The recent, well-attended LA StreetSummit
was proof enough that we Angelenos—from East Los Angeles to Long Beach,
school age to elderly, bicycling to median gardening—have a shared
future in redeemed streets. But wait a second…we already own these
streets! Now is the time to ask them to serve us better.
Living Streets
has been scheming ways to ‘flip’ our city’s existing vasphalt
hardscapes for better use: serving people instead of cars. We are
eager to wield the power of demonstration by paintcan and paintbrush,
which New York City’s Transportation Department Commissioner touted
during her recent visit to Los Angeles. Even
elected officials and City Planning Department staff who heard
Sadik-Khan’s talks are excited to see some similar, LA projects sped
towards implementation!
But we need your help identifying these streets, their stakeholders, and especially their park, square, protected bike lane, garden, bulb-out, bioswale, and otherwise people-serving better selves.
Doing something is what we’re about, and as Sadik-Khan’s crew at NYCDOT and our friends up at San Francisco’s Pavement to Parks
have shown, it’s hard to quarrel with the quality of life improvements
these simple, low-cost pilot projects have stacked up. The places
they create so easily trump what many figure as the imperative of
reserving on-street speeding and parking space for cars. We know that
once people live in the difference between our current,
car-accommodating streets and ones designed for them, they won’t want
to go back!
We’d like to work together to find sites for at least one 6-month pilot project before Street Summit 2011.
Join us to plan how and where we can pool our resources to make this happen!
Here’s what to do now:
1.) Check out Pavement to Parks’ criteria for locating leftover spaces waiting to be discovered as lovely streetside oases.
2.) Start surveying your own neighborhood for such roadside respites in hiding!
And then,
Come learn about the 10 Living Streets Tenets
and opportunities to see them implemented in your neighborhood’s starving streets at:
Living Streets’ April 29 meeting at 7pm:
634 S. Spring Street Edison Room (1st Floor)
Please RSVP to: livingstreetsla@gmail.com
