Does the pandemic mean long-term revitalization of downtown LA and other public spaces?
Dana Cuff is UCLA professor of architecture and urban design and director of the award-winning design research center cityLAB. Since receiving her Ph.D. from Berkeley, Cuff has published and lectured widely about spatial justice, the architectural profession and affordable housing. She is a recent recipient of prestigious awards for her leadership as an activist (2019, Architectural Record), educator (2020, AIA Los Angeles) and researcher (2020, Architectural Research Centers Consortium).
"Since the pandemic, restaurants have taken over curbside parking for outdoor eating, and some streets have been closed to traffic. Might these changes be permanent, and what could U.S. cities look like overall post-pandemic?
Katharine Lusk, co-director of the Boston University Initiative on Cities, says there was considerable national support for reconfiguring public spaces for al fresco dining, but many cities weren’t as eager to commit to permanently closing roads or creating new cycling infrastructure.
But in LA, the pandemic pushed a car-centric community to think of public areas as pedestrian-friendly, and even beaches had more pedestrians. That’s according to Dana Cuff, a professor of architecture and urban design at UCLA and director of cityLAB, a think tank that researches urban design...
Cuff explains that areas like downtown LA might also experience a new revitalization. She also points to events such as CicLAvia.
“Los Angeles has this long history of seeming as if a nuclear bomb went off on the weekends, because there weren't enough people living downtown. Now we actually have a population of people who are housed downtown,” Cuff says. “I'm optimistic that things like CicLAvia have made demonstrations that even the streets downtown can become inhabited and taken over for pleasure. Big parks, like Grand Park, show how active our downtown public spaces can be. So I think we have a good future for increasing public activity in our downtown areas." — Written by Danielle Chiriguayo and Amy Ta, produced by Bennett Purser, Jun. 21, 2021
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the KCRW website.
Read more about Dana Cuff.
Stay engaged. Use #UCLAarts to stay connected.
