Streetsblog Los Angeles

Slate has posted this map to illustrate the concentration of “food deserts,” where large numbers of people don’t have access to fresh food. The USDA considers households more than a mile from a supermarket and without access to a car to be in food deserts, often with only convenience-store junk food for nourishment. In 2009, the agency found 2.3 million of these households. Here, Slate shows the preponderance of those households in Appalachia and the Deep South, and on Indian reservations.

Access to healthy food is just one reason to build walkable places with a mix of uses and diverse transportation options. The places on this map are where people have been stranded — how walkable can your neighborhood be if you can’t walk to buy fresh produce? Many of the people identified here are poor and can’t afford cars. Some are elderly or disabled and can’t drive.

The most vulnerable members of our communities are the ones most hurt by transportation policies that keep a singular focus on automobile transportation and ignore those who need other ways to get around. What Slate is calling a food desert, you could also call an unlivable neighborhood, where even residents’ most basic needs — like access to healthy food — are denied.

Density. Vehicle Ownership. The number of cars packed into a small area.

These are concepts that we discuss often on Streetsblog. Thanks to a UCLA research project undertaken by Professors Mike Manville and Donald Shoup, we can get an idea of some of the challenges Los Angeles’ planners face in trying to ween our city off the automobile.

This article will look at the population density, car ownership per person, and car ownership per mile maps and charts.  At the top of each article will be a “Streetsblog sized” map for Los Angeles with links to maps for San Franscisco and New York for comparison purposes.  All maps are based on information from the 2000 Census.

A huge hat tip to Katie Matchett, without whom this article wouldn’t have been possible. Read more…

A pair of actor’s from ABC’s crime drama Castle are trying to live a car-free life a couple of days every month and are filming their experiences for a YouTube documentary series.  True, Stana Katic and Seamus Dever aren’t vowing to get rid of their cars completely or anything like that, but the reality is that celebrities have a different microphone than the rest of us.  If nothing else, these slick videos are showing how easy it is to ditch the car and get around Los Angeles.

The first film following our heroes’ commute, follows the pair on their bicycles.  It’s clear that neither is a regular bike commuter (correction: it turns out that Dever is, but he seemed to me to be playing the part of a new rider,) but that’s part of the point.  Katic is wearing a softball helmet.  Later, Dever discusses how riding in bike lanes is preferable because “nobody tries to kill you,”  so I guess somebody hasn’t spent a lot of time riding on Venice.

Yet, the two cruise to their destination with no problem.  They each talk up the benefits of cycling for mind, body, soul and environment.  The message is clear.  If these two can ride to work, anyone can. Read more…

Carey Mulligan, we hardly knew you.

Just in time for the release of Wall Street II: Money Never Sleeps, comes news that formerly car-free movie star Carey Mulligan has been converted to a car driver because of a scene where she’s driving a car and how easy it is to get a license here in Los Angeles.  From Entertainment Weekly (page 125 of the Fall TV issue “Carey Mulligan Learns to Drive”:

“[In London] I took an intensive course – two weeks, five hours a day, in a manual car.  Then I took the test, and within three minutes of leaving the test center, the instructor had to use the emergency brake, which means you’ve failed.  Then we had to do 40 more minutes of driving around, when I knew there was no way I could pass.”

“I still can’t drive in London, but I finally got my license in L.A.  I’ve got an automatic there, and they’re not quite so rigorous in the test.  I’ve got it down in L.A.!”

Back in the days of yore (otherwise known as December, 2009), it was common to see Mulligan and her on-screen and real life boyfriend Shia LeBouf sharing a bus bench or riding the bus here in L.A.  LeBouf’s presence is surprising.  I thought he preferred cars that turned into giant talking robots.

No word on whether she switched to driving because her bus route was cut.

(H/T to Clarence Eckerson)

Panel 1: A cyclist speeds down a four-lane arterial street in West Los Angeles.
Panel 2: He stops, noticing something he's never noticed before
Panel 3: He walks his bike into a small courtyard of a small church
Panel 4: He peeks in the window
Panel 5: A choir is rehearsing
Panel 6: He sits down on a bench and listens

If award winning comic book writer Joshua Dysert were preparing this story for his work, instead of recounting for us an experience that would have been impossible had he been driving as part of the "Experiencing L.A. from the Streets" workshop; that might be what it would look like. As it was, Dysert, Christine Louise Berry, Nigel Raad and Diane Meyer were limited to just verbally recounting their car-free adventures, although Raab and Meyer did "cheat" and use power point.

If Meyer's name seems familiar, you might remember her Without a Car in the World: 100 Car-less Angelinos Tell Stories of Living in Los Angeles, exhibit that made waves last fall. Good news Meyer fans, it seems a book is in the works...

While Meyer moderated the panel, and shared more of the stories she chronicled in her exhibits; it was Dysert, Raab and Berry who did most of the talking in the panel, encouraging more car-free or car-reduced living from their audience.

Raab and his slideshow might have been the show-stealer for this panel. The Assistant Professor of Russian History at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles walked seventy two miles over the course of many days to experience the communities of Los Angeles from the streets. Some of Raab's observations earned laughter from the audience, such as that you only saw white males walking in many places if they were accompanying their canines or that the 405 is a more effective barrier to stop travel than the Berlin Wall was.

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Despite being amongst the first to offer a preview of World Without a Car, the amazing car-free photography exhibit by Diane Meyer in Santa Monica, I've somewhat fallen down on the job of promoting the events that go with the exhibition.  Well, I can correct that at least for one day.  Below is an email from Meyer touting tonight's panel discussion:

WI'm young, I'm an actor and a photographer and I'm a woman. This might be nothing unusual in Los Angeles with the exception that I'm also car free.

I ride my bike everywhere and I take the Metro rail or bus to auditions, interviews, meetings and jobs. I carry my photo equipment on the back of my bike when I have a photo assignment across town. I ride my bike in dress and heels and made up when I have an audition in the Valley. I carry my wardrobe in my panniers on my bike when I go to my theater rehearsals and performances at night.

I ride and travel the streets of Los Angeles at odd times, day and night and often times at new places I've never been before. Because I'm not locked in the safety of a car, I plan my route ahead of time and I chose carefully where I go, what streets I take and what roads I travel. And my route changes with the time of day.

In the daytime, I like to discover new streets and new neighborhoods. I have an old Thomas Guide that has all the routes marked that I have traveled and I like to take streets that I haven't traveled before. I love discovering the smells and sights and sounds of the neighborhoods that I never traveled when I used to drive. I like to see the neighborhoods where people walk their dogs, where kids rule the streets, where trees arch over each other and let the sun glitter through the leaves. I love to travel through the neighborhoods that have history left from the night before; Fresh graffiti or a new mural, party bottles overfilling trash bins, or soft piano music coming from a couples window.

Read more...

Last Wednesday we premiered At What Price, a short film that I wrote and directed and that was shot 100% sustainably in East Hollywood.

Sustainability typically is limited to "no plastic" and "no styrofoam" but we explored sustainability further. Much further.

We wanted to involve the community and make the neighborhood be part of our sustainability commitment. Oftentimes, film productions come into town, tow cars, disrupt peoples lives, trash the streets and then leave town. We wanted to be different. We asked the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council to help us and to endorse our sustainable production. They did. We asked a local arborist Cassandra Pruett and LA's Park Czar Alfredo Hernandez, to help us with tree planting after our shoot is over. After all, we wanted to leave the community better then we found it.

The food for cast & crew was brought fresh from local farmers markets, the food was mostly Mediterranean or raw to avoid cooking and the catering area had a team of compost experts from CaterGreen namely Allan & Herminia. We had a footprintologist on set to keep us honest and the shooting location as well as the casting and production meetings were near Transit Corridors.  Everybody used stainless steel water containers and the utensils and dishes were washed and sanitized. Half the cast came to set via Metro and the others walked or rode bikes.

Read more...

Last weekend the Eco-Village sponsored a weekend of events designed to empower the residents within and surrounding the Eco-Village and reclaim their streets.  On Friday night, they hosted Portland architect and activist Mark Lakeman, founder of the City Repair movement, who encouraged those listening to think of themselves as villagers empowered to take control of their streets instead of vassals to the bureaucracy known as local government and DOT’s.  On Saturday, they took his words to heart and went to work on their own street at Bimini Place.

Local activist and author Eric Knutzen gives a good description of the talk at the Homegrown Evolution blog:

Read more…

This week’s newest offering from Streetfilms highlights the fantastic tradition of "Sunday Streets" in San Francisco.  As Ben Fried notes in the New York write-up of the film, in both cities last year’s ground-breaking idea is this year’s "traditional event."

Film maker John Hamilton explains how some mediocre weather didn’t stop the event from being a gigantic success, again.

Despite a blanket of fog, the last San Francisco Sunday Streets of 2009
was, from all accounts, a smashing success, one of the most popular so
far, with thousands of people enjoying four activity-filled hours of
pristine car-free space through Golden Gate Park and the Great Highway.
Kids, families, bicyclists, skaters, dancers, and even the MTA Chief
Nat Ford came out to enjoy the carfree zone.

Note to L.A. City Hall, these events are catching on around the country and have universally been hailed as great successes.  As an added bonus to trying it here, we don’t have to worry about a "blanket of fog" on a Sunday in the Summer.