Last week the Ryerson City Building Institute published a terrific report on Toronto’s Great Streets. It profiles five streets in the city that have been “redesigned for greatness.” They are:
Harbord Street (continuous bike lanes)
Roncesvalles Avenue (placemaking and people)
St. Clair Avenue West (dedicated streetcar lane)
Queens Quay West (public waterfront promenade)
Market Street (prioritized for people and patios)
But what exactly makes a street a great one? The report describes it in this way: “They all play a key role in making the surrounding neighborhood a great place to live, work, and visit.”
This relates closely to what the City of Toronto calls a “complete street”, which is an approach to accommodating multiple kinds of users, enhancing the local context, and determining which trade-offs to make.
And there will always be trade-offs. I am fairly certain that all of these street redesigns were contentious at the time when they were proposed. Because at the end of the day they will never be all things to everyone.
I remember the St. Clair West fight vividly because I moved to the neighborhood in 2009 and the dedicated streetcar lane didn’t fully open until 2010. From 2005 to 2017, streetcar ridership grew 23%. But drivers have remained grouchy.
I now walk Market Street every single day and I agree that it’s one of the most beautiful and functional streets in the city. But the bollards are constantly getting beat up by drivers attempting to parallel park and the retail vacancy rate has not been 0% like is suggested in the report.
Queens Quay West is also a magnificent street. It was a giant step forward in terms of the quality of the public realm in this region and I spend a lot of time there. But it’s of course not perfect. All of us have seen the reports of cars ending up in odd locations, including underground, along the waterfront.
Riding your bike there can also feel like a challenging game of Frogger with all of the pedestrians that now obliviously meander back and forth across the cycling trail. I suggest riding with a good blow horn. The report rightly mentions the lack of delineation between these users.
But cities are a living laboratory and none of these streets should now be considered static. We are fortunate to be in a position to critique levels of greatness. If anything, the map at the top of this post tells me that we need to create more greatness across the other areas of this city.
As 2015 comes to a close, we take a look back at some our most exciting moments throughout the year. Continue below for our top 10 moments on our Great Streets.
10) Play Street - The City of Los Angeles, in partnership with Kounkuey Design Initiative launched the first Play Streets Pilot on 42nd Pl. near Central Ave.
9) Central Ave BID - In October, the Central Avenue Historic Business Improvement District was successful established.
8) Soofa Smart Bench - Starting in September, Soofa Smart benches were installed along our Great Streets that provide solar-powered USB charging ports for phones and devices.
7) LA Express Park - On Thursday, November 5, Mayor Garcetti launched the expansion of LA Express Park into Westwood, bringing demand-based pricing to the parking strapped neighborhood.
6) Parking Day - On Friday, September 18, Great Streets celebrated Park[ing] Day on Hollywood Blvd with a pop-up park, pet adoption center and interactive LA Philharmonic exhibit. The event was such a success, we won a national competition for our temporary parklet design!
5) Make it Mar Vista - On Saturday, November 28, the Mar Vista Chamber of Commerce hosted the first Great Streets Challenge Grant demonstration, Make it Mar Vista along Venice Blvd.
4) Pedestrian Scramble - On Sunday, November 15, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation installed an all-way “scramble” crosswalk at Hollywood and Highland.
3) Cesar Chavez - Completed in August, a series of pilot pedestrian improvements were installed along Cesar Chavez Ave including curb extensions, pedestrian head-starts, and high visibility crosswalks.
2) Challenge Grant - Over the summer, 8 community groups on the Great Streets were awarded funds through the Great Streets Challenge Grant. Each team has been conducting outreach and data collection in preparation for demonstration events across the city, many of which will happen in February, to showcase their neighborhood street as a vibrant public space!
1) REvist REseda- On Thursday, July 30, residents and businesses around Northridge celebrated the completed installation of Reseda Blvd’s sidewalk and street redesign, including protected bike lane, sidewalk furniture and sidewalk pattern.
PPS’s Nate Storring explains how a coworking space in Toronto, inspired by the tenets of Jane Jacobs, can be a model for new geographies of placemaking and innovation.
“the most significant collaborations in these clusters are the ones that enable new kinds of work that never would have been done otherwise. Economists call this innovative activity between clusters of diverse organizations “Jacobs spillovers” (named after you know who). They are more rare, but some believe they are the goose that lays the golden egg of innovation.”
Weekend Reads: Civic Crowdfunding for Participatory Community Development
This article from Robert Goodspeed and Katie Lorah discusses new crowdfunding platforms (like ioby) and their ability to facilitate citizen-led, citizen-funded projects and bring communities together.
“Too many urban neighborhoods in the United States are struggling with issues like access to fresh food, housing vacancy, and a lack of community amenities. While addressing urban problems has typically required large-scale planning and policy changes, the success of techniques like bottom-up community development and tactical urbanism has shown the value of starting small to build community initiative for broader change.”
Weekend Reads: Technology Transforming Public Transit
This NPR All Things Considered report discusses how recent tech innovations are colliding with our public transportation systems. While on-board bus technologies like passenger counters and vehicle locators are being used today, there lies an enormous potential to improve the cost, impact and safety of our systems.
“One challenge cities face, Gogue says, is that they are often "data rich, information poor." There is plenty of data about a city and its transportation system - where people get on and off, how long they ride and so on - but officials may not have a way to read or analyze that information.” Continue Reading...
Mar Vista resident soaking in the sun and enjoying the parklet
This past Saturday, November 28 the Mar Vista Chamber of Commerce hosted the first Great Streets Challenge Grant demonstration, Make it Mar Vista along Venice Blvd.
Councilman Mike Bonin leading the bike parade
Make it Mar Vista held a Small Business Saturday community event complete with pop-up protected bike lane, temporary parklets, interactive mural painting, live performances and an art exhibit.
Pop-up Protected Bike Lane along Venice Blvd
Maria Contreras-Sweet, head of the US Small Business Administration and Councilman Mike Bonin were on hand for the day's festivities along with hundreds of Mar Vista residents.
This report from Maria Rosario Jackson, of KCET discusses how the concept of "creative placemaking" - the recognition of a community's artistic and cultural assets and the integration of those assets in community planning and revitalization - is gaining momentum throughout Los Angles.
“To map the cultural assets of a region we ask: What are a community's tangible and intangible cultural assets -- the places, buildings, traditions, customs, cuisines, natural features, businesses, artists, culture-bearers, stories-- that make it unique? Who are there working artists engaged with community issues and community members? Are there recognized culture-bearers -- people who pass on heritage from one generation to the next?”
As part of the ongoing Great Streets Challenge Grant, Mayor Garcetti’s Great Streets Studio is conducting a series of interviews with each of the grantees to highlight their work and team.
This week, we caught up with Adé Neff, the project lead for Street Beats. Adé is also founder of Ride On! Bike Co-op in Leimart Village which provides hands-on education about bicycle repair and maintenance. Ride On!, the first co-op of its kind in South LA, aims to help community members learn how to effectively fix their own bikes and become self-sufficient bicyclists.
As part of the recent Great Streets Challenge Grant, Street Beats will use music and art to envision a safer and more vibrant Crenshaw Blvd. Together, Adé and his team have raised over $10,000. The Street Beats team has been leading a series of interactive community walks this month and plans are underway up for their day-long activation event. (NOTE: this interview has been edited slightly for clarity).
Great Streets: How did you become involved with the Challenge Grant?
Adé: I’ve been working in the community for quite some time. I started out by opening up the first Capoeira studio is South LA then doing community cleanup and community gardens...
I felt it was important that if you're in the community, to be actively engaged and beautify the community. Sustainability has always been a part of my life. I also started the first bicycle co-op in South LA. [The Challenge Grant] was a project I really wanted to be involved in because it's one of the projects we need to build the capacity to do in South LA.
What was the inspiration to apply?
Naomi and everyone on the team- Andres, Estuardo, Malcolm are all folks who live in South LA. As being members of the community, we know what we would like to see. This was an opportunity to have those things in South LA through this Great Streets Project. That was a really exciting thing for us.
As far as choosing the project that we did, Trust South LA and myself have been doing work around mobility and collecting data around bike paths, pedestrian safety and cycling safety. We knew that the intersection of Crenshaw and Florence has a lot of issues. It was a great opportunity for us to get the community involved in it and see how we can make it safe and fun while educating folks.
What’s made your team a good fit for the Challenge Grant?
The strength of the individual organizations that came together to be a team. Trust South LA has been doing some awesome work. [Community Health Councils] has been doing some great work. I was really excited when I heard who was going to be on the team. I get to work with Malcolm, Naomi and Michael who is an architect I brought in through the work he did on the bike co-op. He’s very active in South LA. In one hand the organizations, in the other hand, we have some visionaries on the team that are really excited to be doing some new and different things.
How did the Street Beats team come together?
It’s about relationships. I have a relationship with Malcolm. I had a relationship with Michael through the work that we have been doing. Andres, a few years ago we started running into each other and spoke to each other about the same things. Naomi, through her work was also in the same spaces I was in. On the occasions we would speak, it would be about the same thing. It was the energy of everyone that came through. The chemistry that came together between organizations and individuals made it such an obvious thing.
Your team raised over $10,000! How was your experience raising those funds?
Lucky for our team, I had already experience doing fundraising through ioby. It was great for the team. All we needed to do was carve out the time to make the phone calls and get folks to donate. Once we were able to get that together, we really able to do a good job. It was really important to get a lot of small donations. We had to go out to the community to talk about the project we were doing. We went to block clubs and community meetings and spoke to them. I’m really happy were able to do that and get the amount of donations were able to get. It made us secure that the community is invested in the project. So not just talking to the community but getting ideas for what they like and any new things we’d be able to incorporate. We wanted it to be for and by the community. Fundraising was our first foray into bringing the community into it.
What has been the biggest challenge so far?
One of the things I’m doing right now is dealing with small vendor and local business and the challenges they have. We’re ordering t-shirts from a small vendor who actually has a shop on Florence. We want to get these t-shirts but the way the timeline is and how those types of things work is a challenge.
I had the same thing with the guy that did the flyers with us.
One of the things I’d like to see done is activate the empty lots so we can highlight some of the small businesses in the area. If people are working out of their homes or mobile, we can try to bring them in. That’s one of the challenges that came up this week.
Next big challenge?
The next big challenge for us is probably the technical aspects of things. Visualizing it is one thing. Doing the budget is one thing but when it comes down to it: day-of. We’ll definitely have the manpower and volunteers because of the community buy in. But are we going to actually be able to build the stuff we intend on? Right now what we’re dealing with is community involvement. We have the dates and sites for that. Dealing with DOT, managing the traffic and shutting down parts of the street on the day-of will be issues.
For More information on Street Beats follow them on twitter and check out their website.
