Gary Slossberg For LA City Council District 13

All the locations mentioned below are within two blocks of each other.

There’s a cute Spanish style multiplex up the street from where I live. And it’s boarded up with plywood and a chain link fence. Sort of detracts from the charm.

Charmless Spanish Style employs City’s own Design Standards.

Maybe this sounds like a symptom of a bad economy. But that’s not it. It’s been left this way for 7 years. It’s owned by Ronald McDonald House. They bought it in along with 5 other residential lots up the street in order to build a bigger hotel for guests who bring their sick children to the nearby Children’s Hospital. They built the hotel but left this particular parcel of land to waste away. (RMH is a worthy organization and what I am attempting to demonstrate is in no way belittling the important role they serve to the families of sick children.)

Understandably, the residing neighbor on the North side of this property is not a big fan of the dilapidated building. She takes excellent care of her property. She and husband are constantly painting over gang tags next door and hearing trespassers rustling around inside the units. The residing neighbor on the south side of the property says he hears people in there too from time to time doing, “…God knows what”.

Craftsman copies styles from the City’s nearby Light Yard.

A block away sits another abandoned property; a charming, old craftsman house on Virgil. It’s been abandoned for years. I could see inside before they nailed boards onto the windows and doors. The inside was covered in tags. Another neighborhood council member informed me that it was being used by squatters for prostitution and drugs. Now this house has a 9-foot tall chain link fence that surrounds its perimeter. One of the sides of the fence has a gaping hole.

Almost as unattractive as the City's Light Yard down the street.

A block in the other direction is a vacant double sized lot on a small, residential street. It’s been vacant with a breached chain link fence for the past 7 years. It sits there taunting the children who play in the street because there is no nearby park. Less than a block away from that vacant lot, is the DWP’s light yard which looks similar to a vacant lot only it is less attractive. The city thought that historic route 66, right across the street from a Carnegie Library, in one of the most densely populated areas of Los Angeles would be a great place to store light posts for the rest of the city. Behind a 12 foot high, razor wire fence that is patrolled nightly by a security guard, sits the worst offender of all: the light yard owned by the City of Los Angeles.

Child walks by city light yard on way to school.

Unidentifiable substance behind the fence. Hope it's safe for the children on their way to school.

If we can only hold landlords as accountable as we hold our own city agencies then I suppose things could get worse than they are now. It would be nice to think that property owners care about the community more than they do about their profits but this is not usually the case. But when the city’s own example of how to maintain property is such a hideous eyesore (located smack dab in the middle of 3 elementary schools no less), the standard for what everyone else needs to do to comply has been set. Why shouldn’t gangs and squatters look at this neighborhood and feel right at home. They can literally run recession proof businesses with no overhead and, at the same time blend in with the image the city puts forth in her own properties. Maybe the city’s plan is to attract all the crime to my neighborhood so it is more centralized.

(Walking distance is generally considered .25 miles or a 5-minute walk)

Most people would agree that Los Angeles is park deficient. Granted, there are some urbanites who can walk into a bar with green décor and that is all the green space they need. For the most part though, crowded living in an urban environment requires some form of relief. Since at least the dawn of the industrial age, that form of relief has generally been considered natural and open space.

If any smart city could design from scratch, they would build their city on a layer of comprehensive, well-integrated, well-connected parks and open space. In Los Angeles, however, we do not have that luxury. Our city is so well established and built-out that we cannot simply throw in a bunch of parks. In fact, even trees have a hard time in Los Angeles.

It’s natural to think park development is easy. Couldn’t we raze the dilapidated development, throw in some groundcover and plants, and let nature takes its course? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. In fact, the cost of developing a park is usually in the millions. Land acquisition, engineering, and especially maintenance are very costly.

Don’t forget that land is in short supply and land owners/developers probably aren’t willing to give it up to the park cause, which won’t generate a viable profit for them. Parks require continual maintenance as well as good design, in order to ensure it is successful and safe, and does not itself turn into blight. City officials do have ways of making it affordable to developers to include park space in their projects. But, this often means giving them incentives like allowing increased density, which can often be unmatched by supporting infrastructure, or unwelcome by the neighborhood.

Another issue is how exactly do we define park sufficiency? Is it about the total number of parks? Their size? Their use? How far people must walk to get to them? How accessible they are (cost, by transportation, etc.)? Whether they can or should be everything to everyone? How well they service the cultural and socio-economic circumstances of the immediate service area? It seems each person has his or her own priority, but in L.A. it is more about “Let’s take what we can get.”

The current LA City Council District 13 office has been working on developing pocket parks. These are very small parks weaved into the larger urban fabric. Sometimes they even include small public open spaces developed on whatever land can be obtained, even a median in some cases, such as at the intersection of Vermont, Hollywood, and Prospect. Like I said, we take what we can get.

While these small parks do help, they still seem unsatisfactory to some. So, what can we do? What’s the solution? Should we follow up on the original 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew park plan for L.A., which used lush green avenues with trees and landscaping to connect various parks? What about green roofs – some cities have small rooftop parks with trails where people can even walk their dogs. Maybe we should switch to the strong-mayor form of government so our own Daley can ram his way through the politics and red tape and magically make the parks appear.

Parks are an important necessity in Los Angeles, for children and adults alike. They can help alleviate stress. They can help connect Angelinos with nature, and perhaps give them a sense of how they fit into the larger global environment. Heck, parks should even be a basic human right. But, like many public goods, who is going to bear the cost of providing and maintaining parks? In these financial times, park costs are in competition with other publicly valued city budget items like police service. It’s easy to say someone else should do it, but would you make the compromise in your own backyard?