Tactical Urbanism in Los Angeles by Charlie Simpson

An Overview and Analysis of Tactical Urbanism in Los Angeles

Charlie Simpson Urban & Environmental Policy Occidental College April 2015

Table of Contents Glossary…………………………………………………………………...3 Abstract/Executive Summary………………………................................5 Introduction: A Movement........................................................................6 What is Tactical Urbanism?………..……………………………………7 DIY and Everyday Urbanism…………………………………………..14 Answering These Questions in the LA Context……………………….20 Methodology……………………………………………………………..22 Findings/Analysis: From Unsanctioned to Sanctioned………………..23 Everyday Urbanism in Los Angeles ………………………………25 Functional & Communal………………………………………………..33 Union de Vecinos: ‘DIY Social Spaces’…………………………...35 Community Living Rooms…………………………………………43 Eco-Village Intersection Repair……………………………………46 ‘Guerrilla Gardening’: LA Green Grounds and Ron Finley……….51 Functional & Individual………………………………………………...53 LA Department of DIY…………………………………………….54 Socal Guerrilla Gardening…………………………………………56 Playful & Aspirational…………………………………………………..56 City-initiated Tactical Urbanism in Los Angeles……………………...60 People St……………………………………………………...........61 LA County Parklets……………………………………...………...71 Pop-up Planning Workshops……………………………….……...75 Phase 0 Implementation……………………………………...........77 Pop-up Events…………………………………………….……….78 Recommendations……………………………………………….……...81

Everyday/Latino Urbanism………………………...………….…..81 Functional & Communal……………………………….……....…83 People St……………………………………………….………….85 LA County Parklets…………………………………..…………...88 Conclusion………………………………………………………..……..89 Acknowledgements……………………………………………………..90 Bibliography…………………………………………………………….92 GLOSSARY: 

Tactical Urbanism: “an approach to neighborhood building and activation using short-term, low-cost, and scalable interventions and policies.” (Lydon, 2) The interventions include illegal, unsanctioned, bottom-up initiatives as well as formal, cityled programs and policies.

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Urban Intervention: an act of interfering or changing the built environment of cities

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Do-it-Yourself (DIY) Urbanism: small-scale, creative, usually informal or illegal changes to the built environment

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Everyday Urbanism: various uses and changes to the built environment that reflect and address the quotidian, daily needs and values of individuals and groups. (Often informal or unsanctioned)

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Latino Urbanism: the ways in which Latino-Americans shape and alter their streets and neighborhoods to reflect their daily needs, values, and culture.

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Functional & Communal: a type of unsanctioned, informal change to the built environment that addresses a need in basic street infrastructure. They are completely initiated and organized for and by the community itself.

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Functional & Individual: a type of unsanctioned, informal change to the built environment that addresses a need in basic street infrastructure. They are initiated and organized by individuals and may not reflect the overall values of the community.

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Playful & Aspirational: a type of unsanctioned, informal change to the built environment that makes a statement or questions a normal use, but does not address an

immediate need. They propose future changes or simply bring attention to a certain aspect or use of the built environment. 

Built Environment: the human-made spaces in which people interact in everyday life (streets, sidewalks, buildings, etc.)

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Gentrification: the process of neighborhood change in which higher-income outside residents move into an area, displacing existing lower-income residents. Property values rise, rents increase, and the commercial area changes, all to cater to the incoming residents with more money.

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Equity: fairness and justice in the way people are treated; freedom from bias or favoritism (according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

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Unsanctioned/Unauthorized: an act that is not officially recognized or made legal by city government.

Abstract/Executive Summary: Tactical Urbanism is a growing movement across the world in which individuals, communities, and municipalities are reshaping their cities one street and block at a time. Los Angeles seems to be one of the leading cities of this Tactical Urbanism movement. In order to provide a context and overview of the movement in Los Angeles I look at issues that are prevalent in regards to Tactical Urbanism. Evident in the literature is that Tactical Urbanism deals with issues of social equity and gentrification. How do unsanctioned examples of Tactical Urbanism prevent from becoming catalysts for gentrification? How does formalized Tactical Urbanism (specifically Parklet/Plaza programs) remain equitable and empowering in terms of locations, and community input for designs? The most successful examples of Tactical Urbanism have only come from younger white middle class individuals. How can cities broaden the scope of Tactical Urbanism by harnessing the energy of grass-roots activities happening around the city, especially in underrepresented communities? I try to answer these questions as they apply to Los Angeles through interviews, informal discussions, content analysis, research, and site visits. I found that many examples of what could be called Tactical Urbanism exist in Los Angeles in lower-income communities. Mostly ignored by the municipality, many examples exist of communities altering their built environment in incremental ways, and more importantly, making changes that combat gentrification by occurring for and by the existing community. I also analyzed the more formal, city-led examples of Tactical Urbanism in Los Angeles, focusing mostly on the parklet and plaza program called People St. The program provides more immediate changes to communities, but is somewhat limiting in their level of community input for designs and locations. Upon analyzing the unsanctioned, informal examples and the city-led

examples of Tactical Urbanism in Los Angeles, I propose that the city work towards being more enabling, flexible, and empowering—giving communities the tools to shape their own environment. Los Angeles has a lot of potential to understand the examples of Tactical Urbanism happening around the city and use this small-scale, low-cost, and inclusive approach to work towards a city that better reflects the people living in it. I hope that this thesis sheds light on this potential, and helps to bring a greater voice to communities all over Los Angeles, especially in the communities most in need.

Tactical Urbanism: “A nation that celebrates freedom and weaves liberty into its national myth rarely gives regular people the chance to shape their own communities.” –Charles Montgomery, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design (314) “Plans are often outdated before they are even published, while on a day-to-day basis the control of development perpetuates categories of use that are inflexible and unsuited to times of continuous change.” (Bishop, 19) “The most interesting, most successful placemaking projects today leave behind previous tenets of the field: gone is the master-planner, the big, top-down, bureaucracy, and the enormously expensive, multi-year debt-financed capital plan.” (Silberberg, 11) “The layers of bureaucracy that must be navigated for projects small and large have become so thick and the process of receiving permission to build so convoluted, given the variety of competing interests and jurisdictions, that it is exceedingly difficult—and expensive—to get anything done efficiently, if at all.” (Lydon, 83)

Introduction: A Movement Urban planning of the last century has been controlling, rigid, and slow to implement change. Often long-term plans are drawn up with limited public participation and which often take years to start implementing, if they are approved at all. Since the economic meltdown of 2008, cities and developers have to deal with significantly less resources and the ideal of the long-term transformational plan has become increasingly insignificant and even more difficult to implement. With the economic decline of the past several years, communities across the board 6

are receiving fewer of the city’s resources and infrastructural upgrades. At the same time that cities and people are being affected by the recent recession, people are becoming more efficient with what they do have. People and community groups are using the Internet to crowd-source money for local projects. Social media and blogs are increasingly becoming a platform to spread ideas and organize for change. Governments are starting to use the Internet to become more open, inclusive, and responsive to people’s needs. Important to note as well is that it’s “for the first time in twenty years that city growth surpassed that of the exurbs. Our largest cities…grew at a faster rate than their suburbs for the first time in almost one hundred years.” (Gallagher, 14) More people are moving to the city. Fewer resources, frustration with government and planning, radical Internet connectivity, and a growing number of people in cities have all seemed to create this environment of working together, taking action, and starting small. With various reasons and intentions, individuals, community groups, non-profits, business districts, private developers, and governments have all been changing their built environment in incremental ways. Whether it’s an individual addressing an immediate need to their neighborhood or a municipality simply testing out their plans, a movement is becoming increasingly visible.

What is Tactical Urbanism? Dozens of names have come to describe the overall trend towards this inexpensive, smaller, local approach to urban development. To name just a few, it has been called Guerrilla, Informal, Spontaneous, Temporary, Pop-up, Insurgent, Iterative, Everyday, DIY, and Tactical. I have chosen to approach this paper through the lens of ‘Tactical Urbanism’ because it includes a larger spectrum from informal, illegal, urban interventions, all the way to formal programs and events. Urban Planner and co-founder of the planning, research, and consulting firm called the Street Plans Collaborative, Mike Lydon just released a book titled Tactical Urbanism: Short-

term Action for Long-term Change. The book defines and gives context to the movement and provides a framework for cities and citizens to approach a Tactical Urbanism project. Mike Lydon defines the term and describes the spectrum and general ways in which it is used in the following excerpt from his book: “Tactical Urbanism is an approach to neighborhood building and activation using short-term, low-cost, and scalable interventions and policies. Tactical Urbanism is used by a range of actors, including governments, business and nonprofits, citizen groups, and individuals…Tactical Urbanism is a learned response to the slow and siloed conventional city building process. For citizens, it allows the immediate reclamation, redesign, or reprogramming of public space. For developers or entrepreneurs, it provides a means of collecting design intelligence from the market they intend to serve. For advocacy organizations, it is a way to show what it possible to garner public and political support. And for government, it’s a way to put best practices into, well practice—and quickly!” (Lydon, 2-3) The whole idea is that everybody is acting to make change to the built environment; everybody can be a city builder. Some of the more well known examples of Tactical Urbanism include Intersection Repair and Parklet and Plaza programs. Intersection Repair is an example of when a neighborhood in Portland decided, without permission from the city, to paint an intersection, build “a 24-hour self-serve tea station, a community bulletin board, an information kiosk, and a children’s playhouse” to slow down traffic and make it into a community gathering space. (Lydon, 96) The city eventually formalized the process and provided the tools for every neighborhood to be able to transform their own intersection. The community transformed their neighborhood using simple, cheap materials and the process was scaled up and became an official, easy way for communities to make immediate changes to their neighborhood. The various parklet and plaza programs around the country, including the People St. program in L.A. which I will analyze later in this paper, are programs in which the city allows non-profits, businesses, and business districts to apply to transform a parking space or an excessive roadway space into a mini plaza or park.

They are built using low-cost materials and are generally renewed every year. This is an example of a city providing the tools for communities to have more open space quickly and cheaply. One appeal to Tactical Urbanism is that if it doesn’t work then it can easily be removed because of the low-cost and temporary nature of the projects. Expressed in Lydon’s book are a few key characteristics that make Tactical Urbanism a success. From the unsanctioned, grass-roots level, a key aspect of Tactical Urbanism is to seek collaboration with the city and within the neighborhood to try to scale up the intervention to make lasting change. “It’s important to remember that what makes your project tactical is the intent; the short-term intervention should be placed within the framework for delivering longterm change.” (Lydon, 187) In order to gain the attention and support from the municipality you need to measure the results and document, blog, or draw media attention. Another desirable aspect of a tactical intervention is that the project is easily replicable to other areas of the city or neighborhood. Once the municipality recognizes a project, they should be flexible, empowering and enabling. “Municipal leaders are in a position to use their limited resources to scale the best bottom-up initiatives citywide. For city and citizen, Tactical Urbanism is now the primary tool for doing so.” (Lydon, 42) What constitutes the ‘best’ bottom-up initiatives is up for debate, but the point is that the city has to be responsive and flexible. Cities and residents have to work together. Mike Lydon’s book goes on to advise that “city leaders focus less on the illegality of temporary interventions…and more on the underlying conditions that cause constituents to act without city permission in the first place.” (Lydon, 184) If people are actively changing their built environment then the city needs to understand why. Once a city does formulate a Tactical Urbanism program such as the Pavement to Plaza program in NYC, how does it remain equitable and empowering to the communities it involves? NYC’s plaza program, because it relies on

private funding and maintenance, was leaving out neighborhoods that couldn’t afford to apply. The program received a grant and there is a non-profit group called the Neighborhood Plaza Partnership that both specifically aim to address this issue of equity and help aid the most underserved neighborhoods. Most other parklet and plaza programs around the country are trying to deal with the same issue. From Mike Lydon’s book it is clear that there are tensions between bottom-up interventions and how the government reacts to them. In the thesis titled Tactical Urbanism, Public Policy Reform, and ‘Innovation Spotting’ by Government: From Park(ing) Day to San Francisco’s Parklet Program, Mariko Davidson further addresses some of the tensions inherent in Tactical Urbanism. Davidson agrees with Mike Lydon that bottom-up projects will succeed if they align with the goals of the city, are documented, and seek support from the municipality. More importantly, the thesis argues that Tactical Urbanism risks becoming elitist and not representing the needs of the community. Davidson gives examples of some of the most successful Tactical Urbanism projects: ‘Better Block’, ‘Walk Raleigh’, Guerrilla Bike Lane Separators, and ‘Park(ing) Day.’ Mike Lydon’s case studies looked at three of the same projects, which he calls ‘Build a Better Block,’ ‘Guerrilla Wayfinding,’ and ‘Park(ing) Day.’ This following excerpt from Mariko Davidson’s thesis gives insight into the current success stories from around the country: “Tacticians from these projects were all young (25-35 years), college-educated white men that implemented these projects alone, with little to no public input process taken prior to the activity…If Tactical Urbanism becomes a new norm to implement strategy, we should be conscious to the extent it articulates, and can amplify, the vision of a race, class, and gender already dominantly represented in American society. Tactical Urbanism might become another advantage in an already unequal system.” (Davidson, 52-53) If the most successful projects in the U.S. are being done by a specific social group, then an obvious gap that needs to be addressed is what the underrepresented groups are doing to

informally shape their built environment. How can cities approach their tactics and possibly formalize their projects in an empowering and iterative way? To keep many Tactical Urbanism projects from becoming elitist or only representing a few, Davidson emphasizes that they need to gain public feedback and support before becoming more formal solutions. The Tactical Urbanism success stories that Mike Lydon and Mariko Davidson explain are truly amazing examples of how individuals and small groups can make a city-wide and even national impact by starting small, using low-cost materials, and allowing them to scale up. Municipalities just need to see this potential and search for opportunities to empower and enable the most underserved neighborhoods and make sure that future projects represent the needs of the existing community. The remaining pieces of literature that specifically address Tactical Urbanism focus on planners and the city and how they can implement bottom-up initiatives and use Tactical Urbanism to benefit and empower the communities it involves. In The Planner’s Guide to Tactical Urbanism by Laura Pfeifer, she addresses the difficultly that planners face in trying to maintain the spirit of Tactical Urbanism while formalizing a project, which means getting things done quickly and with low-cost materials. She says “planners must balance the need for a robust level of citizen engagement with the desire of community stakeholders to implement projects quickly.” (Pfeifer, 8) Once a citizen-initiated project becomes formalized, it must still reflect the spirit of the community and be able to be implemented fast. She advises that cities avoid being immediately critical of any unsanctioned or illegal activity because they may be exposing a community’s need. Planners must try to “harness the energy and creativity of citizens.” (Pfeifer, 19) There is also a section, based upon various examples throughout the North America, about how cities can test out innovative ideas and uses by hosting temporary, pop-up events. She also mentions an important point that cities should learn from other examples of Tactical Urbanism

existing elsewhere, but should avoid simply copying other models; projects should always be adapted to the local context. Her criteria that cities should consider when using Tactical Urbanism projects will be important when I later examine existing projects in Los Angeles. The study titled Reclaiming the Right of Way: A Toolkit for Creating and Implementing Parklets written by a team from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs exposes various issues and challenges that parklet programs have dealt with. These challenges include funding from the community group or business, public engagement in the planning phase, and creativity allowed in the design. These are all challenges that reiterate the considerations that planners need to take when formalizing a Tactical Urbanism project that the other studies have mentioned. The Vancouver parklet program, for example, showed that â&#x20AC;&#x153;public engagement could be improved during the planning phase, a challenge given that parklet projects are designed to move quickly from concept to implementation.â&#x20AC;? (UCLA, 58) Because the parklet programs rely on private funding, underserved neighborhoods often need extra support. Because the city wants to implement the improvements quickly, they may have to jeopardize community engagement. This begs the question: How do cities formalize a Tactical Urbanism initiative that harnesses the creativity of the community, reflects their needs, and still implements projects in a timely manner? Another study on parklet and plaza programs titled Experimenting With the Margin: Parklets and Plazas as Catalysts in Community and Government by Robin Abad further suggests that formalization of Tactical Urbanism projects need to focus on ways to ensure equity and appropriate community involvement. One of the benefits of Tactical Urbanism is increased community engagement, and the major parklet and plaza programs around the country are based upon community-initiated applications. A community group or business district initiates an

interest in a parklet or plaza, but sometimes they may not have the appropriate amount of community support, flexible design choices that reflect the community’s needs, and often certain neighborhoods cant afford to apply. “As Parklets rely upon private partners for design, construction, and ongoing maintenance, they most often appear in districts of economic significance and stability, or districts transitioning into increased levels of commercial activity.” (Abad, 170) This thesis describes something called Heuristic Urbanism, which is the process of formalization from an unsanctioned, grassroots effort to a sanctioned, government initiative. “Heuristic Urbanism considers the progression of urban interventions from guerilla tactics to sanctioned strategies.” (Abad, 43) Although formalizing Tactical Urbanism seems to have the potential to increase public engagement and speed the project delivery time, it is not without its growing pains. The good thing about Tactical Urbanism, though, is that unsuccessful or unwanted projects can easily be removed and even improved. Just because a project has scaled up to become formal, does not mean that it cannot continue to scale up and improve to become even more permanent and reflective of the community’s desires. Even though small-scale, iterative urban change is not new, the term ‘Tactical Urbanism’ was just coined within the last handful of years. Because the term is new, relatively few studies have been written on specifically ‘Tactical Urbanism’ and the implications that the movement has on today’s cities. From the literature I’ve just discussed, issues of equity and gentrification are a constant theme. Even the artist responsible for founding Park(ing) Day—an annual event held around the world where people transform parking spaces into parks for a day—and who has heavily contributed to the formation of the Pavement to Parks (parklet) program in San Francisco, has recognized that “there is a fervent debate happening at the moment about Tactical Urbanism and its relationship to social equity.” (Bela, 2015) Individual, unsanctioned examples

of Tactical Urbanism run the risk of not representing the community. Official, governmentsanctioned programs deal with the same issue. More specifically, the most successful examples of when Tactical Urbanism has scaled up from unsanctioned to sanctioned, have only represented initiatives from young, white males whose intent was to grab the attention of the municipality. The actions of communities and individuals who are in underrepresented neighborhoods and whose actions are not necessarily to gain the attention from the city officials need to be considered. The literature on terms such as Guerilla, DIY, Insurgent, Temporary, Popup, and Informal, which often have overlapping qualities with, and can even be called Tactical Urbanism, need to be reviewed. Similar tensions arise with these studies in terms of equity, gentrification, and how the city can properly deal with the interventions, but it is necessary to review in relation to Tactical Urbanism in order to broaden the understanding of what low-cost, small scale city-building interventions are occurring. How do they fit in with Tactical Urbanism?

DIY and Everyday Urbanism DIY or Do-It-Yourself Urbanism is a term that is frequently compared with Tactical Urbanism, but that varies slightly. Mike Lydon in his book, Tactical Urbanism: Short-term Action for Long-term Change, states that “Not all DIY urbanism efforts are tactical, and not all Tactical Urbanism initiatives are DIY.” (Lydon, 8) Small, unsanctioned changes to the built environment can fall under the umbrella of Tactical Urbanism if the intent is to catalyze longterm change and address a need in infrastructure. If it is a self-expression of art, that can still be DIY, but isn’t necessarily tactical. What also distinguishes Tactical Urbanism from DIY is that “Tactical Urbanism projects exist along a spectrum of legality” and includes governmentinitiated examples, not just unsanctioned activity. (Lydon, 8) Because many of the DIY urban

interventions are synonymous with many of the unsanctioned grass-roots examples of Tactical Urbanism, the literature has shown similar challenges and tensions. So what is DIY Urbanism? In a study titled Do-It-Yourself Urban Design: The Social Practice of Informal “Improvement” Through Unauthorized Alteration, Gordon C.C. Douglas defines the term and analyzes dozens of DIY examples from various cities in North America to try to find out what types of people were doing these interventions, what their intentions were, and what potential impact they had on the community. Douglas defines DIY urban design as “small-scale and creative, unauthorized yet intentionally functional and civic-minded ‘contributions’ or ‘improvements’ to urban spaces in forms inspired by official infrastructure…Individuals or informal groups challenge expected, regulated uses of particular spaces through unauthorized direct action.” (Douglas, 2013) Douglas’ definition focuses on individual interventions that seem to make useful changes to the built environment, but their intent often isn’t to seek recognition or authorization from the city. This shows a distinction from Tactical Urbanism, however, in which documentation and recognition are keys to catalyze lasting change. Most importantly, he concludes that the majority of the people he has found to perform these interventions are young, white, educated, middle-class men located in gentrifying areas. Douglas also echoes the criticism of Mariko Davidson’s study that unauthorized, individual urban interventions risk becoming elitist and not representing the community’s needs as a whole. Within the last few years, many examples of Tactical Urbanism and DIY urban design have received mostly positive press, but equity and issues of community representation need to be addressed. Douglas sums up this issue well in the following quote: [taking into account] “the favorable attention that interventions often receive in trendy publications, and it is entirely possible that these ostensibly counter-cultural acts of organic, positive, informal contribution may, just like official urban design improvements, ultimately help

increase property values, and thus precipitate and even encourage the gentrification process.”(Douglas, 2013) He does end the study on a positive note, suggesting that cities should learn from these actions before quickly removing or condemning them. An investigation of how cities should deal with and even integrate DIY tactics into formal processes is the focus of the paper titled DIY urbanism: implications for cities by Donovan Finn. His definition of DIY urbanism is similar to Douglas’ in that individuals or small groups perform the actions in an illegal manner with their intent to be functional improvements, similar to official infrastructure. Finn’s research mentions, like most of the literature I’ve mentioned so far, the potential issues that the interventions themselves have on social equity, but he also talks about how city governments should respond to DIY interventions in an equitable way. Finn seems to think that “DIYers [need] to accept the reality that certain DIY tactics will be co-opted by cities, thereby stripping away some of DIY’s rebellious ‘guerilla’ luster.” (Finn, 394) Once an unsanctioned urban intervention becomes part of the official process, how does the city still maintain the empowerment, ‘luster’, and need that the original act expressed? Finn sums the dilemma between top-down and bottom-up initiatives well when he says that “the formal structure of modern municipal planning and design still leaves very little room for true DIY efforts.” The role of planning should be to “maximize the public benefit of private actions and minimize their attendant harms.” (Finn, 387) Which DIY and tactical efforts should be acknowledged? One type of intervention in a particular neighborhood could be seen as innovative, while other similar examples of DIY urbanism in another neighborhood could be ignored, rejected, or seen as vandalism. As the studies on Tactical Urbanism have shown thus far, city governments have disproportionately given positive attention to interventions done by the more affluent middle-class.

This criticism seems to have been further expressed about the ongoing exhibition called Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good by one of the essays that the exhibit commissioned. The event was first shown in 2012 at the U.S. Pavilion at the 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale. It “documents the nascent movement of designers acting on their own initiative to solve problematic urban situations, creating new opportunities and amenities for the public. Provisional, improvisational, guerrilla, unsolicited, tactical, temporary, informal, DIY, unplanned, participatory, opensource—these are just a few of the words that have been used to describe this growing body of work.” The exhibition’s description calls these interventionists ‘designers,’ which already seems to be a limiting term. Even though some really great, transformative examples in this exhibition are for and by underserved communities, it doesn’t seem to be the majority. Professor Tom Angotti, in his essay that is actually posted on the exhibition’s website, accurately sums up the major issue with DIY and Tactical Urbanism and their relation to equity: “This Spontaneous Interventions exhibition honors gentrifiers by giving them a prominent place at the prestigious Biennale. Missing from the stage are the local residents and businesses who, over decades and with little fanfare, improve their communities through many brilliant and creative actions. Their many gradual, small steps have to be analyzed and understood for their role in shaping the urban environment and creating livable cities.” Who are these unrecognized residents who are making these gradual, small, brilliant, and creative steps to improving their community? The following two pieces of literature explore the communities and people, mostly in low-income neighborhoods, who, like the DIY and Tactical Urbanism examples described before, are also making small, unsanctioned, creative steps towards improving their built environment. These communities’ actions most often aren’t being recognized and very few of them catalyze officially sanctioned programs like the success stories of Tactical Urbanism. In the

book titled Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities, Jeffrey Hou, among a host of other contributors, explore people who are using public space in unintended ways. “Insurgent public space is in opposition to the kind of public space that is regulated, controlled, and maintained solely by the state.” (Hou, 13) Communities, through what Hou calls ‘momentary ruptures’ and ‘everyday struggles’ in the built environment, express their cultural, social, and economic needs onto public space in ways that are often illegal. He refers to this remaking of public space as guerrilla urbanism. “The instances of self-help and defiance are best characterized as a practice of guerrilla urbanism that recognizes both the ability of citizens and opportunities in the existing urban conditions for radical and everyday changes against the dominant forces in the society.” (Hou, 15) Examples include readapting vacant lots for gardens or cooperative housing and transforming single-use residential sidewalks into mixeduse places to gather and sell food. A chapter by Michael Rios describes how Latinos in the U.S. are adapting spaces to reflect what French philosopher Michel de Certeau, and more recently, Margaret Crawford in her book, call “Everyday Urbanism.” This is a term used to describe how urban spaces are used for people’s daily routines and economic, social, and cultural needs. This concept is applied to a chapter by James Rojas about how “Latinos often retrofit elements of the built form to satisfy their economic and social needs” in Los Angeles. (Hou; Rojas, 36) I will go much further into depth about what Rojas calls ‘Latino Urbanism,’ when I discuss these unauthorized urban interventions in the context of Los Angeles. The book titled The Informal American City: Beyond Taco Trucks and Day Labor, analyzes various examples of informal activity in cities, similar to those in Insurgent Space. The book concludes: “the prevalence of informality in cities suggests that conventional city planning and urban design regulations should be reevaluated, as they are failing to meet the complex

needs of society.” (Mukhija, 8) Editor Vinit Mukhija argues that government should understand what informal, illegal, urban interventions people are performing and adapt their policies and planning to better engage and reflect the community’s needs. A chapter by Nabil Kamel describes the ‘placemaking tactics’ of marginalized communities that includes sidewalk vending, guerilla gardening, informal playgrounds, informal signage, etc. These actions are described as forms of “everyday resistance” that are done silently. While many residents in lower-income communities rely on walking, biking, and transit, many neighborhoods and cities in America are built to serve the car. “Marginalized residents are locked in a material and institutional environment designed for other times and users. These constraints are renegotiated every day by a variety of placemaking tactics—despite the high risk, costs, and uncertainty associated with unsanctioned practices.” (Mukhija; Kamel 133). In Insurgent Public Space and The Informal American City, the small-scale urban interventions differ from the examples in the studies on Tactical and DIY urbanism. Marginalized communities, trying to survive economically and express their cultural values usually perform the informal interventions in the books I just named. Their actions usually reflect communal values and needs, and they have no intention of measuring impacts or seeking the recognition of the municipality. For example, a person who has set up a street-vending cart near a bus stop isn’t trying to catalyze long-term change or blog about the experience; it’s an activity engrained in the everyday life of the community. The small amount of research on Tactical Urbanism exposed certain challenges that need to be further addressed. A common theme throughout the literature was the issue of social equity and gentrification. Unsanctioned examples of Tactical Urbanism, often initiated by individuals or small groups, risk not reflecting the community’s needs; a deliberative process with more public

input seems necessary. Of the unsanctioned initiatives of Tactical Urbanism, the most successful examples across the country that have become part of a formalized city process, have only been performed by young, white, middle-class citizens. What similar unsanctioned city-improvement efforts are occurring in lower-income communities of color? What are ways in which the city government can empower and enable these communities? Once a city government formalizes a Tactical Urbanism project, specifically parklet and plaza programs, they have been criticized for leaving behind the most underserved neighborhoods and having limited flexibility in terms of community input. How can the municipality implement Tactical Urbanism programs that are socially equitable and sufficiently reflect the creativity and needs of the community? I will try to answer these questions within the specific context of Los Angeles County. Before I do that, however, I must first give some context to the Los Angeles landscape.

ANSWERING THESE QUESTIONS IN THE LA CONTEXT “And the automobile ruled all over; the cars glided across this strange landscape—no longer exactly urban, certainly not suburban in any traditional sense—at speeds up to fifty miles per hour along new broad, six- and eight-lane dedicated concrete and asphalt strips that cut straight through the old neighborhoods, barrios, and ghettoes of the city.” (Axelrod, 18-19) The quote above is from the book titled Inventing Autopia by Professor Jeremiah B.C. Axelrod, describing the car-dominated landscape of Los Angeles that began to take shape in the 1920s and has prevailed ever since. As a city, Los Angeles is the second largest in the U.S., the largest in terms of counties. The landscape is dominated by low-rise detached homes, strip-malls, and overlapping freeways. The city was overwhelmingly built for the car and not the pedestrian. In the influential book titled Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Reyner Banham describes the city in terms of four different landscapes: the beach, the freeways, the flatlands, and the foothills. People in Los Angeles spend so much time in their car that Banham writes an entire section describing the freeways. “The freeway system in its totality is now a single

comprehensible place, a coherent state of mind, a complete way of life, the fourth ecology of the Angeleno.” (Banham, 213) Built to allow people to move easily from place to place, freeways and roads have become the place; this car-dominated landscape leaves little room for active pedestrian life. In contrast, New York City’s vertically dense, concentrated street grid with a mix of uses and short blocks, keeps the streets alive with people at all hours of the day. In sprawling Los Angeles it is unpleasant to walk anywhere because of the single-use zoning, cracked, narrow sidewalks, and endless parking lots; usually people’s daily needs are far from where they live. Aside from being a car-dominated city, it’s important to note that Los Angeles is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the United States. According to the 2013 Census Bureau, LA County is 48.3% Hispanic or Latino, 27.2% White, 14.6% Asian, and 9.2% Black. Latinos make up almost half of the population. In an article by the educational, independent T.V. station in L.A called KCET, a study is referenced that shows that Los Angeles is “the capital of Asian America, with the largest number of Asian immigrants of any county in the nation, and the home of the largest Burmese, Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Indonesian, Korean, Sri Lankan, Taiwanese, and Thai populations outside their respective home countries.” (Trinidad, 2013) A seemingly endless number of cultures are represented in Los Angeles, and together they are constantly shaping and changing the built environment with their everyday behavior. Entrenched in Los Angeles are many different people who live in ways that often contradict the car-dominated, low-density city. They are re-making the city to greater reflect their needs and values, often acting in unauthorized or illegal ways. Individuals, artists, designers, community groups, non-profits, and more, are contesting the pre-conceived, top-down approaches to using public space. Many people in lower-income communities, who often don’t own cars and whose culture values street-life, must use the resources they have to re-make their 21

neighborhoods. If the power of Tactical Urbanism in Los Angeles, of small-scale action leading to long-term change, is to reach its potential, these unauthorized actions need to be recognized and understood. The official examples of Tactical Urbanism also need to find ways to adapt to the needs and context of Los Angeles. City officials need to examine LA and how its people are re-shaping their environment.

METHODOLOGY: How do unsanctioned examples of Tactical Urbanism prevent from becoming catalysts for gentrification? How does formalized Tactical Urbanism (specifically Parklet/Plaza programs) remain equitable and empowering in terms of locations, and community input for designs? The most successful examples of Tactical Urbanism have only come from younger middle class individuals. How can cities broaden the scope of Tactical Urbanism by harnessing the energy of grass-roots activities happening around the city, especially in underrepresented communities? These are the tensions and gaps that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve found in the literature regarding Tactical and DIY urbanism. The goal of this paper is to attempt to answer these questions within the context of Los Angeles. In order to do this, I researched and compiled a list of all of the unsanctioned examples of Tactical, DIY, and Everyday Urbanism that I could find and that seemed relevant to this project. I first analyze the unsanctioned, informal interventions and then look at the various official examples of Tactical Urbanism, focusing on the People St. program in LA. In regards to the illegal, informal interventions, I arranged the examples that I found into categories based off of their different intentions and initiators. I then formulated them into tables describing the action itself, and who, when, and where they were done. The dozens of interventions I found to be happening in LA have varying levels of community input and whose intentions go from addressing a need to playfully expressing an individual passion. To further

understand some of these interventions and provide a voice to the underrepresented examples, I interviewed different initiators and people who deeply understand the changes their community is making to the environment. In some cases I also went and visited the sites and interventions to better understand their appeal and scale. I then seek to better understand the official examples of Tactical Urbanism in Los Angeles. I categorize them based upon the nature of the program or intervention and formulate them into a table that briefly describes and orders them. I chose to focus on the People St. program, which allows community groups, non-profits, and business districts to apply for parklets or plazas. I also examine the pilot parklet program that just started for Unincorporated LA County. Part of my analysis included mapping out all of the existing or approved parklets and plazas in Los Angeles to provide further context. I briefly talked with the assistant pedestrian coordinator for the City of Los Angeles, Valerie Watson, who is most heavily involved with the People St. program. I also interviewed the planning director for Pacoima Beautiful, a non-profit community organization who recently applied and received a plaza from the program. I then had a discussion with a team at the LA Department of Public Works who just initiated the pilot parklet program for Unincorporated Los Angeles County. Aside from the parklet and plaza programs, I also describe the other various examples of city-initiated Tactical Urbanism around Los Angeles. Through interviews, site visits, research and content analysis, I try to give insight into the existing Tactical Urbanism movement in Los Angeles and find ways of making these interventions more equitable, empowering, and enabling.

FINDINGS/ANALYSIS: From Unsanctioned to Sanctioned When analyzing the unauthorized examples of urban interventions in LA, some of them may be â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;tacticalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; with the intent to gain recognition from officials and catalyze longer-term

change. Others may also be called DIY Urbanism, spontaneous, bottom-up interventions that may or may not have the intent to gain recognition or have any long-term implications. Lastly, these unauthorized, illegal interventions could also be called ‘Everyday Urbanism’, reflecting small changes to the built environment that occur on an everyday basis due to people’s needs and values. Many of these interventions could be called multiple names. A challenge with Tactical Urbanism is finding the potential of urban interventions in underserved neighborhoods. My analysis examines all of the different potential names—Tactical, DIY, Everyday—because they recognize short-term, low-cost actions occurring in neighborhoods of all different incomes and ethnicities; not everyone has the same intentions. In relation to Tactical Urbanism, city officials need to look at the potential of enabling and empowering the ways in which people want to live, regardless of its intention or if its legal. Another challenge expressed in the literature is preventing unauthorized interventions from catalyzing gentrification. Mariko Davidson’s thesis puts emphasis on how these unsanctioned interventions are usually done by individuals whose actions leave no room for community input, and therefore run the risk of causing conflict and gentrification if not removed. This is another reason why I look at unsanctioned urban interventions from a spectrum of actors in order to find examples that DO represent and come from the community. Out of all of the unauthorized examples of urban interventions in LA I organize them into four different categories based upon their intention and the initiators: ‘Everyday Urbanism,’ ‘Functional & Communal,’ ‘Functional & Individual,’ and ‘Playful & Aspirational.’ Refer to Figure 1 for a chart displaying the four categories. Everyday Urbanism, based upon Margaret Crawford’s book by the same name, describes the way in which city dwellers alter their built environment on a daily basis to reflect their economic, social, and cultural needs and values.

What I refer to as ‘Functional & Communal,’ are unauthorized urban interventions that are functional improvements to a need in infrastructure and done for and by a community or neighborhood. ‘Functional & Individual’ interventions are unauthorized functional improvements to a need in infrastructure, but done by one or two individuals often without larger community involvement. ‘Playful & Aspirational’ refer to unauthorized interventions that are often done by individuals or small groups that may bring attention to a problem in the built environment or question a particular space’s intended use, but that do not immediately try to fix a problem. Figure 1: Types of Unauthorized Urban Interventions

Everyday Urbanism

Functional & Communal

Unauthorized Urban Interventions

Functional & Individual

Playful & Aspirational

FINDINGS/ANALYSIS: Everyday Urbanism in Los Angeles In analyzing Everyday Urbanism within the context of Los Angeles, I focus on how Latinos in East LA are remaking their built environment on a daily basis to reflect their social,

economic, and cultural needs. In his thesis titled The Enacted Environment: The Creation of “Place” by Mexicans and Mexican Americans in East Los Angeles, James Rojas discusses how Latinos are retrofitting the built environment in East LA through their everyday behavioral patterns. He describes how Latinos use space differently from the average middle-class American suburbanite. He calls the activation of space that Latinos use the ‘Enacted Environment.’ The following quote from Rojas accurately captures the concept: “The enacted environment is made up of individual actions that are ephemeral. However, they are all part of a persistent process. The pictures in this thesis illustrated the everyday habits of the residents of East Los Angeles, which changed constantly from day to day and as they moved away. The enacted environment is a stream of events in time that people create.” (Rojas, 90) Latinos’ interventions reflect their everyday behavior, values, and needs. The interventions aren’t always premeditated one-time instances, but take place in a variety of ways at various times throughout the day. “For economic reasons, Latinos walk, bike, and use public transit. These everyday activities bring people together and integrate human needs with mobility.” (Hou; Rojas, 36) In Los Angeles where the landscape is dominantly built to support the car, Latinos must retrofit and activate their streets and yards into pedestrian-oriented spaces; he calls this activation and remaking of place in East LA ‘Latino Urbanism.’ One Saturday morning, James Rojas took me on a walk around East LA, showing me firsthand the prevalence of Latino Urbanism. Walking down a commercial street, I saw brightly painted stores and restaurants and a fair amount of people populating the sidewalk. On the residential streets, which in most neighborhoods in LA would be quiet and privatized places, I saw people gathered around a fence in their front yard, selling household items on the street. I saw front yards utilized as mini-plazas and a street vendor selling papusas. We took a walk down various alleyways that were painted with murals. We turned a corner on a dead-end street next to

a highway and saw a religious shrine with a painted mural, flowers, and benches. Seemingly every space between houses was activated and used for a social, economic, or cultural purpose. From the interventions that I saw and that Rojasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; analyzed in his thesis, I will briefly describe four different examples of Latino Urbanism: street vending, religious shrines, murals, and front yard plazas. Street vending is ubiquitous around the streets of East LA. They provide extra street activity and make residential streets into mixed-use areas. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Latino street vendors have ingeniously transformed auto-oriented streets to fit their economic needs by strategically mapping out intersections and temporarily transforming vacant lots, sidewalks, and curbs into pedestrian-oriented mercados.â&#x20AC;? (Hou; Rojas, 38) In the book The Informal American City, there is an entire chapter about the importance of street vending. "Los Angeles is the only one of the ten most populous cities in the United States that does not allow sidewalk vending of food." (Mukhija; Vallianatos, 210) Los Angeles needs to see the value and importance that street vending adds to these streets. In East LA it meets an economic need for many and brings life to the streets.

Photo Credit: James Rojas 27

Photo Credit: James Rojas

Another form of Latino Urbanism are the various shrines, big and small, that are spontaneously placed throughout the community. They can be found in parking lots, front yards, alleys, on the side of buildings, and the street. On December 12th people gather at a big shrine in the parking lot of the ‘El Mercado’ swap meet in East LA. "The annual event now draws more than 5,000 believers. They celebrate the virgin for 24 hours. Bands play, children dance and shopkeepers donate countless tamales, gallons of coffee and pots of menudo." (Bermudez, 2011) The shrines can become spaces to gather and celebrate the Lady of Guadalupe. In an interview with James Rojas, I asked him about the impact of the shrines on the landscape. He told me “the shrines offer moments of solace and silence and soften the edges of the landscape. They offer variety mentally and physically in the environment. They are a sacred and mental space.”

Photo Credit: Charlie Simpson

Another common expression of Latino values and culture in the landscape are murals. Most shops and restaurants are painted bright colors to draw attention from the pedestrian and advertise what they sell. On the sides of buildings there are also tons of murals that cover the entire wall. The last example that I want to discuss is the use of front yards as plazas. Many people construct waist-high fences that act as gathering points and bring life into the front yard. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Enclosed front yards help transform the street into a plaza. This new plaza is not the typical plaza we see in Latin American and Europe with strong defining street walls but has an unconventional form. Nevertheless the streets in Latino neighborhoods have all the social activity of a plaza.â&#x20AC;? (Hou; Rojas, 41) These various examples of Latino Urbanism provide life

and vibrancy to East LA and give the place character; city officials need to understand these uses of space.

Photo Credit: Charlie Simpson (Mural on the side of a market)

Photo Credit: James Rojas (Front Yard Plaza)

James Rojas, who grew up in East LA, has written countless articles and publications on the subject of Latino Urbanism. I tried to gain a further understanding of the intentions and essence of Latino Urbanism. I also ask him about Latino Urbanism in relation to Tactical Urbanism and how city officials could better understand these interventions in East LA. When asked about the intentions of Latino Urbanism and how it differs from most other traditional examples of DIY Urbanism, he emphasized that Latinos are addressing social and cultural needs and values; their actions have “survivalist intentions.” Recognizing that Tactical Urbanism is most successful when the interventionists gain recognition from the city officials, I wondered if the Latinos in East LA have official recognition in mind when they retrofit their environment. He told me that Latinos don’t care if their actions are recognized, because “they are going to do it anyway. They let spaces flow like water; it’s all subconscious.” This reinforces that they are simply expressing themselves, their culture, and addressing their needs; their everyday actions aren’t intended to catalyze long-term change. Rojas further talked about the differences between Tactical Urbanism and Latino Urbanism when he said: “Unsanctioned Tactical Urbanism isn’t always based off of an immediate need, but more external factors. Both Latino Urbanism and Tactical Urbanism are both driven out of neglect, but Tactical Urbanism are the tactics of the white middle class. Latinos have a more back-door approach and they are humble about their interventions. They aren’t blogging about it, so people aren’t recognizing it as legitimate.” This statement echoes the challenge that Mariko Davidson expressed when they pointed out that most all of the successful examples of Tactical Urbanism have come from the white middle class. Latino Urbanism is a multi-generational approach to neighborhood building; people of all ages participate. Often times, for example, older women build and maintain the shrines. Lastly in regards to the municipality enabling Latino Urbanism, Rojas told me, “Latino Urbanism is

telling a story. The city needs to learn what that story is and how they tell it. In order to tell that story city officials need to really read the landscape.” East LA, an underserved, lower-income community is left to rebel against the auto-oriented, highly regulated landscape of the city. Their intentions may not be to draw the attention from the city or to even catalyze long-term permanent change, but they are altering their physical landscape on an everyday basis; the city needs to learn how to let the community tell their story better and give them the tools to shape their environment the way that they need and desire.

FUNCTIONAL & COMMUNAL How do unauthorized, small-scale urban interventions prevent from becoming elitist and not representing the community’s needs? Douglas, Finn, and Davidson each expressed concerns in their literature about individual urban interventions being catalysts for gentrification. To address this concern, I analyze examples of unauthorized DIY and Tactical Urbanism that are for and by the community, instead of in contrast to their needs. These examples are also ‘functional,’ meaning they address a deficit of infrastructure in the built environment. Figures 2 and 3 show a list of these ‘functional & communal’ interventions in Los Angeles.

Union de Vecinos Interventions (East LA) Benches

Alleyway Transformations Intersection Transformations Filled Potholes Solar Lighting Planters Shade Structure Murals Fences

Description Sidewalk Benches/Seating Programming (community events), Repaving, Mobile Planters, Murals, and Street Signage Zebra Crosswalks and Murals Repaving Increase Safety for Pedestrian Gardening/Beautification Comfort for Pedestrians Beautification Building and Repairing fences for Safety

Figure 2: Functional & Communal; Union de Vecinos

Interventions by Other Community Groups

Time/Location

Group

Community Living Rooms

2002-present; all over LA

Steve Cancian in collaboration Outdoor seating, usually at with community bus stops groups

Intersection Repair

2005 (re-paint frequently); Koreatown

Los Angeles Eco-Village

Painted Intersection with Zebra Crosswalks

Description

Guerrilla Gardening

2010-present; South LA

L.A. Green Grounds

Edible Gardens on Sidewalks (new 2015 ordinance allows gardening vegetables on cityowned land!)

Pop-up Land Activation

2014-present; Watts (expanding to other under-served neighborhoods in LA)

Free Lo(t)s Angeles (Coalition of organizations)

Temporarily activating vacant lots. Hosting Pop-up events to visualize whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible.

Figure 3: Functional & Communal

UNION DE VECINOS: ‘DIY Social Spaces’ Union de Vecinos, a community group based in the Boyle Heights neighborhood in East LA, is a prime example of a community gathering together to make changes that reflect the neighborhood’s needs, independent of the city. Not waiting for the city to make improvements is one of the major appeals of Tactical Urbanism—getting things done. Union de Vecinos has a network of different neighborhood committees that work together to build ‘DIY Social Spaces.’ The organization applied for a grant from the Goldhirsh Foundation to expand this DIY Social Spaces campaign. Although they didn’t receive the grant, it is work that they have already been doing for a few years. In the application, they summarize their reasoning and idea behind this DIY activity: “Los Angeles’ social connectedness deficit is rooted in our poorly maintained car dominated streets, alleys and neighborhoods. Most Angelenos wish for a more walkable, safer, neighborly environment, but see no way they can make a change when even the simplest public space project seems to take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars. We think we have found a solution: DIY social spaces created by volunteers in a few months for a few thousand dollars.” Union de Vecinos works with assigned neighborhood committees to identify a problem and trains them to transform streets, intersections, and alleyways through physical improvements and organizing activities. Some of the physical improvements have included benches, movable planters, murals, solar lighting, zebra crosswalks, fixing potholes, repaving alleys, building fences, and providing shade structures. They’ve also organized activities such as cleanups, movie nights, mercados, and children’s activities. The organization hopes to be able to provide the tools to replicate the process all over the city. Union de Vecinos seems to be acting in accordance with most of the principles for successful Tactical Urbanism projects: community input, rebuilding their neighborhood one block at a time, and under replicable conditions. Mike Lydon even explains that often time the 35

biggest benefit from Tactical Urbanism projects are “the relationships and social networks created during the planning and implementation of the projects.” (Lydon, 127) Union de Vecinos also stresses the importance of building ‘social connectedness’ and relationships through the process. Their goal is also to make long-term change to their neighborhood. “These changes include building a team that creates opportunities to get to know your neighbors and together build simple DIY projects that have long lasting and transformative impacts in the community. To gain further insight into these community transformations, I interviewed Elizabeth Blaney, the co-director of Union de Vecinos. She explained that with the ‘DIY social spaces’ they approach them with a 6-step protocol, shown in Figure 4 below. With the neighborhood committees they identify a location, prioritize the issue, design, fundraise, build, and then install and celebrate the project. This protocol is very similar to the five-step design thinking process that is commonly applied to successful Tactical Urbanism projects. Mike Lydon says that in his firm’s experience, “the five-step design thinking process is valuable for producing successful Tactical Urbanism projects.” (Lydon, 172) The design thinking process can be seen in Figure 5 below. The interventionists first empathize with the needs of the community or come from the community itself, define the site and root causes of the project, ideate (brainstorm) and research ways to improve the problem, prototype or design an intervention, and then test out the project by building and implementing.

Intersection Transformation by Union de Vecinos in Boyle Heights:

: Photo Credit: James Rojas

Photo Credit: Charlie Simpson Alleyway Transformation by Union de Vecinos in Boyle Heights: 37

Photo Credit: Kris Fortin (LA Streetsblog) http://la.streetsblog.org/2013/05/01/lapd-threatensclosure-of-painted-alleyway-to-public-events-lacking-permits/

Photo Credit: James Rojas

Blaney told me that there have been 15 total alleyway and intersection transformations across Boyle Heights in East LA—all of them community-initiated and with little to no acknowledgement or assistance from city officials (refer to the pictures from the previous pages). Of the intersections that they transform, they mostly include painting a mural in the middle of the intersection and zebra crosswalks at all four crossings. This slows down traffic and makes the intersection into more of a pedestrian-friendly gathering space. In one alleyway in particular she explained how “one neighborhood created a mini-plaza where they installed solar lighting, repaved the alley, built a community garden, and designed mobile planters to block the streets for meetings and other events they organize.” When children want to play in the alleyway, they can close it off to cars with the homemade planters. I recognized that this concept of turning underused, neglected roadway into plazas is similar to the official plaza/parklet program in LA called People St. Because of their seemingly similar goals, I asked Elizabeth Blaney if her DIY Social Spaces program would ever consider applying for a plaza through the People St. program. She explained how there are hundreds of small alleyways between houses in Boyle Heights that serve as people’s extended yards. Blaney summarized the differences between the programs when she said: “The People St. program is usually on major roads and commercial corridors. Union de Vecinos focuses on areas that haven’t gotten resources and that are based upon need. Our projects are in unrecognized places—in smaller, residential areas and small alleys that often serve as people’s backyards.” The alleyways that Union de Vecinos transforms most likely wouldn’t even meet the criteria for size and location that LADOT and People St. require. I will go more into depth about the People St. program later when I discuss city-initiated examples of Tactical Urbanism in LA.

LADOT People St. Plaza vs. Union de Vecinos Alleyway Plaza:

Photo Credit: peoplest.lacity.org (North Hollywood Plaza)

Photo Credit: Kris Fortin (LA Streetsblog) http://la.streetsblog.org/2013/05/01/lapd-threatensclosure-of-painted-alleyway-to-public-events-lacking-permits/

The most important aspect of these transformations is that they are created for and by the community. As I’ve mentioned, a major concern with most unauthorized urban interventions are that they catalyze gentrification. With Union de Vecinos’ projects the entire process is driven and directed by the community. In my conversation with co-director Elizabeth Blaney, she demonstrated the importance of this process in regards to traffic signs that a Barrio Unido, a neighborhood committee, installed: “We also want to make sure that the projects increase a use value for the community and not a market value for investors. We do not want our projects to result in gentrification for our own members. So for example, when community members design projects we look at aesthetics and designs to serve a function for the community but not necessarily for potential investors. In the case of Barrio Unido, they wanted to slow down traffic in the alleys. Instead of installing the typical stop signs they designed their stop signs in the shape of a triangle, painted it blue and wrote STOP in Spanish. This created a different type of aesthetics from middle class neighborhoods that added value to current residents but that wouldn’t necessarily increase a property value for those looking to move into the neighborhood.” The DIY Social Spaces program that Union de Vecinos initiates is making immediate and profound impacts in Boyle Heights. These projects are happening in the same area—East LA— that the examples of Latino or Everyday Urbanism are occurring. The work of Union de Vecinos, however, is addressing particular problems with street infrastructure and is more premeditated action. As I have illustrated, the DIY Social Spaces also share many aspects of unauthorized Tactical Urbanism; the differences would be that Union de Vecinos isn’t necessarily trying to scale up their projects to be official programs and they aren’t quantitatively measuring and documenting the impacts. These projects show potential for the city officials to enable and empower this community in East LA to make these changes more lasting.

Identify Location

Install/Ce lebrate

Prioritize Issue/Pro ject

Build

Design Workshop

Fundraise

Figure 4: Union de Vecinos 6-step Project Protocol

Figure 5: Design Thinking Approach to Tactical Urbanism Photo Credit: http://we-makemoney-not-art.com/wow/0tu_design_thinking_diagram.jpg; courtesy of Street Plans Collaborative ‘COMMUNITY LIVING ROOMS’ Part of the improvements by Union de Vecinos included sidewalk benches initiated by the community. Steve Rasmussen Cancian, an architect and designer, collaborated with the community on the designs. Cancian has helped build what has been commonly called ‘Outdoor Living Rooms’ or ‘Community Living Rooms’ in Oakland, and also East, Central, and South Los Angeles. Usually these benches provide much needed seating around the many bus stops in Los Angeles that have no places to sit. Cancian’s street furniture differs from most other examples of unauthorized urban interventions done by architects and designers. He deliberately

collaborates with the community to help address the needs, proper location, and designs of the street furniture; it’s a community effort. Robin Abad, whose thesis about Parklets and Plazas I discussed in the literature review, refers to Cancian’s projects: “The ‘Community Living Rooms’ can be carefully distinguished from other typologies of ‘tactical urbanism,’ which can become associated with gentrification, displacement, and replicating existing patterns of inequity.” (Abad, 56) Abad mentions that Cancian has a ‘planning to stay’ approach to his projects that are for and by the community. In the literature by Donovan Finn and Gordon Douglas on DIY Urbanism, one of their major criticisms of these interventions were gentrification as well, but they both mention the ‘Community Living Rooms’ as outliers in that discussion. Douglas describes how the furniture is “largely initiated, designed, and built by long-time residents acting in their own neighborhood and with the explicit goal in most cases of improving an underprivileged neighborhood while discouraging gentrification.” (Douglas, 2012) The Spontaneous Interventions exhibition that I also referred to in the literature mentions Cancian’s projects. I mentioned a quote by a professor named Tom Angotti who wrote that the exhibition ‘honored gentrifiers.’ If that statement is true, then the ‘Community Living Rooms’ definitely stand in direct opposition to Angotti’s statement.

Photo Credit: Charlie Simpson (Community Living Room) An urban intervention’s path from unsanctioned to sanctioned, illegal to legal, informal to formalized, shows the potential of small-scale, low-cost actions to catalyze more permanent change. These ‘Community Living Rooms’ are exemplary of this process. In San Francisco in 2010 there was an exhibition titled DIY Urbanism: Testing the Grounds for Social Change that featured Cancian’s projects. In their description of the street furniture, they talk about the process of the project’s formalization in Oakland and Los Angeles:

“At first the outdoor living rooms in West Oakland were regularly hauled away by officials, but more recently the city has informally accepted the installations and offered permits if activists would purchase liability insurance. In Los Angeles, local activists won full permitting for living rooms without fees or requirements to buy insurance, eventually drawing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to come build a bench.” (SPUR, 2010) Mike Lydon in his book on Tactical Urbanism states: “the promise of Tactical Urbanism will be reached only if municipal leaders and citizens alike develop a holistic, cross-disciplinary approach to bring the benefits to the places that need them the most.” (Lydon, 20) The criticisms of Tactical Urbanism have been that the primary examples have not represented underserved communities of color and that these unsanctioned initiatives can lead to gentrification. The ‘Community Living Rooms’ by Steven Cancian stands in opposition to these criticisms and further show the potential that community-oriented urban interventions have in transforming the landscape. An article in the New York Times was written about Cancian’s work and described the process that residents go through to implement the street furniture: “Community leaders and residents are asked to help plan a site. Landscape architects do the drawings, and community groups get permits from the Office of Community Beautification within the city’s Department of Public Works. Experts help to cut wood and give other technical assistance to the residents, who build and finish the furniture.” (Steinhauer, 2008) As of 2008, there were over 20 of these projects happening in Los Angeles; it’s harder to gauge how many there must be now. In this example, Los Angeles city officials seem to have acted as enablers instead of restricting enforcers. ECO-VILLAGE INTERSECTION REPAIR The Los Angeles Eco-Village is a community that has a Do-it-Yourself spirit deeply engrained in the way they live. The two-block neighborhood is located three miles west of downtown LA in Koreatown. The community is described on their website as an “intentional

communityâ&#x20AC;? that â&#x20AC;&#x153;demonstrates processes for achieving lower environmental impacts while raising the quality of community life.â&#x20AC;? I took a tour of this community by its founder Lois Arkin to see first hand the way in which the community has retrofitted their lifestyle to contrast the privatized, auto-dominated landscape of Los Angeles. On the inner side of the building there is an enclosed courtyard that has a huge food-producing garden and their residents have rebuilt their homes to include French doors that open up into the courtyard. Besides the small-scale changes to the everyday built environment that I focus on in this paper, the residents living here carry that same DIY spirit into seemingly every aspect of their lives.

Photo Credit: Yuki (Los Angeles Eco-Village) https://laecovillage.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/intersection-repair-event-12-june-2009/

What really jumped out to me on the tour was the intersection in front of their building that resembled a plaza. On multiple occasions the Los Angeles Eco-Village has invited Mark

Lakeman, the initiator of ‘Intersection Repair,’ to facilitate the transformation of the intersection in front of the Eco-Village community. ‘Intersection Repair’ is a community-led transformation of an intersection into a gathering space. This process was adopted as an official ordinance in Portland in 2000 that allows ‘Intersection Repair’ to be replicated across the city. Although ‘Intersection Repair’ occurred at the Eco-Village in Koreatown, in Los Angeles no such ordinance exists; it’s illegal. After talking with the founder of the Eco-Village, Lois Arkin, she told me that they tried to negotiate with the city, but got caught up in the many overlapping layers of Los Angeles government. She said: “When we first did it [the intersection repair] in 2005, I reached out to several different City Departments (Transportation, Bureau of Street Services, Council Office 13) and staff either referred me to another Department which I'd already talked to or simply didn't have a response. So we just ‘did it.’ And there have been no complaints.” This echoes the reason why so many people have been initiating these unsanctioned city-improvement projects on their own. I placed this intersection transformation in the ‘Functional & Communal’ section because it addresses a need to slow down traffic and was involved by a majority of the two-block neighborhood. Lois Arkin told me: “We flyered the neighborhood when we did this all three times and really got the neighborhood kids and families involved, as well as some of our broader constituency.” Families and people of all ages from the community helped paint the intersection that included a mural covering the entire center, striped crosswalks, and added seating and trees on the adjacent bulb-out. It’s also important to note that this intervention occurred in an underserved neighborhood that, according to the Eco-Village website, “includes approximately 15 ethnic groups,” and “incomes are very low to middle but primarily lower.” This is also an example of Tactical Urbanism that occurs for and by a lower-income neighborhood and

successfully transforms the built environment to make it safer for everyone. This intervention also seems extremely unlikely to cause any gentrification because of the nature of the intentional community living there. The website explains: “the buildings and land have been removed from the speculative real estate market and will continue to provide permanently affordable housing for low to moderate income households.” Lois Arkin also shared with me that they have applied through the People St. program of Los Angeles to transform an alleyway adjacent to their building into a plaza. Their application wasn’t accepted, but they plan to reapply during the next application cycle. Arkin said that their vision is to make their two-block neighborhood completely car-free, and the People St. plaza would, in addition to the existing ‘Intersection Repair’ put them closer to that goal. Upon further analysis, the ‘Intersection Repair’ initiated by the Eco-Village, and the intersection transformations done by Union de Vecinos seem extremely similar (Refer to the pictures on the next page) Both projects include painted murals in the middle of the intersection and illegally striped crosswalks. There seems to be potential for the city to look into a similar ordinance as Portland, allowing neighborhoods to legally replicate this intersection transformation. Obviously the context of the landscape and politics in Portland is extremely different from Los Angeles, but an interest from communities to slow down traffic and provide public space in their intersection has clearly been demonstrated.

LA Eco-Village Intersection vs. Union de Vecinos Intersection

Photo Credit: Yuki (Los Angeles Eco-Village) https://laecovillage.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/intersection-repair-event-12-june-2009/

Photo Credit: Charlie Simpson (Union de Vecinos Intersection Transformation)

‘GUERRILLA GARDENING’: LA GREEN GROUNDS AND RON FINLEY In 2010, Ron Finley, with the community volunteer organization called LA Green Grounds, transformed the public piece of land between the sidewalk and the street in front of his house into an edible garden. The city gave him a citation that turned into a warrant, commanding him to take down the garden. After the surrounding community petitioned to keep the garden, they were allowed to keep it if they paid a permit. Ron Finley and LA Green Grounds were addressing a need in the community; their intent was simply to provide a food source for the many people living in South Los Angeles. LA Green Grounds is a grass-roots organization that helps communities build community gardens on front lawns and vacant lots; it’s a communal effort to address a deficit in food access. According to Ron Finley’s famous TED talk describing his ‘guerrilla gardening,’ South LA is a food desert, meaning there is no supermarket or access to healthy food in the community. Finley also described how Los Angeles leads the nation in publicly owned vacant lots—26 square miles, which is the equivalent to 20 Central Parks.

Photo Credit: Nick Weinberg http://blog.ted.com/no-more-citations-for-curbside-veggies-in-losangeles/ 51

The unsanctioned actions of Ron Finley and LA Green Grounds seem to have paid off. According to an article from the popular ‘Next City’ media source, Los Angeles has now approved an ordinance to allow growing edible gardens on public land without having to pay a permit. “A new Los Angeles ordinance goes into effect this month (April 19th) that will allow residents to garden on city property without a permit. Thanks to an act of ‘guerrilla gardening’ by South Central L.A. resident Ron Finley, Los Angelenos will no longer have to pay the $400 permit to garden in the city-owned land between the street and the sidewalk.” (Stanley, 2015) It may be unlikely that the actions of Ron Finley directly led to this enabling response from the city, but he definitely provided a ton of inspiration. In this case the small-scale, unauthorized, community-oriented action, that was addressing a need in the community, catalyzed long-term change for all of Los Angeles. People who want to grow food on vacant city property now can. The details and restrictions of this ordinance aren’t available yet, but the news is certainly inspiring. FUNCTIONAL & COMMUNAL: CONCLUSION If some of the challenges and issues recurring in unsanctioned Tactical Urbanism deal with gentrification and equity in terms of finding examples in underserved, lower-income communities, then the functional and community-oriented interventions in Los Angeles that I’ve discussed provide counterpoints and potential to expand the scope of Tactical Urbanism. The ‘DIY Social Spaces’ of Union de Vecinos, ‘Community Living Rooms’ from Steve Cancian, ‘Intersection Repair’ from the LA Eco-Village, and ‘guerrilla gardening’ from LA Green Grounds, exemplify the powerful potential that small-scale, community-oriented action can have in catalyzing longer-term change for the existing community.

FUNCTIONAL & INDIVIDUAL By ‘functional & individual,’ I refer to Gordon Douglas’s definition: “Small-scale and creative, unauthorized yet intentionally functional and civic-minded ‘contributions’ or ‘improvements’ to urban spaces in forms inspired by official infrastructure…Individuals or informal groups challenge expected, regulated uses of particular spaces through unauthorized direct action.” (Douglas, 2013) The emphasis with these interventions is that they are unauthorized, done by individuals or small groups, and intended to address a need in the built environment. As expressed in the literature review, these types of interventions are heavily criticized for being catalysts for gentrification—outsiders or individuals making changes that may or may not represent the community’s needs and desires. Because these types of interventions are highly contestable, they deserve attention. Figure 6 is a matrix of these ‘functional & individual’ interventions, describing the action, initiator, and when and where they took place in Los Angeles. I want to note that some of the interventions I list in the table, because they were anonymous, may have actually been done with some level of community input, but it’s hard to know because they often show up spontaneously over night. From within Table 6, I will briefly discuss the various bicycle improvements done by the ‘LA Department of DIY’ and ‘Socal Guerrilla Gardening.’

Intervention

Post Furniture Bike Lane/Signage

Bike Sharrows 'Pass With Care' Bike Signage

Time/Location

2009-present; All Over 2008; Fletcher Dr Bridge (Atwater neighborhood)

2010; Highland Park 2010; All over LA

Bike Sidewalk Ramp 4th St Bicycle Signage

2008; LA 2007-present; along 4th St in Central LA

Intersection Painting and Traffic Bollards

2014; Silverlake

Bus Shelter Bus Bench DIY Public Service

2015; Northeast LA 2014; Echo Park

Socal Guerrilla Gardening

Late 1990s- Present; All over LA

2002; 110 Freeway

Initiator Culver City Industrial Designers (Ken Mori, Jenny Liang) LA Dept. of DIY (Anonymous Group) LA Dept. of DIY (Anonymous Group)

Description

Anonymous LA Dept. of DIY (Anonymous Group)

Bicycle awareness signs Painting curb red to give more access to bikes over cars Signs saying 'Bike X-ing' at a few intersections Painting cracked pavement to slow traffic and highlight unsafe roadway. Use of traffic bollards to slow traffic. DIY awning and benches at a bus stop. Bench in front of a bus stop Freeway Signage Suspending over the 110 Freeway

Anonymous

Anonymous Owner of Tony's Barbershop Anonymous Artist Richard Ankrom Scott Bunnell (socal guerrilla gardening group)

Benches and chairs that can be attached to street signage poles

Painted bike lane and signage

painted bike signage

Planting drought-tolerant plants in vacant spaces

Figure 6: Functional & Individual LA DEPARTMENT OF DIY The LA Department of DIY may or may not be a legitimate group of people, but the term was first used by a blogger who was describing unsanctioned bike lanes that seemed to have been painted over night on Fletcher Bridge in the Atwater neighborhood in Los Angeles in 2008. 54

Since then, the name has been used in multiple articles to describe many other similar anonymous interventions, most of which address bicycle infrastructure. Gordon Douglas, the author of Do-It-Yourself Urban Design: The Social Practice of Informal “Improvement” Through Unauthorized Alteration, identified and interviewed many people who performed these anonymous interventions, including individuals who have been attributed to the Department of DIY. Douglas states their influence and intentions in his essay: “the bike lane painters I spoke to in Los Angeles invariably say their actions are a response to the city’s lack of such infrastructure, and also that they were directly inspired by Toronto’s Urban Repair Squad, who began doing similar things a few years earlier.” (Douglas, 2013) Also worth noting is that this largely anonymous group, or the actions that have been attributed to them, have often tried to replicate official infrastructure. Douglas, also a part of the curatorial team at the Spontaneous Interventions exhibition of the U.S. Pavilion at the 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale, wrote an article describing the specifics of the Fletcher Bridge Bike Lane painting: “In workers’ vests and hard-hats, protected by orange cones and barriers made of sawhorses, and wielding brooms, stencils, and a professional lane-striping device, they went to work amidst the early-morning traffic over the L.A. River. In less than an hour, and for a few hundred dollars in materials, they painted a new bicycle lane.” (Douglas, 2012) Some other bike improvements include informal bike sharrows, ‘Pass With Care’ and ‘Bike Xing’ signs. The city often takes down these anonymous, spontaneous bike interventions quickly. At the least, however, they do start dialogue about improving bicycle infrastructure in Los Angeles. It is unclear whether these interventions had any community input or whether they only reflect a few individuals’ needs. These bicycle infrastructural projects do address a deficit in the built environment, but because of their anonymity and questionable community input, they have less of a chance to catalyze more lasting changes, and fall in line with the challenges regarding DIY and Tactical Urbanism: gentrification and equity.

SOCAL GUERRILLA GARDENING Socal Guerrilla Gardening is a group of volunteers led by Scott Bunnell who plant drought-tolerant gardens in vacant lots, on medians, beside sidewalks, and any other neglected piece of city land. “Bunnell and others have met under the cover of darkness and stealthily converted almost a dozen vacant spots into beautiful gardens.” (Villano, 2012) Bunnell has been doing this since the late 1990s. He selects a site himself and then recruits volunteers through word of mouth and his website, socalguerrillagardening.org. Their intention seems to be the beautification and activation of vacant space. These actions are illegal and Bunnell has apparently “had a handful of run-ins with CalTrans, the state agency in charge of the freeway off-ramps on which gardens have been planted.” (Villano, 2012) I previously discussed Ron Finely and LA Green Ground’s guerrilla gardening efforts. The gardening by LA Green Grounds focuses on edible plants, intended to address a lack of healthy food access, and includes a heavy amount of community involvement. Socal Guerrilla Gardening is way more spontaneous and does not establish a relationship with the community or area where the gardens are planted. I assume that they are often welcome improvements by the community, but it still could create tensions without any community input. These functional yet unauthorized urban interventions done by individuals or small groups need to be recognized by the city because they are controversial. They are communicating a need one way or another through the built environment and should be further discussed in regards to their potential benefits and drawbacks.

PLAYFUL & ASPIRATIONAL Gordon Douglas in his essay categorizes some of the informal urban interventions as ‘aspirational urbanism,’ in which the interventionists promote or advertise a future use of land or

a building—calling attention to the space, but not actually making a functional improvement. I also include ‘playful’ interventions because, like aspirational intentions, they usually just start a discussion about a use of a space without actually providing civic-minded infrastructure. If they are changes that can be utilized by people, it is usually more ephemeral to spark people’s interest. I list and briefly describe these interventions happening in Los Angeles in Figure 7. Usually done by artists and designers, these types of activities play with the landscape and simply bring into question what may be possible in the future. Because they aren’t functional improvements themselves, their impact on longer-term change is much harder to discern. They still fall into the category of illegal, unauthorized urban interventions, but seemingly have less of an impact in the discussion on Tactical Urbanism. They are usually done by individuals and small groups, often anonymously, and without community input. Because of this, they fall victim to potential issues with conflicting community values and needs. The ‘Bunchy Carter Park’ sign promoted a park on a piece of land slated for development and the ‘Aqualine’ signs from the group Heavy Trash promoted a subway line. I could see how there could be some potential backlash from the community if their needs or values don’t line up with what these signs are promoting; they could, in that sense, be catalysts for unwanted development. Although these ‘Playful & Aspirational’ interventions aren’t the focus of my study, I found them useful to mention in the overall discussion of unauthorized urban interventions. Like the previous section on ‘Functional & Individual’ interventions, they also need to be discussed and acknowledged to better understand the nature of illegal, bottom-up initiatives in Los Angeles.

(Bunchy Carter Park for the People) Photo Credit: http://www.spontaneousinterventions.org/project/bunchy-carter-park-for-the-people Intervention

Aqualine Sign

Time/Location Initiator 2000; Along Ocean Ave, Wilshire Blvd, San Heavy Trash (Art Vicente Blvd Group)

DIY Swings

2011; All Over LA

Seedbomb Vending Machine

2010-present; All Over LA

Billboard Art Islands of Los Angeles

2010; All Over LA 2007-present; All Over LA

Little Free Libraries

2010-present; All Over LA

Fort Hauser 2009; Midcity LA Bunchy Carter Park' 2009; Downtown Signage LA

Description Signs promoting a subway line from DTLA to the Westside; This project is currently the Purple Line Extension Homemade swings temporarily Jeff Waldman built in underutilized spaces COMMONstudio Vending Machine encouraging (design firm) and the planting seeds in anyone can install one underutilized spaces MAK Center for Art and Using billboards for art instead Architecture of advertisement Signs proclaiming traffic islands Ari Kletzky as National Parks Miniature Libraries installed Little Free Library usually in front of people's (Non-profit Org) but houses or in underutilized anyone can install one spaces activating a traffic island with Faith Purvey temporary art installations LA Dept. of DIY Sign promoting a vacant lot as a (Anonymous Group) park

Figure 7: Playful & Aspirational 58

UNAUTHORIZED URBAN INTERVENTIONS: TAKEAWAYS AND CONCLUSION When taking into account the issues of equity and gentrification and analyzing the unauthorized urban interventions that I have categorized—everyday urbanism, ‘functional & communal,’ ‘functional & individual,’ and ‘playful & aspirational’—it becomes clear that the examples that included a large amount of community involvement or expressed consistent cultural values and needs show the greatest benefits to the area. Latino Urbanism and ‘Functional & Communal’ examples of small-scale, unauthorized actions best reflect and address community values and needs. While examples of Latino Urbanism reflected more ephemeral and everyday needs and values, the examples of ‘Functional & Communal’ were more pre-planned responses to a lack of adequate street infrastructure. Like most successful examples of Tactical Urbanism, these interventions are usually not intended to catalyze an officially sanctioned program or form of approval, but share the goal of improving the built environment with small-scale, low-cost actions. They prove as counterpoints to the criticisms of equity and gentrification often associated with Tactical Urbanism. Individuals or small groups mostly initiated the examples that fell into the categories of ‘Functional & Individual’ and ‘Playful & Aspirational.’ They were often anonymous and without any kind of community input except for their responses after the project was already completed. These types of unauthorized urban interventions are most often criticized for being performed by the white middle class and only representing the values of one person or very few individuals. Despite this criticism, popular examples of Tactical Urbanism have proven that these types of interventions done by individuals or small groups can have a profound impact on the community and catalyze long-term change. For this reason it is important not to discard the ‘Functional & Individual’ and ‘Playful & Aspirational’ examples purely

because they are synonymous with issues of community representation.

CITY-INITIATED TACTICAL URBANISM IN LOS ANGELES How do formalized examples of Tactical Urbanism remain equitable and empowering in terms of location, and community input for design? Once an example of Tactical Urbanism becomes an officially recognized process or program, how much is the creativity and empowerment from the community compromised due to official concerns with safety, liability, and code? These are just a few questions to consider when examining official Tactical Urbanism programs. I group the different city-initiated examples in Los Angeles—refer to Figure 8—into four different categories: parklets and plazas, pop-up planning workshops, pop-up events, and ‘phase 0 implementation.’ I will be focusing and going into the most depth on the parklet and plaza program in the city of LA called the People St. program. I also analyze the newly initiated LA County pilot parklets. Pop-up planning workshops are examples of when the city or planning officials bring their official neighborhood or street-level plans to the community. Usually done in a day, officials show the community examples of various street improvements through physical manifestations using low-cost, temporary materials. The pop-up event that I will be talking about is CicLAvia, sometimes called Open Streets—an event that allows various streets around the city to be used only by cyclists and pedestrians. Lastly, ‘Phase 0 Implementation’ is when planners use temporary, low-cost materials to test and quickly implement projects from an already official, city-approved plan. Mike Lydon also uses this term in his book on Tactical Urbanism to refer to these types of projects.

Parklets & Plazas (People St. and LA County Parklets)

Pop-up Planning Workshops

City-Initiated Tactical Urbanism in LA

Pop-up Event: CicLAvia/Open Streets

'Phase 0' Implementation

Figure 8: Types Of City-Initiated Tactical Urbanism in LA PEOPLE STREET The People St. program, run primarily through the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT), is a program in which various community partners can apply to transform underutilized parking spaces or roadway into a parklet or plaza. The program also provides on-street bicycle parking, but I am only focusing on the parklets and plazas. A parklet is the transformation of up to two on-street parking spots into an extended sidewalk seating area. A plaza transforms a portion of a street into a large pedestrian space with chairs, tables, and/or other amenities. The parklets and plazas are built using low-cost, easily removable materials and must be renewed by the community partner on a yearly basis. This program falls under the category of Tactical Urbanism because the interest comes from the community for projects that are small-scale, temporary, and low-cost with the goal of catalyzing longer-term change. According to the website, it â&#x20AC;&#x153;is hoped that community support will be so strong that residents 61

will work with the city and local elected officials to make them [the parklets and plazas] permanent or seek future capital-intensive, corridor-level urban design improvements.â&#x20AC;? It is an iterative process where the projects can easily be removed or can also lead to more permanent, expansive change. Below I have mapped out all of the People St. plaza and parklet locations, represented by green dots within the city boundaries. So far there are 12 total plaza and parklet projects that have either been approved or already built. The yellow dots represent the three parklets that just opened in unincorporated East LA, which I will discuss after People St. Parklet (York Blvd)

Photo Credit: Charlie Simpson 62

Plaza (Sunset Triangle Plaza)

Photo Credit: Brian van der Brug, LA Times http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/11/local/lame-silver-lake-space-20120311

Table 9: Parklets and Plazas in LA City and County (Green Dots = People St. projects) (Yellow Dots = LA County parklets in Unincorporated East LA) Parklet and plaza programs around the country have of course not come without criticism. When analyzing the issues in regards to the People St. program, however, it is worth noting that the first round of parklet and plaza applications were just recently approved in late 2014 and have started to be implemented only early this year (2015). Los Angeles has had one 64

pilot plaza and four pilot parklets that date as far back as 2012, but People St. has only recently begun to install the first round of projects as an official application-based program. I will examine some of the initial and preliminary criticisms, but the difficulties will become more evident as the program accepts and installs more projects. The most common criticisms and challenges of the various parklet and/or plaza programs around the country, as I briefly discussed in the literature review, include funding and maintenance from the community partner, public engagement by city officials in terms of design, and the ability of the program to serve the communities most in need. In The Planner’s Guide to Tactical Urbanism, Laura Pfeifer explains the challenge that many parklet and plaza programs face, is to “balance the need for a robust level of citizen engagement with the desire of community stakeholders to implement projects quickly. “ (Pfeifer, 8) The People St. program tries to strike this balance with the ‘Kit of Parts,’ which provides a set of pre-approved, required design options from which to choose. The People St. website states that the reasoning behind the ‘Kit of Parts’ is “to simplify the process, removing the need for Community Partners to reinvent the wheel each time a project is considered and avoid lengthy project review.” The ‘Kit of Parts’ may speed up the implementation process, but it undoubtedly jeopardizes some level of community input. The UCLA parklet study done by a team from the Luskin School of Public Affairs, states this same challenge with Vancouver’s version of a parklet program: “public engagement could be improved during the planning phase, a challenge given that parklet projects are designed to move quickly from concept to implementation.” (UCLA, 2012; pg. 58) In a recent LA Times article by architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, he writes about the resurgence of public space being built in LA and specifically addresses the ‘Kit of Parts’ compromise. He mentions, in reference to the original plaza on Sunset Blvd, how “its

recognizable polka-dot pattern has been copied — cut and pasted, as it were, with minor modifications — to create the People St plazas.” (Hawthorne, 2015) Each plaza has a different design ‘kit’ selected from the options that reflects the context of the space, but the overall look is very similar across all of the plaza projects. In the Leimert Park plaza, the community negotiated with the city to change the colors from the ‘Kit of Parts’ and to add Adinkra symbols from West Africa in the middle of the polka-dot designs. Despite these slight design changes that attempt to reflect the strong cultural identity of the area, Hawthorne goes further to criticize the newly built Leimert Park Village plaza, which sits next to a famously built public space built by Frederick Law Olmsted: “The polka dots overwhelm the attempts to mark the African American cultural history of the neighborhood, while the adjacent Olmsted plaza, long the active center of Leimert Park's political life, is ignored altogether. To simplify getting these plazas approved, the DOT has created a "kit of parts" that limits design choices. But there are places where a more considered approach makes sense, even if it means slowing the process and raising additional funds for a more comprehensive design. Leimert Park, where prewar City Beautiful ambition and rich postwar African American cultural history are piled together, is certainly one of them.” (Hawthorne, 2015) Leimert Park Village Plaza

Photo Credit: http://www.thefamilysavvy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/leimert9.jpg 66

I had a brief discussion with Valerie Watson, the assistant pedestrian coordinator for the city of LA, who has been a key contributor to the evolution of the People St. program. She addressed the design, maintenance and funding. She discussed how the partnership between the community and the city is all about empowering the community to take ownership of the space. In terms of maintenance and funding, there apparently haven’t been any issues because they only try to approve community partners that demonstrate funding and maintenance capability. The People St. website explains that community partners include Business Improvement Districts (BID), Community Benefit Districts (CBC), chambers of commerce, ground-floor business owners, fronting property owner, or non-profit and community-based organizations. BIDs show the most success because they have strong organizational capacity. Non-profits and community organizations, who may not have as many resources, have been fortunate enough to receive probono work from architects and landscape designers and usually turn to the online crowd-sourcing tool called Kickstarter for additional funding. Funds have also commonly come from neighborhood councils and local officials. I asked her about the ‘Kit of Parts’ designs and she expressed to me that if a community partner wants a design that is different from the kit of parts then it takes a ton of time. People St. is trying to speed up the project delivery process and give them the design assistance so the community doesn’t have to provide funding for design and technical services. She says it will obviously evolve over time and that these projects are only the first phase in what hopefully leads to more permanent solutions in the long-term. The Leimert Park and North Hollywood plazas both were able to slightly change the color pattern that was different from the ‘Kit of Parts,’ which proved to be a difficult compromise with the paint supplier. Clearly more flexibility and community input needs to be considered. Community partners have to fund, maintain, and operate the plazas and parklets, while

LADOT provides some baseline services to help speed the implementation process. This process seems to inherently limit certain organizations that may not have the organizational capacity to apply for a project, much less fund and operate them. Community partners also must have the organizational capacity to “seek professional guidance” on the implementation of the ‘Kit of Parts’ designs. Robin Abad, in his thesis on parklets and plazas, examined various case studies in California, including Los Angeles. He found that “during the pilot program stages in San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles design professionals worked for free.” (Abad, 147) Probono professional design assistance may have been key to the pilots’ successes, but moving forward that doesn’t seem like a consistently reliable option for all community partners, especially those with fewer resources. Because the program relies upon private funding, a legitimate concern has been that parklets and plazas will only be located in more affluent areas. Based upon the existing and approved People St. projects, however, two plazas do exist in the lower-income neighborhoods of Pacoima and Leimert Park. These communities were able to receive the plazas because of the well established and influential community organizations that applied. They were able to demonstrate their capacity to maintain and operate the spaces. The organization that applied for the Bradley Avenue Plaza that was just recently built in early 2015 was the non-profit organization called Pacoima Beautiful. To gain further insight into the application process and the potential impact that a plaza may have on a community in need, I decided to interview Max Podemski, Pacoima Beautiful’s planning director. Pacoima is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley where, according to the national real estate search engine CLR’s 2012 demographic data, more than half of the residents have not completed high school and the per capita income is only half of that of California. The area is

also around 86% Hispanic. In my interview with Podemski, he talked about how the residents rely on walking, biking, and public transit and how there is a vibrant street life. He states: “there is a disparity between the physical reality and demographic reality of the area. It was a working class minority suburban neighborhood and now it has become a dense immigrant neighborhood. Lots of people do not own cars and 20% of the population lives in converted garages and/or rented rooms. People are using the neighborhood in a different way.” This plaza on Bradley Avenue is a means to start addressing this disparity between how people are using the space and how it was built for them. The location of the plaza itself is adjacent to the San Fernando Gardens Housing Development and is hoping to act as a bridge between the housing community and the rest of the neighborhood. Podemski talked about how the San Fernando Gardens has been known for crime and gang activity and how the plaza risks being taken over by these groups. For this reason, Pacoima Beautiful plans to heavily program the plaza, hosting community activities and shows. The ability to program and activate plazas is one of the key components that People St. emphasizes. Podemski said that he will gauge the success of the plaza, however, if the community congregates around the space even when there aren’t any programmed events. In terms of the application and funding, Podemski noted that the process moved really smoothly and advocated that it become a model for other programs in LA. Funding for the plaza included $10,000 from local officials, $5,000 from the neighborhood council, and $10,000 from the online crowd-sourcing website called Kickstarter. Maintenance also was not an issue because Pacoima Beautiful identified the ‘Green Team,’ a group formed by the local Councilman to maintain the whole boulevard, to help with the plaza. They also received pro-bono help from the renowned Alta Planning firm in terms of arranging the designs that were picked from the ‘Kit of

Parts.’ When asked about the ‘Kit of Parts,’ Podemski seemed happy with the results and mentioned that the designs can evolve and become more permanent over time. Included in the plaza are two exercise bikes, removable tables/chairs/umbrellas, lounge seating, and an event space, which are all options that People St. includes. Podemski showed how Pacoima Beautiful was able to do outreach and get major support from the community. There were 7 community meetings to discuss the details of the plaza before it was installed. Identifying maintenance and funding wasn’t extremely difficult either. With strong community support and organization, this application brought much-needed public space to a lower-income neighborhood that otherwise might not have gotten this kind of attention from the city. As the program moves forward, it will be interesting to note how other lower-income communities that may not have well-established community organizations deal with the People St. application; because there is not organizational capacity in the first place, certain areas may not even think to apply. Bradley Plaza (Pacoima)

Photo Credit: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/684301992/help-furnish-bradleyplaza

The People St. program proves to be a way to get things done and test out ideas; it’s reflective of the spirit of Tactical Urbanism, which marks a change from the typically rigid, slow bureaucratic process. It allows communities to bring new public space to an area quickly and cheaply, and empowers them to maintain and operate the space. Because the program is in its early stages, it is difficult to confirm that People St. is dealing with similar issues that are occurring around the country in terms of serving all types of communities, regardless of their wealth. Complaints and challenges with the design options, however, has been part of the discussion. There is an obvious compromise in terms of community input that must take place in order to achieve these quick transformations. Even if the ‘Kit of Parts’ simplifies the process, more flexible design options need to be considered. I will touch more upon this in my ‘Recommendations’ section. LA COUNTY PARKLETS The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the LA County Department of Public Works have been inspired by the city’s People St. program to conduct their own parklet program. The areas covered are the unincorporated areas outside of the Los Angeles city boundaries. In late March of this year the county celebrated the opening of three parklets that will serve as part of the pilot program. All three parklets are located in East LA, in predominantly underserved Latino neighborhoods. The goal is to turn this pilot program into an official application-based program in partnership with the community, similar to People St. Just for the pilots, the parklets were completely funded and constructed by the county, leaving the operation and maintenance to the adjacent business owner, but in the future program, the community sponsor would provide funding.

Photo Credit: James Rojas

I sat down with a team from the LA County Department of Public Works to discuss the various details and goals of the program. With the pilot parklets, their goal was to implement them quickly to test out their viability. This meant that there wasn’t as much public outreach to gather surrounding business and/or community support. In terms of the designs, they are all similar, ‘modular’ designs that can easily be replicated. They said that the community is allowed to come up with their own designs, but that they discourage it because it is more costly and complicates the permitting process. This proves to be the same issue that People St. and other programs around the country are dealing with—compromising community input with quick project delivery. They are looking into ways to slightly expand the options and existing designs, but for now all three are extremely similar, using the same materials. In terms of locations, they looked for sponsoring restaurants or cafes to support the parklet because they believed that pedestrian activity would be greater in these areas. The space remains public and there is no table or dining service allowed on the parklets, but the businesses believe that they will get an increase in sales due to the extra public space. This contrasts to a lot of the People St. projects that have been purposely placed in areas that are not associated directly with one particular business to further emphasize that it is public space. Even though the parklets in LA County have signs that show that they are public space, typical residents may assume that it is only for the adjacent business. This was also a concern for the Vancouver parklet program, as the UCLA parklet study notes: “An ongoing challenge has been that, even with a large sign that says “public seating” attached to the structure, many assume that the seating belongs to the adjacent café.” (UCLA, 2012; 58) It is also worth noting that the city of Long Beach, adjacent to Los Angeles, has a couple of parklets, in which they allow restaurants and cafes to provide dining service; they aren’t considered public space.

A precautionary criticism for LA County is the parklets’ association with private businesses and the designs that, thus far, have much less variation than the People St. projects. In Robin Abad’s study examining parklets and plazas in California, he advocates for parklets that are distinctly and clearly seen as public. He fears “the parklet may come to signify less for enhancement of the accessible pedestrian realm and more for economic boosterism and privatization. This thrust would concur readily with opinions that Parklets and Pedestrian Plazas are a function and/or facilitators of gentrification.” (Abad, 169) In an article by the artist and designer who heavily influenced the initiation of the parklet program in San Francisco, John Bela expresses similar concerns. He says that the Mission District neighborhood association in San Francisco has even blocked parklets because they feared they would bring unwanted investment and gentrification. In my tour of East LA with James Rojas, who was showing me examples of what he described as Latino Urbanism, we noticed the East LA parklets, which appeared to be underused. I later asked Rojas in an interview what he thought about the East LA parklets and he said “the materials aren’t consistent with what Latinos like (the wood and color). They are an example of cut & paste urbanism. They don’t realize how different cultures use space. Latinos socialize and congregate in a different way—in bigger groups with the whole family. They have more familybased socializing.” This description of the parklets as having ‘cut & paste’ designs was the same criticism that the LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne had about the People. St. program. The East LA parklets need to have more community engagement and outreach to make sure that the location and designs reflect their needs and values. The program also needs to proceed with caution if the parklets are going to be mostly sponsored by adjacent restaurants or cafes to ensure their image as entirely public space.

POP-UP PLANNING WORKSHOPS Tactical Urbanism “is being used to bring planning concepts to people physically rather than asking them to come to planning meetings to discuss proposals theoretically. The goal is to show people different opportunities in the real world so that more informed decisions may be made by a more diverse audience of people.” (Lydon, 15) Pop-up planning workshops replace the typical planning meeting where only a small group of people usually attend and are asked to react to words, diagrams, and charts that are difficult for everyone to understand. Proposed design improvements are temporarily built on the street so that people can actually experience and see what certain proposed projects feel like; often there are also community bulletin boards, asking people to give their reactions and propose different projects. Lydon describes how a major utilization of Tactical Urbanism is for increased public involvement—“truly participatory planning must go beyond drawing on flip charts and maps.” (Lydon, 15) Melendrez, an urban planning, design, and landscape architecture firm based in Los Angeles, has cooperated with the city of LA on a number of ‘pop-up’ workshops and events. One in particular was the ‘Pop-up Mango’ (Michigan Avenue Neighborhood Greenway) workshop in Santa Monica. On the Melendrez firm website they describe the workshop as “the first of its kind within the region, temporarily transforming the street to demonstrate proposed changes, such as: traffic calming devices, traffic circles, chicanes, curb extensions, enhanced landscaping, miniparks and places for neighbors to gather. The event gave citizens an opportunity to see and evaluate public realm improvements during the planning process, hands-on.” The city of Long Beach also initiated a very similar pop-up planning workshop called ‘Walk Forth’ Long Beach that included green alleys, landscaped median, community gardening, pedestrian wayfinding, pop-up plaza, a pop-up parklet, and a mid-block crosswalk. Other similar events in Los Angeles

include ‘Pop-up Reseda Blvd’ in the valley, and an envisioning of the potential improvements to Pacific Blvd in Huntington Park that included a pop-up plaza and festival. With pop-up planning workshops like these, not only do they reach a wider audience, but they can “help allay NIMBY (not in my backyard) fears as the possibilities for change are demonstrated in the short term.” (Lydon, 14) Non-profit organizations have also taken part in pop-up planning workshops. As part of the community outreach for the Bradley Plaza in Pacoima and the Leimert Park Village Plaza, the community groups initiated pop-up planning workshops, closing down the proposed plaza areas to show the community what the People St. plaza could bring to their community. During this pop-up plaza in Pacoima, James Rojas showed an even more low-cost, inclusive way to demonstrate and engage the community through his ‘Place It’ workshop. At the pop-up plaza, Rojas allowed the community to create the changes that they wanted to see by using little trinkets and various small miscellaneous objects—arranging them in ways that represented their design improvements. These ‘Place It’ workshops can also be categorized as ‘Pop-up Planning Workshops’ because they can happen anywhere and they use temporary materials to represent certain design improvements. The ‘Place It’ workshops are, in essence, Tactical Urbanism on an even more micro scale.

Pop-up MANGO (temporary traffic circle)

Photo Credit: Frank Gruber; http://thehealthycitylocal.com/2014/02/ A coalition of organizations called ‘Free Lo(t)s Angeles’ (FLA) is another example of community organizations working to show what’s possible. The description of the initiative on their Facebook page states: “FLA organizes “pop up” events on vacant lots identified through meetings with local residents, community organizations, and city council offices. FLA guides a community planning process to learn what resources residents want to bring to their community.” Most of their pop-up workshops have occurred in South LA, but also include other lower-income communities with unused public vacant lots. PHASE 0 IMPLEMENTATION As part of already approved plans for streets, cities have been implementing them in small, low-cost phases that allow data to be collected and plans to be implemented faster and

with more feedback. Mike Lydon calls this ‘Phase 0 Implementation.’ A famous example is in downtown Los Angeles on Broadway. Called the Broadway ‘dress rehearsal,’ the planning firm Melendrez worked with the city of LA to implement the temporary first phase of the Broadway Streetscape Masterplan. Melendrez’s website summarizes the concept: “the project is being implemented in a temporary pilot installation, which includes a reconfiguration of the six lanes of traffic into three lanes, enhancement of crosswalks, the addition of curbside parking to respond to business needs, and a "dress rehearsal" installation of sidewalk extensions delineated in the roadway with striping, special surfacing of the existing concrete roadbed, protection of these new pedestrian areas with bollards and planters, and street furnishings including movable tables, chairs and umbrellas.” These pilot implementation projects are similar to the pop-up planning workshops, except that they are part of an existing plan and usually lasts an extended amount of time before iteratively becoming more permanent over time. POP-UP EVENTS Pop-up events, like the other pop-up categories I just discussed, temporarily re-use public space to show what is possible. What makes them different is that they are not used as part of specific plans. A famous example that has been used all over the world is called Open Streets, or in Los Angeles it’s called CicLAvia. This event temporarily shuts off a number of consecutive streets to cars for a day, only allowing non-motorized forms of transportation such as pedestrians and bicyclists. In addition to advocating for safer streets for cyclists and pedestrians, CicLAvia also brings an opportunity for other forms of Tactical Urbanism to be used. At the most recent CicLAvia event in the Valley, the city used the day as an opportunity to test out a protected bike lane on Chandler Avenue, called ‘Pop-up Chandler.’ This is an example of a pop-up planning workshop being used at the same time as CicLAvia. Also during CicLAvia in December of 2014 the Free Lo(t)s Angeles group that I mentioned in the ‘Pop-up Planning Workshop’ section,

activated a vacant lot in South LA. CicLAvia seems to have the potential to be a platform to test out many forms of Tactical Urbanism. An international pop-up event called Park(ing) Day, is where individuals, organizations, and city officials all over the world, including Los Angeles, transform any metered parking space into a temporary public space. This event happens every year on September 19th and since it’s beginning in 2005 in San Francisco, has scaled up to influence parklet programs across the country. This event shows how a small-scale, low-cost, temporary action has spurred a movement across the world. Park(ing) Day is one of the most popular and successful forms of Tactical Urbanism. Another pop-up event occurred on three blocks of York Blvd in Highland Park for the opening of the York Park on February 21st of this year. The event was called the ‘York Village El Mercado’ and closed down the blocks, allowing dozens of food trucks and small pop-up businesses to line the boulevard; tables, umbrellas, and chairs were also put in an intersection. Similar events like these in Los Angeles, pop-up events that center around selling food and goods, include the hundreds of Farmer’s Markets in the city, ‘Odd Markets,’ and Art Walks. Farmer’s Markets and ‘Odd Market’s temporarily activate vacant parking lots and sometimes close streets to allow only pedestrians.

York Blvd Pop-up Event (‘York Village El Mercado’)

Photo Credit: Charlie Simpson ‘Pop-up Planning Workshops,’ ‘Phase 0 Implementation,’ and ‘Pop-up Events’ are all examples of Los Angeles city officials demonstrating what is possible and changing the way in which people think about public space. They do not fall in line with the official programs of Tactical Urbanism such as the People St. parklet and plaza program because they are more

temporary, but are necessary to discuss in the context of Tactical Urbanism in Los Angeles. They are small-scale, low-cost urban interventions that try to catalyze longer-term change.

RECOMMENDATIONS “Empowering citizens to contribute to the design of their surroundings, within some parameters, can result in numerous benefits, from innovative solutions to a more engaged citizenry, and DIY projects can illustrate to planners and other citizens what is possible. The role of planners will be to harness that enthusiasm and creativity in ways that are safe, equitable, effective and locally appropriate.” (Finn, 395) “Enable public servants to understand the shifts from leading to enabling, from controlling to influencing, and from operating in isolation to working in partnership with others in order to better serve the public.” (Camponeschi, 72) “Give communities tools instead of ideas—this will give them the confidence to frame their own needs and explore their own solutions.” (Camponeschi, 69) “Use co-design to understand the daily experiences, needs, and contributions of diverse actors in diverse communities—we need to broaden our conception of which knowledge matters and foster a politics based on the values and aspirations of citizens.” (Camponeschi, 70) EVERYDAY/LATINO URBANISM “Through their cultural, social, and economic behavior patterns and needs, Latinos imagine, investigate, and transform their physical landscape. For example: a fence becomes a place of social interaction; a store sign becomes a work of art; and a front yard becomes a plaza. Planners often lack the tools to investigate and understand this built-environment, or take seriously these interventions, even though they are creating such a palpable sense of place and neighborhood identity.” (Rojas, 2015) It is evident that there are many small, daily actions and interventions occurring in East Los Angeles—street vending, murals, front-yard plazas, religious shrines—that together contest the auto-oriented environment, create a vibrant street life, provide necessary income, and most importantly reveal a Latino community with strong cultural and social values and needs. “The real challenges facing contemporary city dwellers today is that the process does not serve their interests and or cultural expectations.” (Lydon, 81) These residents in East LA walk, bike, and take transit in a city that favors cars. Los Angeles needs to understand that its many different

communities consisting of many different ethnicities live in many different ways and one overarching prescriptive plan or code won’t address their many different needs. Los Angeles needs to “set up spaces to encourage diversity of use and users—leaving room for selforganization and DIY development in public spaces is a powerful way to build community, encourage interaction, and focus on more than just monetary exchanges.” (Camponeschi, 70) In a recent article by James Rojas he talks about how urban planners in Los Angeles don’t pay attention to local values and context enough. “Despite these cultural, social, and visual interventions, urban planners often ignore these cultural assets, which are rarely found in the local planning and zoning codes. Unlike most U.S. communities, which are created and regulated by zoning codes, there is no Latino urbanism zoning code. The Boyle Heights' zoning code is similar to the West Los Angeles community of Mar Vista, but these communities feel, look, function very differently.” (Rojas, 2015) The city needs to look at the existing activity, the examples of Latino Urbanism, and give them the tools to express and expand upon those actions. One specific action that the city could take is to legalize street vending, as this is a vital component to the East LA street life. One way in which James Rojas enables the community to express their values and culture is through his ‘Place It’ workshops. He works with people through art to allow residents to create their own landscapes and express their own values; through his artistic approach he levels the playing field and empowers all different types of people to have a say in the planning process. Women, children, and immigrants who are often underrepresented voices, are given a chance to be heard and express their ideas. People use random small objects and toys to represent and create spaces that they value. James Rojas’ ‘Place It’ workshops take the principles of Tactical Urbanism—small scale, temporary, hands-on actions—and applies them to each individual.

An LA Times article by its architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne argues that the city of LA is actually starting to incorporate Latino values into their policies. He cites the People St. program and the mayor’s Great Streets Initiative as examples of the city sharing the Latino values of walking, biking, and transit. He fears, however, that these official programs that are trying to improve Los Angeles and the predominantly Latino neighborhoods, could displace its residents. “In Highland Park, East L.A. and elsewhere, immigrants are already feeling financial pressure to leave neighborhoods that are being actively remade in their image — or marketed precisely for the appeal that Latino Urbanism has lent their sidewalks and streets.” (Hawthorne, 2014) This argument coincides with the question in my research about how the city can formalize unsanctioned, DIY activity that adequately maintains the values, creativity, and input that the original intervention contained. When the city becomes more flexible and enabling of Latino culture it needs to do it in a way that robustly engages the community and empowers them to still design and create the spaces that they want; this will help prevent displacement and gentrification. FUNCTIONAL & COMMUNAL One of the consistent challenges with unsanctioned examples of Tactical and DIY Urbanism expressed in the literature was their potential to not represent the community’s needs and catalyze gentrification—acts of individual interests imposed on the community. The most valuable acts of unauthorized urban interventions are those that are done in collaboration with other community members. The community acts together to make immediate changes to the built environment instead of just individuals. Most of the examples that I gave—‘DIY Social Spaces’ in Boyle Heights, ‘Community Living Rooms’ throughout LA, ‘Intersection Repair’ in Koreatown, and ‘Guerilla Gardening’ in South LA—all were initiated and performed by

community organizations. I see potential in Los Angeles for more non-profit and community organizations to take on the Tactical Urbanism approach and make immediate, civic-minded changes to their neighborhood. For example, the city needs to look at the interventions that Union de Vecinos is doing and provide them with the tools, maybe in the form of expedited permits or funding, to enact these changes and even build upon them to have a more lasting impact on their neighborhood. One of the focuses of Union de Vecinos’s actions are centered around the hundreds of alleyways around Boyle Heights—this could be a starting point for the city to look at in terms of an enabling partnership with the community. Steve Cancian’s ‘Community Living Rooms’ are a great example of how officials in Los Angeles were responsive and enabling to the community-led changes being made in the city; now there are dozens of these projects in the city, mostly in lower-income neighborhoods and around neglected bus stops. The Los Angeles Eco-Village did an intersection repair in their neighborhood. Union de Vecinos has also transformed many intersections in a very similar way in Boyle Heights. Los Angeles may want to look at the possibility of implementing a version of Portland’s official ‘Intersection Repair’ program and fit it to the context of Los Angeles. Whatever the response of the city, people are changing the landscape to fit their needs and make the streets safer and the city needs to respond. Donovan Finn sums this concept up perfectly when he states: “Empowering citizens to contribute to the design of their surroundings, within some parameters, can result in numerous benefits, from innovative solutions to a more engaged citizenry, and DIY projects can illustrate to planners and other citizens what is possible. The role of planners will be to harness that enthusiasm and creativity in ways that are safe, equitable, effective and locally appropriate.” (Finn, 395)

PEOPLE ST. The People St. program in Los Angeles is in its beginning stages. Like the principles of Tactical Urbanism, it is iteratively responding to its challenges as they appear. There is not enough evidence to suggest that the program, due to its reliance on private partners, only serves the more affluent neighborhoods. With many lower-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles having a strong history of grass-roots organization, this inequity of location may not be as big of an issue with Los Angeles as it has been in other cities. Regardless, Los Angeles needs to be precautionary and ensure that the neighborhoods most in need of public space are receiving parklets and plazas. San Francisco and New York City have both mapped out areas of the city that need parklets or plazas the most; Los Angeles needs to create this type of map that identifies neglected areas that lack public space. New York City’s DOT “attempted to address the inequity through an $800,000 public-private partnership with JP Morgan Chase to help economically distressed neighborhoods implement and manage plaza programs locally.” (Lydon, 163) NYC has a non-profit organization called the Neighborhood Plaza Partnership that helps communities apply that otherwise may not have the resources or organizational capacity. In addition, NYC also provides extra ‘points’ and prioritizes the plaza applications in most needed areas. Los Angeles needs to look to NYC to possibly replicate these types of measures to ensure that all communities are being served. Another area that the People St. program needs to address is its flexibility in design. The ‘Kit of Parts’ may work for some locations, but if even the slightest changes to logo and color for the Leimert Park Village Plaza were difficult then something needs to be changed. Communityinput in terms of design should not be heavily jeopardized even if the implementation process is slightly slower. With the San Francisco’s Pavement to Parks program “the guidelines are not

very prescriptive. These guidelines will allow parklets to have a unique character and display a sense of belonging to their particular neighborhood, as the city cherishes the diversity of parklet designs.” (UCLA, 38-39) The NYC plaza program, for example has some pre-approved design options, but they encourage local, public art. The UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs study titled Reclaiming the Right of Way: A Toolkit for Creating and Implementing Parklets also suggests creative designs. “Parklets can be functional and aesthetic assets for cities, especially if they demonstrate unique and innovative architectural and landscape designs. Cities should encourage innovation and experimentation in parklet design. At times, design competitions or charrettes may produce a rich inventory of ideas about parklet design.” (UCLA, 72) While I have referred to the parklet and plaza programs in NYC and San Francisco in reference to equity and flexibility of design, I think that Los Angeles needs to adapt the People St. program to further reflect the landscape of Los Angeles. NYC and San Francisco are extremely dense cities with very high levels of pedestrian activity on most of their streets. Los Angeles is overwhelmingly more auto-oriented, without a continuous network of streets that are walkable. While the city is starting to invest more attention into pedestrian and transit improvements, they are still trying to urge more people to walk. NYC and San Francisco already have that existing vibrant pedestrian life that is a critical component to parklets and plazas being heavily used. Although the People St. program prioritizes locations that already have a decent amount of pedestrian life, these areas’ streets are still not as crowded as NYC or SF. I go by the York Blvd parklet often, for example, at various times of the day and I rarely see more than one person using it, if at all. York Blvd does have a dense array of shops and higher pedestrian activity than most Los Angeles neighborhoods, but this walkable commercial area only lasts for three blocks. In this sense, the parklets and plazas in Los Angeles are more aspirational in trying

to attract more pedestrian life. The parklets and plazas are a great first step and an amazingly innovative leap forward in promoting a pedestrian-friendly Los Angeles, but it will still take a while; in the spirit of Tactical Urbanism, hopefully these short-term, low-cost projects catalyze longer-term change in the pedestrian realm both physically and behaviorally. Also worth noting is that the parklets and plazas are prioritized in commercial areas, with high pedestrian activity, and speed limits of 25mph. They can also be located on streets up to 35mph, but there has to be a five-foot buffer between the travel lane and the project, at least for parklets—this buffer usually is in the form of an existing bike lane. Streets and areas that meet these criteria seem to be limited in Los Angeles. I propose either making a map of the streets in Los Angeles that tentatively meet these criteria or expanding the guidelines and deign to adapt to residential areas and streets with faster traffic. Included, for example, in the UCLA parklet toolkit, they identified potential plazas in a residential area and near a school. Expanded criteria in terms of location should be examined. I also think that the People St. program should expand the application-based concept to include fast-tracked crosswalks, bulb-outs, and other street safety improvements. An example of this type of project is in the city of Hamilton, Ontario in Canada. The city of Hamilton, as a response to unsanctioned, DIY street improvements, created an official program that quickly implements traffic bollards, high-visibility crosswalks, and curb-extensions with low-cost materials. Mike Lydon describes Hamilton’s approach in his book Tactical Urbanism and says that “today, the city continues to develop pilot projects and is looking into developing an online platform for citizens to more easily suggest locations in need of improvement by the tools of Tactical Urbanism.” (Lydon, 107) In Long Beach, there was a project that transformed part of a parking lot into a plaza

using cheap, low-cost materials; they called the project ‘Park(d) Plaza,’ which was initiated in 2012. Given the ridiculously excessive amounts of parking and parking lots in Los Angeles, I believe that this concept should be taken into consideration with the People St. program. LA COUNTY PARKLETS I think that the LA County parklets, despite just opening their three pilot parklets a few weeks ago, should seriously seek to engage the residents as much as possible in terms of design, location, and general acceptance. The designs thus far are too manufactured and as James Rojas said, an example of “cut & paste urbanism.” The predominantly Hispanic culture in East LA, as shown through the way they transform their environment through Latino Urbanism, holds strong values and those should be heavily examined when considering parklets. Los Angeles County also needs to be precautionary about all of their parklets being located in front of sponsoring businesses to make sure that people know that it is a separate public space to be used by everyone. OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS As I have briefly mentioned, the Free Lo(t)s Angeles group, a coalition of organizations, holds pop-up events in vacant lots, predominantly in South LA, to show possible transformations and get the community’s input. I believe that the city of Los Angeles could build upon Free Lo(t)s Angeles to become an official program that allows communities and neighborhoods to temporarily activate vacant lots with their own designs and programs. Washington D.C. has a Tactical Urbanism program that deals with vacant lots called the Temporary Urbanism Initiative (TUI). “The Temporary Urbanism Initiative (TUI) was created to focus on transforming vacant spaces throughout the city, highlighting their potential to provide services and activities to local residents and to boost economic development.” (Pfeifer, 22) Los Angeles is a city with

approximately 26 square miles of publicly owned vacant lots and would definitely benefit from a similar program.

CONCLUSION “Municipal government is uniquely positioned to create a permitting and regulatory environment that is favorable to the tactical urbanist, and eliminate barriers to would-be leaders in priority neighborhoods.” (ioby, 2015) “Communities everywhere have ideas for how to improve their neighborhoods. The challenge now is to equip policy makers, local governments, service providers, and professionals with tools and processes that enable local citizens to be partners in creating great sustainable places to live.” (Camponeschi, 113) Los Angeles is a city with countless examples of small-scale, low-cost urban interventions. From individual illegal street vendors all the way to the official People St. program, Tactical Urbanism is vibrant in LA. A criticism of Tactical Urbanism is that unsanctioned, individual projects are catalysts for gentrification. Another issue with Tactical Urbanism is that the successful examples have predominantly come from young, white, middleclass men. Within the context of Los Angeles, I found that through Latino Urbanism and ‘DIY Social Spaces’ in East LA, ‘Guerrilla Gardening’ in South LA, ‘Intersection Repair’ in Koreatown, and ‘Community Living Rooms’ in various neighborhoods in the city, examples of Tactical Urbanism do exist that provide counterpoints to its common criticisms of equity and gentrification. The locations of these various interventions were all in lower-income communities. Community-initiated examples of unsanctioned, urban interventions are ideal because their improvements represent the character and needs of the neighborhood. I also learned that many initiatives are similar to Tactical Urbanism, but because of their intentions and sometimes-ephemeral nature, they aren’t labeled as Tactical Urbanism and therefore may be left out of the discussion. This leaves out most lower-income communities whose intent may not be to document, measure results, or blog about the experience. Cities needs to recognize all of the

communities acting in incremental, unauthorized ways to improve their surroundings. Examples of unauthorized projects of Tactical Urbanism becoming official programs, and/or city-initiated Tactical Urbanism programs in general, often have to jeopardize some level of community engagement in order to implement the projects quickly. Also due to their reliance on private partners, they often leave out less affluent neighborhoods and communities. With the People St. program specifically, they are in their beginning stages, but need to expand their flexibility in terms of designs. The LA County pilot parklets also need to expand their design options and more robustly engage the community as they begin to create a formal applicationbased program. Los Angeles has a ton of potential to seize upon the creativity and innovation of its residents. Los Angeles needs to create a flexible, enabling, and empowering environment that allows communities to express their cultural, social, and economic needs and values. With the proper tools, Los Angeles can help to provide a city of co-creators in which residents have to power to make an immediate impact in their community.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to give a huge thanks to my family, who has been overwhelmingly supportive and whom without I would not have been able to even attend college. I would like to give special thanks to my advisors Professor Robert Gottlieb and Professor Martha Matsuoka. Professor Robert Gottlieb has been an invaluable resource throughout this process as my primary advisor, having guided me through my research. I would like to also give an enormous thanks to James Rojas, who has given me overwhelming support and guidance in writing this thesis through interviews and meetings. Professor Hector Fernando Burga has also provided me with tons of support and advice in the writing process. I would like to also thank the people I

interviewed: Elizabeth Blaney, Max Podemski, and Lois Arkin. I would like to also thank the various people who I have had meaningful discussions and informal talks with: Mike Lydon, Valerie Watson, Gordon Douglas, LA County Department of Public Works staff, and Julie Flynn. I would also like to thank Megan Monroe for putting up with me through this writing process. Finally, I would like to thank all of the Urban & Environmental Policy Class of 2015 at Occidental College.

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