Joel C on January 14, 2010, at 11:45AM – #1

This is such a fantastic opportunity to reclaim some public space for the pedestrian. Those examples from Expo Park and Culver City are excellent, and there are countless other ideas available throughout the world.

Sebastian on January 14, 2010, at 12:23PM – #2

How about a bike lane. With grass and trees around it.

Romer on January 14, 2010, at 12:58PM – #3

HOw about a place to sit and be during lunch time and a place to be while waiting for transportation (bus stops, Dash stops, FIDM pick up/drop offs, etc).

oscar on January 14, 2010, at 04:47PM – #4

how about no lanes for vehicle traffic through the entire 1 block park? Can't we have a park without cars in LA?

Oscar on January 15, 2010, at 12:04PM – #5

And how about FIRST converting all the streets in dtown to a one lane streets and other solutions to start alleviating traffic rather than slowing it down and thus creating congestion and therefore huge amounts of pollution?

Can we have a city WITHOUT congested traffic rather than keep on "beautifying" the city which is absolutely POINTLESS other than satisfying our big american egos?

Just in case is not clear enough; projects like the street car, parks that close off streets, events like the yearly close of Grand, Fiesta Broadway and movie crews create huge amounts of congested traffic by blocking already overly used vias. As angelenos we seemed to have grown quite comfortably with this problem to the point that we are almost unaware.

Beautifying the city should not be our biggest concern, congested traffic and trash ARE our biggest problems and we should be spending money and time in fixing them rather than focusing in vain objectives.

Creating more traffic congestion as a result of the creation of social urban spaces is in my opinion rather stupid.

Chris on January 15, 2010, at 04:00PM – #6

@Oscar

Funny, I was rode through downtown today and I was thinking the exact opposite. Traffic absolutely FLIES through downtown LA compared to downtowns in other cities. I just moved here from Washington DC last week, and I can tell you...the speed with which cars move through downtown LA make it feel like a much more pedestrian hostile place than in a city like DC. Its all those one-ways. It feels like Baltimore before they started fixing things.

DC gets jammed during rush hour, and would probably be very frustrating to someone like you who feels like the purpose of city streets is to move automobiles through as fast as possible. But for the rest of us not stuck in a 1950's mentality, its an extremely pleasant place to walk, work, and live. I've done a lot of exploring here this past week and so far the only place I've found in LA that approaches the level of walkability of an East Coast city is Santa Monica. Clearly downtown has potential...the old buildings are breathtaking, and the neighborhood really does have a nice urban feel. But cars need to be slowed WAY down, all those one-ways need to be converted to two-ways, and the now-commonplace (in other cities) suite of urban design tools such as bulb-outs, bike lanes, bike boxes, and street furniture need to be utilized- big time. Until these measures are taken, downtown LA is going to limp along in this super-slow-mo gentrification.