Hooray For Hollywood's Urban Renaissance

"For decades, tourists deposited themselves at one of the most famous intersections in America -- Hollywood and Vine -- and looked around in puzzlement, wondering what exactly they were supposed to be seeing.

The surrounding Hollywood neighborhood had fallen into such miserable disrepair that its main consumers were people seeking drugs or tattoos. Many entertainment companies were long gone. Crime was rampant, incomes were depressed, and people who labored in the industry that gave the neighborhood its fame were nowhere to be found.

But in a few weeks, work will begin on a luxury hotel and a collection of $1 million condominiums at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, joining a skyline of condos and trendy new hamburger and sushi outposts rising among the mid-20th-century architecture.

That Los Angeles neighborhood, which had been promised a comeback for a good 40 years, seems to have finally achieved it, a cross-continent bookend to the transformation of Times Square in New York, with one key difference: Los Angeles residents, not just tourists, have found reasons to go there and live there.

In the last several years alone, more than $2 billion has been spent on projects in the neighborhood, including mixed-use retail and apartment complexes and new schools and museums. Many urban planning experts see something other than a confluence of low interest rates, a tight housing market and developers with a gleam in their eyes.

The Hollywood renaissance represents a potential future of much more of Los Angeles, a sprawling, horizontal city where vertical, dense and at least somewhat walkable neighborhoods with public transportation are increasingly in vogue."