WATER IN LA: Surfurbia and The LA River

Friday, April 3 at 7PM

The county of Los Angeles is home to 70 miles of coastline and 51 miles of river pathway. Los Angeles has had, and still has, a complex

relationship with its waters: From the beaches— or Surfurbia, one of Reyner’s Banham’s Four Ecologies of Los Angeles— to the

concrete channels of the LA River, to the recurring challenge of drought in California. How do we negotiate today the channelization

of the LA River that changed the urban landscape decades ago? What revitalization efforts will change the future landscape? How do we

confront the privatization vs public access of beachfront territory? As LA is surrounded by water, how do we grapple with an ongoing

lack of potable, usable water?

Panelists: Benjamin Ball, Daveed Kapoor, Elizabeth Timme
Moderated by Madelyn Glickfeld

 

AUTOPIA

Saturday, April 4 at 12PM

Los Angeles has long been a city vehemently loved and hated for its automobile-centric culture. The urban planning of the city in the

twentieth century saw little priority given to a larger network of accessible highways as well as viable public transportation infrastructure.

While even Frank Lloyd Wright considered the vehicle a means of freedom and even a new concept of space, others would argue that the

ramifications extend past bad traffic: isolationism, a lack of city center. This discussion will look into different cultural and political

views of The Automobile in Los Angeles, recent transformations and goals of public transportation developments, and both the history and

future possibilities of urban planning and policy regarding transportation.

Panelists: Marco Anderson, Matt Benjamin, Deborah Murphy, Kati Rubinyi

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‘Water in LA’ Bios:

+ Benjamin Ball is one half of Ball-Nogues Studio (established 2004), an integrated design and fabrication practice operating in a territory

between architecture, art, and industrial design. Together with Gaston Nogues, the studio’s work is informed by the exploration of craft and

essential to each project is the “design” of the production process itself. The Studio has exhibited at major institutions, including MOCA Los Angeles;

the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Guggenheim Museum; PS1; the LACMA; the Venice Biennale; the Hong Kong | Shenzhen Biennale; and the

Beijing Biennale. In 2007, the Studio was the winner of the Museum of Modern Art PS1 Young Architects Program Competition and their work is part

of the permanent collections of both MoMA and LACMA.  Benjamin and Gaston have taught in the graduate architecture programs at SCI-Arc, UCLA,

and USC. Their work has appeared in a variety of publications including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Architectural Record,

Artforum, Icon, Log, Architectural Digest, Mark and Sculpture.

 

+ Daveed Kapoor has practiced architecture, development and construction in Los Angeles since 2000, and has completed over 70 commissions in

California. In 2005, he founded utopiad.org, a land development, placemaking and architecture collective focused on creating space that improves the

quality of people’s lives. Utopiad has designed, permitted and constructed multiple housing, hospitality, live/work, and manufacturing places in Los Angeles,

Santa Monica and San Francisco. He commutes by foot or bicycle and is a transit advocate that has implemented bus stops, bike lanes, bus only lanes,

parklets and pedestrian upgrades. Daveed serves on the Los Angeles Walks steering committee.

 

+ Elizabeth Timme is the director and co-founder of LA Màs, working on projects that look critically at systemic problems and provide solutions based

on research and community engagement. Primarily using alternative models of social inclusion and collaboration to shape the future of equitable city growth.

Elizabeth is an Adjunct Professor at Woodbury University’s ACE Center, in addition to serving on the re-code LA team, a comprehensive revision of the

zoning code for the City of Los Angeles.

 

+ Madelyn Glickfeld is the Assistant Director for Outreach and Strategic Initiatives for the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (IoES)

and was named the Director of the UCLA Water Resources Group at the IoES in 2012. Madelyn connects diverse faculty expert in water across the campus

for interdiciplinary research, as well as connecting UCLA with other experts across Southern Califonia. She is currently following and reporting on the

California drought and its consequences, working on issues of drinking water for disadvantaged communities and other research projects to understand the

governance of imported and local water sources in the Urban Los Angeles Region. She has been a member of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control

Board since 2008.

 

‘AUTOPIA’ Bios:
+ Marco Anderson is a senior regional planner with the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). He currently works in the

Sustainability Department integrating land use and transportation policy. Marco is the project manager for the SCAG Electric Vehicle Program,

the SoCal Clean Cities Coalition Coordinator, and the lead on the Sustainability Planning Grant Program.  For the previous five years he was a

grant manager for over twenty five SCAG-funded local land use studies, and lead the Toolbox Tuesdays program of training sessions for planners

from the SCAG region.

 

+ Matt Benjamin has approached transportation planning from a variety of perspectives, both as a user and through his work in the public, non-profit

and private sectors.  He lived in LA without owning a car for nearly a decade, using his feet, bicycle, bus, rail and car share. Serving as the first

Planning and Policy Director of the LA County Bicycle Coalition, Matt played a key role in growing  the region’s most visible active transportation

advocacy organization. Since 2007, Matt has worked full-time in the private sector, where he led some of the region’s most complex and controversial

active transportation planning projects including the City of Los Angeles Bicycle Plan.  Matt has also worked as a consultant in New Orleans where he

injected analysis of transportation affordability into the study of the post-Katrina housing market. Matt currently leads the active transportation

planning practice for Fehr & Peers in Southern California.

 

+ Deborah Murphy serves as an Urban Design/Planning and Grant Preparation consultant to Metro; the cities of Los Angeles, West Hollywood,

Santa Monica and Long Beach; and non-profits including Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, Los Angeles River

Revitalization Corporation, the Eco-Rapid Transit Authority, the Playhouse District Association, East Los Angeles Community Corporation, Little Tokyo

Service Center, the Warner Center Association and the Trust for Public Land.  Deborah has facilitated the successful award of over $85 million in grant

funds for new parks/open space and pedestrian/bicycle/transit improvements. In her efforts to make Los Angeles more walkable, she founded a pedestrian

advocacy organization, Los Angeles Walks, is the Chair of the City of Los Angeles Pedestrian Advisory Committee, a member of the Green LA Coalition

Living Streets Initiative, a board member of the Streetsblog Los Angeles and has conducted Walkabouts in Hollywood, Glassell Park/Cypress Park and

Downtown Pasadena. She also teaches part time at Cal Poly Pomona.

 

+ Kati Rubinyi is a consultant in sustainable mobility planning and project development.  Kati is a research and development innovator who brings a

design approach to planning and project integration. Before starting her firm Civic Projects, she had a proven track record in creative urban planning for

municipal clients. Kati initiated, managed and realized the publication of the book “The Car in 2035: Mobility Planning for the Near Future”. A former

architect with 20 years of professional experience in design and the built environment, Kati worked on multiple project phases for firms on the east coast.

Her educational background includes a graduate degree in fine art and an undergraduate degree in philosophy.