The Simon reporter Joe Dungan visits one of the Valley's most impressive cultural landmarks - the 22-foot tall tower of wooden pallets. The tower, made from discarded Schlitz pallets, and now sagging, is under threat of destruction and nobody seems to care.
· Meet Our Non-Traditional Historical Landmark: The Tower of Pallets [The Simon]
The Park Plaza Hotel near MacArthur Park is in escrow, meaning somebody will hopefully throw a few dollars at the building and open it up again. As FranklinAvenue notes, the building is in various stages of use and condition with some areas, including lovely ballrooms in continued use, while other areas are dilapidated, as viewable in these pictures from the Center for Land Use Interpretation.
· New Chapter for the Park Plaza? [Franklin Avenue]
USC Economics Professor Peter Gordon looks at the trend of private communities in the US. Not the "gated" communities everyone hates, but those communities governed by homeowners associations. They're a collective all to themselves, and one that seems to escape "planning dogma". Another swipe at urban planners for planning for people not for dollars.
· That's why they call it dogma [Peter Gordon's Blog]