Tag Archives: LA

Announcing LA Great Streets Challenge Grant Winners: 8 Ways LA’s Great Streets are getting even greater!

This morning, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the eight winners of the Great Streets Initiative’s Challenge Grant,  a partnership between LA Great Streets and ioby that   challenges  citizens to re-imagine their city’s streets as vibrant public spaces.

These winning applicants  are being awarded up to $10,000 in city funding , and  have the opportunity to raise additional funding on ioby – up to $10,000 of the funds they raise will be matched dollar-for-dollar through the Great Streets initiative—that’s a potential total of $30,000 per project!

Out of scores of great entries, eight winning projects were selected earlier this   month. They’re a diverse lot, but every project incorporates aspects of community engagement, data collection, creativity, and long-term impact.

Greatstreets_tile

We’ll be featuring their  individual stories on our blog next month. In the meantime, and in no particular order, here’s a brief rundown of all of them:

  • The Arid Lands Institute’s Connect the Dots project will bring citizens together to envision Van Nuys Boulevard between Victory and Oxnard as a culturally and environmentally resilient Great Street, especially concerning “optimized hydrologic function” for this drought-prone area.
  • Through [[RE]] VISIT [[RE]] SEDA, the Northridge Chamber of Commerce will encourage performers and participants to rethink the traditional streetscape on a corridor of Reseda Boulevard as a performance space, art gallery, cinema—and more.
  • Pacoima Beautiful will build off the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s “People St” program to pay homage to local DIY placemaking efforts by formalizing and propagating them on Van Nuys between Laurel Canyon and Bradley Avenue.
  • With its Make It Mar Vista Small Business Saturday event, the Mar Vista Chamber of Commerce will invite all Angelenos to interact with local businesses, artists, and each other for a day of true community engagement along the Great Street of Venice Boulevard.
  • The National Health Foundation will organize a Complete Streets Pop‑Up event on Central Avenue in South L.A. that will engage youth as community ambassadors to demonstrate and implement innovative and healthy interventions along the corridor.
  • Street Beats is the Community Health Councils’ day-long, collaborative, outdoor event to help bring safety improvements and quality streetscape amenities to Crenshaw Boulevard in Hyde Park.
  • The North Figueroa Association will produce FIG JAM, a free, family‑friendly, educational, and cultural event that will honor the neighborhood’s rich heritage while creating buzz for its promising future.
  • Multicultural Communities for Mobility’s Cesar Chavez Complete Street Demonstration will create a vibrant corridor in Boyle Heights with improved multi‑modal safety and healthy lifestyle streetscape amenities, and will include an economic lift from within the community itself.

Great Streets projects

More about the Great Streets Initiative

LA’s   Great Streets Initiative launched in October 2013 to help reimagine the city’s neighborhood centers, one main street at a time. Streets are the backbones of neighborhoods: the places where we live, work, learn, and play on a daily basis. Mayor Eric Garcetti believes that great neighborhoods deserve Great Streets that are livable, accessible, and engaging for all the people who live and work around them. And ioby agrees!

Read more on Tumblr and Twitter, and check out highlights from a related series of events held this past May, called #EyesonTheStreetLA, that celebrated life on the streets of Los Angeles.