[A Christmassy colored map showing commuting times in LA, from our list of best and worst maps of 2013]
Week in Review: The Curbed Cup competition kept on keepin' on as we moved into the Elite Eight, with neighborhoods slugging it out for the top spot and Glendale seems to be doing some crazy whoop ass on the Historic Core. Perhaps next year Downtown's Piñata District, the colorful street with storefront after storefront selling piñatas, will make it into the competition, but probably not. In a week broken up by the Christmas holiday, Curbed wept silently while looking at pictures of Christmases from years past when people knew how to be festive and our children still visited us. The New Year is looking promising, with a few renderings having leaked of the proposed Metropolis "city within a city" project in Downtown LA. Hopefully, we'll get a few more to satiate our render-porn thirst in the coming weeks and months. There's a lot of ugly listing photos floating around the internet, and now Curbed has gathered 34 of the most hideous interior shots from the past year. The Chinese have come to Downtown's rescue once again by buying up the old un-built Fig Central project across from Staples Center, with plans to get moving on the multi-tower retail/residential/hotel project sooner than later. Metro is hoping to simplify future subway/light-rail station designs instead of the menagerie of designs currently found at existing stations, which sounds good but will probably fall apart as soon as some neighborhood/city decides they need special stations because they're special (looking at you Beverly Hills).