Exploring the people, places & culture of greater LA
This weekend Foodprint Project returns to Los Angeles with its much-anticipated event, Foodprint LA. According to Nicola Twilley, co-founder of Foodprint Project, the event will “…explore the forces that have shaped the Angeleno foodscape and speculate on how to feed LA in the future.”
Water has long been the most prized resource in Los Angeles. Indeed, the city’s history and growth is inextricably linked to the development of infrastructure required to import water from the Eastern Sierra and other regions.
While the Los Angeles River was the main water source for El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles when it was founded in 1781, population growth outstripped the river’s ability to meet the city’s increasing thirst. Enter William Mulholland, the first superintendent of the new municipal Water Department. Under his leadership, the city constructed the Los Angeles Aqueduct, a five-year project completed in 1913 that brought water from the lush Owens Valley to semi-arid Los Angeles.
It’s not often that one hears Bay Area residents expressing admiration for Los Angeles, let alone acknowledging that they can learn something from the nation’s second largest city. So it was a pleasant surprise to see that the theme of the August / September 2012 issue of The Urbanist was “Learning from Los Angeles.”
Once again the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) welcomes the public to its annual Open House. This highly anticipated event is your chance to get an inside look at one of the world’s premier research facilities focused on exploration – both of Earth and the universe beyond.
In May of 2011, I met Lawrence Culver while participating in a tour of the LA River. As we chatted while exploring Marsh Park, located adjacent to the River in the Elysian Valley neighborhood of Los Angeles, I learned that he is an Assistant Professor of History at Utah State University and had recently written a book titled The Frontier of Leisure: Southern California and the Shaping of Modern America, published by Oxford University Press.
The Los Angeles Zoo’s latest exhibit, The LAIR, opens to the general public today. Visitors can expect to see over 60 species of living amphibians, invertebrates, and reptiles (hence the name LAIR) from around the world housed in six themed exhibit areas that include habitats for a wide variety of unique and endangered species.
The Los Angeles Public library (LAPL) is a wonderful resource that is underappreciated by many in the city. Take for example its 100 year old map collection, which consists of more than 100,000 items. According to the LAPL, “it is one of the largest collections owned by a public library in the U.S. and is noted for materials relating to Los Angeles and the West including historical topographical maps, road maps, street guides, and fire insurance atlases.”
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