Finding a Heart: the L.A. River

Rome, one of the West’s oldest cities, and Los Angeles, one of its youngest major cities, share a lost opportunity. Neither has capitalized on the enormous potential of the rivers that run through them, but both now realize that reconnecting their rivers and cities can bring enormous benefits. Other great cities, such as Paris, London, Shanghai and Boston, use their rivers as central features to organize their urban space and promote civic life.

Rome and Los Angeles share another condition; each is subject to occasional but devastating floods. Rome channeled the Tiber in the 1870s. In 1930, the Olmsted brothers and Bartholomew Associates mapped out 200 miles of parkways and boulevards along the Los Angeles River. However, a major flood in 1938 wiped out this vision and instead caused planners to realign the river and construct the ugly concrete flood channel that we see today.

Earlier this year, I was in Rome doing independent study as a fellow at the American Academy. As I have long espoused a “greenway concept” for Los Angeles that uses the L.A. River as a key corridor, I studied the Tiber River because there are numerous parallels. Many of the strategies that I recommended for the Tiber are equally applicable here.

* Link the river to a regional open space network that ties together existing parks, natural reserves, plazas and gardens. The network should also utilize rights of way, including rail and power line easements, river tributaries and the river itself.

* Focus attention and resources on areas in which we can make the biggest difference.

In Rome, there are three bends in the river that played a critical role in the city’s history; these became my prime focus. Los Angeles needs to identify its key locations. These include not only historic sites but also available land adjacent to and accessible from central city neighborhoods in need of recreational space. One such site is along the Long Beach Freeway north of where the Rio Hondo joins the Los Angeles River.

* Identify potential sites along the river where new public and private development can occur. Here, we have already begun with plans for state parks at two locations near downtown: Taylor Yard and the Cornfield.

Additionally, cultural and housing developments are naturals that could sit on terraces overlooking the river. Among my study’s visions for sites along the Tiber in Rome are a new opera house, convention center, hotel complex, marina and parks.

* Develop a system of bike and walking paths that follows the banks of the river. Bike pathways already exist along portions of the Tiber embankment. In Los Angeles, we could use the service road along the embankment to connect existing bikeways.

* Preserve and restore the natural habitat along the river. Within Rome’s downtown, the river is mostly walled, but the riverbed is natural earth. Native trees and riparian growth are found in riverside parks just outside the core area.

The Tiber is one of the only continuous “natural” landscaped features within Rome, a city known for its hard-surfaced plazas. In L.A., natural habitats can be found in the Whittier Narrows and Sepulveda Basin, but others could be created at places like Taylor Yard.

* Improve the quality of the river water by capturing the trash that runs to the ocean during rainstorms and by establishing better river management to stop polluters. Water quality is central to the futures of both rivers as recreational resources.

Naturally, we still must make provision for flood protection. Wholesale removal of the flood walls in both cities is impossible without a major change to water flows. In Rome we recommended that some flood walls be reduced by as much as seven feet while still maintaining flood protection.

Tempering or reconfiguring the flood walls in Los Angeles is also important if we are to “naturalize” the river course. A large percentage of Angelenos come from cultures with long-standing traditions of active use of public open space -- the promenade, the square and the park. Only 4% of Los Angeles’ surface area is devoted to parks, compared with Boston and San Francisco, more than 9% each; Seattle, 13%; and New York, 17%.

The Friends of the Los Angeles River are working to call attention to our city’s most underused resource. The City Council has formed a committee to create a master plan for the revitalization of the river. This is exciting progress.

It may take us 100 years to recapture our river and make it the heart of the city. Rome is just getting started after 2,800 years.