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In Los Angeles, local residents are using art to express what they’d like their community and streets to look like through L.A. Vision Zero Workshops.
According to a blog form Streetsblog Los Angeles, they have partnered with non-profit groups like Los Angeles Walks, Place It!, LongBeachize, and Santa Monica Next, to engage the community in a creative process which allows residents of any age, ethnicity, or experience level, to participate in planning and designing healthy communities.
What makes their approach to community engagement different?
They provide the community with legos, blocks, trinkets, and pretty much anything you can find at an arts and crafts store, and allow them to get visually creative with what safe streets should look like.
During L.A. Vision Zero Workshops, residents go through the process of “imagining, investigating, constructing and reflecting,” on what a safe and healthy community should look like, according to a LA Streetsblog post.
After conducting workshops, locals will go out on walking tours with Los Angeles Walks to identify unsafe streets as well as sidewalks and roads that may need improvements.
Project partners will also host a ‘shoe in’ event at City Hall where they will set up 100 pairs of shoes to raise awareness of the 100 pedestrians that were killed by drivers, the previous year.
By raising awareness of the need for safer streets in LA, and opening up more opportunities for walking and biking, Vision Zero hopes to turn LA into one of the healthiest places to live.
Read more about the workshops here. Learn more about the L.A. Vision Zero project here.
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If you know of similar policy/systems changes happening in your community and you’d like us to share it, send it to us here.
By The Numbers
33
percent
of Latinos live within walking distance (<1 mile) of a park
