Yule Heibel's Library tagged los_angeles →  View Popular, Search in Google

Totally makes sense:
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The eHighway might seem laughable at the moment to all but the most fervent environmentalist, but just wait. Air pollution in Long Beach and Riverside costs these communities an estimated $18 million annually in asthma bills, docking residents on average an incredible 8 percent of their household income. And the toxic stew isn't expected to waft away anytime soon. Here's Siemens infrastructure chief Daryl Dulaney laying out the grim prognosis for the future in a press release:

"When most people think of vehicle emissions, they assume cars do most of the damage, but it’s actually commercial trucks that are largely to blame," says Dulaney. Freight transportation on U.S. roadways is expected to double by 2050, and by 2030, carbon dioxide emissions are forecasted to jump 30 percent due to freight transport alone.
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atlantic_cities trucks pollution catenary e_cars los_angeles

Fine example of how LACMA leverages its web presence and uses it to connect to audiences.
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The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has a reputation for being digital-savvy. Earlier this year, it was one of the first museums to bring exhibition catalogues online, beginning with out-of-print titles and moving on to include current material. Its blog, Unframed, is considered one the best museum blogs around; and now, in a move sparked by listening to what its audience wanted (“more images”), LACMA has launched a new all-collection landing page with an interesting “remix” option.
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lacma los_angeles art art_museum

Great article about policing, police power, and street safety.
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Depending on police to solve all crime problems is equivalent to depending on emergency room doctors to be primary care doctors --- it's expensive, it's not their job, creates a culture reliant on catastrophe to get any attention, and much better if we prevent the catastrophic stuff from happening in the first place.

Crime prevention and public safety happens in many ways. "Safe streets" don't just happen because people with guns, nightsticks, menacing stares, and power trips are always threatening to beat some teenagers into submission.
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And:
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I said that "public safety" as currently configured is a "male-centric" solution for a reason.

If you take a step back, the friction you see between the police and gangs is essentially a bunch of older guys barking at young guys. Mayor Villaraigosa, Chief of Police Charlie Beck, City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana, less there's something we don't know about --- all guys. Gangleaders, gang members --- usually all guys too.

I don't notice too many women involved in these public safety conversations, unless they are UCLA Urban Planning Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris.

Subject to more threats of attack, women, along with seniors, children, and the disabled would have a better idea of "safer streets" than males. Architect Doug Suisman once said that the best measure of a safety of a public space is to see how many females to males are in a certain area. The more females, the more successful.
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And
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Creating safer streets means lowering the speed limits on streets. When cars exceed 20 mph, the pedestrians and cyclists become uneasy. It's no wonder, because 85% of individuals will die if struck by a motorist cruising along at 40 mph.
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policing safety street_life streets los_angeles gender cars public_space

Interesting strategy: artists using billboards to counteract billboards and direct attention in other ways...

art public_art billboards los_angeles

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Andy Lipkis, Founder and President of TreePeople, describes how this organization has pioneered an integrated approach to managing urban ecosystems as watersheds in the Los Angeles region. This involves strategic tree planting, tree-mimicking technologies, and community engagement to generate multiple solutions to the environmental threats facing our cities, including ensuring a sustainable water supply, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, preventing water and air pollution, fostering stronger neighborhoods, and creating jobs. For a summary of TreePeople's six demonstration projects that are now collecting 1.25 million gallons of water every time it rains 1" in Los Angeles, visit www. treepeople.org. Video Going to Green: Planting Seeds of Change with Community Forestry produced by the Media & Policy Center Foundation for PBS.
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Great stuff here - fascinating to see how "silo-think" works against solving problems.

environment ecological_urbanism los_angeles envirospeak.tv green_technologies urban_renewal

A bit of a fluff piece (this is the "printable" page - FastCompany has so much annoying flash & crud on its front pages), but there's an interesting thought about *im*permanent architecture here.
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One of Ma's core ideas -- the impermanence of architecture -- has particular appeal for anyone who would be happy to see Los Angeles' relentless sprawl bulldozed. Ma, 43, views today's Western architecture as a descendant of the Greco-Roman tradition, which is all about building in stone and erecting things that are intended to last forever. (Which makes it all the more amusing that he's an occasional collaborator of Koolhaas, creating mind-bending buildings, such as Beijing's CCTV headquarters, that look as if they might fall down.) Clearly a son of modern China, he questions the West's preservationist reflex. "Everything has a life cycle, as should buildings," he says. "Preservation is an action in sacrifice of future possibilities. The future needs its own space."
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fast_company architecture los_angeles asia

File this under "life imitates art"? There's a fascinating battle happening in LA over whether or not Sonny Astani, businessman and developer, should be permitted to install a new kind of LED-generated image, 12 stories above the street and 14 stories tall, on the side of his 33-story condo building currently under construction in downtown LA.

The inspiration? Opening scenes in Blade Runner of downtown LA, showing "a skyscraper-sized advertisement portraying a Japanese woman smiling before popping a snack into her mouth. Astani says an image, such as that of a flying sea gull, could now even travel from one building to the next."

I have to admit this sounds really cool, but I can see why many factions in LA would oppose this, too. We're all familiar with the really bright illuminated advertisements -- even Victoria has a small version of one, installed outside the arena on Blanshard at Caledonia. It's bright, too bright. But Astani proposes a much more modulated, artistic, and dimmed level of lighting. If the images could look as subtle -- yet powerful -- as Blade Runner's, it could work, but there's no garantee, that if permitted, subsequent developers would follow in that "artistic" style.

Another aspect is this: the proposal, if it's art, also calls into question just how intrusive public art should be in public space. Does it have a right to be so intrusive as to be impossible to ignore? Can I, as a citizen, be obliged to register public art -- and admittedly, it would be impossible not to register this project?

Is part of what captures my attention/ imagination regarding this project its uncanny fusion of subtlety and assault, packaged as visual stimulus?

Another question: is this an art form that expresses a corporate and anti-pedestrian city ("...neighborhood anchored by Staples Center and L.A. Live, the hotel and entertainment complex that includes the recently opened Nokia Theatre"), fitting for LA where people don't walk anyway (but just wait: it'll show up soon enough on the very v

astani advertising billboards outdoor_installations public_art public_space los_angeles

"The debate about the availability of housing in Los Angeles and the city's development policies has been testy but long overdue." An interesting article by Yaroslavsky that initially makes the reader think that he's advocating a sort of nimby-istic "pulling up the drawbridges" mentality, but if the reader perserveres to read the entire piece, it seems his suggestions are really LA-specific. They're not necessarily in conflict with infill development; development around transit routes & hubs; and creation of density in areas that really need it (in our case, downtown). He does bring in late 80s experiences, however, which make you wonder if things haven't irrevocably moved beyond thel contexts he's referencing.

urbanplanning urban_design density los_angeles neighbourhoods nimbyism smartgrowth eco_density affordable_housing