West Hollywood has been fighting about its streets for years. Fountain Avenue split the city in half. The Weaver’s Walk tree fight got ugly. The San Vicente Streetscape Plaza has been in planning purgatory so long some residents have stopped asking.
On April 25, the City is stepping back from the fight and trying to think bigger.
The Strategic Streetscapes Symposium runs from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Council Chambers, 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard. Doors open at 9:30. Lunch included. RSVP at go.weho.org/strategic-streetscapes.
The day’s discussions will take on the ecology of better public space, how a neighborhood’s history and memory shape the places people actually use, the politics of getting anything built in a dense city, and what you do with a corridor that’s been underperforming for years. West Hollywood has examples of all of it.
The event is organized by the Urban Design & Architecture Studio — the same office behind the San Vicente Plaza, Weaver’s Walk, and the Fountain Avenue redesign — working with Long Range Planning, Transportation & Mobility, Facilities & Field Services, and Historic Preservation Planning. Part of the City’s annual Earth Month programming.
If you’ve ever sat through a streetscape hearing and wondered if anyone was actually listening, this is the room to be in. For more information contact Ric Abramson at rabramson@weho.org or (323) 848-6476.
UDAS has become a nest for urban planning ideologues who have found safe haven in a city that has seemingly unlimited funds to spend on studies and proposals for things that have near zero public demand or need. They come here to burnish their resumes in our municipal Petri dish.
So if we are dealing with “community memory”, are we re-planting the bushes along the alley behind the aquatics center? Historically, that area was heavily frequented after after 2 a.m. on the weekends. Can these consultants come up with any more contrived excuses to spend money on absurd projects that the residents are not advocating?