Urban Design

The programs offered by Livable Spaces aren't limited to their speaker's series, the group also does community and transportation planning for communities around the city. Currently, the group is chronicling their efforts in creating the needed bicycle and pedestrian connections for two neighborhoods surrounding the Chinatown and Lincoln/Cypress Metro Gold Line Stations. Much more information about the project can be found at the projects website, which can be found here.

Councilmember Richard Alarcon is taking aim at a major planned development that he says will add "long commutes over already jammed freeways into the San Fernando Valley creating further gridlock and adding pollution to our air." The environmental documents for the project state that it will create 357,000 average daily trips, but there is no follow-up on what that will mean to the surrounding roadway network. Alarcon is asking the city to weigh in on this development and do everything in its power to stop the development.

Gordon Price began his lecture at City Hall yesterday by noting that big changes are coming as a result of global warming and a decline in the amount of oil the world can produce and warned that Los Angeles will be one of the cities that will see the most change.

Vancouver’s Skyline The Envisioning Green Los Angeles Speakers Series kicks off with lectures and a bike tour from Gordon Price, a former Vancouver City Councillor. Price will show us how Vancouver recreated itself as an urban model for Eco Density. Price’s lectures have been described to me (not by someone associated with these events) as … Continued

Have a Very Transit New Year...Or At Least Try

For anyone working on comments for the Warner Center Mall, I got some sobering numbers for the amount of trips that will be generated by the addition to your local mega-mall.

Last night I tried to go to a public meeting on Santa Monica's Transportation and Land Use Plan. Sadly, whenever I get into a car to go to a meeting that's not local, I don't actually make the meeting because there's a ton of congestion.

EDITED BELOW (10:11 PM)