Mr. Hawthorne embedded design requirements into the city’s procurement process that led to a new model for transit and bus shelters, in hopes of maximizing shade to reflect the realities of climate change. And he worked with historians, architects and Native American leaders to develop a more inclusive approach to building monuments and memorials in the city.
He also helped establish design criteria for affordable housing projects to make them more efficient and sustainable, and developed new architectural prototypes for more housing options in neighborhoods made up of primarily single-family homes.
“What we really tried to do is kind of change the way that Los Angeles broadly and city government thinks about these issues,” said Mr. Hawthorne, who took an expansive view of his job, saying it ranged from doing “very nitty-gritty policy work” to taking on broader questions about the city’s policy goals.
But since Mr. Hawthorne left in October to teach at the Yale School of Architecture, the position has remained vacant. Los Angeles’s new mayor, Karen Bass, who succeeded Mr. Garcetti in January, does not plan to name another chief design officer, a mayoral spokesman said.
Public realm roles in cities are still an experiment in progress, said Philip Barash, an urban planner who teaches at Boston University and co-founded the Public Sphere Projects, an initiative to help create and support effective and equitable public spaces.
Cities that really want to prioritize civic life in public spaces should not just create a public realm chief, but actually invest power and resources in the position, Mr. Barash said. The person in the role should be “at the top of the municipal pile” in order to have broad reach, he added, and should not be a “minor functionary buried in a couple of departments.”
The Municipal Art Society and New Yorkers for Parks have called for a public realm director since 2019. “It’s not a focus on making everything standardized and looking the same,” said Adam Ganser, the executive director of New Yorkers for Parks. “It’s a focus on equitable access, making everything feel seamless, connected, and easy to use.”
