From LA.Streestblog.org
By Joe Linton
Markings on cities streets can sometimes reveal what used to be there
My job is to report on L.A. Streets. I like to think that every trip I take I am doing a sort of sampling transect, mentally making notes of how streets are working, what has changed, what led to the current conditions. I often encounter unexpected changes in city streets; then I try to figure out what happened and why.
City streets are a complex palimpsest – an outgrowth of centuries of policies and priorities and investments, spread on top of millennia of underlying landscape. Formal redlining and informal segregation might have defined neighborhood boundaries. Old rail rights of way cut through neighborhoods, affecting the shapes of parcels and the configurations of buildings. Highways cut through cities, severing communities and streets formerly connected. Cities that prioritize car travel over walking allocate more space to drivers, while shunting pedestrians onto narrow ill-maintained sidewalks – or no sidewalks at all.
Photo by Rodrigo Araya on Unsplash