How much has the city really changed?
The New Yorker created a fascinating side-by-side comparison of a drive around DTLA. Filmmaker Kevin McAlester was commissioned to recreate a 70-year-old drive through downtown Los Angeles. His split-screen tour of Bunker Hill in DTLA in the 1940s and a present day L.A. shows how much—or how little—the city has really changed.
In the 1950s, the elegant facades of mansions and hotels were replaced with low-incoming housing known as The Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project. The area was populated with pensioners, immigrants and workers, according to The New Yorker.
Fast-forward and the buildings have since been adaptively reused by businesses or developed into loft apartments, drawing in droves of artists and Financial District workers. In the video, you’ll see a shifting skyline as quaint residential homes are replaced with the sleek curves of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and other major art institutions like the MOCA.
Featured image: New Yorker