Design
Rethinking Downtown L.A. by Revising Pershing Square
The city reboots Pershing Square every few decades. In the long term, that’s no way to run a historic park.
It’s not that Pershing Square is awful. The way that some Los Angelenos talk about it, you might guess that it was a failed park, a downtown ruin.
Maybe the issue is that Pershing Square hasn’t lived up to its potential, while the rest of downtown L.A. is now exceeding it. The park, which is more than 150 years old, has changed faces several times. Its current incarnation dates back to an overhaul in the 1990s, and while there are admirable qualities to the postmodern design by Ricardo Legorretaa and Laurie Olin, too much of the park was given over to defensive design meant to keep out people suffering from homelessness and dereliction.