of the excess (on the Williamsburg waterfront, and the far West Side) are mostly in trouble, and at the very least have had to ratchet back the most odious of their marketing in order to attract a broader range of clientele.

I pay more to live here than I was paying in Brooklyn — but if rents hadn’t tumbled a year ago, I wouldn’t have considered it. And there’s a much wider range of people living down here than there was two years ago — and a lot wider than a few blocks away in Tribeca, which has managed to hold its position as the most expensive neighborhood in the city.

I enjoyed my visit to downtown LA last spring, and can see the evidence of revitalization everywhere. It was exciting, given that I don’t think I ever knew a single person who lived or played downtown in the first 30 years I was alive. No one would be happier than me to see the central core continue its upswing, so I’m glad to see Hawthorne shining some light on the things that are worth paying attention to.