Exploring the people, places & culture of greater LA
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.
As I reported in an October 2010 post, the Los Angeles Planning Department’s Office of Historic Resources is undertaking an ambitious program called SurveyLA, which is the first comprehensive effort to identify historic resources throughout the city. Now the Office of Historic Resources has launched an innovative public engagement program called MyHistoricLA, which is intended to get the public directly involved in the survey process through the use of an online technology platform developed by MindMixer.
In case you hadn’t heard, last month the American Planning Association (APA) designated two locations in Southern California as Great Places in America for 2011. One was named a Great Street and the other a Great Public Space.
Once again USC will host the Archives Bazaar, a daylong event that offers Los Angeles history buffs, Californiana enthusiasts, and academics the opportunity to learn about new information sources and research methods, exchange ideas, share new findings, and celebrate their passion for the city’s local history. The event is presented by LA as Subject, an association “dedicated to preserving and improving access to archives and collections that document the history of Los Angeles’ diverse peoples, languages, cultures, and geography.”
The 2006 Southern California Environmental Report Card, published by the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, included a study titled Urban Parks, written by Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. It analyzed “the provision and politics of open space in Los Angeles by focusing on three different but interrelated aspects of park politics:
I recently came across an interesting research project called “Zen in the Art of Travel Behavior: Using Visual Ethnography to Understand the Transit Experience.” The study was undertaken by Camille Fink, a PhD student in the UCLA Department of Urban Planning, and Brian Taylor, AICP, Professor and Chair of Urban Planning and Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA. The project’s final report was published in late 2010.
If you haven’t noticed by now, I am very interested in architecture, urban design and city planning. I get excited investigating how the built environment changes over time and impacts the people who live in neighborhoods and cities. I love meeting architects who are working to transform or re-imagine existing buildings and the urban fabric, as well as design entirely new structures that can elevate and inspire our daily existence and connect us more fully with the world around us. I also appreciate experiencing how design can influence the way I interact with others around me and with the environment itself.
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