On September 19, 2008 the city of Los Angeles held its 2nd annual Park(ing) Day LA. Park(ing) Day LA is a day where people from all over the City of Los Angeles come together and transform public parking spots throughout the city into ‘pocket-parks.’ Throughout the events such as Park(ing) Day LA, Los Angeles hopes to change its stereotype of being a ‘maze of asphalt, smog, and traffic congestion…[hoping to entice the creation of] additional parks and open space throughout Los Angeles – especially how it relates to smaller, more infill opportunities toenhance the public realm with the benefit of recreation, landscape, habitat and opportunities to cool the City with increased canopy coverage.’
‘Historically, civic leaders had the mind set that Los Angeles was a city of single-family homes each with their own private backyard and there was no need for public open space, parks and recreation. This oversight, coupled with an increased population growth has left the City of Los Angeles with only 10% of the recommended 8-10 acres of parks and open space for every 1000 residents.’1 Last year the first annual Park(ing) Day LA was held throughout the streets of Los Angeles, and was a reported great success. This year the initial response was positive. Charles Kurzkawski, a third year student at the University of Southern California attended the days events, ‘the pocket-parks were interesting to see and very insightful, I am from Chicago and I never knew about some of the planning issues that the city of Los Angeles is dealing with.’ Park(ing) Day LA made an impact on Charles and many other people who walked the streets on Friday.
Park(ing) Day LA provided architects, and artists a quant platform to display their artwork. It provided companies an opportunity to display their ‘green conscience’ and allowed for politicians to make a public appearance that will resonate with pro-environment voters come election day. All in all, it was a great event day that courted support for a vast variety of problems and new solutions. However as we look back and see the pageantry of the day’s events, it is quite clear that Los Angeles’ efforts to ‘green’ the city have yet to make a significant impact.
The reason many environmental ideas never come to fruition is because there is a lack of funding. Many of the big oil, energy and automobile companies are making insane profits due to the exploitation of the masses. The inability to change trickles down to the local level with developers not being able or willing to risk spending the extra dollar on a relatively unproven sustainable technology or idea. The Los Angelinos, as well as the rest of America’s, unwillingness to seek drastic change has put the City of Los Angeles in a predicament. This past month Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was quoted at in a speech at LA Business Council’s Mayoral Housing summit, “It means putting our money where our mouths are and saying we are willing to pay just a fraction more on purchases to invest in an expanded system of mass transportation linked to housing that regular families can afford.”
With gas prices over $120 a barrel , with an economy in the dumps and the smallest per-capita middle class in America, Los Angeles needs to work with developers in order to force the change throughout the city. This paradigm of change should come from the bottom up and the top down. The bottom up shift can start at the local level bodies such as planning commissions, or city councils can force developers to spend the extra cash in order to create sustainable developments through the approval process of building plans and permits. If everyone gets on the same page, and incentive subsidies are given to developers who use the latest and greatest technologies, change will begin to happen.
If the carrot and the stick method is to be applied, we need reward not just the people but also the companies and developers who do their part to ‘green’ Los Angeles, and also penalize those who have not changed their ways to move toward a sustainable city.
With pressure from the bottom, the top will be forced to change. Once the public is headed in the right direction and the public demands sustainable technologies and practices, companies will start to follow along the same path to sustainability because that is where the money will be. Right now companies and developers have no economic incentive to change their ways and until local level government starts demanding environmental responsibility, change most likely wont happen.Park(ing) Day LA is a very cute idea about getting the word out about a cause and educating a portion of the public. The government needs to step up and ensure that something gets done in order to make Los Angeles a green and sustainable city.
1 comment:
I really enjoyed your Park(ing) Day LA blog. You really focus on some key issues that the government is not working on to make Los Angeles a greener city. I really think that you chose a subject that relates to a lot of people not only in Los Angeles but throughout America as well. I think that with the situation that Los Angeles is facing in its efforts to become a more “greener” city is expressed well in your blog. You provide very good evidence and support to make your claim that environmental ideas such as the Park(ing) day in Los Angeles is pretty much due to the lack of funding. Incorporating your quotes from people like the major of Los Angeles strengthens your ideas. I specially enjoyed your quote from Antoni Villaraigosa because it gave me a better explanation of the point your were trying to get across to the readers. The links that you provide give helpful insight to some of the issues you raise in your blog. While I do agree with your ideas and standpoint I would have like to heard some of the issues and reasons why a lot of companies in Los Angeles are not participating in events like the one you talked about. I think that hearing from both sides would have been beneficial to me as a reader in order to understand how important it is to make Los Angeles a “greener” city. Like I mentioned the links were great but I think that maybe there should have been a couple more to better understand some of the information you provide. This would have been very helpful especially were you commented on the fact that companies have no intention on changing their ways until the government steps in and starts demanding environmental responsibility. One other thing that I might recommend is deleting your test blog before you post your actual official blog. Nevertheless, I think that your blog is very well written and example of how this assignment should be done. I believe this post is a very good example of what should be used for next semesters to come for writing 340 students.
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