Ahhh… the glitz, the glamour, the sun, the surf. Los Angeles has come to represent the California dream that draws people from every corner of the country. But along with screen starlets, suburbia reigns supreme in the City of Angels. And that’s bad news for sustainability, contributing to auto-dependence, heavy freeway congestion, and ranking it second only to Fresno for the worst air quality in the nation. To combat this, city officials are promoting public transit, but a deeply engrained (and smoggy) car culture is making this difficult. One thing that may help get drivers out of their cars and into the great outdoors is the Los Angeles River Revitalization Plan, a multi-billion dollar project to transform 32 miles of the river shoreline into a continuous, carbon-sequestering greenway, uniting communities along the way. City Councilmember Ed Reyes, who’s overseeing the project, has also been hard at work planning the Arroyo Seco neighborhood development—potentially the first LEED-certified neighborhood in the nation. L.A. plans to up its solid waste diversion to 70 percent by 2015 and is also in the process of creating an environmentally preferable purchasing program for city operations. (Photo by Aaron Logan)
Mayor: Antonio R. Villaraigosa
Sustainability Coordinator: Karin Christie, Environmental Affairs Dept.
Sustainability Website: http://www.lacity.org/ead/environmentla/
City Website: http://www.ci.la.ca.us/
Water Resources:
Ok, Angelenos, imagine this: a picturesque, 30-mile-long expanse of green, complete with parks and paths and planted with native, drought-resistant vegetation all along the Los Angeles River. Imagine rollerblading and pushing jogging strollers and barbecuing right on the banks of the historic waterway...more »
Submitted by Claire Latané
I always wanted to live in California: the mecca of liberalism, bastion of healthy living. When I moved here five years ago for graduate school, I was surprised and thrilled to learn that Los Angeles was, in fact, a diverse collection of unique individuals from every walk of life. So, it wasn’t that I felt pressure to ride my bike to work. I just really wanted to do my part for a healthy city by being one less car in Los Angeles.more »
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How does age of a city affect how it performs? Take a look at how pre- and post-war cities measure up to each other.
These forty million [poor] people are invisible because America is so affluent, so rich; because our expressways carry us away from the ghetto, we don't see the poor. —Martin Luther King, Jr.
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