By Andrea Pavia, Blog Editor

Dear members of our varied and eclectic association:

Happy New Year!

I will be the blog editor for this year, and I am happy and excited to get to interact with many of you in the coming months.  I am also hopeful that we will be able to foster some great exchange of ideas among members.

I am an urban designer with an architectural background, originally from Rome, Italy. I have been living in the Los Angeles region on and off for about 12 years now. I do have a love-hate relationship with our city; I have been moving in and out three times (and counting). But there must be something really powerful and seductive about it that keeps dragging me back! Currently, I am working at Steer Davies Gleave, a transportation planning firm, in Downtown LA and live with my family in Burbank.

For this year our aspiration is that the blog will be an engaging tool to foster an enriching debate among APA members and interested stakeholders on the present and future challenges of the Los Angeles urban region. Our hope is that this will help our community to identify and converge on short and long term planning ideas to address the most pressing issues both at the micro and macro scales. We also welcome a reflection on our regional strengths and how we can capitalize on these to make it an even better place for everyone.

This is a starting list of issues based on our experience that we would like you to reflect and respond on:

• congestion
• affordability
• safety
• mobility (options)
• rigidity (lack of resiliency)
• exclusionary practices
• public-ness/civic-ness
• beauty

However, we are open to suggestion on any issues you may think valuable. For instance, do you have a position on measure S or H that you would like to share? We welcome a variety of voices and backgrounds in the intent of making this discussion the most livable and far-reaching possible. And yes, it will be an open-ended process!

Our first contributor for this year is James Rojas, who will be leading a workshop on participatory planning at the 11th annual APA Los Angeles Student Symposium on Saturday, February 11 on the University of Southern California campus.

If you would like to contribute to the blog, ask any question, or just chat please contact us at: blog@nullapalosangeles.org

Warm Regards,

Andrea Pavia