Resources

Progressive Los Angeles Network

Urban Environment Priorities for Los Angeles

LA’s urban environmental challenges are invitations to make Los Angeles a more livable city for all its residents. Together, we can meet air quality standards and eliminate environmental hazards from our most economically stressed neighborhoods. We can embrace clean technologies to create high-paying jobs and safer and cleaner workplaces. With some smart planning, we can turn vacant lands in the inner city into community gathering places, and preserve and restore the region’s natural beauty and diversity for our children and grandchildren.

To improve our urban environment, The City of Los Angeles should institute a Liveable City Plan, designed to measure current environmental, transportation, and land use conditions, get broad community input on the kinds of changes needed to improve quality of life, and then set goals, strategies, and timetables for making this vision a reality. While launching the Liveable City Plan, the City should take the following priority actions:

1. Increase urban parks. The City should double park space in park-poor neighborhoods within four years.

2. Clean up contaminated “brown fields” land. The City should inventory and map existing brown fields sites and should double the number of sites rehabilitated each year, while including communities in the site assessment, land-use planning and decision-making process regarding the re-use of brownfield sites, so that rehabilitation starts with community recommendations, not developer proposals.

3. Reduce Pesticide Use. The City should adopt a City Pesticides Reduction and Integrated Pest Management Policy to reduce annual pesticide use by 75 percent by weight within 5 years, with at least a 10 percent reduction within one year. The City should also bring its leadership to bear in ensuring that the LA Unified School District completely phases out toxic pesticide use on school grounds.

4. Promote clean fuel vehicles and green energy. The City needs to convert its fleets so that half of all City vehicles in all categories are alternative fuel vehicles within four years; ensure that the MTA phases out all of its diesel buses; and push the LAUSD to phase out all diesel school buses, which pose a special threat to children. The City also should increase municipal use of energy from green power sources such as solar and wind by at least 50 percent, measured as a share of all power used.

5. Inventory toxic health risks. The City should inventory health risks in the City from toxics in the air, water, land, and buildings, including cumulative risks and risks to vulnerable populations such as children and the elderly, and create a public database showing risks by neighborhoods.

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