From Bengali to Thai, L.A. County voting officials are brushing up on some new languages for voters.

The nation’s most linguistically diverse ballot is about to offer even more ways to say “I voted.”

This June, when the polls open for the 2012 primary elections,Los Angeles County voters will be able to cast ballots in three new languages and receive oral translations in two more.

The addition of written voting material in Hindi, Khmer and Thai, and the planned recruitment of poll workers who can give bilingual assistance in Gujarati and Bengali, will bring to eleven the number of languages—other than English—in which L.A.County citizens will be able to vote.

Ballots and voting literature have been available for at least a decade in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Spanish and English.  Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan says the additional voting material and recruitment could cost up to $1 million, but is necessary to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

That law generally requires language assistance for voters when a non-English-speaking minority exceeds 10,000 voting age citizens or 5 percent of a jurisdiction’s electorate.

“It’s a federal mandate that unfortunately does not come with federal funding, so we have to absorb it into our own budget,” says Logan. “It’s a challenge, but it’s also a great opportunity to ensure that we’re getting information to people in ways that they can access and comprehend.”

Efrain Escobedo, executive liaison forLogan’s office, attributes the need to a number of factors, including an increase in the number of naturalized citizens from India and Southeast Asia, and the migration of Asian-American voters from other states. Escobedo added that this year’s mandate required extra analysis because it was issued not by nationality, but by ethnicity and race. 

“They gave us two categories—Asian Indian and ‘Other Asian Non-Specified,’ ” says Escobedo.  “But India has over 122 recognized languages and 22 official languages. So when you tell us ‘Asian Indian,’ that doesn’t really help.”

Meanwhile, a search for non-Indian “other” Asian groups that weren’t already getting bilingual assistance yielded more than 80,000 residents of L.A. County with a half-dozen different national origins.

Eventually, Escobedo says, county analysts narrowed the list with the help of targeted census data, community groups such as the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and the Artesia-based South Asian Network  and analysis from the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration at the University of Southern California.

In addition to leading to the new languages on the ballot and in polling places, the county’s research yielded a rough sketch of the county’s dynamic immigrant populations. For instance:

• Los Angeles County now has more than 1.35 million people who identify themselves as Asian.

• The county’s largest Asian community is non-Taiwanese Chinese, which represents nearly 372,000 people or about 27.5 percent of the Asian community.

• Filipinos run a close second with nearly 329,000 residents, or about 24.3 percent of the county’s Asians. Another 216,000 or so residents are Korean, making up about 16 percent of the Asian community.

• More than 76,000 county residents identified themselves as Asian Indian in the 2010 Census, representing roughly 6 percent of the county’s overall Asian population. More than a third were naturalized citizens.

• About 20,000 of the county’s Asian-Indians are registered voters and more than two out of three have a college degree. The vast majority reported fluency in English, but about one in ten said that they don’t speak it well.

• The county’s immigrant population now includes more than 32,000 Cambodians, 23,000 Thais, 10,000 Indonesians, 9,000 Pakistanis, 6,100 Sri Lankans and 3,000 Laotians.

• Four out of every ten Cambodians are naturalized citizens, and more than a third of the county’s Cambodian population is registered to vote. But nearly 40% of Cambodians over age 25 in the county lack a high school diploma, and a third of the county’s Cambodian population speaks English poorly or not at all.

• The county’s Thai community also reports a 42 percent rate of naturalization. But only about 25 percent reported poor skills in English and more than four in ten have college degrees. 

• Los Angeles County’s Thai communities are clustered in Cerritos, Glendale, L.A.and Long Beach. Cambodian clusters can be found in Long Beach, Signal Hill, Lakewood and Pomona. Meanwhile, Asian Indians are concentrated in Artesia, Cerritos, Diamond Bar, Walnut and L.A.

Posted 1/31/12

L.A. County holds animals for 5 days before euthanizing those that haven't been claimed.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors this week weighed in on a narrow-but-emotional debate over euthanasia in animal shelters, urging the governor not to repeal a suspended law requiring shelters to wait more than three days before euthanizing abandoned pets and strays.  

The mandate, suspended since 2009, is one of more than 30 that Gov. Jerry Brown has sought to eliminate in the wake of the state’s budget crisis.

Signed into law in 1998 by Gov. Pete Wilson, and named for its sponsor, former Santa Monica state senator Tom Hayden, it has extended the lives of lost and stray animals by requiring shelters to hold them from four to six days, rather than the 72 hours under the prior law. Local governments are supposed to be reimbursed by the state.

As California’s economy has struggled, however, the shelter law has been a target. In 2004, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger briefly tried and failed to repeal it, and five years later, it was suspended as part of a deal to balance the state budget.  At the time, animal rights groups feared that shelters would begin euthanizing animals more quickly, but they continued to abide by longer waiting periods, making up for the lack of state reimbursement out of their own budgets.

In Los Angeles County, for instance, the Department of Animal Care and Control has spent about $600,000 a year of its $33 million budget to hold animals for five days before euthanization, says Chief Deputy Director David Dijkstra. 

“As long as we have the ability, we like to make animals available for adoption or owner redemption for as long as possible,” Dijkstra says, noting that the county impounds about 90,000 animals a year and euthanizes fewer than half of them.

Some animal rights activists have argued that Hayden’s Law has worsened conditions for shelter animals because so-called “rescue holds” by hoarders and well-intentioned but disorganized animal lovers force shelters to house aggressive and diseased animals for weeks at the expense of more adoptable pets who then end up being euthanized for lack of space.

The state also points to a 2008 report from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office that found no proof that the Hayden Law had led to an increase in pet adoptions, and therefore recommended repeal.

Still, Brown’s proposal to save more than $23 million a year by taking the mandate out of the state budget has drawn a fresh round of protest from some pet lovers and animal rights groups. Hayden recently spoke out  in a YouTube video, and the Humane Society of the United States this week asked members to write to Brown.

The Board’s response, led by Supervisor Michael Antonovich, a longstanding advocate for pet adoptions, took the form of a 5-signature letter asking that the law not be repealed.

Quantifying the local impact of Hayden’s Law has been difficult because so many variables are involved in pet adoptions. For example, in recent years, Dijkstra says, shelters have become more crowded because owners have had difficulty caring for pets in this economy. Moreover, many of the 40,000 or so animals euthanized each year in county shelters are animals such as feral cats that can’t easily be placed for adoption.

However, he notes, by the most available measure—dog impounds—the suspension of Hayden’s Law has not increased euthanasia. In 2008-09, the county impounded 45,903 dogs, with 54 percent adopted or returned to their owners. In 2011-12, the projected number of impounded dogs stands at 48,823, with 57 percent returned or adopted. 

About 80 percent of pets are claimed by their owners within the first three days, he says, but last year, about 1,100 lost pets were reunited with their owners on their fourth and fifth days in the shelter. In the past year, he adds, the county also has begun putting abandoned pets up for adoption sooner than they might otherwise have been made available.

“It’s very rare that an owner shows up after we’ve made a dog or cat available for adoption,” he adds, “but that has happened on a couple of occasions, and in those cases, the new owners are contacted and asked if they’ll give the pet back.”

Posted 2/8/12

The movement to increase the number of women cyclists on L.A. streets includes Andrea Denike Martinez.

Andrea Denike Martinez still remembers the day she got back in the saddle.

It was Earth Day—April 22, 2010. For the first time since a bad bicycle accident fractured her skull and landed her in intensive care several years earlier, Martinez was ready to once again brave L.A.’s streets on two wheels.

Heading out from her Echo Park home, she was pumped up with environmental commitment—and “so nervous,” she recalled.

But moral support was also on the road that day. “I met another girl on a bike going that very same route.” She was a total stranger, but Katherine Gladwin was going in the same direction so they rode together to their jobs near Wilshire and Western.

They not only became fast friends, but started a small women’s cycling crew they dubbed the Bodacious Bike Babes. Since that first commute, they’ve organized and publicized group rides, volunteered at events like CicLAvia, and generally tried to encourage other women to take the plunge into an L.A. cycling world that remains overwhelmingly dominated by men.

Even though they may have felt alone out there at times, Martinez and Gladwin have plenty of company these days. On Wednesday, February 8, a coalition of women cycling advocates is set to gather in Long Beach to announce an ambitious goal: doubling the number of female bicyclists on Southern California streets within five years.

The initiative is led by a relatively new organization, Women on Bikes SoCal, which seeks to promote the “joy, beauty and benefits of bicycling for women.” Its campaign includes establishing the nation’s first women-only scholarship program for League Certified Bike Safety Instructors. (Information on supporting the initiative is here.)

One of the most visible faces of female cycling in Southern California, Long Beach Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal, is among those backing the movement.

On a recent bicycle tour of her city, which is noted for its large and growing network of bike-friendly amenities, Lowenthal made it clear that dressing like Lance Armstrong—and riding like a Tour de France champion—are not required to join the cycling revolution.

“I want to wear my heels. I want to do all sorts of kinds of things that are about regular lifestyle,” Lowenthal said. “You don’t have to be the 50-mile-a-week spandex athlete. You can move about with your children and make it a very family-oriented, healthy, active lifestyle.”

In fact, Lowenthal thinks that the health and well-being of kids can be a powerful motivator in getting women to take up cycling. Childhood obesity is a “crisis of epic proportions,” she said, and there’s nothing like getting mothers on bikes to get everyone else onboard, too. “It is that green light: ‘Well, Mom’s OK with it,’ “ she said.

Still, if current statistics are any indication, there may be an uphill climb ahead.

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition reports that only 16% of cyclists spotted during last year’s bicycle count were women—about the same percentage as in the previous count in 2009. A new report by the national advocacy group Alliance for Biking and Walking found that only 20% of those bicycling to work in Los Angeles are women—compared to 33% in Sacramento, 38% in Portland and a remarkable 49% in Memphis.

Jennifer Klausner, left, and Alexis Lantz of L.A. County Bicycle Coalition. Photo by Allan Crawford/Women on Bikes SoCal

Ask L.A. women cyclists, non-cyclists and would-be cyclists about the imbalance, and most are quick to sum up the problem in two words: too dangerous.

“A lot of it is people really are deathly afraid of cars, and the way people drive,” said Martinez, 33, co-founder of the Bodacious Bike Babes.

“It’s just too stressful being on the road,” added Kristen Schwarz, 28, who lives in East Hollywood and gave up her bicycle a couple of years ago after one too many encounters with speeding motorists. “It’s tough out there!”

Everyone, it seems, has a harrowing story or two.

“My first experiences in L.A. were pretty terrifying. I went down Wilshire. It was definitely a treacherous route,” said Gladwin, Martinez’s friend and co-founder. “My bicycling career in Los Angeles started in a pretty daunting fashion.”

She’s been struck twice by cars, the first time by a morning rush hour driver who mowed her down on Wilshire. “She stopped and she actually was complaining about heart palpitations because of the trauma she had experienced,” said Gladwin, 29, who was thrown to her knees in the collision. “I was intimidated but I wasn’t going to let that deter me.”

Magdalena Paluch, who interviewed women cyclists as part of a project to create a bicycling app while she earned her master’s degree in industrial design at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, said greater female involvement could lead to big things.

“I feel strongly that if anything will change, most of the time it changes because of the women. We are change agents,” she said. “Women are considered an ‘indicator species’ for biking and public transit because women are risk-averse. If you make it safe for women to bike, it’ll be safer for everybody.”

Cycling advocates agree. They say that creating more, and safer, facilities like “protected bike lanes”—in which riders are buffered from car traffic—and “bicycle boulevards” on slower-moving residential streets is the key to overcoming the perception and reality of dangerous L.A. streets.

Joe Linton, a CicLAvia consultant and longtime L.A. bicycle activist, noted that the gender disparity disappears in countries like the Netherlands, which has a highly developed network of bikeways and a culture in which cycling is considered a safe and commonplace way to get around.

“In very bicycle-safe cultures, women are actually the majority. In daredevil places, or places that are perceived as daredevil, like L.A., women are reluctant, and reluctant to go with kids,” Linton said. In Los Angeles, where men have long dominated the bike scene, it’s easy for experienced, hardcore cyclists to forget how women—and other less confident beginning riders—may view the challenges of the road, he said.

Advocates are increasingly pointing to women riders’ safety concerns as a way of advancing a broader agenda of making streets better for all cyclists and pedestrians, of all ages. “This is a growing issue,” said Alexis Lantz, planning and policy director for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.

In fact, the women’s safety argument has been made as part of a push for improvements in Los Angeles County’s Bicycle Master Plan, set to come before the Board of Supervisors in the weeks ahead.

Lantz said it also could be a factor as advocates press for more bicycle resources in the Southern California Association of Governments’ Regional Transportation Plan. And, on the federal level, she said, “Safe Routes to School”  funding—which provides resources for many bicycle and pedestrian programs and is now threatened as part of the budget showdown in Washington—is another area in which women’s street safety concerns are a big part of the conversation.

Beyond the public policy arena, signs are everywhere that women are finally starting to make their move into the bike lane—at least a little bit.

Photos of bike-riding celebs like Zoe Deschanel, Hilary Duff and Vanessa Hudgens are all over the Internet, as are fashion-forward blogs such as Los Angeles Cycle Chic. Monday nights are reserved for women at the Bicycle Kitchen. Although nobody’s done a formal count, popular street-closing CicLAvia events seem to be bringing out large numbers of women. And young female activists are creating crews like Iron Unicorns, dedicated to creating “equality for women cyclists, both on the streets and in society.”

All those are valuable in building the women’s cycling movement, Lantz said.

“I think there is something that everyone can bring,” she said. “Cycle chic is a really great way of promoting cycling for some women. I really think that the more attention brought to cycling, the better.”

Long Beach Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal. Photo by Allan Crawford/Women on Bikes SoCal

Posted 2/7/12

Landscaping with native plants is one of many ways to curb urban runoff.

Malibu made a prizewinning environmental “cleaning machine” out of a vacant lot that had the community’s annual chili cook-off site. You don’t need to own a spread like Legacy Park, though, to help curb urban run-off.

Paul Herzog, coordinator of the Surfrider Foundation’s Ocean-Friendly Gardens Program, recommends “CPR”—conservation of water, permeability in your soil and retention devices such as rain barrels and rain gardens—to homeowners who would like to build water cleanliness into their landscaping.

And even small changes can help. Here are few:

Apply mulch. “It’s a simple thing to do, and it makes a big difference,” says Herzog. “Some areas even offer mulch from the city for free.” Mulching keeps weeds down, and, more importantly for the oceans, captures and holds water that might otherwise make its way down to the beach.

Redirect your rain gutter onto your landscape.  Don’t let water wash over your roof and then send it directly into a storm drain. Turn your downspout or, if necessary, buy an attachment at the hardware store to send that water onto your lawn or garden, where it’ll do more good.

Reset your irrigation timers when you reset your clocks. You know how you spring forward and fall back for Daylight Savings Time? Well when you reset your clocks in the fall, adjust your irrigation to account for the rainier winter weather. And when spring arrives, set them again for the drier summer days.

Go native. Think about what naturally grows here the next time you landscape. Native plants don’t have to be dull. (Click here for ideas.) “Monarch butterflies journey from Canada to Mexico and there’s only one plant that baby Monarchs will feed on,” he says. “Milkweed. And some varieties are native to this place.”

Posted 2/6/12

Ramp closures, like the one signaled above during Carmageddon, are coming to Wilshire in May.

Activity’s buzzing all over the 405 Project these days, but work on one of the biggest—and potentially most traffic-confounding—near-term endeavors has been put off till May.

Work on the much-anticipated “flyover” ramps at Wilshire Boulevard, originally scheduled to start last year and then postponed until March, has been delayed again because of slower-than-expected progress in relocating a federal government utility line along Sepulveda Boulevard.

The westbound Wilshire on-ramp to the northbound 405 and the northbound 405 off-ramp to westbound Wilshire will need to be completely closed for 90 straight days so that workers can demolish and rebuild the ramps. The operation will later be repeated on six other ramps, with varying closure times anticipated. Kasey Shuda, acting community relations manager for the project, said the delay in getting started is not expected to affect the overall project timetable.

The prospect of long-running ramp closures at one of the busiest intersections in the nation has sparked concerns among those who live and work in the area. In the aftermath of Carmageddon, the upcoming work was dubbed “The Rampture” in the blogosphere, with many predicting far worse disruption than last July’s freeway shutdown because the ramps would be closed so long.

The organization FAST (Fixing Angelenos Stuck in Traffic) has suggested that offering free fares on Metro rapid bus line 761 would not only help alleviate jams but also could help turn some automobile drivers into bus commuters over the long term.

UCLA also has called on public transit agencies to offer reduced or free fares in the area while the ramp work is underway. In addition, the university is requesting extra traffic control officers along detour routes and other roadways likely to get heavy use during the closure.

Shuda said those ideas and others are now under discussion.

This week, meanwhile, brings the full closure of the northbound 405 between Getty Center Drive and the 101 Freeway for two consecutive nights so that the Mulholland Bridge can be shored up with a massive center supporting column. Details on the night closures taking place on Wednesday Feb. 1 and Thursday, Feb. 2, are here.

The column and other temporary supports will remain in place as the bridge’s south side is reconstructed. Then, sometime this summer, the north side of the bridge will be demolished in “Carmageddon II.” Specifics, including the date, have not yet been set.

For a closer look at what will be happening in all three of the project’s segments over the next 30 days, click here.

When completed in 2013, the project will add a 10-mile northbound carpool lane to the 405 along with other improvements.

Posted 2/1/12

A new push to fight homelessness is underway, with county departments banding together to get the job done.

Acknowledging that solving the multifaceted problems of the nation’s largest homeless population calls for bigger and more concerted action, supervisors on Tuesday created Los Angeles County’s first interdepartmental council on homelessness.

The council will bring together county departments serving children, families and veterans along with those specializing in everything from mental health and housing to criminal justice and social services.

Board chairman Zev Yaroslavsky, who proposed the council along with Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, said its creation will allow the county to take its efforts against homelessness “to a whole new level.”

“Getting this kind of centralized communication among departments, not just within departments, gives us a real opportunity to do something special,” said Yaroslavsky, who will serve as chair of the new council, with Chief Executive Officer William T Fujioka acting as vice-chair.

Los Angeles County, already a focus of national attention because of the size and complexity of its homelessness problem, will use the new interdepartmental team to “scale up” successful programs that have been so far tried on relatively small scales, according to the motion by Yaroslavsky and Ridley-Thomas.

The motion was unanimously approved, along with amendments offered by Supervisor Don Knabe. Those amendments require an evaluation of the council at the two-year mark; mandate that the council develop its plan using existing resources; and instruct the CEO to inventory and review “outcomes, findings and best practices that resulted from the board’s investment of $100 million to prevent and end homelessness” since 2006.

That earlier push, called the Los Angeles County Homeless Prevention Initiative, has led to pilot projects such as Project 50, which has taken a “housing first” approach to assisting some of Skid Row’s most vulnerable chronically homeless people. Another program, called Access to Housing for Health, has moved frequently hospitalized homeless people into housing where health care services are available.

Although the 2011 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count report estimates a 3% drop in the county’s homeless population since 2009, it nevertheless depicts a large and troubled population of 51,340, including growing numbers of veterans and the aging.

Against that backdrop, national homeless advocates said interdepartmental and interagency councils can offer important advantages in getting things done.

“Homelessness is a cross-cutting issue,” said Steve Berg of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. If agencies and departments aren’t working together, he said, “you don’t get the kind of results you should get.”

And because there’s rarely enough money to adequately meet all the needs of the homeless population, bringing together diverse service-providers can “create efficiencies while serving people better,” said Laura Green Zeilinger of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, a model for the new county council.

Such collaborations, she said, can also make it easier to pursue funding opportunities, set priorities and create a better dynamic for solving problems.

As the council begins its work, it’s clear that people far beyond L.A. County will be watching.

“I definitely think that what Los Angeles does can influence other counties,” said Nan Roman, president and CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “I think it’s very promising.”

More than 50,000 homeless people live in L.A. County, from the beaches to the desert.

Posted 1/31/12

L.A. County wants your help in shaping the vote of the future.

How do you design a secure, reliable, accessible system of voting for a place with 4.3 million voters, 4,500 polling places, 10 languages and more square mileage than two Delawares?

That’s the challenge as Los Angeles County works to update its aging voting system in time for the 2015 elections. Fortunately, a 21^st-century innovation—crowdsourcing—just made the job easier.

In a novel approach that is being closely watched by local governments around the nation, the county this week put out the call for public input on how to improve L.A.’s system of voting.

No suggestion is too large or too small, amateurs are as welcome as experts and even off-the-cuff brainstorms are welcome, says Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan.

Anyone with an inspiration, from shorter ballots to voting by cell phones, can respond before March 22 by searching for the accessible elections challenge at www.openideo.com or by clicking here.

“This is just to get peoples’ creative juices going,” Logan says.

The initiative is part of a larger movement to make elections more secure and participatory in the information age. For more than two years, the county has been laying the groundwork for an overhaul of its voting system, the core of which dates to 1968, when the county installed a then-state-of-the-art punch-card system to count ballots.

“Our current system has served us well and with integrity, but the vote-tallying system is based on outdated software,” says Logan. “It’s difficult to get parts and maintenance, some of the equipment isn’t even made anymore, the card readers are becoming obsolete and on the software side, the language doesn’t have the flexibility to be modified.”

Los Angeles County is so vast that none of the commercially available voting systems now on the market can accommodate it, says Logan. Touch-screen voting machines have raised security concerns, he says, and tend to be expensive and logistically unwieldy in a county with 4,500 polling places. Meanwhile, existing paper-based systems being used in other jurisdictions present their own sets of problems when they’re forced to accommodate a system with millions of voters speaking multiple languages and spread across more than 4,000 square miles.

The county had already gone back to the drawing board, surveying poll workers, city clerks, tech experts, stakeholders, vendors, scholars and, of course voters, when Logan was approached several months ago by a federally funded voting project and asked to participate in a so-called “open-innovation challenge” aimed at creating a voting system that would be universally accessible by voters regardless of literacy, language or disability.

The result, he says, was an opportunity to cast a wide net for ideas while continuing the county’s own efforts. The Accessible Voting Technology Initiative, underwritten by a grant from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission and issued by the county and the Washington, D.C.-based Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, will take input from anyone with an idea.

Logan says the county faces a number of challenges in developing its own system; for one thing, federal and state regulators will have to approve any system that is developed. Also state legislation will have to be tweaked for the county to spend money on anything but a system now on the commercial market.

“We hope this challenge will accelerate the idea process,” says Logan. “By the end of summer—and granted, by then we’ll be doing the 2012 elections—we hope by then we might even have some prototypes.”

Posted 1/26/11

Prices are going up for park-and-ride and shuttle services to the Hollywood Bowl.

Concert-goers planning to use the Hollywood Bowl’s popular park-and-ride service this season, take note:

Buy your park-and-ride tickets in advance and you’ll pay the same $5 roundtrip fare that’s been in effect since 1995.

Those who wait to purchase their tickets at boarding time won’t be quite as fortunate.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved the first fare increases for the program since 2009. Roundtrip park-and-ride service will go from $8 to $10 for those who purchase at the park-and-ride lots. Roundtrip service from four shuttle lots—two on Ventura Boulevard and the others at Hollywood and Highland and the L.A. Zoo—will increase from $4 to $5.

In either case, patrons will avoid the Bowl’s famously tough stacked parking and will be able to travel with a clear environmental conscience in buses powered by clean diesel or alternative fuels.

And they’ll be in good company. Ridership on the park-and-ride and shuttle programs hit a 10-year high during the 2011 season, with nearly 31% of all patrons using the service. In all, patrons from all over the county logged 422,612 one-way trips by shuttle and park-and-ride last year.

Posted 1/24/11

A new ordinance means bike parking must be a part of new developments in unincorporated L.A. County.

What does the width of your sidewalk have to do with the diameter of your waistline?

What do shade trees have to do with how active you are?

And what does bicycle parking have in common with farmers markets and community gardens?

They’re all elements in Los Angeles County’s new Healthy Design Ordinance, initially approved by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday, and now receiving finishing touches from county attorneys.

The ordinance, expected to become law in March, represents part of a new and increasingly important partnership between planners and public health officials trying to fight an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and other diseases by making it easier for people to adopt a more active lifestyle.

To the delight of bicycle advocates, the new ordinance would require for the first time that bike parking be included in new developments in unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County. (Similar provisions are included the county’s proposed Bicycle Master Plan, which is expected to come before the board in coming weeks.)

To foster more walkable communities, the Healthy Design Ordinance also would mandate 5-foot wide sidewalks instead of the current 4-foot standard. And, to make sure those wider sidewalks are inviting, it would require that shade trees be included in future development plans.

It also seeks to bring healthy vegetables and fruits to so-called food deserts by making it easier for farmers markets and community gardens to take root in residential and other areas without a lot of red tape. And written into the ordinance is a requirement that those markets accept CalFresh payments.

Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, the county’s top public health official, said his department was happy to have invested part of a 2010 grant it received from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help get the Healthy Design Ordinance off the ground.

It’s all part of a shift in tactics to move disease prevention out of the doctor’s office and into the streets.

“If we want to improve the health of Angelenos, we need to start by improving our physical environment and our social environment,” Fielding said.

Supervisors praised the work that has been done so far.

“This is a big idea. This is forward-looking. This is progressive policy-making,” said Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky, who initially proposed the measure along with Supervisor Don Knabe, also saluted the efforts. But he said the new ordinance is just a first step toward designing a healthier county.

“Much more needs to be done to create livable neighborhoods that do not rely solely on automobile transportation,” Yaroslavsky said. “County planners and engineers, and private developers, will have to make a concerted effort to achieve neighborhoods where people feel comfortable walking, biking, and taking transit.”

In a motion adopted along with the board’s vote Tuesday in favor of approving the ordinance, Yaroslavsky directed county staff to take a closer look at “zoning and land use policies that encourage sprawling developments which force people to drive vast distances just to get to work, or buy a gallon of milk.”

At the same time, the motion recognized that there are no one-size-fits-all approaches, and that not all healthy design features will apply to every community.

A rethinking of what planning can mean to the health of communities and individuals is “actually pretty exciting,” said Susan Tae, a supervising regional planner who led the Healthy Design team for Regional Planning. “To create a more pleasant environment is to encourage a pedestrian to take a walking trip rather than jump in a car.”

(For a look at some of the guidelines the team came up with in developing the ordinance, click here. And a two-minute summary of the ordinance’s main points is here.)

Tae said other initiatives, such as the upcoming Bicycle Master Plan and a new specific plan to create a more walkable area around Gold Line stations on the 3^rd Street Corridor inEast L.A., will help move the spirit of the new ordinance forward.

Designing for health, she said, requires thinking like a walker or cyclist and constantly asking: “How do we create things at more of a pedestrian scale?”

“If it’s not comfortable,” Tae said, “then it’s not going to be used.”

Community gardens will be able to take root more easily under the new ordinance.

Posted 1/24/12

Many helped build Burden's city, including Rich Sandomeno, Alison Walker and leader Zak Cook. Photo © 2012 Museum Associates/LACMA

Chris Burden’s vast, new miniature skyline may have been one artist’s urban vision, but behind the scenes, it took a village to build “Metropolis II”.

“It was a long process—almost five years—and it took a lot of people,” says the L.A. artist on a recent morning at LACMA, straining to be heard over the din of his creation. The idea, he says, was to evoke the energy of a modern city; around him 4,400 tiny toy wheels on 1,100 toy cars whoosh around an elaborate thicket of toy skyscrapers at up to 240 scale miles per hour.

The room-sized piece, opening to the public January 14, is on long-term loan to the museum from its owner, LACMA trustee Nicolas Berggruen. A big hit in sneak peeks last month, it will be available for viewing anytime, but will only operate Fridays through Sundays, with a special showing on the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

Situated just a short walk from Burden’s iconic “Urban Light,” it is mesmerizing and frenetic, a singular vision of a way of life familiar to every visitor with a car in the parking garage of the museum. But Zak Cook, Burden’s lead engineer, says as many as eight people at a time were assigned to the project, working under the artist’s watchful eye in his rural studio in Topanga.

“In all,” he says, “probably 14 people had a hand in it.”

Hiring crews of assistants isn’t unusual for successful artists, who often need extra hands and special expertise to execute large-scale ideas. “It doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s Chris’ work,” Cook notes. “The work couldn’t exist without Chris. It could exist without me.”

Burden’s crew, like the piece, reflected Southern California:  There were two special-effects artists and two college-level art instructors, a maker of artisan snowboards, woodworkers, ceramicists and assorted masters of fine arts from UC Riverside and UCLA. One of the craftsmen on the prototype was the lead guitarist in the L.A.-based band “Dengue Fever.” Much of the infrastructure and train wiring was done by a heavy diesel mechanic-turned-jewelry-designer who was a finalist last year on Lifetime Television’s “Project Accessory.”

Some laid the Plexiglas track. Some built the dreamlike skyscrapers. Some installed the intricate floors and platforms. UC Riverside MFA Alison Walker and the “Project Accessory” finalist Rich Sandomeno came to know the piece so well that LACMA has since hired them to operate and maintain “Metropolis II” and act as a sort of pit crew.

“It was supposed to be a 9-month job and I ended up working on it for three years,” joked Sandomeno. “But it’s been so great to work with Chris and Zak and all the other artists. Besides, he adds: “When I was a kid, I loved Hot Wheels. “

The combination of Burden’s vision and all that painstaking labor is as intricate and playfully serious as art gets—a vast, buzzing skyline that has been compared to New York, L.A., “The Jetsons” and the 1939 World’s Fair. In the course of an hour, the tiny vehicles whip around the thicket of fanciful high-rises a collective 100,000 times on 18 lanes of traffic.

“It’s a city of the past and a city of the future,” says Burden. “It’s a city of the past in the sense that the cars run free, and a city of the future in their speed.”

An earlier, much smaller, version, with only about 80 cars, was built in 2004 for a Japanese museum, Burden says, “but they showed it for six months and then the museum changed direction. “ After the piece was put into storage—“all that work and then nobody got to see it”—Burden decided to make another Metropolis that would be “bigger and better.”

“Metropolis II,” however, took on a life of its own, says Burden: “I think we finished right around the time of Carmageddon. Every building took three or four months, which, I think you could build a tract house in that time.”

Cook served as general contractor for Burden’s architectural direction, working out such not-so-minor details as how to make the cars move reliably. (After much trial-and-error, Cook invented a sturdy, yet invisible, electrically powered conveyance system that hauls the toy cars uphill with magnets, like a rollercoaster, then releases them.)

Burden guided the team closely, Cook says, but also welcomed their input. Many contributed ideas for the exquisite buildings, which the team gave informal names: “AzDec Plaza” was a half-Aztec, half-Deco extravaganza contributed by Walker.  An octagonal black high rise with blue windows, built by painter and fellow MFA Greg Kozaki, was known as “DarkTower.” A beautiful blue-and-green glass tile skyscraper was dubbed “Linkous Tower” by Frank Diettinger, a mold-maker who had done special effects for films such as “Sleepy Hollow” and “Bride of Chucky”, and who wanted to honor deceased indie singer-songwriter Mark Linkous.

“Whoever built it got to name it,” says Cook, adding that there was one major exception. “There’s an Eiffel Tower-looking building made from erector set parts, with the uppermost narrow part kind of extended, and Chris named that one.”

“Yeah,” laughs Burden, “I call it ‘Viagra Tower’ because it’s too tall.”

Cook worked on the piece from its inception. Of all the team members, he acknowledges, he probably has the least artistic resume. The 42-year-old son of a former Time correspondent, he graduated from UCLA with a degree in geography and worked for several years in the consulting division of CALSTART, a Pasadena-based clean transportation consortium.

But after a trip to India in 2000, he says, he realized that he didn’t want to keep doing white papers on the environmental impact of ports and airports; he wanted to write fiction and children’s books.

In search of a day job, he got a call one day from a friend who worked for Burden’s wife and fellow artist Nancy Rubins; Burden needed someone to help restore his 1998 sculpture “Hell Gate”, a massive bridge made of erector set pieces. The friend knew that Cook had done construction work in college.

Learning on the job, Cook then went on to help Burden build several more major pieces, including Burden’s 2001 “Bateau de Guerre”, a massive battleship made of gas canisters, and his 2002 model of a British landmark, “Tyne Bridge”.

Burden jokes that Cook “was in charge of work-ethic.”

“He’s very precise and thorough,” says the artist. “I couldn’t have done this work without somebody like him.”

Cook says that now that “Metropolis II” is finished, he intends to return to his own pursuits, and maybe finally finish those children’s stories.

“Not that Chris and I would rule out working together again in the future, but, honestly, this is such a great note to go out on,” he says, watching from a balcony at LACMA as the traffic hums by in the city that he helped make.

“I don’t see how I could ever top this.”

Chris Burden with his creation, created in his Topanga workshop. Photo © 2012 Museum Associates/LACMA

Posted 1/12/12