The City of Los Angeles's sprawl (from the San Fernando Valley to San Pedro) masks the fact that it has a relatively straightforward street grid... at least if you stay close to Downtown. Numbered streets run east-west, named streets (Figueroa, La Brea) north-south.
The numbered streets begin, unsurprisingly, with 1st St., the street that City Hall and the Walt Disney Concert Hall live on. What I was surprised to learn was that the street grid runs all the way to 266th St., in LA's Harbor City neighborhood.
The problem with LA's streets are 1) The size of the blocks being too large, and 2) how narrow the sidewalks are and how wide the streets are.
ReplyDeleteThose characteristics have made much of the city pedestrian unfriendly.
I don't know what we can do to the size of our blocks without displaying thousands of people, but we CAN narrow our streets and widen our sidewalks.
Another good idea is introducing streetcars (on tracks) much like Toronto, which will connect neighborhoods that will not be serviced by subway/light rail. I'm talking about connecting Echo Park <-> Silver Lake <-> Los Feliz along SUNSET BLVD with a streetcar for example.