Aug. 10, 2025 3 AM PT
We requested L.A. Instances readers: “Thinking ahead to 2050, how might you reconfigure the city so it is a sustainable home for everyone?” Here’s a sampling of their feedback:
Use the Chicago riverfront, residences, structure, and so on., as your instance. We may have a thriving inexperienced area with the L.A. River, bike paths, neighborhood parks, gardens, and so on.
Los Angeles is aware of tips on how to climate a disaster — or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to construct a metropolis for everybody.
Go worldwide and use Florence or Tokyo as your examples. Enact lovely single-stair buildings, public artwork, clear sidewalks and streets which are protected within the metropolis price range, and dependable automated trains that run each 4 minutes so folks don’t really feel trapped by their vehicles.
Our legislators should enact public coverage and alter their cities for the higher. As an alternative, the L.A. Metropolis Council permits a literal grime area behind Metropolis Corridor for use for random occasions as an alternative of latest housing or a shared, protected public park.
— Rachel Smith
I might put an emphasis on clear air in each public area. Whether or not the priority is viruses or wildfire smoke or the rest, no public area ought to have poor air high quality. We have to be monitoring air high quality ranges in all public areas and placing in applicable air filtration.
The Pacific Palisades home is clad in fiber cement. The roof is manufactured from fireproof TPO (thermoplastic polyolefin), the deck is made with specifically handled wooden for fireplace resistance and a fireplace suppression system behind the home sprayed fireplace retardant onto the vegetation.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Instances)
— Annette Majerowicz
I don’t reside there, however hope to retire there. I need walkable areas with maintained sidewalks and shade.
— Cindy Riachi
The time has lastly come for Los Angeles to construct up in earnest. The city sprawl that has come to outline the town has now change into one among its greatest threats. One estimate is that in the USA, one in 4 new houses are inbuilt areas vulnerable to wildfires and an estimated 95% of wildfires in California are “man-made.” This existential query has largely been unaddressed up to now 25 years, particularly because the area has caught to its formulation of rising communities additional outwards.
Now we discover a area that has begun to stagnate as fires proceed to pound on its doorways and its residents are questioning their future and security there, all of the whereas preventing rising costs.
There may be a lot alternative that comes with increase, the power to reshape the town, carry forth excessive density, sustainable, residential buildings that may alleviate the housing disaster and even scale back site visitors as some research have proven. An emphasis on land administration and parks can open up metropolis areas whereas defending it from the specter of wildfires.
— Matthew Perez
For the love of God, can we simply get some bike lanes?
— Evan Gillespie
Landscaping? Sure, however be certain that it’s drought-tolerant and geographically applicable.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Instances)
To rework Los Angeles right into a sustainable and equitable metropolis by 2050, we’d like a holistic strategy that addresses local weather challenges whereas fostering neighborhood well-being. My imaginative and prescient is rooted in structure, landscaping, neighborhood planning and inclusive design practices.
Resilient Structure and Housing: Buildings have to be designed to face up to the rising menace of wildfires and different climate-related occasions. This implies utilizing fire-resistant supplies, integrating inexperienced roofs for pure cooling and air high quality, and designing adaptable, modular buildings that may be rapidly reconfigured or relocated if wanted. Housing must be dense however human-scaled, with versatile areas that accommodate altering household buildings and neighborhood wants.
Sustainable Landscaping and City Ecology: Landscaping in 2050 Los Angeles will transfer away from water-intensive practices, embracing native, drought-tolerant crops that assist native biodiversity. City forests will play an important position in lowering warmth islands, whereas neighborhood gardens and concrete farms will change into integral to neighborhood id, offering each meals safety and inexperienced area.
Linked and Local weather-Aware Neighborhoods: To reduce automotive dependency, neighborhoods can be designed as walkable, bike-friendly hubs that blend housing, workspaces, and leisure areas. Public transportation can be built-in seamlessly into these communities, encouraging energetic mobility and lowering emissions. We’ll rethink zoning to permit for extra live-work areas, eliminating lengthy commutes and fostering native economies.
Neighborhood-Centered Planning: Planning can be community-driven, prioritizing fairness by involving residents in decision-making processes. Every neighborhood will develop its personal id and goal — some specializing in water administration and remedy, others on city agriculture or neighborhood power manufacturing. This localized strategy will construct social cohesion whereas addressing particular local weather challenges.
Welcoming and Inclusive City Cloth: By 2050, Los Angeles will embrace its various inhabitants by valuing abilities and contributions from all residents, together with immigrants. Tailored housing and assist programs will guarantee nobody lives on the streets, and public areas can be accessible and inclusive
May AI robots decide up all our trash sooner or later?
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Instances)
— Ena (Ana) Yanchapaxi
Cease catering to builders, massive firms and monopolies. We have to prioritize residents and companies so folks can keep domestically.
— Josh Walters
*Use AI Robots to choose up and arrange all trash 24/7.
*Double-decker gentle rail on the ten and 405, 105, 101, 5. Put gentle rail on each main east to west artery.
*Shut all oil refineries
*Transfer the airport outdoors the town.
*Make coastal areas into large wetland / chaparral ecosystems.
*Return Altadena and Pacific Palisades right into a chaparral ecosystem.
*Increase sidewalks / pedestrian entry; create plazas to extend walkability.
*Cut back water imports to assist the remainder of California and make it extra immune to local weather change.
*Create extra freeway overpasses for wildlife.
*Change gasoline stations with state-run electrical charging stations
*Fruit bushes all through the town
*Dense communal residing choices.
Plant extra fruit bushes? Why not?
(Jeanette Marantos / Los Angeles Instances)
— Matt Ceran
Repeal and part out Prop. 13, and rezone a lot of the metropolis so we are able to construct multi-family housing, extra walkable communities. Simply construct extra housing and see how a majority of the town’s issues will diminish or disappear altogether. Oh, and plant extra bushes. I feel it’s a tragedy that the town with probably the most unbelievable climate on the earth was made so un-walkable.
— Michele Medina
Los Angeles must rethink its car-first historical past before everything if we’re ever going to make inroads towards a extra sustainable future. Preventing continuously for higher public transit is the simple reply as we see Metro working in new initiatives, however there additionally must be a hyper-local push towards sensible density, advocating for extra walkable neighborhoods, fewer single-family housing developments, and fully redesigning cities and cities so of us can entry what they want while not having to drive all over the place.
— Charles Vignola
I feel Los Angeles must make extra space for folks and nature, and fewer for vehicles. Tons of residences all over the place, bike and bus lanes, trains, and parks. Plenty of that’s exhausting, small work you see on a neighborhood scale, however there’s one massive venture I’d wish to see: burying the 101 and constructing a linear park within the Cahuenga Move. This is able to give extra folks entry to an enormous park, scale back automotive air pollution, and supply secure passage for mountain lions to cross into Griffith Park. The views of the valley and the basin can be spectacular, and it might be a refuge, a reconstruction of the traditional Tongva strolling path.
— Jonathan Eby
