LA Podcast - Nobody's Asphalt

Alissa, Rachel, and Sophie dig into an investigation that shows the City of Los Angeles stopped repaving its streets instead of implementing multimodal safety improvements. Remembering Robert Silverstein, the lawyer who tried to halt nearly every major Hollywood development. Plus: an appreciation of LA’s own hometown starchitect, the legendary Frank Gehry, who died at the age of 96.

Listen below, at Apple Podcasts, or almost anywhere you get your podcasts.

SHOW NOTES

The Future Is LA: “LA has stopped repaving our streets”

LA has 28 pothole trucks, currently only 12 run daily due to budget cuts

Here are all the HLA appeals and a follow up on “large asphalt repair”by Streetsblog’s Joe Linton

The City is also trying to be ADA compliant (but with this federal administration, who knows)

This was the year traffic fatalities were supposed to be reduced to zero — except people keep dying! For contrast: Vision Zero in London: “Across all 157 schemes on borough roads, there was a 34% decrease in fatal or serious casualties.” Even crosswalks advocates are getting arrested

What will make LA safer when cars kill more people than homicides? Alissa wrote about “Dying to host the Olympics” last year

Traffic fatalities are also a problem at the state level, and advocates recently held a vigil at at Caltrans HQ

LA Times: “Robert Silverstein, who fought City Hall over Hollywood development and won, dies at 57"

Stop the Gondola recently celebrated Silverstein for slowing Metro approvals 

Bernard Luggage was preserved — but is still empty! — and Silverstein also tried to stop a residential tower by preserving a Spaghetti Factory (which is also still empty)

The classic Curbed (RIP) piece about “greenmailing” from 2013 

LA Times: “Frank Gehry dead: Disney Hall architect transformed LA's landscape”

“To look only at the overwrought megaprojects, however, is to miss one of Gehry’s crucial achievements: his ability to turn an existing building, no matter how ordinary, into something humane and delightful,” writes Carolina Miranda in The Atlantic

The Guardian on the “Bilbao effect,” where the Guggenheim “transformed Bilbao’s wider civic fortunes, attracting 1.3 million visitors in its first year and… became shorthand for uplift through cultural tourism predicated on “iconic” architecture”

LA Times: “To a handful of condo owners whose units face the Disney Hall on Hope Street, the view of the Frank Gehry landmark is glorious -- until around noon on a sunny day. Then, the sun hits the stainless steel arches on the hall’s Founders Room and bright light is reflected into their condominiums” (2004)

This week’s episode was produced by Sophie Bridges

The reporting and analysis you hear in the show is put together by our rotating cast of producers and co-hosts every week. All opinions expressed on the show are solely those of co-hosts and may not represent the views of LA Forward

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