Silverlake Farmers Market

Join the railLA collage team to gather your ideas in preparation for a new 2011 architectural publication in the works which will look at 20+ Los Angeles sites with cars and envisioned “Beyond Cars.”

Join ULI LA as we kickoff our TOD Summit 2011 Initiative to engage public and private sector leaders to discuss pressing transportation and land use challenges.

The Kickoff Event will include an address by invited Keynote Speaker Congressman Xavier Becerra, U.S. Representative for California’s 31st Congressional District, followed by two provocative Panel Discussions.

Panel Discussions

In the spirit of public private partnerships, ULI LA has awarded four Technical Assistance Panels (TAPs) to provide input from the real estate community on complex land use development issues for TOD projects. The Kickoff Event will include a discussion moderated by Jonathan Watts, Principal, Cuningham Group Architecture, with representatives from the following cities, whereby the ULI audience can learn more about these TOD sites, their opportunities and challenges:

1)      City of Baldwin Park
2)      City of Inglewood
3)      City of Santa Monica
4)      City of Compton, Redevelopment Agency

Additionally, as investment in the regional transit system continues to grow, ULI LA is seeking to find solutions to coordinate land use development and the successful implementation of TOD projects. Join ULI LA in a second Panel Discussion with various agencies about the importance of TOD in the region and specifically what their department/agency is doing on the issue.

Panel Moderator: Michael Woo, Dean, College of Environmental Design, Cal Poly Pomona

Panel Speakers:

• Michael LoGrande, Planning Director, City of Los Angeles
• Kelly Boyer, Director of the Los Angeles Multifamily Hub, U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Hasan Ikhrata, Executive Director, Southern California Association of Governments
• Roger Moliere, Chief, Real Property Management & Development, Metro

Program Agenda

9:00 AM- Registration and Networking Breakfast
9:30 AM- Welcoming and Keynote Address by invited Congressman Xavier Becerra
10:00 AM- Technical Assistance Panel Discussion with the Awarded Cities
10:30 AM- Panel Discussion with Local Agencies
11:30 AM- Closing

Registration  

• Member: $35
• Public Sector: $35
• Non-Member: $55
• Student $25

http://www.uli-la.org/todsummit2011-kickoff

As part of our ongoing effort to develop a vision for a high-speed future in Los Angeles, we will continue to collect ideas from you. For more information or to submit your idea, please click here.

Under Construction

We are also developing a portfolio of the ideas collected to date. In the meantime, you can scroll through the project, videos, and written submissions submitted to date.

We suspect Los Angeles might have a car-crazed reputation but we also know this city has a vibrant community that likes to take bikes, buses and sidewalks, too. So GOOD is teaming up with railLA, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, the Coalition for Clean Air, and de LaB for an event that shows how L.A. can move beyond cars. We’re holding it at the exhibition LA Beyond Cars: A Global Perspective on Rail and Space which envisions the future of high speed rail in Los Angeles. And we’re challenging everyone who attends to use alternative transportation. That’s right—our goal is to make this a completely car-free party.

Board a bus, take the train, ride a bike, map out a walk, jump on your scooter, hire a horse and buggy, break out your hoverboard … just get here in a way that illustrates an L.A. that’s not auto-dependent. Connect with friends and travel together. Document your trip on Twitter, Flickr or Facebook using the tag #LAbeyondcars. When you get to the event, we’ll have an opportunity for everyone to record how they got there, where they came from, and what happened during their journey. James Rojas will be holding his extremely fun interactive city planning workshops focusing on walking and biking. The folks from CicLAvia will be on-hand to talk about how they’re planning a car-free street celebration this fall. Plus:  There will be prizes awarded for the people who arrive in the most unique, alternative, or “beyond car” ways. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Moving Beyond Cars
L.A.’s Alternative Transportation Celebration
Wednesday, August 18
7 to 10 p.m.
The Jewel Box / City National Plaza
525 S. Flower Street, Downtown Los Angeles
Free, cash bar

Tips for safe biking and links to routes from the LACBC
Tips on how to ride and plan your trip from Metro
Tips on car-free commuting from the Coalition for Clean Air

RSVP and share the event information on Facebook

Sponsored by GOOD, railLA, Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, Coalition for Clean Air and de LaB

Graphic by Will Etling

The infrastructure, when successful, solves the technical objectives of its design engineers: moves trains; moves power; moves water; moves cars.

But in Los Angeles technical means often become both visual ends and operational limits the original problem solvers never imagined. The cumulative effect of the existing infrastructure is to sub-divide the city, delimit zones of use and purpose, and to segregate by race, and economic capacity.

The freeways, tracks, power grids, and concrete rivers originally designed to connect a horizontal city, often deliver the opposite: the piecemeal city, with infrastructure as a consistent obstacle to the integration of the disparate civic parts.

The solution: reconceive the city by multiplying the purposes of its infrastructure. We intend to build over, under, around, and through the freeways, rivers, power grids, and tracks, to use the existing rights of way as the foundations for a series of new, infrastructure-scaled conceptions of building form, habitation, and public and private purpose that will redefine Los Angeles by strategically re-associating the sociologies, the uses, and the sense of the civic whole the civil engineers have long precluded.

Link to idea

This post was submitted by Eric Owen Moss Architects.

An unusual open space project will be opened in the Munich city quarter of Theresienhoehe in June 2010. After a ten-year process, which took the design from an international competition through to the realized project, the new quarter on the former site of the Munich fair is now endowed with the identity of a hybrid art-landscape space. Covering a length of 300 metres and spanning 50 metres in width, the space is an artificial landscape build over a pre-existing thin railway cover. Nature and artificiality are blended through landscape architecture and art, and joined into one. The public park references travellers’ dreams and reacts to the lines of movement of the functional railway below. Arranged as a play-way, alpine meadows and pine-framed dunes are brought together. Astroturf meets authentic lawn, freely interpreted gymnastics equipment turns into a herd of free roaming horses, and sequences of climbing-frames wind their way through the abstracted landscapes. Rosemarie Trockel is considered one of the most important German artists working today, and is known internationally for border crossing themes and genres. The work of Berlin landscape architects Topotek 1 is characterized by a strategy that similarly defies categorization. Their cooperation has resulted in a project that bridges childlike memories and urban nature, complex structural engineering and the definite lightness of its landscape architecture.

This post was submitted by Topotek 1, Rosemarie Trockel with C.Venart.

In addition to its program management role on the California High Speed Rail, Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) has worked on some of the world’s most well-known high-speed train projects. For the 214-mile Taiwan High Speed Rail, PB performed a variety of roles from initial planning in the 1990s through completion in 2007. In support of China’s ambitious high-speed rail network, PB provided construction supervision services for a 100-mile line linking Shijiazhuang and Taiyuan that opened in 2009 and contributed project management and other services to a 285-mile line connecting Zhengzhou and Xi’an that opened in 2010.

This post was submitted by Parsons Brinckerhoff.

Our design for Greenwich South conceives an innovative vision for a 21st -century urban environment. Our proposal transforms the Greenwich South district of Lower Manhattan, an urban “island” bound by well known, distinct neighborhoods and icons but lacking distinction and connectivity itself, into a 24-hour live-work-play community, creating a new architectural DNA that will function as a stimulus for creative development of the adjacent urban areas for years to come. In addition to fostering a new, iconic identity for Greenwich South, our scheme stitches together and integrates the renewed development with adjacent neighborhoods and amenities, establishing a new community that will stimulate a sense of increased interdependence and connectivity within the area.

This post was submitted by Morphosis.

This post was submitted by Newlands & Company.

The new Bologna Central Station building and the development of the surrounding areas offer the chance to reconnect the northern and the southern parts of Bologna and to interpret the station as a clear urban fragment that creates coherence within its context. For this purpose we propose to take the surrounding urban fabric of Bologna as the inspiring source of the project.

It is understood that contemporary stations should be integral parts of the city. We therefore thoroughly analyzed the urban structure of Bologna. Our scheme proposes to build a new level above the rail tracks, to continue the urban fabric and accommodate the envisaged additional program. Different kinds of public transport can be interconnected this way and combined with activities of the daily urban life. The train station becomes an inhabitable piece of infrastructure and hence a part of the city. The new complex creates urban vitality by connecting the northern and southern parts of the city. The new central station, called ‘Citta Sospesa’ is easily accessible by means of ramps, elevators and escalators, both for travelers and passers-by. A new network of streets and public squares emerges which are bound by public, commercial and cultural facilities. They are protected from sunshine and rain by means of large arcades; such elements specific to the local context are interpreted in a contemporary way for the design. At the same time the station program can easily be combined with the city program creating an attractive commercial and cultural environment which offers great user flexibility. Openings in the new square create visual connections between the levels below and above ground, and facilitate orientation and sunlight penetration down on the rail tracks.

The roofs of the Citta Sospesa’ offer additional places for relaxation to both travelers and the citizens of Bologna, with stunning views over the city, close to the rail tracks. Streets, plazas, escalators, ramps and elevators create a 3-dimensional infrastructural network that ensures fast access to the rail tracks.

The new Central Station design is part of a wider masterplan, which integrates the program required in the competition into the surrounding urban areas. The morphology of the city is continued without creating any historic replicas.

This post was submitted by MRVDV.

Spinal Tap is a master plan and an architectural proposal for the High Speed Rail (HSR) development area that re-frames Downtown Los Angeles by creating an elongated open landscape on top of the 101 freeway. On the main Spine, we propose a monorail system that links 4 distinct new districts-the Urban Beach, Nonstop Space/New HSR Transit, the Cultural District, and the 101 Commons containing the existing Civic District and Disney Concert Hall. By shifting the main transit connection from Union Station to the New HSR Hub on the main Spine, we intend to invigorate the upper side of Downtown Los Angeles and activate different districts along the spine. The east/west axis on the Spine will elongate along the highway to increase use-ability of the new high speed transit center. It literally becomes an extension of the terminal. The focal point of Union Station is also shifted south to create a direct relationship with the circulatory spine. Through this proposal, the urban fabric will house outdoor and media-related programmes that create a new face for downtown and present an image that will represent the future of Los Angeles.

This post was submitted by Jeeyea Kim, Kris Hedges, Ryan Russell.

Who

railLA (www.railLA.org) is a joint effort between the Los Angeles Chapters of the American Institute of Architects (AIA/LA) and the American Planning Association (APA-LA) with the specific purpose of increasing public awareness of the benefits inherent in integrating high-speed rail into our cities, most notably, at first, in Los Angeles.

What

A decade into a new century, Los Angeles finds itself grappling with the economy, traffic congestion, global impacts from the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, and a growing realization that planning to address these issues needs to be comprehensive rather than piecemeal.  Coinciding with this realization is the planning of the California High-Speed Rail project, which as the largest public works project in U.S. history, promises to bring transformative changes to both our regional transportation and our image as the capitol of the automobile-centric lifestyle.  railLA has invited a vocal supporter of the Mayor’s 30/10 plan, Richard Katz, and a panel of distinguished leaders from government, community, education, and business to talk about this state of affairs, where we should go, and how we get there.

Topics

• The 30/10 Plan: Implementation and Benefits
• The Movement Toward Sustainability As It Affects Urbanism
• Union Station As The Hub Of A Re-Envisioned Los Angeles
• Good Planning Principles: Pulling Together A Network Of Pedestrian,
• Bicycle, Vehicular, And Transportation Options.
• Implementation Challenges: The Importance Of Consensus-Building

Panelists

• Richard Katz (Moderator), California High-Speed Rail Authority, Metro, and Metrolink board member
• Michael Woo, Dean, College of Environmental Design, Cal Poly Pomona
• Ed Reyes, Los Angeles City Councilmember, Council District 1
• Michael I. Schneider, Managing Partner, InfraConsult LLC
• Ayahlushim Hammond, Senior Vice President, Thomas Properties Group

When

Friday, July 30, 2010 8:30-10:30 a.m.

Where

The City Club on Bunker Hill, 333 S. Grand Ave, 54th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90071 Tel: (213) 620-9662

Contact

Gunnar Hand, Chair, railLA

816-916-6304

[email protected]

More information

Visit the Transformational Transportation Registration Page

1920 city center was where people wanted to go – 2020 it’s airport – HSR must go where people want to go or it will not succeed ie make a profit – HSR feeding airlines makes sense – hub and spoke using all air chokes on its own success because air can land only 200 passengers/minute – rail can deliver and exit 2000/minute – when air gets cancelled, rail can substitute – fast delivery fo passengers relieves hub and facilitates flight planning – less congestion at peak times with nearby airports opart of same system – transport to downtown from airports exists – rail perfect for 400 mile trips – air for over 400m – R.O.W. is most expensive part of HRS system – I propose elevated HSR down center of freeways and up river valleys on 8ft dia precast biorock (seacrete) “trees” 200′ oc 16′ to 100′ high to maintain level – precast beams support carbon fiber double “U” ties which support rail – inexpensive and fast with little ecological disruption – also wheels and motors reinvented.

Link to Idea

This post was submitted by Jerome Morley Larson Sr EAIA.