Jessica Helfand, Alissa Walker|Audio
February 27, 2020
Episode 121: Love and Squalor
With Michael on vacation, Jessica is joined by Alissa Walker, the urbanism editor of Curbed. She has lived in Los Angeles for almost 20 years but only recently has begun to see a new kind of homelessness, with people going to jobs during the day and returning to tents or RVs at night.
Jessica, meanwhile, sees L.A. with fresh eyes:
The parks are so beautiful. The flowers are always in bloom. When you see dirt and when you see homelessness, it’s really catastrophic against the backdrop of so much idealized perfection.
Also mentioned this week:
- Frieze Week in LA
- Artnet, Barbara Kruger on Why She’s Plastering LA’s Buildings With Questions About What It Means to Live Another Day
- Crenshaw/LAX Transit Project
- Destination Crenshaw
- Elijah Chiland, Curbed, Agency responsible for housing LA’s homeless discovers 3,000 units it ‘didn’t know about’
- Nithya Raman, Nithya for the City
- YouTube Movies, Down and Out in Beverly Hills
- Urban Confluence Silicon Valley video
- Alissa Walker and Alexandra Lange, Curbed, Design competitions won’t solve your city’s problem
- Alexandra Lange, Design Observer, Against Kickstarter Urbanism (2012)
- Travel Film Archive, Flight to California 1952
- Rosa Lyster, The Outline, We will never find dignity in air travel
- Molly Young, The Cut, Garbage Language: Why do corporations speak the way they do?
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By Jessica Helfand & Alissa Walker
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Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer and a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Communications Arts and Eye magazines. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame, Helfand received her B.A. and her M.F.A. from Yale University where she has taught since 1994.
Alissa Walker is editor of the design blog