(editor's note: This story is written by James Rojas, who's sustainable transportation models have been featured here at least three times in the past. His most recent model, one of a Santa Monica geared towards cyclists and pedestrians, can be viewed at the 18th Street Art Gallery in Santa Monica until March 27 as part of the Shangri L.A. exhibit.)
Shangri L.A.: Architecture As a State of Flux is about utopia and the future of the city. I was asked by the curator to create a model for the exhibit. I call it "Santa Monica Off the Grid: An Interactive Urban Planning Project. "
This model illustrates a sustainable urban form that reduces energy consumption by promoting walking and biking. This mobility system is achieved by changing the street pattern and architecture of the city. Blade Runner’s 2019 image of L.A. is a place that consumes massive amounts of energy, while my vision of the future is precisely the opposite. My utopia is a place where energy is efficiently used and humans get back to what we where designed for, walking and supporting public transportation.
I have created a new urban structure for the city that supports human powered mobility. Therefore streets are rearranged in curves and circles to encourage this type of mobility and discourage others. Santa Monica is in the shape of semi circle with Wilshire Blvd. dividing it in half.
With the coming of the Subway to the Sea and Phase II of the Expo-Line, Santa Monica will serve as anchor for these projects. Santa Monica is the region’s beach playground and will have to accommodate up to a million visitors a day by rail. How do we get a millions visitors to the beach by foot quickly and safely?
Walking creates a sustainable city by reducing auto use, lowering health-care costs related to a sedentary lifestyle and creates socially sustainable public spaces within the city where people can enjoy people each others company.
“Off the Grid,” is a new urban plan for Santa Monica and is a composite of many places from around the world that I have experienced, including city plans that vary as much as Washington D.C. and Tokyo. I have taken some of most pedestrian friendly urban design features and incorporated them into this interactive model.
Streets for Human Powered Mobility
L’Enfant’s plan for Washington D.C.’s creates a pedestrian circulation though the use of roundabouts, diagonal streets, and vistas. Mannheim Germany’s renaissance plan set a standard for small block sizes and other features such as the Wassatrum . Rome’s Spanish Steps provide a public space that successfully tackles grade issues. The Ring Streets of Budapest and Vienna offer optional ways for people to move around the city that defies the grid.
Places for Social Interaction
Paris’s wide sidewalks provide a great place for “people watching” and dining. Barcelona’s Cerda Plan creates eight square plazas at each corner. Seville’s buildings with courtyard centers offer a quite semi public space where people can gather for intimate conversations. New York’s Central Park and Santa Monica’s beach front prove to be great natural landscapes for large and small crowds.
Pedestrian Friendly Architecture
Tokyo thin “pencil buildings” create a nice rhythm for pedestrians. The drippy Hasbourg building of Central Europe provide architectural eye candy for pedestrians. The great public buildings of the early 2oth century such as department stores, train stations and markets can all be proto-types for how to design spaces for lots of pedestrian activity.
Process of City Building
Cities are in a constant state of flux. The changing nature of cities reflects the aspirations or the limitations of their inhabitants. Urbanites interact with the built environment daily, through living, working, playing, and even building it. Their interactions with the place and each other create a collective understanding of the city. The city becomes a collection and reflection of individual ideals.
Santa Monica is no different. The 3-dimensional model I created returns participants back to the proverbial sand box where they can play and think with out constraints or preconceptions about urban planning. The sand box approach creates something of a democratic planning forum for participants, by creating a safe space where there are no wrong or right answers when it comes to planning. Adults play like children and children play like adults.
The installation attempts to capture the fascination we have with the urban landscape by engaging the viewer into a miniature world of Technicolor shapes and forms. Over 2,000 plus recycled knickknacks such Jenga pieces, Scrabble tiles, bottle caps, peppershakers, a translucent Boeing corporate paperweight and the like will become homes, skyscrapers, public buildings, and monuments, and all incorporated into the model.
These objects will help participants engage with the model by envisioning and exploring their ideas through reshaping this model city during the course of the exhibition.
By engaging participant’s motor skills, this process promotes/inspires learning and creative thinking. Participants will be allowed to create 3-dimensional forms that are real or conceptual. Their individual forms and choices become public discourse. This reshaping process allows participants to discuss their ideas with each other thus making the installation a place of interaction.
This installation is a process of city building rather than a product, which mimics the state of being of cities. Through this art installation, transportation and land-use are pushed to their limits.
Bike Month continues, Metro 91 Freeway widening, Destination Crenshaw, Culver City Bus, Santa Monica MANGo, Metro bike lockers, Metro Sepulveda Transit, and more
Short newly protected bike lane on Laurel Canyon Blvd, extensive NSFV bus improvements under construction this month, and scaled-back G Line plans should get that project under construction this summer