Fifteen Years in the Making, How Downtown L.A. Finally Arrived

“When I was growing up, I would tell people to get out of Downtown L.A. by 6 or 7 p.m.—it wasn’t safe,” my Uber driver told me as we wrapped around the Hollywood Freeway before making a turn onto West 4th Street. I looked down at my watch. It was about 7 p.m., and I was heading into the once-verboten neighborhood—now the city’s nexus for great restaurants and hip hotels.

The emergence of Downtown Los Angeles, dubbed DTLA, is no news flash: The area has been on the rise since the late 1990s. But that was the start of a long uphill climb. By 2009, it had already undergone the transition from bleak badlands to vibrant cultural mecca, thanks to early pioneers like the L.A. Live entertainment complex and the Standard Hotel. Since then, a slew of new hotels, restaurants, and museums have joined, and the neighborhood is showing no sign of slowing down.