Livable Streets

"It's still important for us to come together," began Taryn Randle, one of the ride leaders and member of both the Ovarian Psycos and Black Kids on Bikes.

Move over Sunset Triangle Plaza, a pair of street reclamation projects on the Eastside are threatening to steal your thunder as the most progressive street reclamation project in Los Angeles. Living Streets L.A.and Councilman Jose Huizar unveiled new designs for a "street porch" on York Boulevard in Highland Park and a "street plaza" on Huntington Drive in El Sereno.  Both designs are completely unique as they arrived as a result of an extensive community process that started with a simple question, "How would you like to improve your street?"  Nearly a dozen sessions later, each community devised surprisingly similar plans. "Ryan [Living Streets' Ryan Lehman] and I were pleasantly surprised that when given the option to choose any street improvement, the project both people chose were in one case a street porch and another case a street plaza," explains Steve Rassmussen Cancian, the architect for the project. Rasmussen Cancian prefers to avoid the term "parklets" which confuses people by leaving the impression that the city is planning something bigger, such as a soccer field, for the middle of the street.  He prefers the more descriptive "street porch" for the above pictured design for York Boulevard which is actually resembles an urban porch.  For El Sereno, pictured below, he prefers the term "street plaza."

WHEN THEY JUMPED HIM IN to the crew in 10th grade, he tells me, the actual beating didn't last very long. There may have been 6 guys, but Fidel, a natural fighter, was swinging more fiercely than they were. After he connected hard with a couple of the guys, they decided they had had enough and declared it over.

In 2008, we were curious. In 2011, we were ecstatic. In 2012, depression is starting to set in. The South Figueroa Corridor Project, unveiled to the cheers of Livable Street advocates last February, may be on the ropes.  Without action by a city agency, or the mayor's office, advocates are going to have to say goodbye to the separated bike path, bus only lane, increased open space, pedestrian plaza and other improvements the project promised.  But it shouldn't be that way.  In 2011, advocates were given three progressive visions for South Figueroa, currently a four or six lane street with whizzing cars or gridlock depending on the time of day.   Instead of "good," "better" and "best," we might get status quo. With the state-mandated dissolution of Community Redevelopment Agencies, a certain amount of chaos is occurring around the state.  Nowhere is that more prevalent than Los Angeles. One month after the dissolution of the local Community Redevelopment Agency, the city seems no closer to having a plan than it did when the California Supreme Court upheld Gov. Brown's plan to shutter the CRA's doors at the end of January.

Mikey, Jonathan, and George were waiting for a friend just a few feet from the corner of Ave. 50 and York Blvd. in Highland Park when a police car pulled up. Two cops got out and told them to turn around, spread their legs, and put their hands behind their backs.

The idea of “complete streets”—that is, streets designed with all users, not just cars, in mind—isn’t a new one, but it hasn’t caught on everywhere yet. On Friday, planners, engineers, advocates, and students convened at the second annual UCLA Complete Streets for California conference at the Kyoto Grand Hotel downtown to renew their excitement in complete streets, see photos of cool projects around the country, and discuss how to make complete streets the norm in California. Advocates hope a widespread focus on complete streets in California could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging more walking and biking, but also promote healthier lifestyles, as explained by UCLA public health professor Richard Jackson.

There's been a lot of excitement, not just in Silver Lake but around the city, for the opening of Los Angeles' first street plaza in Silver Lake this weekend.  Pictures and renderings of the "Sunset Triangle Plaza" at at Griffith Park and Sunset Boulevards have been popping up at Eastsider, LAist and Curbed as well as Streetsblog.  The grand opening of the plaza is this Sunday from 11:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M.

(Update: I got a little confused by the motion.  It will shut down through traffic on Yucca Street in Hollywood, between Las Palmas Ave. and Whitley Ave.   Cars are permitted, through traffic is blocked.  Curbed found me out. - DN)

Nowhere else in LA area are individual street routes as important than in the Northeast. Because of the area’s hills there is no grid.  Streets wind their way up hills and cut through valleys creating public space and connecting the community to places beyond.