People St

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Website: www.peoplest.org

People St offers communities within the City of Los Angeles the opportunity to transform underused areas of LA’s largest public asset – our 6,500 miles of city streets – into active, accessible public space.

Community organizations, business owners and other groups can apply for opportunities to enhance the quality of the public realm through installing three innovative design treatments, including plazas, parklets and bike corrals.

This website is your one stop shop for information, resources and materials on People St Plazas, Parklets, and Bike Corrals, and the process for applying to bring these projects to your neighborhood.

Building from lessons learned from the city’s first six pilot projects, LADOT has been working closely in an unprecedented collaboration with community members, elected officials, and other city staff to develop People St into a program that will expedite project development and implementation with a clear, consistent process.

People St facilitates partnerships between the community and the City of Los Angeles to implement projects that transform redundant or under-used areas of street into high-quality public space.

These cost-efficient conversion projects use simple elements like moveable tables, umbrellas and chairs; paint and plantings; and lively and entertaining programming to create relatively instant transformations to improve the life of a street.

Bringing a People St project to life requires the active participation of community partners to build neighborhood support for a project, identify an appropriate site, conduct outreach, raise the money required, and provide and fund long-term maintenance.

The goal is to create true public-private partnerships on projects that are initiated and driven by and for communities.

People St contributes to more active, livable streets, enhancing quality of life in the City of Los Angeles. Providing expanded public spaces can increase safety for people who walk, bike and take transit, encourage increased levels of walking and bicycling, and support economic vitality.

New local gathering spaces can foster a greater sense of community and social cohesion. Plazas, parklets, and other new types of public space can also become centerpieces of neighborhoods, providing venues for events and celebrations.

All this activity is shown to support local businesses as more pedestrians come to and spend time in neighborhoods.