Livable Places - Resources

Walk, in L.A.?
In a scene from the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, set in Los Angeles in 1947, a couple of kids are hitching a ride on the back of a streetcar when private detective Eddie Valiant joins them. One of the kids wants to know why Valiant doesn’t have a car. And Valiant says, "Who needs a car in L.A.? We got the best public transportation system in the world.” This probably struck most viewers as pure Hollywood fantasy.

Today, Southern Californians are more likely to identify with the Missing Persons rock song “Nobody Walks in L.A.”

How did we get here?
Most people assume that Los Angeles was built up around the automobile and cannot be reoriented to public transportation. But actually, in the early years of the last century, Los Angeles was built around the streetcar. In the 1920s the Pacific Electric was the largest electric trolley system in the country, with 6,000 trains running on 144 routes extending into four counties. The Red Car and other trolley lines made a car-free existence not only possible, but common.

Postwar political and business leaders had a powerful new vision for Los Angeles – suburban tracts connected by fast-moving freeways. Not hampered by L.A.’s streetcar orientation, they pushed many of Los Angeles’ freeways along the routes of defunct streetcar lines.

Are we ready to move on?
Los Angeles’ love affair with the car is showing signs of strain. Traffic is a perennial high-ranking concern among voters and rated the worst in the nation. Women now spend more time in their cars than on one-on-one childcare. In March 2002, the New York Times reported that sprawl-weary Angelenos were beginning to trade in the suburban home for a more urban setting to avoid spending hours each day on clogged freeways.

Are we ready for a postsuburban vision for L.A.? One where we read or crochet as we take the bus or Red, Blue, Green or Gold Line to work? One where our children walk or bike to school? One where we walk to a corner store for a quart of milk or bicycle to meet a friend for a cup of coffee?

Creating Walkable Neighborhoods
Walking guru Dan Burden calls the pedestrian the “indicator species” of a vibrant neighborhood. He recommends that we pay close attention to the environmental factors that make us feel comfortable as pedestrians. Here’s Dan’s indicator list for walkable communities:

A compact, lively town center with shops, significant housing and a distinct personality.
Many routes and transportation choices to get to the commercial center.
Low-speed streets where motorists yield to pedestrians.
Neighborhood schools and parks where children can walk or bicycle.
Public places packed with children, teenagers, older adults and people with disabilities.
Convenient, safe and easy street crossings.
Inspiring and well-maintained public streets with sidewalks, planter strips, medians, on-street parking and bike lanes.
Land use and transportation mutually beneficial.
Celebrated public space and public life
Many people walking.

Can you get there from here?
Just like the leaders who reoriented L.A. to the automobile, we can reorient ourselves away from auto-dependence. Every day, local governments make decisions about building in neighborhoods and downtowns. Many of those decisions are made within an auto-centric framework that puts moving traffic and providing parking foremost. This has resulted not just in freeways, but also wide streets that foster faster driving. More insidious are the miles of surface parking lots surrounding every store, office building and apartment complex. These parking lots separate the stores and other businesses and make walking between them not only unpleasant and inconvenient, but often dangerous.

By contrast, many of our favorite urban places to walk – Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, Old Town Pasadena, downtown San Diego, many of San Francisco’s neighborhoods – were first designed before cars were king. These areas are compact, with buildings touching each other and the sidewalk. Cars are present but move more slowly, posing less danger to pedestrians. Parking is either scarce ( San Francisco) or tucked away in parking structures ( Santa Monica, Old Town Pasadena). That people also live in or near these areas gives them a round-the-clock vibrancy that is usually lacking in office parks, shopping malls and purely residential neighborhoods.

Beth Steckler is the policy director for Livable Places, a nonprofit organization working to build housing and more sustainable communities.

For more information on making areas more walkable, check out the Community Design page at the Local Government Commission’s website www.lgc.org.

Opinion