City Scenes: Cycling L.A.'s new 6th Street Bridge (w/ video)

While I missed out on all the excitement surrounding the opening of L.A.’s new Sixth Street Viaduct back in July, I finally got to see the bridge in person during a visit to California this October. I also got to try out the city’s bike share system.

There is a Metro Bike station near the western end of the bridge at the intersection of Willow and Mateo streets. It was a typically bright and clear Monday morning, and traffic was light in this corner of the Arts District.

Traffic was light on the bridge, as well. It was almost hard to imagine the bridge crowded with revelers or subjected to “street takeovers” as it had been in the weeks following its opening. The structure’s broad, bright surface seemed to shimmer in the sunlight, and in a state of quiet that was only occasionally interrupted by passing vehicles.

Much of the discourse around the bridge’s opening this summer focused on the unruly appropriations of this new urban space and on how to maintain an uninterrupted traffic flow. I noted that the speed humps which had been touted as a quick-fix solution for stopping road racing on the bridge have not been installed.

Another strand of discourse placed blame for the unanticipated disruption not on the “unruly” bridge users but rather on the designers and planners whose ingrained transit biases and myopic mobility visions laid the foundation for an emergent repurposing of the infrastructure that was ultimately inevitable rather than unexpected. The L.A. Times editorial board barely stopped short of invoking the Lefebvrian “right to the city” in calling for a vision of public space oriented around people rather than vehicles. My own urbanist inclinations are entirely in agreement with this rhetoric. Having now seen the bridge in person, however, I have to say that I quite like the new Sixth Street Viaduct. The bridge may not represent anything revolutionary, nor does it offer a bold new vision for urban space, but for what it is I found it to be accessible enough for pedestrians and cyclists, while offering expansive views of the river and downtown skyline. Even the bike lanes, which the Times editorial derided for being insufficiently “protected” from traffic, offer a better sense of separation from the road relative to what I’ve seen in U.S. cities.

On the bridge’s aesthetic features my feelings are more ambivalent. The concrete surface conveys the sense that the bridge is merely an extension of L.A.’s sprawling freeway network, and the canted arches smack of the sort of cosmopolitan “starchitecture” that renders all spaces in a homogenizing image of sameness. I am also preferential to the original bridge design and was in favor of the early proposals that the replacement viaduct be designed as a replica of the former structure (the preservation of historic and landmark architecture is one of the issues that brings out my conservative side). Regardless, I enjoyed my brief time on the bridge. I also unconsciously recreated my GTA avatar’s 6th St Bridge photo from back in August:

Here’s some video I shot during my bridge crossings:

L.A's 6th Street Bridge, startup shutdowns, bumpy roads

Last month the city of Los Angeles celebrated the opening of the new 6th Street Viaduct bridge. The new structure replaces the original 6th Street bridge, an iconic landmark that spanned the L.A. river, connected downtown to Boyle Heights, and appeared in numerous films and other media. The original bridge was constructed in 1932 and demolished in 2016 due to structural problems.

The fanfare around the viaduct’s opening was quickly replaced by media coverage of illegal activity and street takeovers bringing traffic across the span to a standstill. In addition to reported road races, spinouts, and wheelie exhibitions, the new bridge was soon employed for a variety of unintended uses:

Video on social media from last weekend showed drivers spinning their wheels and performing other antics on the bridge, leaving the pavement scarred. Some people even crawled onto the ribbon-like arches that line the bridge to get elevated views of the action. Other isolated incidents have included a man getting a haircut in the middle of the bridge last Wednesday and another shadow boxing while wearing a red cape.

Reading about the commotion – and the flurry of responses – from afar, I was tempted to catch a flight to L.A. for a first-person perspective of the proceedings before the proposed preventive measures could be implemented (I had to settle for visiting the virtual ghost of the original bridge in Grand Theft Auto V, see photo above). The new 6th Street Viaduct, the disputes over its utilization, and the discourse around the controversy represent a confluence of urban communication issues. In the first month of its opening, the bridge has supported a communicative convergence of contrasting visions of city form and function.

On one hand is the bridge as symbol, as a medium for communicating urban identity and values. In response to the “unruly” behavior overtaking the new viaduct Los Angeles city council member Kevin de León highlighted the bridge’s symbolic function as an iconic landmark communicating an elite cosmopolitan status:

He predicted the bridge would become as famous as Griffith Park Observatory and Venice Beach. “We do have a new star in town,” he said. “It’s something all Angelenos deserve. This would be a symbolic icon for not just the region ... but for the entire world.”

This perspective attests to the role of iconic architecture (or “starchitecture”) for communicating urban distinction and “world city” status, as well as acting as lightning rods for attracting additional investment. But other Angelenos see the new bridge as symbolic of the attendant processes of gentrification. As stated in one community organizer’s account:

I begin to explain once again that the new Sixth Street Bridge Project is often hated for the wrong reasons. Though mostly because many people are quite convinced that this new bridge is a symbol of gentrification and displacement of a culture-rich community. And its hard to see how not to get that impression, given the characteristics of this project and the inequity in the end results.

From this perspective the viaduct is not merely a route for moving traffic between downtown and Boyle Heights but is a corridor for carrying capital into new extractive territories.

Beyond the bridge’s symbolic status as communication medium, the material form of the viaduct also functions as an infrastructure, not only for traversal but for expression. The aforementioned councilmember de León has targeted graffiti on the new bridge, asking the city council to allocate additional funds for graffiti removal.

The proposal to clean up graffiti passed 3-1 after De Leon and San Fernando Valley area City Councilman John Lee got into a debate, with Lee saying that spending that kind of money downtown takes funding away from other districts in Los Angeles that are trying to clean up their own local graffiti.

De León’s comments advocating for residents to take “collective responsibility as stewards of the bridge” moved beyond graffiti to the range of behaviors by which individuals were using the bridge to get their fifteen minutes of fame:

De León urged people to “step up and do everything within our power to make sure that we don’t allow a small group of individuals that are looking for their virtual fame to go viral on Instagram, TikTok or Facebook or Twitter — whatever it may be, for them to hijack the bridge that ultimately, at the end of the day, is the people’s bridge. This bridge belongs to everybody.”

There’s a lot to unpack here. De León’s emphasis on collective responsibility and assertion that “the bridge belongs to everybody” are ripe for analysis, but in the particular context of graffiti I can’t help but think of Richard Sennett. Sennett’s prolific career of urbanist writings began with the influential articulation of the “uses of disorder” for city life. In later writings Sennett addressed graffiti with a somewhat ambivalent attitude (to my reading anyway) that viewed it as a form of private address indifferent to the general urban public, and expression of an “aggressive” relation to the environment.

But De León also references the role of mediation in drawing crowds to the bridge, particularly the influence of social media. In our mediated era the opening of a new urban landmark offers an occasion not only for individual exploration but for seizing the novel infrastructure as a platform for creating “content” to add to the endlessly circulating stream of online images. The ever proliferating ways in which urban environments are mediated represent a wrinkle in Sennett’s theories of disorder and individual expression, as social media participation has incentivized new ways of relating to the urban environment.

A letter to the editor published in the July 27th Los Angeles Times shifted blame for the bridge chaos away from the unruly individuals taking over the traverse to the designers of the new viaduct who “forgot to include human beings” in their plans:

The resulting design was full of what engineers call “affordances” — design aspects that vividly suggest how an object or space should be used. They invite (afford) an almost inevitable human response: An elevator button affords you to push it, a chair’s design affords you to sit on it (or avoid it), and wide-open lanes afford teenage boys the irresistible impulse to drag-race.

The letter writer is evincing a perspective of spatial determinism that closely accords with Keller Easterling’s writings on medium design, and echoes insights of many antecedent urbanists. The same day the letter was published the Times editorial board issued a statement that expressed similar sentiments:

Instead, focus on the crowds of pedestrians, cyclists, skateboarders, Instagrammers who’ve flocked to the bridge and made it their own. Despite less than ideal conditions (the speeding cars and the flimsy “protected” bicycle lanes), the 6th Street Viaduct has become a spot for family strolls, bike rides, scenic views, even quinceañera photos and a podcast recording. This is no mere roadway connecting Boyle Heights and downtown. It’s an opportunity to rethink L.A. transportation infrastructure and public space. The viaduct was built for cars, but it should be reclaimed for people.

Again, the editors advance a vision of public space that is designed for people rather than cars, an argument that has a long history in American urban planning. They also come close to positing a Lefebvrian call for a right to the city. The statement closes by imagining the possibilities for the new bridge that goes beyond its exchange value as a symbolic icon to its latent use value as a cultural space:

Imagine having a safe, beautiful connection between the two communities. The first chaotic weeks of the new 6th Street Viaduct could turn into a rare and wonderful opportunity. The bridge is already a visual landmark. What if it became a cultural landmark as well — marking the beginning of a new era in Los Angeles, one that elevates people over cars.

The quick-fix solutionist strategies that were proposed (and possibly already implemented as of this writing) to restore order on the viaduct were predictable: speed bumps in the traffic lanes and additional fencing along the bridge sides. These “solutions” are just an extension of both defensive architecture in urban space and myopic mobility approaches. The new 6th Street Viaduct is an event, a new urban space that has already changed the urban landscape and altered the Los Angeles skyline. But the discursive space that its reception has opened reveals the broader scope of its transformative potential.

Road Blocks: Mobility & Sidewalk Accessibility in Pittsburgh's South Side

When I moved to Pittsburgh’s South Side last summer I found it to be a dramatically different experience compared to my years living in the city’s East End neighborhoods. Most notably the entirety of South Side Flats seemed imminently accessible, with the major thoroughfare and commercial core of East Carson Street providing a walkable central corridor through the dense and dynamic neighborhood. I also immediately took advantage of the neighborhood’s unique mobility infrastructure including the nearby river trail, dedicated bike lanes, and ample neighborways. However, for the past several months more and more of my daily traversals through the neighborhood have featured scenes like the one pictured in the above photo.

Pennsylvania publications recently marked the beginning of “PennDOT construction season” with the release of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s 2022 budget. But here in the South Side it has felt like an uninterrupted construction season from last fall all through the winter. Some of this has to do with an apparent modernization project that has been taking place all along Carson Street: a block-by-block construction effort that has seen the upgrading of street corners to feature more even pavement and new curb ramps, as well as the installation of new traffic lights. In the photo above you can see a newly-installed yet-to-be activated traffic light alongside an existing fixture.

The above photo shows the view of Carson at 23rd Street as seen from my apartment. The median embankment was constructed last fall. You can still see the faded paint lines of the crosswalk that enabled protected traversal over Carson until it was disrupted by the new median. There is now a crosswalk that allows pedestrian traffic to continue along Carson across the South Side terminus of the Birmingham bridge, however this crosswalk wasn’t constructed until a couple of months after the original crosswalk was disrupted. Accordingly, for several weeks pedestrians on this block were confronted with the dilemma of either forging into traffic to navigate the newly impeded crosswalk, or doubling-back to cross over at the end of the block. From my vantage point I watched as numerous pedestrians – including people in wheelchairs or using crutches – opted to step into the line of traffic in order to continue their progress.

The road work along Carson and adjoining streets has been incessant for the past many months. Although I am free of physical impairment and able to negotiate these disruptions with relative ease, I have been frequently frustrated by my inability to to maintain uninterrupted progress in my journeys and particularly mindful of the inconveniences experienced by people with lesser mobility than myself.

Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure was founded in 2017 under the Peduto administration. From my perspective, the department’s title and mission statement have always reflected a capacious understanding of “mobility” that not only considers the needs of physical movement but also attends to the broader spectrum of social and economic mobility. There is much about the DOMI mission and purview that I support. As stated on the department’s website, DOMI evinces several “mobility principles.” One of these principles is that “all trips less than 1 mile are easily and enjoyably achieved by non-vehicle travel.” After months of mounting frustrations with my own daily peregrinations, I decided to document a short and simple journey that I make on a weekly basis in order to illustrate how my experience falls short of DOMI’s stated goals.

The nearest grocery store to me is only 0.3 miles from my apartment (one of the many mobility advantages that I have enjoyed in this neighborhood). I make the trek to the grocery once a week, traveling on foot. For the past several months my travel along this route has been fraught with impasses and obstructions. So I documented my experience last week in order to illustrate the degree of difficulties encountered during a single, simple journey. All of the following photos were captured last Saturday, April 2nd. It is worth noting that the various hindrances documented herein stem from a variety of sources: not only city projects but also private construction. Furthermore, the street closures and sidewalk disruptions along Carson and adjoining streets are subject to rapid change from day to day, however they have been a persistent presence in aggregate for several months. These pictures are therefore indicative of the range of obstacles to mobility and accessibility encountered during a short walking journey on a recent afternoon.

Upon leaving my apartment I head east along Carson Street following the most direct route to the grocery store. I encounter my first obstacle as soon as I reach the end of the block: the sidewalk on the opposite side of 24th Street is inaccessible.

It may be hard to believe, but this configuration is actually more forgiving than it had been in the past. For several weeks previous the fencing extended all the way to the edge of the sidewalk, forcing persistent pedestrians to step out into the street to continue their travels. The fencing has recently been moved toward the mid-point of the sidewalk, however the placement of temporary signage and permanent presence of light poles and trees makes this sliver of sidewalk treacherous for any traveler, not to mention unsurpassable for individuals using wheelchairs or other mobility aids.

So, stymied at the very first street crossing along my journey, I turn right on 24th Street. The next potential passageway that would enable me to continue toward my destination is Carey Way, an alleyway that bisects the block. However, due to this building construction that has enveloped the entire area, the alley is also blocked off. So I continue to Sarah Street, only to find that the sprawling construction has also claimed the sidewalk on this side of the block.

As I’ve been doing for the past three months or so that his fencing has eliminated the sidewalk, I travel into the street to circumvent the obstruction, hewing as close as possible to the chain-link barrier and hoping that approaching vehicles offer ample leeway as they pass. After negotiating the lane of oncoming traffic and navigating around the parked cars that stand between me and the curb, I am back on the sidewalk. This reprieve is short-lived, however, as halfway down the 2500 block of Sarah Street there is a sudden interruption of the sidewalk in front of a house that is being renovated.

I carefully tread along the narrow berm of the curb with arms outstretched, like a gymnast traversing a balance beam, and continue my harrowing journey to the market. Thankfully there are no major obstacles for the remainder of my transit (if we are overlooking the radically uneven sidewalks along Sarah Street, where the alternating concrete and brick surfaces are routinely broken up by the subterranean courses of tree routes). Finally I arrive at the grocery and complete my shopping for the week. For the journey home I have no desire to retread the hazardous path that brought me here, so I eschew the Sarah Street exit and depart from the Carson Street entrance instead. Immediately upon exiting the store I am confronted with a construction sign admonishing me to cross the street, as the sidewalk up ahead is apparently closed.

However, upon turning right to follow the direction indicated by the arrow on the “sidewalk closed” sign, I see that the opposite corner is itself inaccessible, cordoned off by construction cones and temporary barriers.

Unable to follow the construction sign’s directive to cross the street, I continue along Carson Street back toward home. Sure enough, at the end of the block the way becomes impassable.

As you can see in this photo, every corner of this intersection was marred by construction impediments.

Once again I venture into the street and precariously brave oncoming traffic, having been left with no other viable alternatives along my route. I make it only to the end of the next block before encountering the next roadblock.

Again stepping off the curb into the street, I walk around these obstructions to return to the initial obstacles that I first encountered along my short journey.

These photos attest to the wildly inaccessible conditions that I encountered during a very short walk on a recent weekend afternoon. In stark contrast to DOMI’s mobility principles, this 0.3 mile journey was far from easily and enjoyably achieved. As mentioned earlier, this snapshot of a recent afternoon captures street conditions that have been rapidly and continuously fluctuating, and indicate both private and city construction projects. However, what I believe these photos make abundantly clear is that the sidewalk conditions in South Side have been absurdly inconsistent, and the maintenance and mobility and accessibility in this neighborhood has fallen far short of reasonable standards.

The Fair City part 1: Aesthetics of Urban Order and Justice

In his book The Uses of Disorder, Richard Sennett valorizes the uncontrolled events and heterogeneous populations of cities as creating environmental conditions necessary for healthy personal development and the maturation of open and engaged worldviews. Published in 1970, the then 25-year-old Sennett was writing in the immediate wake of urban riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In the book, Sennett is primarily concerned with the negative effects of white flight from urban cores, and the proliferation of comparatively homogenous suburban developments and “gate communities”. For Sennett, encounters with the difference and “disorder” found in a thriving urban center are essential for personal development, helping citizens learn to live a balanced life and develop nuanced political views. The notion of disorder that Sennett emphasizes is directly drawn from the social pathology literature of the time. Rather than pathologizing these elements of urban life, Sennett conceptualizes diversity and difference as vital components of the urban experience. Disorder, Sennett argues, is an essential and productive element of city life.

Discourses based on a dichotomy of order and disorder have long been applied to urban spaces. Cities and citizens have been “ordered” not only through planning schemes and infrastructure, but also through public policies and discourses. Through employing the language of disorder, these discourses have functioned pathologically to conceptualize certain citizens, spaces, and practices as either harmful or beneficial. At times it is urban residents themselves that are considered “disorderly,” based on predominating perspectives of the “good city” and the “good citizen”. In other cases it is the urban environment itself that is deemed “disorderly”. Visible litter, graffiti, and buildings in disrepair are common examples of physical disorder in city spaces. Sometimes, it is the present of certain people that makes the environment disorderly, as has recently been the attitude taken toward the visibly homeless in U.S. cities.

Many notable urban theorists have expressed the importance of social justice in urban life. Authors such as Sennett, David Harvey, and Susan Fainstein have written about justice in the city as well as the search for “the just city.” In his classic book Social Justice and the City, David Harvey writes “the shaping of space which goes on in architecture and, therefore, in the city is symbolic of our aspirations, our needs, and our fears” (p. 31). This notion serves as the foundation for Harvey’s investigation into the relationship between urban development and social justice. For Harvey and related scholars, the city has served as a useful unit of analysis for both the examination of and the intervention into visible disparities and social injustice.

These two perspectives on cities, of cities as disorderly spaces and of cities as representative of social justice, are linked through their attention to aesthetic concerns. In On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry considers the etymological link between beauty and justice: fairness:

A single word, “fairness,” is used both in referring to loveliness of countenance and in referring to the ethical requirement for “being fair,” “playing fair,” and “fair distribution.” One might suppose that “fairness as an ethical principle had come not from the adjective for comely beauty but instead from the wholly distinct noun for the yearly agricultural fair, the “periodical gathering of buyers and sellers.” (loc 827)

A key constituent of both notions of fairness, Scarry notes, is symmetry. She cites John Rawls’ definition of fairness as “symmetry of everyone’s relations to each other” to further emphasize this connection. Balance and symmetrical distribution is an ideal for both aesthetic beauty and social justice. Cities have often served as sites where social inequality is made visible, as unequal development and distribution of resources is set in stone. This essay argues that this link between aesthetic awareness and social justice is an important aspect of the urban experience, and that cities are particularly adept environments for cultivating both values.

The first section of this essay focuses on scholarly discourses of the city and how they influenced regimes of urban planning and governance. Particular attention is paid to the social scientific approaches developed in the early 20th century that developed into the “social pathology” perspective of U.S. sociology and political administration. The second section presents a case study of the “broken windows perspective” in urban studies and governance. This case demonstrates how aesthetic evaluations have served to promote regimes of urban policing and criminal justice. The third section considers the current trend in U.S. cities of gentrification and displacement as it relates to these concerns with urban aesthetics and social justice.

References

Fainstein, Susan S. The Just City. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010.

Harvey, David. Social Justice and the City. REV - Revised. Vol. 1. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009.

Sennett, Richard. The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity & City Life. [1st ed.]. New York: Knopf, 1970.

Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1999.