Oxy Professor Hopes to Win $100,000 to ‘Make L.A. More Connected, Equitable and Sustainable’

By 2050, the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College wants Los Angeles to be more about people than cars.

That overarching vision is part of LA2050, a $1-million competition being held by the Goldhirsch Foundation to shape the future of Los Angeles along eight key indicators:

• Arts and cultural vitality
• Education
• Environmental quality
• Health
• Housing
• Income and employment
• Public safety
• Social connectedness

The foundation has its own assessment of L.A.’s health (click on the above links for details)—and it has received 279 project-based proposals, including the one by Oxy’s UEPI, for the LA2050 competition to tackle the city’s most pressing problems.

Further, the foundation will award grants worth $100,000 each to the top 10 proposals that win in a round of online public voting that began April 2 and is scheduled to end at noon next week on Wednesday, April 17 (Pacific Daylight Time).

UEPI submitted its proposal in a partnership with the Latino Urban Forum, a Los Angeles-based organization that draws on the expertise of architects, city planners, administrators and lawyers in an attempt to understand and improve the cityscape in which L.A.’s underserved Latino communities live.

Written by UEPI Director Mark Vallianatos in consultation with James Rojas, founding director of the Latino Urban Forum, the proposal focuses on what Vallianatos refers to as a “once in a lifetime opportunity to change the DNA of land use in the City and shape Los Angeles as a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable place.”

Starting this year, writes Vallianatos, a strong advocate of bicycle lanes and pedestrian traffic, the City of Los Angeles will under take a Comprehensive Zoning Revision for the first time since 1946. This presents a golden opportunity to make land use in L.A. more democratic and diverse because:

By controlling physical places, zoning has sometimes kept less powerful socioeconomic or ethnic groups “in their place” at the margins of society. And, by favoring cars and private backyards over high quality public space, it has reduced the types of social interactions that build community. In a diverse city, we cannot afford to exclude some residents from amenities and opportunities or to wall people off from their neighbors.

Click here to read the full UEPI proposal written by Vallianatos as well as to vote for it.

“I intended to explain and pitch our concept of using creative planning to identify ways to improve rules on the built environment, and thereby make L.A. more connected, equitable and sustainable,” Vallianatos told Eagle Rock Patch.

Click here to view all 279 proposals received for the LA2050 competition and vote for the project of your choice. (Remember, you can vote only once—and the deadline is April 17.)