Our streets and neighborhoods are living monuments to the era in which they were built. The recently constructed subdivisions of the Inland Empire and southern Orange County are a suburbia executed with a half century of experience. The mid-century neighborhoods of much of the Valley and South Bay speak of a time when the autopian suburb was still a new thing; people reveled in driving to roller-skate restaurants and drive-in theaters instead of drudging to Wal-Mart in a giant SUV. Mid-City, though contorted toward car-centrism over many decades, still shows signs of a time when the auto was peer to the streetcar. In Los Angeles, there is one remaining example of a street which predates even the streetcar: Olvera street. It is but one small block amid millions of miles of broad thoroughfare, but take a walk through it and you come to appreciate, if only to a small degree, the 18th century life that our Spaniard Angeleno forefathers once led.
Sometimes, streets and neighborhoods are rebuilt or destroyed entirely, and with them the history they once carried. There was a time when there was no Four-Level interchange between Angelino Heights and Bunker Hill; before the freeway came they were considered adjoining neighborhoods, now they are thought of as different parts of the city. And look at Bunker Hill: what once was a residential neighborhood has been transfigured into a concrete business district where every street is a freeway. It seems that whenever streets are rebuilt in Los Angeles, they are rebuilt in the image of the automobile. The dynamic community life of the old neighborhoods is simply an anachronism, it needs to be paved.
But fortunately, this clamor for cars and wide streets seems to be slowly fading. In its stead are ideas from such visionaries as David Yoon, a writer, photographer and web designer. David has recently founded Narrow Streets LA, which reimagines some of LA’s less pleasant thoroughfares as pedestrian friendly havens by thinning them to the scale of Olvera, LA’s original narrow street. The site is only a few months old, but David has already built a sizable repository of photoshop-based renditions of future narrow streets. He is open to requests; I suggested he write about Olvera as an example of one LA street that requires no narrowing, and he was kind enough to run it as a feature.
It’s taken us the better part of a century to even begin to learn that wide thoroughfares generally make cities an unpleasant place to live. Sure, they have their place; I have always been a fan of freeway cover parks, which preserve the functionality of the freeway while making them significantly less ugly. But we could really do with a few less arterial wasteland boulevards and a few more of David’s walkable, enjoyable avenues. Here’s to a future of narrow streets and broad possibilities.
You’re probably looking at this picture and thinking, “what a beautiful abandoned railway”. But it will be gone soon; the Expo Board of Directors have voted 6-0 (with one abstention) to ratify the Expo Line FEIR (final environmental impact report), which will replace this cozy little train track with a fully functional modern light rail line. Try to take this same picture in five years, and you’re likely to get smacked upside the backside by a train heading for Downtown.
That is, unless “smart rail” advocates get their way. The Neighbors For Smart Rail group is apparently planning a lawsuit to alter the course of the line’s construction. Steve Hymon of Metro’s Source has more:
It remains unclear how such a lawsuit would impact construction of the Expo Line. But residents said that if such a suit was filed they would likely seek an injunction to stop construction until the report is redone to their satisfaction.
So, if the courts side with these smarties over Metro, they will get to reshape the line “to their satisfaction”. Are there any legal limits to how far off course their satisfaction can take the line? More to come on that, but there are certainly plenty of wealthy westsiders who would love to divert the train to the much slower Venice-Sepulveda route, or kill it entirely. NFSR claims they simply wish to see the line built underground in their neighborhoods, but it’s entirely possible that they are in fact planning to weigh the line down with unnecessary costs in hopes that it never gets built.
Will the Expo Line run through Cheviot, or will the smarties get to keep their beautiful abandoned train tracks intact? We shall see.
LA always seems to grapple with budget woes. This year, the city faces a deficit of $175 million. As a solution to this problem, the LA city council proposed earlier in the year to send the city’s arts funding to the chopping block.
This caused quite a flutter within LA’s arts community, and yesterday some of the art program’s beneficiaries made the case to keep arts funding to the council. Department of Cultural Affairs director Olga Garay pledged to trim her budget by $500,000. The citizenry also weighed in; artist and art teacher Lilia Ramirez arrived sporting a giant pair of wings. The unflappable Ms. Ramirez pointed out that art funding rescued her from the streets and helped her find a place in life – she also threatened that if they did in fact cut arts funding, she would molt in the council chamber. Eventually, the council agreed to keep the funding in place.
Now, I don’t like the thought of rubber stamping every civic program. But there’s something about seeing someone show up at a stuffy council meeting in a wing outfit that makes me proud to live here. The budget is a serious issue, but if we chop out programs that help make this a good place to live, we won’t have a city worth balancing a budget for. The council’s decision to keep funding helps breathe life into this city, and is ultimately the right move.
In other news today, the Expo Line is up for final approval from the Expo Construction Authority Board of Directors. They meet at 2:00 PM at the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration downtown. The meeting is expected to be heated, as NIMBY front group Neighbors For Smart Rail will be doing all the can to either stall or kill the project. The Times has weighed in with a ringing endorsement of the train as currently proposed. Look for more on this soon.
In case you missed it, yesterday was a big day for the Subway to the Sea. A crack team of Metro PR representatives struck westward, bombarding Century City with what might well have been the single most enthralling Powerpoint presentation of all time. And good thing; Century City is quite possibly the epicenter of LA’s car culture, and coincidentally enough, a hub for Westside old money.
I arrived by bus, stepping off on the soot-stained northern side of Santa Monica Blvd. At Avenue of the Stars, Santa Monica is so wide that you need two light cycles to get all the way across. There a bus-only lane through the middle of this giant intersection, which helps buses to speed up but also requires bus riders to wait at a stop in a median between seven lanes of traffic. This current bus setup is perhaps the most convincing argument that Century City needs a subway.
Arriving late for the presentation, I was given a handful of pamphlets and told that the material was also “all on the website” – soon to become a recurring theme for my trip. A boldly colored, wide format flier promised me that “the Purple Line is coming to Century City”. I’m sure it is, but not without Metro’s requisite parade of slowdowns and screw-ups.
Not the least of which are the affluent and transit hostile, who were well represented in this crowd. The capable Jody Litvak fielded questions, doing her best to diffuse the dull pessimism of some toward this project. “I live in Marina Del Rey, how will this help me?” one woman plaintively asked. A man was confused as to why the train didn’t run at ground level along Santa Monica, a street which he clearly hadn’t just walked across.
The meeting adjourned, and Jody and several other Metro staffers stuck around to further elucidate on their subway plans for Century City. One Metro employee, in a conversation with an uninformed but open minded attendee, bragged that he rides the Red Line from Hollywood/Highland to Metro HQ everyday – a fact that would amaze Browne Molyneux were she present. What’s more, the subway ride is faster that his commute would be by car. The attendee was impressed, but also worried that the subway couldn’t make back construction costs; his concerns were assuaged when he learned that nearly every form of transportation doesn’t make its money back, including roads. Despite further concerns that the subway would travel directly under his house, the attendee vowed that he would ride the train once it was completed.
I had a chat with the metro employee; despite me never having seen the graphics he had on display, he informed me that they had been available since October. I also learned why Metro is reluctant to build multiple entries to each station, even in crowded areas like Hollywood/Highland: each one costs $20 million. Quite a price tag, but one which is nonetheless warranted by the gargantuan breath of Avenue of the Stars. I was pleased to see many of the proposed station designs include two entrances.
I walked over to admire some of Metro’s fine diagrams, only to overhear a particularly irate old man badgering poor Jody. He looked like a cross between Walter Matthau and the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket, and he sported a plaid pork-pie hat that would make him look really hip were he 50 years younger. I didn’t catch the full tantrumconversation, but from what I overheard, he was not only furious that Metro dare to build a subway, but he also alerted Jody that he was on to Metro’s evil plot to manipulate data to make it look like more people were in support of the project. A subway conspiracy theorist! Maybe he should trade his fashionable hat for one made of tin foil. I was able to covertly snap a picture of this guy, so if you see him, you should congratulate him on his effort to undermine Metro’s nefarious designs.
Jody came up to me and asked if I had any questions. I had a few, and her response to all of them was, “It’s on the website.” I wanted to ask her to shed a bit of light on Mayor V’s ambitious but somewhat impractical sounding “30-10″ plan, but she was beginning to get tired of answering my questions, and with her having just had to deal with Mr. subway enemy, I let her off the hook. Be warned Jody, next time there will be no softball questions.
Despite the knee-jerk grumblings of the rich, a subway line to Century City would be a blessing. For anyone who doubts the benefits of a subway to LA’s “second downtown”, one need only look at how the Red Line has benefited LA’s first downtown. When the subway was first built, critics were outraged that anyone would dare build a subway in what was accepted to be the ultimate car city. But today, thousands people who would otherwise be clogging the streets downtown choose instead to commute by subway, light rail, or Metrolink. Let’s hope the same can eventually happen in Century City.
There was a bit of an award ceremony here in town yesterday – you’ll have to forgive my lack of interest, but an awards ceremony that concerns itself with rewarding outlandish outfits instead of real musical expression is hardly captivating to me. I will give the Grammys credit for honoring a broad array of musical styles (instead of just brain-melting pop), as well as having the class to hold their ceremony downtown. But we don’t need some expensive award ceremony to enjoy music here in LA. In addition to playing host to overhyped and moderately talented musicians, we also have plenty of underhyped ones too. So instead of launching into some big post-grammy analysis, I’ll use this as an opportunity to explore some of the more interesting musical blogs local to the LA area. They’ll direct you to shows where you don’t have to worry about being hassled by paparazzi, though there may still be a few people in outfits as outrageous as Lady Gaga.
Ooooh, I love a blog with intricate logos! LAU’s got a good color scheme too, and plenty of nice videos to listen to. Plenty of events to keep your feet tapping, with a few witticisms thrown in there somewhere.
Essentially identical to LA Underground in content, this blog is endowed with a nearly limitless supply of ironic 1950s era kodachrome photos, thus rendering its irony credentials beyond reproach. Look for a series of interviews with musicians about far flung LA neighborhoods.
The weirdest music you could ever think of. Not exclusively LA bands, but the dude who runs it is local and there’s plenty of interesting stuff nearby.
Not updated much, but it’s nice to know there’s a thriving jazz scene in LA, even if you have to change out of your favorite dirty t-shirt to participate.
Now for a break from a long string of urban planning related posts – whew. I’m not the type to memorize every unknown music act and taunt those who don’t hold such sophisticated tastes, but I do enjoy occasionally seeking out artists with a unique – dare I say, “fresh” – sound. One such artist is Nocando (a.k.a. NoCanDo), a local MC who rose to prominence through freestyle battles and a weekly gig at The Airliner in Lincoln Heights. Nocando is a self avowed nerd, which may be why he brings a touch of artistry into the hip hop hard-assery of his act. Dig the Downtown settings of the youtube clip above, you have to wonder what it was like for the passengers riding in the bus when Nocan jumped in with a camera crew and started rapping. There’s a short clip of the LA subway in there too, though zealously anti-film subway officials may have shut down the operation.
He’s got a new album out, which has been making the rounds in local media. In an interview with LA Record, he has this to say about the state of LA Hip Hop:
there’s a lot of us—a lot of guys that are really, really dope. L.A. guys who don’t sound like they’re from Detroit or don’t sound like they’re from New York—they aren’t punch-line-based, they are these street characters that if you grew up in L.A. that you would see… Bottom line. It’s a great spot to be—it’s like the spot right before critical mass. Which is most exciting.
Suprisingly pleasant news today: more people are walking in LA than you might think. These good tidings come from an otherwise dreary press release from the Alliance For Biking and Walking, a national organization reacting to President Obama’s apparent lack of concern for urban issues in his State of the Union address. According to the study, 12% of all trips in both Los Angeles and Long Beach were conducted by bicycle or on foot. That’s better than Boston and Seattle, the same as Chicago and San Francisco, and behind only Philadelphia and New York. Good stuff.
Unfortunately, LA doesn’t do as well in bike and pedestrian safety, with bikers and peds making up 36% of all traffic accidents. Long Beach does a bit better at 29%. Topping the list are New York, San Francisco, and Honolulu, each with bike/ped accidents over 50% of total accidents.
While LA’s unexpected walkiness may give us an excuse to briefly pat ourselves on the back, we still have a ways to go, especially compared to international cities. ABW points out that Amsterdam and Copenhagen have 35 and 20 percent of their trips made by bike alone – more than any US city.
In other news, while the San Diego-LA-San Francisco high speed rail project didn’t get an Obama shout out last night – that honor instead going to Tampa – the feds are poised to chip in $2.25 bil for the statewide train project. Between that and the $10 billion bond we passed over a year ago, that only leaves $33 billion left to get the project done. The US government is stingier when it comes to funding subways within LA, cheaping out on Metro’s request for funds to engineer the Purple Line and Downtown Connector extensions. If only the federal government could give us just a fraction of the money it spends on wars, we could have 20 subways and a high speed train to Canada and back.
If you’re reading this blog, you probably know who Joe Linton is: an ardent blogger at LA Creek Freak and celebrity within LA’s bicycle (and creek) community. Earlier in the week, he wrote about the proposed Albion Dairy Park (so named because its site is currently occupied by a milk processing plant) nestled on the concrete banks of the LA river in Lincoln Heights. There’s a planning meeting to be held this Thursday, so anyone interested in the planning process should head over. Joe has some ideas of his own, namely “a more-or-less linear two-way class I paved-concrete bike path along the western edge of the site”.
But wait, there’s more! A glance at the Albion park home page reveals that it is supposed to be “the City’s first Los Angeles River land purchase that will be used for a public park.” Providing that all future land purchases are contiguous with this one, we could build a “more-or-less linear” bike path extending south a respectable distance into Downtown LA. We might even be able to (gasp) close the gaping hole of the LA River bike path between Atlantic and Elysian Park! Don’t listen to those naysayers who say that bike paths are bad – ok, well there are a few bike paths around here that are pretty bad, but this wouldn’t be one of them. Unlike the more remote San Gabriel River and Rio Hondo paths which are used primarily by the spandex-clad, an LA River path would be a practical option for residents of Downtown and Boyle Heights. Close the gap!
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t’s been raining all week, and while this may be good news for umbrella companies, it’s making life difficult across the LA area. In the Foothills, rains of up to 5″ in the mountains are causing erosion and flooding, while Long Beach’s freeways are failing to drain.
A bit of rain can be a welcome change from our generally sunny weather, and it helps keep LA’s many reservoirs full and functional. But these torrents are starting to become a real threat. Here’s hoping everyone makes it through the rainy season unscathed this year.
Linda Samuels, an accomplished architect who I was fortunate to meet at the LA 2.0 event last month, has pointed me to another “2.0″ event of equally visionary and inspiring proposals. It’s WPA 2.0, a nationwide design contest hosted by UCLA’s CityLAb. WPA 2.0 is billed as a search for “innovative, implementable proposals to place infrastructure at the heart of rebuilding our cities, [recalling] the Depression-era Works Projects Administration… that has, in turn, become a lasting legacy.” Linda has done a post about the event on her personal blog, as well as her more detailed write-up at the Design Observer.
The contest is now over, and while the winner is an intriguing algae park in Brooklyn, I fond one of the more interesting (and locally relevant) proposals to be an amped-up redux of the currently proposed Hollywood Freeway Central Park, designed by Gary Garcia, Marc Yeber, Iris Tsai, and Xiaoye Zhang. Their revised proposal (.pdf link) includes a number of features not included in the original proposal, including a “viewing deck”, an improved habitat and water chain, more bike paths, and improved integration with the community and local culture.
Their proposal is stunning visually, offering inspiration for future park construction or renovation. But for all it offers in vision, it lacks in practical ideas for bringing the project to completion. The current proposal already comes with a $900 million price tag, and adding elaborate view decks will undoubtedly add to the cost. Perhaps the most implementable ideas are the less flashy ones: better bike paths, creeks and rainwater purification, wildlife habitats. I have to say, if nothing but the original proposal were built, I’d still be very happy.
But aside from its more specific ideas for the park features, the expanded proposal offers a rallying cry for freeway parks throughout the area:
It is imperative that existing infrastructure, originally built to serve efficiencies on a singular level that often resulted in fractured neighborhoods, now be viewed as the most promising prospect to provide relief to those seeking open space. a seismic retrofit planned for the 550 mile freeway network within Los Angeles County offers the opportunity to capture some of the approximate 19 square miles dedicated to these thoroughfares. By integrating new layers of urban infrastructure that perform socially and ecologically, neighborhoods become reconnected and natural resources better managed.
The Hollywood Freeway Central Park will be a great asset to the city in its own right. But what we really need is not one but many freeway parks, uniting neighborhoods formerly devastated by freeway construction. Even if the WPA 2.0 proposal’s lofty visions for the Hollywood park never come to pass, it may yet serve to spur a wave of freeway parks throughout the city, bringing communities together and making Los Angeles a better place to live.
