LA’s ‘People St’ Initiative Brings Quick & Affordable Street Improvements

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Parks, plazas, and bike racks are all a part of the City of Los Angeles’ new People St initiative—a program created to get the community’s input on affordable ways to improve the built environment.

Launched earlier this year as a way to involve the community in designing healthy public spaces, People St allows residents to submit proposals for three project types:

1. Parklets;
2. Bike Corrals; and
3. Plazas.

In a statement on the People St webpage, Mayor Garcetti said: “Fundamental to People St is its bottom-up, community-based approach.”

Community groups like neighborhood associations and business districts are eligible to submit their proposals to LA DOT after getting support for a project. However, the projects must be located in areas with high pedestrian traffic to be considered competitive.

The city receives applications during two cycles (fall and spring) and approved projects are able to bypass a lengthy process of obtaining city permits. Once implemented, the street improvement project may remain at a location for up to one year. After the first year, supporters may seek approval for the change to remain permanent.

“We’re in the era of shrinking governments and budgets. People want to marshal the resources already there,” Valerie Watson, assistant pedestrian coordinator at LADOT said, in a Citylab blog post. “So we have to figure out how we can facilitate quick transformations without going through a lengthy design process.”

People St is an award winning initiative of the City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LA DOT), the City of Los Angeles Deapartment of Public Works and City Planning, the office of Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Los Angeles County Metro Authority.

Read more here.
Visit the People St homepage for additional details.