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Downtown Los Angeles
Photograph: Jeff Cleary/Flickr

Los Angeles tops Wired's list of cities shaping the future of design

Michael Juliano
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Michael Juliano
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Los Angeles can sometimes feel like a city of clashing design ideas, from mismatched street grids to one-way roads that inexplicably become two-way and back again (we’re looking at you two, Figueroa and Grand). But that hasn’t prevented Wired, a technology magazine, from seeing design greatness in LA’s near future.

Wired placed Los Angeles atop its list of cities that are shaping the vision of tomorrow. LA joins the likes of Shanghai, Dubai and our unrequited love San Francisco as a city that’s heading toward a more environmentally sound, fun and beautiful future thanks to a set of deliberate design decisions.

So why exactly does Wired think we’re a city of the future? Part of that owes to the conversion of 4,500 miles of orange-yellow sodium-vapor streetlights to white, interconnected LEDs as part of a wireless grid of lights that the Bureau of Street Lighting can change in response to emergencies and other events. Additionally, the magazine cites the $8 billion LAX overhaul (and particularly the celebrity-tailored Delta One terminal) as well as the general shift from water-slurping lawns toward native drought-resistant flora. Finally, Hopscotch, the first-ever roving car opera, cements our spot in the list because, well, we don’t really know—Wired just thinks it’s really cool.

We’re not about to argue with our place atop the list, but we can think of a few major infrastructure initiatives to merit our spot: road diets, aggressive Metro expansion and Vision Zero, Mayor Garcetti’s push to end traffic deaths. In addition, the Frank Gehry-designed overhaul of the LA River is set to alter the appearance and connectivity of entire stretches of the city while SpaceX and Hyperloop ponder the future of transportation.

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