MetroRiderLA

[tags]los angeles, downtown los angeles, long beach, paul shigley[/tags]

Downtown Los Angeles skyline
Credit: latca via Flickr (Creative Commons license)

Metro’s librarian, who also maintains Los Angeles Transportation Headlines, found a July 18 blog entry from Paul Shigley, editor of the California Policy & Development Report. He ranked California’s best and worst big-city downtowns, on the entry of the same name. Most Angelenos would click on the link and expect to find Los Angeles ranked somewhere high on the worst side. But, no! Los Angeles ranked fourth-best. Two other Southern California cities beat L.A. out. San Diego tied for first, and Long Beach is third.

Regarding Los Angeles, Shigley said, “Yes, downtown L.A. has been on the comeback for, oh, 50 years. It’s still very much a work in progress and it’s not necessarily an inviting place after hours. But while the redevelopment work continues, a lively, incredibly international community has taken over much of downtown.” And for Long Beach, Shigley said, “For decades, downtown Long Beach was simply a place with potential. … But much of this has started to change in recent years. … There may be no West Coast downtown that is a more enjoyable place to be a pedestrian.”

Only one big city, defined by Shigley as having a population of 300,000 or more, made the worst list: Fresno. Shigley said, “It’s really not even close. Bakersfield, Oakland and Anaheim all have less-than-ideal downtowns, but none of those districts is as desperate, depressing and even threatening as downtown Fresno. The hideous 1970s office buildings are the least of the problems in Fresno’s core.”

After the jump, click on a city to take a Flickr tour of what these downtowns look like.

(more…)

So with great fanfare Downtown’s first supermarket in decades has arrived. The Ralphs Fresh Fare at 9th/Flower opened this past Friday to an enormous crowd of Downtown residents eager to make their neighborhood a… neighborhood. And as a Downtown resident, I can prematurely say that it has done just that. What used to be a fairly dead intersection (albeit housing a beautiful little urban park and an ample flow of cute fashion design students) has like magic transformed into a vibrant destination bustling with life and pedestrian flow that ripples for blocks beyond the store. What’s more, this is one of the best supermarkets I’ve ever been to, Ralphs or otherwise, any Downtowner would be a fool not to patronize this spectacular store. On a similar note, any Downtowner would be a fool to drive to this spectacular store!

The Ralphs Fresh Fare is truly unique among supermarkets I’ve seen in Los Angeles in that there is no parking lot in front of the store. There’s a few spots along the street, but other than that, it’s just a wide sidewalk and then the entrance to the store. This is a true urban grocery store, unheard of in this city! That’s not to say that this particular Ralphs doesn’t have parking - it does in the form of 127 spaces under the store. But part of the call of living in an urban area is walkability, right? So let’s see if we can leave those 127 spaces empty and get to Ralphs without a car!

(more…)

At any rate. The New York Times reports a great real estate deal in NYC: Look what you can get for merely $225,000:

A parking space.

All of this talk about transit-oriented development and NIMBY obstructionists and everything else, and at the end of the day, this article explains why what should be patently obvious to basically everyone in the Western Hemisphere: LA is not New York.

We have two separate issues, which often mistakenly get conflated into one.

(more…)

[tags]transit oriented development, l.a. times, t.o.d., los angeles, development[/tags]

Note: Article edited for content. Names changed to protect the innocent. -Fred Camino 07/17/07 11:38 AM

This past Saturday, the Los Angeles Times had an article casting doubt on the much touted concept that is currently changing the face of Los Angeles: Transit Oriented Development or T.O.D.

If you’re a MetroRider, or are even remotely aware of the development happenings in Los Angeles, then there’s no doubt you’ve heard of and maybe seen T.O.D. It’s popping up everywhere… from a revitalized Downtown (Ralphs, downtown’s first grocery in decades, opens on July 20) to a new Hollywood, it seems like every time you exit a Metro Rail station, something new is being built. In fact, there are very few stations along the Red and Gold lines that don’t seem to have any “transit villages” being constructed around them. I even rode to the very end of the Gold Line this past weekend, to the Sierra Madre Village station, smack in the middle 0f the 210 Freeway and adjacent to ultra-suburban East Pasadena (less than a quarter of a mile from the station you’ll find a big box parking lot mall with a Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond, Old Navy, and much more) only to find that multi-unit housing is being built right next to the station. Transit Oriented Development is everywhere!

So why is the L.A. Times so down on these exciting a transit accessible developments that are literally transforming Los Angeles?

(more…)

[tags]metro movies, car free, uncar, copenhagen, urban planning, contested streets[/tags]

[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9067416427722807670&hl=en[/googlevideo]

Los Angeles bicycle blogger Brayj Against The Machine brought this clip from the film “Contested Streets” to my attention. The clip offers a fascinating and inspiring look into the reimagining of streets in Copanhagen from the traditional automobile oriented streets to streets focused on the bicyclist and the pedestrian. What’s so interesting to me, is that according to the clip, Copanhagen wasn’t always this way, but they fought against the trend, political dispute, and naysayers to bring a about a better city. It gives hope that perhaps such a transformation could happen in car-centric American cities.

[tags]los angeles, koreatown, purple line, transit oriented development[/tags]

The scaffolding is going up around the Wilshire/Western Metro Purple Line Station. Eventually, it is to become Solair Wilshire, a condo/retail development built on top of the station mouth. No link is provided to the site, which only has an interest form and nothing else of useful consumption.

How Solair is shaping up. Note the scaffolding placed over the escalator. 

In the meantime, take the subway to see the revitalized Ralphs across the street (I contributed the news and photo to Curbed LA earlier this week). Grab some really good grub at the hot case, and drink joe from K-Town’s first Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.