The Greatest City?

Here's a fabulous essay (with fabulous photography) by Geoff Manaugh over at BLDGBLOG about why Los Angeles is the greatest city in the USA.

That demands repetition: he claims Los Angeles is the greatest city in the Unites States.

No matter what you do in L.A., your behavior is appropriate for the city. Los Angeles has no assumed correct mode of use... No one's going to save you; no one's looking out for you. It's the only city I know where that's the explicit premise of living there – that's the deal you make when you move to L.A.

Amen. Whether or not you choose to hold this up as a paragon of greatness is purely a matter of taste; I tend to agree with his sentiment that LA is a singular place, unique and incomparable.

Now don't get me wrong; I'm a country boy to whom Boston will always feel like the Big City. And I love New York, albeit in a removed fashion; I haven't lived there, so my concept of it is more romantic. It's the source of our dreams of Gotham City and Metropolis. Home to the best and worst.

But Los Angeles doesn't play that game. It's a true empty canvas, because it isn't waiting to be filled. Los Angeles may not give you anything, as Manaugh says, but it also doesn't ask anything of you in return. Live and let live, drive and let drive, and nothing more. The rest all comes from yourself.

Los Angeles is the confrontation with the void. It is the void...It's a confrontation with the oceanic; with anonymity; with desert time; with endless parking lots.

Certainly not heaven, but definitely fascinating.