Upcoming Events
Past Events
LA County Department of Regional Planning and APA Los Angeles Present: Community Planning Month 2022 Speaker Session
October 27, 2022 from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM
Zoom
The Rise of Freeway Cap Projects: Bridging Communities to Reunite Residents and Address Past Inequities and Environmental Injustice
Register
CM Credits: 1
Cost: Free
It’s no surprise that freeway development has historically impacted communities by creating a physical barrier that disconnects neighborhoods, leads to a lack of open and shared spaces, and results in negative health outcomes of surrounding residents. The lasting effects of these developments can create a deep fissure in the social cohesion and cultural connections of communities and often perpetuate community disinvestment by local government with no visibly organized center or community identity to advocate for resources.
Join Los Angeles County Planning and APA Los Angeles for a speaker session during National Community Planning Month to discuss solutions to these challenges that attempt to reconnect communities in the hopes of repairing some of the long-lasting impacts for a more sustainable future. The event will include a conversation between local and regional practitioners on the role Planners have played historically focusing on individualized mobility and transportation while neglecting community connections and the importance of social and cultural cohesion and ultimately perpetuating environmental injustice through fractured and unhealthy communities. This will be followed by examples of more recent projects, most notably freeway cap parks and the possibility of new infrastructure projects, that attempt to undue the negative impacts of these past practices and foster connections between previously fractured communities.
Objectives for this Speaker Series:
- Reflect on the historical role that freeway development has played in disconnecting communities, perpetuating inequitable development and negative health impacts.
- Learn about the growth of freeway cap projects to help reunite communities, reinvigorate public spaces. What have we learned so far? How have proponents and developers of freeways been at the table to collaborate with advocates and help rebuild literal and figurative bridges between previously disconnected communities.
- Discuss the current momentum spurred by federal infrastructure funding and what’s possible for the LA region.
Speakers:
- Doug Houston, Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, UC Irvine
- Laurie Goldman, President, Friends of Hollywood Central Park
- Dan Kopulsky, Office Chief, Multimodal System Planning, Caltrans Dist. 7, Los Angeles/Ventura Counties
