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| Downtown Los Angeles urbanone.com |
Those of you who have been regular readers of this blog have figured out that yours truly is a Los Angeles native. As a native of the City of Angels, I have had to endure, on occasion, all the myths and stereotypes about the city I live in and its people. One of the most enduring not so wonderful images of Los Angeles is a "...sprawling metropolis, suffering constant automobile gridlock." While this is true to extent, the Southern California region has major challenges; housing affordability to environmental to name two. However, C.J. Gabbe happily reports in his article, Eight reasons it's exciting to be an urbanist in Los Angeles today" for http://communitybuilders.net, "...after living in L.A. for the past two years...planning at UCLA, I've also been impresses with the planning and development innovation coming from the region." Los Angeles is starting to play catch up by expanding transit options and creating walkable communities. Personally speaking, if the informational pamphlet I recently downloaded from the Los Angeles Department of Planning is any indication, Los Angeles is definitely the place to be if you are an urbanist. Mr. Gabbe lists eight reasons why this is true.
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| CicLAvia Boyle Heights la.streetblog.org |
CicLAvia events are a fun and exciting way to encourage the growing bicycle and pedestrian culture. When eighties new wave band Missing Persons sang "Nobody Walks in L.A," they had no idea they would be so wrong thirty-two years later. CicLAvia temporarily transforms the streets of Los Angeles into a car-free zone for the pleasure of everyone. This event has become so popular "...that up to 180,000 Angelenos flock to iconic boulevards from a new perspective.
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| The Roosevelt Apartments adowntownnes.com |
For the longest time, Downtown Los Angeles' older buildings stood mostly unused and neglected; making them prime candidates for reuse. However, one major obstacle that stood in the way of full adaptive reuse implementation was parking. Parking is a huge issue not just in DTLA but all over the city. Civic officials realized parking regulations were inhibiting the preservation and re-adaptation of older buildings. In 1999, the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance was passed by City Council. This ordinance allowed developers to convert older buildings without prohibitive parking requirements. The result was more than sixty building have been spared from demolition and have become a vital part of DTLA's increasing vibrant neighborhood.
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| Los Angeles River thelariver.com |
Yes, the Los Angeles River does exist and no, it is not an endless concrete slab. Los Angeles has great plans for this fifty-one mile River. The City envisions the River as a continuous lushly landscaped "industrialized wonderland," hospitable to walkers, runners, bicyclists, kayakers.
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| Sunset Plaza Triangle losangelesurdezine.com |
Some habits are hard break and weaning Angelenos off their cars is a formidable task. Be that as it may, Los Angeles is following the lead of other cities in accelerating its efforts to turn an auto-centric city into a more pedestrian-friendly one. C.J. Gabbe reports, "L.A.'s People St. program specifically transforming rights-of-way into people-friendly plazas, parklets, and bike corrals." Through the People St program, "Communities can transform underused areas of L.A.'s largest public asset-our 7,500 miles of city streets-into active, vibrant, and accessible public space with People St, a program of the City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation..." (http://peoplest.lacity.org) The program is based on partnerships between the communities and the City of Los Angeles. The projects are conceived of and driven by the communities, brought into existence through the People St. Community Partners who are required to actively take part in building neighborhood support for a project, identifying an appropriate site, do outreach, fund raise and provide long-term management, maintenance, and project operations. (Ibid)
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| Parking along 7th Street in Downtown L.A. lastreetblog.org |
A typical first question Angelenos ask when going anywhere is "is there any parking?" Besides actually finding a space, the other major parking-related issue is the cost. No one wants to pay a fortune just to park somewhere for any amount of time. One way to deal with the sometimes outrageous cost of parking is through variable pricing, the idea of UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Professor Donald Shoup. It should be noted, in the interest of full disclosure, C,J. Gabbe is a doctoral student at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Professor Shoup has studied parking at great length, focusing on the key connection between "...transportation and land use, with important consequences for cities, the economy, and the environment." (http://luskin.ucla.edu/donald-shoup) To wit, LA Express Park™ is a website that melds technology with on demand-bsed parking pricing to create an innovative parking strategy.(http://www.laexpresspark.org) LA Express Park™is currently active in Downtown Los Angeles but will be coming soon to Hollywood and Westwood Village.
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| Larchmont Boulevard en.wikipedia.org |
While we are on the subject of parking, does anyone ever wonder where all the revenue collected from parking meters ever goes to? Over twenty years ago, the City of Pasadena, California implemented a meter revenue sharing program which designates the revenue collected from the meters toward streetscape and neighborhood improvements.
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| Los Angeles Sprawl lasmogtown.com |
Technical assistance for implementing smart growth
Southern California is a growing region. Managing that growth in a prudent manner has become a serious issue for the Southern California Association of Governments. To study how Southern California grows SCAG has developed a program, Compass Blueprint, which is designed to
...inform the development of the Regional Transportation Plan and Sustainable Communities Strategy, assists local government planning efforts, and is driven by four key principles:
Mobility-Getting where want to go
Livability-Creating positive communities
Prosperity-Long-term health for the region
Sustainability-Ensuring that today's decisions do not compromise future generations
http://www.compassblueprint.org
C.J. Gabbe estimates that if the Los Angeles metropolitan area successfully enacts the Sustainable Communities Strategy (http:/rtpscs.scag.ca.gov), then per capita, green house gas emissions will decrease eight percent by 2020.
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| Downtown Los Angeles streetscape painting yasminediaz.com |
Zoning codes are a necessary evil. They are what keep landfills from being opened next to schools. Like any regulatory policy, zoning codes become outdated or no longer workable. Los Angeles is no exception to this and is not afraid to that its zoning codes no longer work. The City's zoning codes are the product of piecemeal additions over several decades. Mr. Gabbe reports, "Today the city is the midst of a complete code overhaul..." The overhaul re:code LA is "a comprehensive revision of LA's outdated zoning code. First adopted in 1946, the current Code has grown from a simple 84-page pamphlet to an unwieldy 600+ page book that inadequately realizes a 21st Century vision of a better Los Angeles for all residents." (http://recode.la)
These are just some of the reasons to get excited about being an urbanist in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Department of City Planning has many exciting programs that will move the city forward into the future. Los Angeles does not have to be a bleak dystopia, envisioned in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. It can be a place of innovative thinking and action. To be fair, there are serious challenges to the future envisioned by the current city government but change is possible. The challenges of the present can be made into opportunities for the future.
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