Think small: safety first, grandiose projects later.

BY most any standard, downtown's residential revival has to be considered good news. The presence of a long hoped for "24/7" community downtown--beyond the homeless and the police--signals a welcome change from the grim reality of downtown after dark.

But it would be misleading to suggest that the current addition of perhaps several thousand people into central Los Angeles represents anything more than a blip in what is a dispersed, multi-polar region. Even as a select number of yuppies and empty nesters move into lofts and apartments, many times that number head for the periphery, which since 2000 has accounted for over 85 percent of the region's population growth.

Perhaps more importantly, downtown's status as a business center continues, if anything, to weaken as other areas--from the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys to the Inland Empire--capture more of the job base.

L.A.'s central core--that is the area three miles around downtown--controls a mere 7.3 percent of the region's job base. To put that in perspective, the area three miles around Anaheim has roughly 13 percent of the Orange County employment base and that of San Jose has 11 percent. Manhattan accounts for nearly half of New York's employment.

Despite a reviving regional economy, downtown has continued to suffer among the highest vacancy rates in Los Angeles County, at nearly 20 percent--far higher than either the San Fernando or San Gabriel valleys.

These numbers should make policymakers--and investors--somewhat cautious about "big plans" for the central core. But when it comes to downtown, many otherwise reasonable businesspeople seem to throw caution to the wind.

L.A. spreads out

Some of this is based on a misguided sense of civic spirit. We are constantly being told that a "great city" needs a powerful downtown. Development boosters seem anxious to place their hopes on Eli Broad's faux Champs Elysees on Grand Avenue and even more impractical boondoggles surrounding the Convention Center.

The concept of downtown, as historian Robert Fogelson points out, was born during the industrial revolution. Most great cities before that--Rome, London, Paris, Cairo--were configured by districts dominated by government, the marketplace, religious institutions and workshop areas. Venice, the forerunner of modern cities, was broken into specialized industrial districts, as well as areas given to public administration, markets and the church.

Downtowns emerged much later--appearing in Webster" s for the first time fight after the turn of the last century--and mostly in America and other younger countries. They developed in part because train travel made concentrating functions in one place possible while advances in construction allowed for ever-taller buildings. Los Angeles followed this trend in the late 19th and 20th centuries, building up a smaller version of what existed in New York, Boston, Chicago--and Philadelphia.

Yet early on, L.A.'s city fathers, reacting to the squalor and congestion in these traditional cores, were determined to spread out. In 1908, Los Angeles created the first comprehensive urban zoning ordinance in the nation, one that encouraged development of sub-centers, single family homes and dispersed industrial development.

Henry Huntington's sprawling Pacific Electric railway set the pattern for the city's expansive geography. The automobile further accelerated L.A.'s dispersion. As early as the 1920s, when Angelenos were four times as likely to own a car as the national average, Los Angeles' historic downtown was becoming less important as the region's economic and social center.

By the 1950s the decline of L.A.'s downtown was already well underway, leaving behind a government center, based around City Hall and the courts. That, along with a number of small, but vibrant specialty districts covering garment, food, toys and jewelry. These highly specialized districts, home to over 6,000 enterprises, now employ well over 50,000 trade and manufacturing workers. (Only recently have city planners and boosters even acknowledged the importance of these areas.)

Forget 'spectacular projects'

There have been repeated attempts to fit downtown's role into eastern models of a "headquarters city." Billions have been poured into building shiny modern high-rises. Yet with the sale of the Los Angeles Times to Chicago-based Tribune Co., even Carol Schatz, president and chief executive of the Central City Association, admitted that "the corporate headquarters downtown is now dead."

At least it was private investors, many from Japan, who endured the losses on these properties, some of which have ended up in the hands of savvier investors such as Jim Thomas. It was the unsuspecting public that invested billions more in a subway system that, boosters claimed, would finally turn downtown into a "real" city center. Yet rather than create a city of Manhattan-style straphangers, the Red Line today carries much less than half what was projected by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

So how do we deal with this history of misguided investments and disappointed dreams? By proposing yet more money be spent in more spectacular projects. We are even being asked to help finance a revitalization plan for the area around the Convention Center, with an ersatz version of Times Square and a new hotel.

Before signing onto these efforts, which have powerful political backing, we should look carefully at what has been wrought so far. The Convention Center--inexplicably located far from the attractions of the coast or entertainment areas like West Hollywood--has been a drain on the public purse for decades.

Perhaps it would be best to build on parts of downtown that have grown on their own--the specialty districts, the ethnic hubs, the communities around government and religion. We should also support the grassroots efforts around the artist districts and the adaptive reuse of older buildings. We should focus more on the small things, like keeping downtown safe and clean, instead of opting for the grandiose.

The time has come to acknowledge that downtown will never be "it" for Los Angeles the way midtown Manhattan is for New Yorkers. That may not align with the dreams of the boosters, but it would fit fight in with what is possible and what is real.

Joel Kotkin is an Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. He is the author of "The City: A Global History" to be published in April by Modern Library.