kraaijvanger •

Nowadays the suburban ideal (of the past century) show its limitations (congestion, pollution, anonymity).
So there is an urgency to choose for the urban, by creating urban settlements in the infinite suburban area, like an oasis in the desert, the Urban Oasis. Transitions from “movement and flow” to “settlement and city lounge” within the existing LA grid.

To create urbanity we introduce the scale of the pedestrian. The Dingbat block is too big and anonymous for the pedestrian and the climate hits hard on everything and everybody present.
A more urban tissue arises through:
- more enclosed urban streets by building on the (sub-urban) cardrives in front.
- transforming the alleys to a green and urban network of green routes and urban squares. These together creates a fine grained urban tissue. This tissue gives environmental and residential value through a systems that collects the water and keeps it in the area, on which trees will grow, that will shade the streets and buildings and keeps the temperature down.

So the uniformal grid will be transformed into a hierarchic fine grained sustainable urban network with lot of diversity, alternative routing, short distances and great urban residence value.

The sub-urban LA grid is enriched with these Urban Oasis , settlements with city lounge qualities. This will transform LA into a more sustainable city with a more fertile environment which can grow and densified within the existing urban grid without changing the overall characteristic of the grid and the typology. The growing of Los Angeles will then be the motor to reverse the desertification and becomes the urban oasis.
 

year
2010

extra info
consultant: Jeroen van Herk (LINKit consult)

project team
Frank Hendriks, Tomas van der Meer