Category: urban planning
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Protecting Fair and Affordable Housing
I was invited to contribute an op-ed to public television station KCET on the topic of Trump’s appointee for Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson. You may have seen developer Geoff Palmer’s luxury apartment buildings clustered on the fringes of downtown Los Angeles. Massive, and dressed in wan tones […]
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Thinking Big by Designing Small: Kounkuey Design Initiative
At the edge of California’s Salton Sea, a community arts event called Projections kicked off on a warm evening last November with poetry readings and music performances ranging from heartrending Spanish ballads sung by a weathered man in a cowboy hat to teenagers grinding out speed metal. As the sun set, flocks of pelicans skimmed […]
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Playing the L.A. River
“Park vs. condos debate—costumes recommended,” reads one of the instructions on a playing card for a plot of land near the Los Angeles River. This tongue-in-cheek prompt for open-air theater comes from a recently launched initiative called Play the LA River. Every card in the Play the River 51-card deck focuses on points of interest along […]
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Why Letting Thousands of People Take Over the Streets Is a Good Idea
On a recent afternoon, the Second Street Tunnel in downtown Los Angeles was not jammed with noxious, idling cars. Instead, hundreds of bicyclists rode through, whooping and shouting to hear the acoustics of the gloriously free tunnel. They could enjoy the sounds without the congestion of cars because of CicLAvia, a wildly popular event where […]
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The Design Solution for Homelessness
The glittering skyline of downtown Los Angeles is bright and close from the roof of the Star apartment building in L.A.’s Skid Row. “We can see them, and they can see us,” says Mike Alvidrez, the executive director of Skid Row Housing Trust, the developer of the sleek Star, an uncommonly beautiful respite for formerly […]
Lyra Kilston 