Letter to the Editor:
Burbank’s extant architectural design, traditionally, has formed after labor-intensive calculations, popular empirical assumptions, and add-on political processes, as well as accidents of the city’s history before and since 1911. But, what about AI skyline planning done by powerful outsiders, say, METRO impacting Burbank via its BRT?
Indisputably, METRO’s BRT will shift real-estate development from mere piecemeal infill schemes to economic overlordship of Burbank’s future design. Burbank’s urban identity is based on its ability to distinguish itself in its current encapsulation by its metropolitan surroundings, Los Angeles County.
The immediate, as well as permanent, effect of METRO’s BRT will be to make the City of Burbank, along with other towns such as Glendale and Pasadena, more difficult to distinguish, in fact darn near close to urban illegibility. Buildings, of course, are the primary carriers of urban function and the floor levels, or stories, of buildings are usually windowed. What future views will Burbankers have through those multi-tiered transparent glass windows caused to be built by METRO’s BRT-SB-79 political scheme?
Considering the fabricated fog of vague political-speak from both near-invisible METRO BRT representatives and our own City Council Members, very little can be discernible! So far, for Burbankers, it is like trying to read Graham Rawle’s 2018 novel OVERLAND in real-time wherein that British writer focused on a fake city (actually built above the Lockheed Aircraft factory during 1942, nowadays the Empire Shopping Mall) appropriately named “Overland”.
Clarity is something so rare in politics that it must be cherished. Professional politicians are formally and self-trained to obfuscate, divert, fool, to appear appealing by contrived masks. Few such creatures have real-world skill sets that are practical in any way other than deception and worse. They’ve added, with deliberate PR blathering, so much cringe worthy touchy-feely phoniness to politics that the meaning of “community” can often elicit snickers from those all too aware of their infidelities and inadequate education in all matter of practical things that citizens desire in their leadership.
Richard B. Cathcart
Burbank
