Visited a park in LA County. Surprisingly nice views for a pond originally intended for flood control engineering.
@mds2 There was a time we made public works pretty for the sake of making them pretty, on account of we knew we'd have to be looking at them forever.
... not everywhere, and not uniformly. But I went to a public high school with huge Thomas Jefferson busts on it put there for no other reason than it was WPA times and the state needed an excuse to keep artists employed. Those busts outlived the original artist.
@mtomczak Pretty sure when I visited this park about a decade ago, the flood control basin was all curvy concrete (and mostly dry most of the time)
The new park is probably better for local wildlife ecosystems, but the old park did have a sort of accidental charm.
More importantly, I am of the opinion that every time LA County tears up a big empty public concrete bowl, they should probably replace it by building a new skate park somewhere.
@mds2 I like this "conservation of curvature" idea and would like to subscribe to your newsletter and / or civic architecture journal. ;)
