My slideshow presentation, with audio graciously provided by Streetsblog Editor Damien Newton. It's 36 minutes long, so be sure to prepare a beverage and maybe a snack. Workshop description:
Urban design tends to remain invisible for most people — until something drastic happens to shake things up. That's the mission of Narrow Streets: Los Angeles, a project where I take photos of our city's famously wide roads and narrow them down using Photoshop. In the process, the photos reveal a suddenly non-car-centric vision of L.A. designed to spark the viewer's imagination and emphasize how important street design can be in affecting our daily lives.For this workshop, I'll present an overview of studies regarding wide street safety, livability, and property value before reviewing street traffic calming design strategies and the virtues of narrow, human-scale streets. Then, we'll use narrowed photographs to facilitate a freeform discussion about the current state of street life in L.A. and how we could improve things in the future. I'll also demonstrate my photo editing process for those interested in taking urban landscapes of their own.
After the slideshow I invited people to engage in a freeform discussion. Here's a transcript of our lively conversation.
Let's start of the week with a little departure from the norm. Here's a shot of Father's Office at Helms Bakery from a year ago, when Helms Avenue ran straight through the bakery compound. Back then, shoppers squeezed themselves to the margins of the street and had to be ever aware of oncoming traffic. But since then, the Culver City Bicycle & Pedestrian Initiative has pedestrianized the area, closing the street to traffic and adding wonderful details like a fountain, benches, cobblestone texture, and these awesome solar-powered bollards.
Here's a list of all the fantastic coverage of the 2010 LA StreetSummit on the ever-awesome Streetsblog, in case you missed it — including tons of well-crafted video.
I'm posting this week's Friday Favorite a day early because I'll be on hiatus tomorrow (it's mah birfday. Wahoo!). Anyway, here's Pershing Square in 1965, before it had been walled off as the elevated concrete plaza it is today:
Every Friday I'll post a narrow or otherwise interesting street snapshot from somewhere around the world. Got a Friday Favorite of your own? Send me your photos!
On paper, Santa Monica Blvd. seems like a farily progressive street. It's got bike lanes, frequent bus transport, and a good number of businesses mixed with residential buildings. It connects Westwood to Century City to Beverly Hills — all major destination spots. But the boots-on-the-ground experience is very different.
My report from the wonderfully inspiring 2010 LA StreetSummit is up on Shareable.
There’s never been a better time to get involved. So much has been accomplished since those early efforts by a few lonely cycling activists. LA has run out of excuses, especially now that other cities — including not just New York but Minneapolis, Seattle, and Tucson — have quickly surpassed our City of Angels in the Great Public Space Race.
