UEPI News and Commentary

Park[ing] Day!

It's a beautiful day and our park is set up!  Come by for a chat in the park. 

The Chicken and Egg Story – Park[ing] Day L.A.-- Park Poor, But Parking Rich

Los Angeles is one of the most park poor but parking rich cities in the country. Endowed with a Mediterranean climate, and mountains and ocean that span the region, what often passes for open space in areas like downtown L.A., are large open air parking lots.  It is not only that parking lots, wide streets, and rows of parking metered parking spaces are unattractive; they also have major impacts on quality of life and the environment by contributing to beach and ocean pollution, raising the temperature on already hot days, and increasing housing costs due to parking requirements imposed on developers.

moving slower in the car pool lane

As the number of hybrid cars sold in California reach 75,000 and the stickers available to drive solo in the car pool lane reach their max, angry car poolers in conventional cars may well try to block the program's renewal. They have a point: hybrids are going to continue to be sold at a fast clip regardless of car pool lane sticker availability, and there is a danger that the overall value of the car pool lane could diminish as more solo driver hybrids enter the lane. That would weaken one of the few incentives to reduce the huge number of those single occupied vehicles. But some of the angry car poolers also complain that hybrids go too slow -- 65 or even 70 mph instead of 80 and faster. They do that (I know from personal experience) because they're conscious of stretching their mileage. But that's a good thing, even good policy if we ever took seriously the idea that speed limits have a purpose. Slowing down to the speed limit on the freeway not only stretches gas mileage but could create less congestion with steadier traffic and fewer accidents. Traffic calming on the freeway -- an unintended consequence of the Prius moment?

Designing the Cornfield

Wanted: Experienced and innovative design firm for new 32-acre state park just north of downtown Los Angeles. Must take into consideration previous site studies, multiple community demands, and diverse constituent needs.

In March, the California State Parks Foundation went searching for teams to develop designs for the new state park at the parcel formerly known as the “Cornfield.” With funding from the Annenberg Foundation to provide $25K stipends to 3 teams, a review panel deliberated over 30 applicants and selected:  Field Operations (NY, NY), Hargreaves and Associates (San Francisco, CA), and Mia Lehrer and Associates (Los Angeles, CA).

Warehouses vs. Urban Gardens: L.A.’s Own Urban Heat Island Effect

It’s hot out there, and one of the reasons it might get even hotter in the years to come in LA, is the continuing push to pave even more of the little green space we have. When Judge Helen Bendix ruled against the South Central Farmers, and developer Ralph Horowitz once again indicated his preference for warehouses over green space, it was also a victory for the urban heat island effect. In 1967, an article in Scientific American first raised the concern that certain characteristics of urban development caused temperatures to rise in urban areas. In the summer, researchers have pointed out that we might be as much as five degrees hotter in Los Angeles due to our hot roofs and pavements, and the lack of vegetation, green space, and trees. More freeways and more black top, more diesel trucks and more warehouses have all kinds of environmental consequences, including forcing us to bake even more in the sun. More gardens, more trees, different strategies for development could begin to cool us down. Too bad the tendency always seems to go in the direction of more, not less heat.

Air Conditioning in the Heat Wave

and Peter Dreier

At a community forum this past Saturday with L.A.’s new Planning Director, Gail Goldberg, fifteen community residents that had been brought to the forum by the Korean Resource Center wanted to talk about the desperate need for air conditioning, especially for seniors and anyone else vulnerable to this god awful heat wave. They didn’t get much of a response that day, and, as it turns out, it’s hard to get a response through any of the formal channels to register complaints involving the various housing bureaucracies. This is especially true for renters who have been promised air conditioning in their leases but never had it, or when their air conditioning system breaks down and the landlord doesn’t fix it. Landlords have even denied tenants the right to install their own air conditioning if “no a/c” is part of the lease, including when the tenant pays the electricity bill!

Landlord interests have been successful in preventing any requirements to fix or install air conditioning to be incorporated into the Housing Code. Nor have the Supervisors, or the City Council, or the Mayor and the Housing Department developed approaches that can facilitate action in this area, especially with the kind of crisis we’re experiencing right now.

In 1995, Chicago experienced a heat wave that resulted in more than 450 deaths; deaths that happened in part because of the failure of policymakers to create the support mechanisms to allow the most vulnerable to withstand the heat. Eric Klinenberg, whose compelling study (“Heat Wave”) of what he called an “environmentally stimulated but socially organized catastrophe” has important lessons for what’s happening now in L.A. and other parts of the country. Let’s hope we won’t see a similar catastrophe happen here because the air conditioning is broke, or a landlord doesn’t allow a tenant to install one, or that the policies we’ve developed to get air conditioning fixed or installed turn out to be broken as well.

Double decker highways and additional highway lanes on the 710 Freeway..do we really need more?

It's unfortunate, but buried within the legislative package of infrastructure projects that the Legislature passed last week, and that otherwise includes important goals such as affordable housing and education, will be a big chunk of change that will go to freeway building, particularly for increasing the ability to expand the movement of goods that flows through -- and pollutes -- the Southern California region. Translated: more freeway lanes or even a double decker of that most notorious of Southern California freeways, the 710.