I grew up near San Francisco, a city with enormous charm and character, a definite center and, thanks to the Bay and the Pacific, obvious borders. San Francisco is a city with such a strong, undeniable personality, that it almost feels like a person to me instead of a place. I assumed, in my inexperience and youth, that all of the great cities of the world would be like that. And I eventually learned that, for the most part, I was right. But not Los Angeles. When I first arrived here in 1980 to go to UCLA, all I saw was endless sprawl, about as colorful and inviting as a parking lot. It was a city seemingly without shape, boundaries or a personality that I could identify. I was lost... more
