Streetsblog Los Angeles

All photographs by Iwan Baan, courtesy of No More Play / Hatje Cantz. via

(editor’s note: When I saw L.A. County was being praised for updating its zoning code to encourage wider sidewalks and bicycling facilities, I went to some zoning experts to ask them to weigh in on the county’s proposal. Occidental College Professor Mark Vallianatos answered my call. – DN)

Shock City

The Los Angeles region was intentionally planned as a horizontal city to avoid some of the perceived ills of dense European and east coast metropolises. Policy makers, planners, voters, industry and real estate interests  made choices around land use and infrastructure that enshrined the single family house, the commuter streetcar, and later, the automobile as the building blocks of L.A.   Just as London, Manchester, and New York symbolized the scale and challenges of the 19th century industrial city, Los Angeles, with its sprawl and unprecedented car culture, was the “shock city” of the 20th century, a new way of organizing urban land.

The Tangle of Health and Zoning

This simplified history of zoning is context to consider as both the County and City of Los Angeles are revising zoning laws with a goal of promoting health. We should acknowledge a central irony in this topic. Land use rules implemented in the past to protect public health have today become health hazards. As Emily Talen puts it in her book City Rules: How Regulations Affect Urban Form, “[z]oning contributed to health problems by spreading people out, increasing their reliance on automobiles and a sedentary lifestyle.” Rules that kept peoples’ homes in different districts than heavy industry were rapidly expanded to separate all commercial uses from residential zones. Starting in the 1930s, Los Angeles began required new buildings to provide on site parking for cars, subsidizing driving at the same time that separate use zoning was undercutting walking. Zoning has also long been used to segregate people by income and race. For instance, one of the first  zoning laws adopted in Los Angeles discriminated against Chinese-owned laundries and single family zones were “protected” from apartment buildings.

The exclusionary effect of some land use regulations contributed to clustering of “concentrated disadvantage:” in neighborhoods with high poverty, unemployment and crime and with few amenities.

In addressing health through land use, the County and City have a chance to undo the damage of earlier rules while also addressing new challenges and opportunities. 

Los Angeles County Healthy Design Ordinance Read more…

The proposed site for BNSF's SCIG railyard.

In a sadly misunderstood and ill-grounded editorial, the Press-Telegram endorsed Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s (BNSF) proposed 153-acre railyard project west of the 710 freeway, the Southern California International Gateway (SCIG). The endorsement comes right before a public hearing featuring demonstrations from some 20 community organizations who will offer evidence denouncing the benefits of the project as well as proposals for a new site.

The initial draft environmental impact report (DEIR) released September of last year was re-visited due to overwhelming complaints from community members and groups, particularly the South Coast Air Quality Management district. BNSF then re-circulated the EIR (RDEIR) in a study that was, in some sense, relatively the same as the first which, by the way, stated clear and significant health hazards.

When asking BNSF to comment in regards to the fact that the RDEIR is heavily contested, BNSF correspondent Lena Kent replied, “The updated DEIR completed by the [Port of Los Angeles] affirms that building SCIG is better than the no project alternative or continuing with the current use at the site. The report shows that residents, students, teachers, and workers nearby would be better off with the project than without the project, in terms of air quality and health risk improvements, as well as all of those living, working, and going to school along the I-710 freeway. We think if folks review the report, the benefits will be clear.”

Sounding oddly reflective of BNSF’s (obvious) support of the project, the P-T continued along the same lines with their stance:

“[BNSF] says its proposed [SCIG] railyard would eliminate about 2 million [sic] annual truck trips, with most of the relief targeted for the Long Beach (710) Freeway. [...] The revised report essentially says the same as the study released last year: that local residents and schools are better off with BNSF’s proposed railyard[.]“

Firstly, it seems no one has actually read the report. Read more…

Kids have their faces painted at the Spring Into Health Festival at MLK Park. photo: Kim Kumpart

“Celebrate Health!” is the main message of the the Spring Into Health Festival that will be held this weekend at Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The event is more a health “festival” than “fair,” said North Area Neighborhood Development Council (NANDC) representative Yelba Castellon. It is an opportunity for the community to celebrate healthy living by participating in activities related to health, fitness, and the environment, in a family-oriented, fun setting.

This year, about 40 local community organizations will be present, offering a variety of services. In the area of fitness, the 24th St. Theater will be offering yoga classes while the Southern California Tennis Association will offer tennis lessons. Organizations like Community Services Unlimited, Revolution Foods, Tree People, and the L.A. Food Bank will offer help with gardening (and offering plants people can take home), nutrition, and cooking. There will be entertainment, an Easter Egg Hunt, and arts and crafts, as well as a raffle for bikes, scooters, and skateboards.

The NANDC tried to ensure that most of the organizations were very local, said Castellon, so that there would be continuity after the festival. If people found a particular clinic or organization that met their some of their health needs, they would easily be able to follow up and visit them after the festival. Read more…

What is the real story behind food deserts?  New research from the Public Policy Institute of California comes to the same conclusion that researchers from the California Center for Public Health Advocacy came to five years ago. I guess the confirmation of these findings is cause for a low calorie celebration. Or perhaps a victory lap around the Staples Center, (LA’s official monument to Coca Cola).

Photo: L.A. Times

The new study by Helen Lee of the Public Policy Institute of California found that there are actually very few official food
deserts in California, and that obesity is not correlated with how many grocery stores a community has.

Not many food deserts?  So what’s all the fuss been about?

In most communities it’s not a lack of food that’s the problem, it’s a lack of healthy food compared to an over abundance of unhealthy food.  Back in 2007, research by CCPHA, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, and PolicyLink, found a strong and direct relationship between the RFEI of the area in which someone lives and their likelihood of being obese or having diabetes.

The what? The Retail Food Environment Index (RFEI) is a ratio of unhealthy outlets (fast food restaurants and convenience stores) to healthier outlets (grocery stores and produce markets) in a given area. It’s a measure of how unhealthy the options are when you walk outside your door.  The higher the number, the more junk is being sold around you.  Statewide, the RFEI is 4.2, meaning there are a whopping four times as many unhealthy outlets as healthy ones. (For more statistics on RFEI, or how it applies to local communities, visit this story from last October on Healthy El Monte.)

California adults living in high RFEI areas (RFEI of 5.0 or higher – five times more unhealthy outlets than healthier ones) had a 20 percent higher prevalence of obesity and a 23 percent higher prevalence of diabetes than their counterparts living in RFEI areas of 3.0 or lower. A higher RFEI was associated with a higher prevalence of both obesity and diabetes for people living in lower-income and higher-income communities alike. Not surprisingly, the highest rates of obesity and diabetes are among people who live in lower-income and higher RFEI communities. Read more…

A map of the 1600 wells which have been drilled over the past ~90 years in the Inglewood Oilfield near Baldwin Hills. Photo courtesy of KCET.

(Part 1 of the series is here.)

IF FRACKING IS such a safe practice, then why is it such a secretive one?

For the past several years, outspoken journalist and media critic Earl Ofari Hutchinson has likely been asking himself that question. Hutchinson is a resident of Windsor Hills, a community that sits adjacent to the 1000-acre Inglewood Oilfield — the largest urban oilfield in the country. Beyond the regular complaints of health problems, noise, and pollution of residents in the area, Hutchinson and others in the area have complained for years that the drilling has been so violent that the foundations of their homes are cracking. One resident had to put his home up on blocks, another resident claims he hears the house cracking at night. Hutchinson himself had to spend $100,000 to fix the foundation of his home because it was, according to SoCal Connected correspondent Jennifer London, “splitting in half.” London interviewed Hutchinson as part of the report she prepared for KCET’s feature on fracking in L.A., slated to air tonight.

Cracks in the home of Windsor Hills resident. Photo courtesy of KCET

It would seem that all was not well in them thar hills. And although all signs would seem to point to the drilling — and the fracking that likely was part of the drilling process — as the possible culprit, getting PXP to explore taking responsibility for that has been a long and difficult process.

In 2011, PXP finally launched what they called their “first annual ground movement survey.” They found that 7 of their 42 monitoring stations had experienced ground movement of greater than 0.6 inches (0 – 0.6” being the acceptable range). Two of those sites were in the Windsor Hills area. Based on these results, the L.A. County Dept. of Public Works asked PXP to determine whether or not the ground movement was related to oil field operations. They were hoping to find some resolution to the 12 complaints that have been lodged regarding ground movement and structural damage.

“At this time,” however, PXP’s report states, “the data suggested that the recorded ground movement may be related to the movement of the Newport-Inglewood fault zone.” The data, however, is PXP’s own data (as I understand it). And because PXP has concluded that they are not the source of the problem, the Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), the agency tasked with overseeing drilling, has not been called in to evaluate the fluid injection and withdrawal rates or assess the validity of the findings. Read more…

Young men play soccer in a parking lot at the Coliseum. photo: Sahra

RIDING BACK FROM an interview at a school garden off King Blvd., I came across a dozen guys engaged in a serious game of fútbol in a Coliseum parking lot. Curious, I plopped myself down next to Oscar Villatoro, a sweet guy in glasses who was sitting out the game because of a bum knee.

Why play here? I wanted to know. Asphalt is flat and fast, sure, but pretty unforgiving on the body.

There was nowhere nearby to go, he told me.

“There are fields over there,” he pointed behind the swim stadium, “but since they don’t play on a team, they can’t use the fields.”

They’ve tried playing on grass around Exposition Park, but security usually shows up pretty quickly to shoo them away, he said. So they just meet here. And they’ve been meeting here for a while — Oscar started joining them here last August, but they had been playing here well before then.

“In August?” I asked, surprised.

It was one thing to play there on a warm spring afternoon, but another entirely to play on sun-baked, shoe-melting asphalt in the dead of summer.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “Some of the guys get holes in their shoes and all that. But they like it.” Read more…

LA County is the most populous county in the nation. Almost 10 million residents claim LA County as home. Keeping tabs on the health of the community and providing health services to such a large and robust population is a big task. And while the public perception is that LA is one of the healthiest cities in the nation, its’ not all sushi and California burgers served up in the city. The real numbers may surprise you. LA County’s obesity rates are rising.

According to the Center for Disease Controlslightly more than 1 in 4 adults in LA County are obese (26.2%). One in five students in LA

Programs such as the "Bike Wrangler" are funded through a RENEW Grant. For more on that program click here.

County are obese. Obesity is one of the most significant risk indicators contributing to chronic disease such as diabetes, heart disease as well as high blood pressure and high cholesterol. With such a high percentage of residents on a course towards poor health the LA County of Department of Public Health is rightly concerned about future high health costs.

This is why LA County recently earmarked $16 million in funds for RENEW LA. RENEW LA targets the issues that lead to obesity and sedentary lifestyles. The program wants to make a “new norm” in which healthy eating and active lifestyles replace fast food and sitting in front of the TV. The program focuses on three key elements:

1. Eating healthy.  RENEW LA will increase accessibility to healthy foods in high-need areas transforming the corner store environment to include health options. Schools will have more nutritious meals. County hospitals and health departments will implement breast feeding education policies. Read more…

Why are you using discredited science? asks a member of the Community Advisory Panel of Supervisor Tim Kustic and Chief Deputy Director Jason Marshall, representatives of the Department of Conservation

Last night, representatives from the Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), Plains Exploration & Production (PXP), the oil company in charge of the Baldwin Hill Oil Field, and other officials went head to head with members of the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance and a highly a skeptical community in a standing-room-only meeting at the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area Community Center.

They were there to talk about fracking — a controversial practice that aims to access hard-to-reach deposits of oil and natural gas by enhanced drilling techniques that inject a mixture of water, sand, and toxic chemicals into the ground — and the steps PXP has taken to increase health and safety protections in the oil field, the largest contiguous urban oil field in the country.

The community has reason to be skeptical. In early 2006, noxious fumes released by PXP’s drilling operations wafted through nearby residential areas. Complaints about the odors came from as far as two miles away, and a number of residents evacuated the area.

Residents were stunned to learn at the time that, although PXP had begun one of the most extensive drilling programs in the state – drilling only hundreds of feet from some residences – there had been no environmental impact review as required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Moreover, DOGGR, a state agency, had been the one to issue PXP the permits without requiring the CEQA review.

The 2008 lawsuit filed by community members resulted in a settlement whereby PXP agreed to reduce the number of wells drilled, commission additional studies on health and air quality, and determine the effects that fracking could have on the surrounding area.

To study the effects of fracking, however, said the PXP representative, one must actually do some fracking. Read more…

Episode 4: Searching for Shangri La – (preview) from MPC on Vimeo.

(Jackson will be speaking as part of the UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation’s “Complete Streets Conference” this Friday.  Tickets are sold out, and despite an earlier report they won’t be accepting walk-ins .   If you check back here Monday for Streetsblog’s coverage. You can also read his thoughts on the importance of a federal transportation bill that caters to healthy communities in a 2011 op/ed published on Streetsblog.- DN)

Dr. Richard Jackson is the head of UCLA’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences.  While he’s been on television as part of the Designing Healthy Communities series on PBS and is known as an advocate for public health in American planning, he still remembers his roots.

Specifically, he remembers how he was able to ride a bus in his hometown of Newark, New Jersey anywhere he needed to go.  That experience helped shape how he views transportation and its impact on the health of our communities and the health of our children.

“Because of our car dependent sprawl, Angelenos can only do one, maybe two big things in a day,” Jackson remarks.  ”In other cities, you can do three or more.”

But a well built transportation network, the kind that gives people safe and attractive options to get from place to place, provides more than just a times savings.  It allows for a healthy lifestyle not possible in all communities.

Robert Ross, president of the California Endowment, tells audiences that he can determine how long someone will live based on their zip code.  Jackson agrees.  “In Oakland California, the average difference in life span of people living in the higher income zip codes and the people living in the lower income zip codes is about fifteen years. It doesn’t need to be that way.”

While transportation isn’t the only thing holding these areas back, access to health care, clean air and healthy food all play a major part, a car-centered transportation system is a major challenge.  Naturally, the areas that have freeways criss-crossing the community tend to be the same ones lacking in hospitals, supermarkets and farmers markets, and attractive open space.

“It’s such a huge disadvantage to be poor in America, because there is such a difficulty gaining access to physical activity, to parkland, to decent and healthy food,” Jackson remarks.

“We’ve built America in a way that is fundamentally unhealthy.”
Read more…

The Real Rydaz Low Rider Bike Club are comprised of around 30 riders, and distinguished from other groups by the insane amount of detail that goes into crafting their custom bikes. It’s all for a good cause, however. They hope that by riding with pride through the streets of their communities–communities where recreational riding is sometimes rare–they are sending a message about the importance of being healthy to youth and adults alike. It is a real club with dues and a probationary period.

Potential members must ride with the group for a probationary period of 45 days so that members can assess the extent to which that person will enhance the group and follow the rules, particularly when out on the road with the group. Once the period has passed and the person is approved, they can begin to invest in building up their bikes. The group is still a work in progress, says manager Shuntain Thomas. They are set in their mission of building bridges between health and kids, but are still strategizing on the best way to accomplish that goal.

In the meanwhile, they can be found at Exposition Park on Saturdays or riding in parades. Next up: the Black History Parade in Pasadena on Feb. 18 at 10 a.m.