Wryly Coyote

A scruffy outlaw quadruped roams the pages of this issue of Los Angeles Review of Architecture, weaving in and out of the policy cul-de-sacs, ominous tech disruptions, and boulevards of broken dreams catalogued herein. As the doctored nameplate on the cover indicates, LARA is a special project from New York Review of Architecture. On our second jaunt out west, we leave our faithful murine avatar behind and once again embrace the lore and mores of La La Land—starting with the coyote. Our admiration for the rugged canid travels along a particular vector: For all their subtle menace, coyotes are endearingly resourceful. They effortlessly straddle the urban-suburban divide. And from a certain perspective—specifically, that of a mountain lion—they’re an underdog. That’s where LARA enters in: We strive to foster a robust critical impulse among a wide public of readers who have experienced irritations and infractions in the built environment. We want to show that things could be otherwise; that architecture can be of use to us all. If we take down a top dog from time to time, so much the better.