Roger Sherman and R.E. Somol ‘s book Under the LA Influence: The Hidden Logic of Urban Property
To complete a recommended read from last semester, I delved into Roger Sherman and RE Somol’s chapter about gaming theory as applied to the development of cities in his book LA Under the Influence: The Hidden Logic of Urban Property published last year (2010). In this section “Landplay and the Logic of Negotiation” Sherman and Somol do not stray from a tendency among architects to write in complicated and unwieldy sentences. However, they do ground a doozie like “Just as the market value of a commodity is assessed relative to its size and other qualities, as well as the context – where and when – it is being bought or sold, the value of a parcel is a direct function of its general developability, which, in turn hinges on its location, natural properties (access to views, mineral resources, etc.), and, of course, as previously discussed, its entitlements” with a curt thought like “This is worked out through negotiation” (p. 62). There were actual a few more sentences of a similar kind – replete with dashes, colons, and parenthesis – before the simple “this is” expression began a new paragraph, but the eventual juxtaposition serves as a small relief.
Incidentally, any sentence beginning with this phrase sticks conjures up memories of my sophomore English teacher who teacher forbade us from including the word ‘this’ without a noun to follow it. This rule of thumb such as this one drove us to write with agonizing specificity and have stuck with me more than most things I learned in High School, and although I am hesitant to accept such blanket rules these days, I appreciated their clarity and intention. In fact, the stickiness of such instruction is likely due to the simple straight-forward nature of the rule as much as the ubiquity of writing assignments in work and school, and, in turn, opportunities where I might have used the phrase if not for Mrs. Miller’s voice echoing admonition at the thought.
Not unrelated to Sherman and Somol’s interest in gaming and the playfulness of property negotiation, his re-appropriation of terminology from law, politics, and bargaining structures the chapter with winsome logic. The diagrams and drawings that Sherman assembles match this tone of playful precision. The beginning and end of the article speak of gerrymandering as a formally irreverent process of negotiation over space. Included is a map of one of Los Angeles’s districts composed of scraggly borders that reflect political interests more than spatial order. The end of the article returns to this idea of gerrymandering which has a similarly informal appearance at the scale of a block or parcel. The 2600 block of Cherry Avenue in L.A. serves as the penultimate example where a bank, café, oil company, and shoeshine establishment share complicated and interdependent ties to one another on a single urban block. In this bizarre example, a café sits beneath and benefits from an the ad hoc advertisement of an urban oil rig and connects to an adjacent but hidden bank by way of a bridge dubbed “Turner’s Pass” cut through a berm and hedgerows.
The images and description satisfies the expectations conjured by a peculiar but technical term like gerrymandering. Many less overtly odd terms house sections of the text including contingent order, dynamic equilibrium, apportionment, and norms. Sherman and Somol tend to explain even the terms that already have a more common and so vague (like norms) with clear examples that efficiently elucidate how they are using in relation to property negotation. As a designer who could otherwise be niave to the jargon of land politics and business, I am happy to adopt the language of those who often, as Sherman and Somol point out, have more a disproportionate amount of control over the physical outcome of city spaces. In this way, a pedantic reading of ‘landplay’ with an eye on Sherman’s diction appeals to my realist side that does want to understand rather than lament chaotic urban forces.
Ideas about negotiation and space are grounded in common-sense examples that make the complexity of the content memorable and less abstract then it would initially seem. The most memorable situations include a two-story home west of downtown L.A. with large billboard, a small plating company – Hugo’s – completely encapsulating by a large company after refusing to sell its land, and strange property outcropping that blocks several lanes of Califa Street in Van Nuys where the city ran out of money to buy property via eminent domain. Like the urban oil rig that has become more of a landmark than a nuisance, these situations seem to have crossed over to becoming novel rather than chaotic, like so many “mistakes” or “eyesores” that gain enough attention can do.
I can think of two examples in cities I have lived in or near. I was amused to hear my mother tell me that the “butt ugly” building in Hartford was finally torn down. A dilapidated 10 story (or so) brick wreckage was so institutionalized as the “butt ugly building”, that when she googled it to show me an image, no less than fifty articles with the words ‘butt ugly’ appeared. Infamous, perhaps, but famous, definitely. Then there is a pink building in Charlotte, North Carolina where I lived for five years. It is pink. Pink, pink. Magenta. Pink. Rumor around the School of Architecture at UNC Charlotte was that the owner had an ax to grind with his neighbor and thought the appropriate form of action was to build a taller, pink monster of a glass tower beside him. I don’t know if that’s landplay or landwar but Sherman and Somol’s article certainly gives me a valuable framework within which to understand these personal and financial forces that shape our cities.
Bibliographical Information:
Title: L.A. Under the Influence: The Hidden Logic of Urban Property
Author: Roger Sherman, R.E. Somol
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 2010
ISBN: 0816649472, 9780816649471
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