LA + CityGrows update — People St process live!
It’s been a great week for CityGrows and our work with the City of Los Angeles! Yesterday, our first process with the City’s Department of Transportation went live for the 2017 People St application process. LA DOT’s People St program. People St allows communities to transform underused areas of L.A.’s largest public asset — our 7,500 miles of city streets — into active, vibrant, and accessible public space.
Plazas and Parklets make for more active, inviting streets. Expanded public spaces can calm traffic and increase safety for people who walk, bike, and take transit. These projects also encourage increased levels of walking and bicycling, all the while supporting economic vitality. Pedestrian-centered activity is shown to foster a greater sense of community, and local businesses benefit as more pedestrians frequent neighborhoods that accommodate them. We are extremely excited to be supporting the latest round of applications, which are open until May 30th, 2017.
The People St program application process is our most complex to date; communities apply to create parklets, plazas, and bike corrals. If their initial idea is feasible based on the City’s guidelines, they develop community engagement plans, designs, and move through programming and budget planning to implementation.
Additionally, we’ve seen the process that EmpowerLA launched in November of last year come full circle — the City of LA will be creating a new neighborhood council, the completion of the process launched last fall! Congratulations to Hermon!
