Two recent movies sketch out two very different visions of the future of Los Angeles, the epitome of the sprawling, western city. There’s the L.A. in the Oscar-winning movie “Her.” And then there’s the L.A. in the movie “Elysium.”
Parts of “Her” were filmed in Shanghai; nobody seems to drive and people live and work in high-rise buildings. In “Elysium,” run-down parts of Mexico City stand in for L.A.
Could L.A.’s future look like either one of these movies, if current trends continue?
Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson asks Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times, and Jon Christensen, editor of the quarterly journal Boom: A Journal of California and journalist-in-residence at UCLA.
Read More
- Christopher Hawthorne’s piece about “Her” in the Los Angeles Times
- Jon Christensen’s piece about “Her” in LA Observed
- Jon Christensen’s essay “Brave new L.A.” in High Country News
Guests
- Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times. He tweets @HawthorneLAT.
- Jon Christensen, editor of Boom: A Journal of California, and professor and journalist-in-residence at UCLA. He tweets @the_wrangler.
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