Frank Gehry’s plans for a $1.8 billion downtown development in Los Angeles are impressive, yes, but Christopher Hawthorne says that the first draft’s “attitude toward the city is laid bare in these models, and, stripped of architectural flourish, they reveal a project a good deal less public-minded than many of us had hoped… Particularly on its lower levels, the design is clogged with retail space — 250,000 square feet of it in total above a labyrinth of underground parking. As a result, the project is shaping up as something of a commercial cul-de-sac: a place that’s designed, like a casino or a mall, to make getting in easier than getting out or walking through.”