CommentsPLATKIN ON PLANNING-Los Angeles’s sidewalks are far more than broken-down, unsafe concrete slabs long ignored and now overdue for major repairs.
They also reveal a city government that is failing its residents in many different ways, all bared wide-open when you closely look at the city’s 7,200 miles of sidewalks. This is not a case of simple negligence, but a direct result of a municipal government that defines “development” as private real estate speculation, not public investment in its streets, parkways, sidewalks, and other open space.
To begin, most of LA’s sidewalks are in terrible shape, and City Hall admits about 60 percent of them arein disrepair. Tree roots from poorly selected and cared-for trees have lifted sidewalks in all Los Angeles neighborhoods. Decades of deferred maintenance have then left these crumbling sidewalks in such bad shape that City Hall is forced repave them. But since sidewalk repairs are a low budget priority for the Mayor and City Council, the sidewalks go from bad to worse.
Furthermore, many of these decaying sidewalks lack legally required ADA curb cuts. This not only brings Los Angeles into conflict with Federal laws, but has also left it open to successful lawsuits forcing the city to finally repair its sidewalks to the tune of $1.3 billion.
LA’s sidewalks have become the home for many of LA’s 30-50,000 homeless people.
Homelessness has quickly grown because the Federal Government eliminated most public housing programs, the State of California’s dissolved every Community Redevelopment Agency, and local market-based programs, like LA’s Measure JJJ, have only produced a trickle of affordable housing. Furthermore, according to the New York Times, soaring economic inequality has pushed a significant percentage of the American population into poverty, yet another factor leading to more homelessness in Los Angeles (and elsewhere).
What we see on the city’s sidewalks is the result of many public policy decisions that have left large numbers of people no alternative but to sleep on sidewalks. This is really an update of the famous Anatole France quotethat capitalism equally denies the rich and the poor the freedom to sleep under bridges. As a result, City Hall officials continually instruct the LAPD to roust homeless people from public sidewalks, although the Federal Courts have recently banned this practice.
LA’s sidewalks have become the preferred paths for BIRD and Lime scooters.
Because Los Angeles has such a poorly developed system of bike lanes and bicycle parking, BIRD and Lime dockless scooter users have taken to LA’s sidewalks. Furthermore, both companies park their scooters on sidewalks, so riders can easily find them.
But there is an alternative to this ad hoc arrangement that forces walkers, scooter renters, and homeless people to compete for the same sidewalk space. Los Angeles could finally take advantage of its wide streets and sunny climate to reduce its appalling traffic congestionby building out an extensive system of protected bike lanes. The second part of this obvious solution is locating ample bicycle parking in publicly accessible areas that could then also double for scooter parking.
So far this is approach is missing in action, replaced by City Hall chatter about pilot programs, helmet use, restricting scooters to streets. But, without enforcement, such ordinances and regulations only delay the real solution: expanded dual-use bicycle lanes and bicycle parking facilities.
LA’s sidewalks offer little shade because the city barely maintains a shrinking urban forest on its sidewalks and adjacent parkways.
In Los Angeles the woefully underfunded and under-appreciatedBureau of Street Servicesis in charge of the city’s sidewalks and most of the city’s urban forest. This includes the shade-providing street trees sometimes planted in public parkways, the thin planting strip adjacent to the city’s sidewalks. Because of decades of outright negligence and minimal funding, both the sidewalks and the urban forest are in deplorable shape. Now, in response to lawsuits, City Hall has begun to repair small segments of the City’s worst sidewalks. Unfortunately, this work also includes leveling street trees that impinge on sidewalk repairs. Even though other cities, from Seattle to Beverly Hills, have avoided this false choice, Los Angeles has chosen to sacrifice its boulevard trees to repair its sidewalks. There is no interest in the Beverly Hills approach of regularly pruning sidewalk-lifting roots or Seattle’s approach of curving sidewalks around large trees.
LA’s urban forest is so under-planted and maintained that many sidewalks are devoid of any tree canopy.
Other streets have poorly selected trees (e.g., Mexican fan palms) that do not shade walkers. The cumulative result is that when Los Angeles is already experienced the first waves of climate change as a mega-drought and record heat waves, the street trees are not there. If planted and then cared for, they could provide shade to pedestrians, improve access to bus stops and subway stations, capture rain, purify LA’s highly polluted air, and sequester carbon.
Next steps.
Is there is a solution to these overlapping urban ills revealed by LA’s crumbling sidewalks? There is, but there is no silver bullet. The obvious place to begin is an Urban Forest General Plan element linked to updated Open Space element, with extra attention devoted to sidewalk repairs and the urban forest, its many problems, and its many solutions. The second part of this planning process needs to be an Urban Forest manager to implement the plan and integrate the efforts of all City of Los Angeles departments dealing with LA’s sidewalks and withering urban forest. This primarily means Street Services, LADWP, City Planning, Recreation and Parks, and LADOT.
Finally, the third part of this comprehensive approach is the City’s budget. It needs to follow the example of all other surrounding cities and make sidewalks and trees a major budget priority, not a forgotten category that has inexorably led to totally avoidable sidewalk repaving, tree loss, and the other maladies revealed by a careful look at LA’s steadily worsening sidewalks.
(Dick Platkin is a former LA city planner who reports on planning controversies in Los Angeles for City Watch. Please send any comments or correction to [email protected]. Previous columns are available at the CityWatchLA archives and the blog, Plan-itLos Angeles.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
