In 2015, Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne and Occidental College launched an ambitious series of conversations about the future of Los Angeles.

On this archive page, you can review event descriptions and view video footage of most events from 2015-19.

 

L.A. House and Home: New Paths in Housing Policy and Residential Architecture

Policymakers and leading architects come together to discuss L.A.’s homelessness, housing affordability and single-family zoning. 

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Amnesiac City: Bolstering Civic Memory in Los Angeles

How should Los Angeles, so often caricatured as a city of the future, engage more actively with its past and the broader notion of civic memory? This stimulating panel will explore the intersection of architecture, monuments, cultural identity and the histories of place.

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Turn Off the Sunshine: Shade as an Equity Issue in a Warming Los Angeles

As climate change intensifies and Los Angeles suffers through more days of extreme heat each year, shade is quickly becoming an equity issue of crucial importance.

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Strange Beauty: Making Sense of L.A. architecture from the 1980s and 1990s

The city’s Office of Historic Resources has compiled a database of cultural and architectural resources, known as Survey L.A.

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Is There an L.A. Sensibility? Place and Politics in Los Angeles Design

Architects, planners, critics and historians often praise works of architecture or urban design for suggesting an authentic sense of place — or knock them for lacking it.

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City on Demand: Technology and the New Shape of American Urbanism

How are new digital services affecting the way we build, live in and move through American cities? 

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Student-organized panel: Homelessness and the Right to the City

This year the students enrolled in Hawthorne’s Urban and Environmental Policy department course connected to the Third Los Angeles Project chose to highlight the topic of homelessness. 

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Three L.A.s, Three Olympiads

The Olympics is one of those subjects that falls almost perfectly into the framework of the Third Los Angeles Project. 

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Streetfight: Janette Sadik-Khan '82 conversation with Christopher Hawthorne

To mark the publication of her new book, Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution, Oxy alum and trustee Janette Sadik-Khan '82 spoke with Christopher Hawthorne about street design, the public realm and mobility in Los Angeles, New York and other cities.

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Turf Battles: The Lawn in Los Angeles

Like the freeway, the single-family house and the concrete-wrapped Los Angeles River, the lawn is one of those symbols of suburbanized Second Los Angeles now being held up for scrutiny as the city begins to remake itself for the era of climate change. 

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