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Hollywood plots freeway coverup
Leaders push a plan to enclose half a mile of the roadway in a tunnel and place a greenbelt on top.
In a town built on make-believe, Hollywood leaders are hoping to pull off the greatest feat yet: creating a public park out of thin air. Civic and business organizers want to turn a half-mile portion of the Hollywood Freeway into a tunnel and construct a 24-acre greenbelt swath from Bronson Avenue to Wilton Place on top.Those proposing what they call Hollywood Central Park will reveal preliminary details tonight when leaders of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency meet with local business executives in an effort to raise $120,000 for a project feasibility study.
When the study is completed, local leaders say, they will be able to seek federal funding for the estimated $209 million that the freeway retrofit and park construction could cost.Backers say other densely populated U.S. cities have undertaken similar projects to carve out hard-to-find recreation space.
tagged city_planning downtown_freeway freeway highway los_angeles open_space park transportation
by jn
...on 03-NOV-06
October 2, 2006
Tokyo Journal
Splitting a Hip Neighborhood, in More Ways Than One
By MARTIN FACKLER
TOKYO, Oct. 1 — With its vintage clothing stores, live music clubs and cheap noodle shops, Shimokitazawa is Tokyo’s answer to Greenwich Village, an epicenter of youth culture in one of Asia’s trendiest metropolises. The neighborhood is popular for its cozy residential feel, drawing hordes of students and young office workers, who regularly throng its maze of narrow lanes and alleys. Its tiny shops, many in converted houses or low-rise apartments, often bear names that recall a counterculture across the Pacific: the Village Vanguard Diner, Haight Ashbury, Mojo Rising. But a shadow has fallen straight across the heart of this pulsing neighborhood. In four years, city officials plan to start building an 81-foot-wide thoroughfare that will slice Shimokitazawa in two. The road has set off a rare battle for preservation in a country where big construction projects have long been welcomed as progress and used to grease the wheels of politics.
Tokyo Journal
Splitting a Hip Neighborhood, in More Ways Than One
By MARTIN FACKLER
TOKYO, Oct. 1 — With its vintage clothing stores, live music clubs and cheap noodle shops, Shimokitazawa is Tokyo’s answer to Greenwich Village, an epicenter of youth culture in one of Asia’s trendiest metropolises. The neighborhood is popular for its cozy residential feel, drawing hordes of students and young office workers, who regularly throng its maze of narrow lanes and alleys. Its tiny shops, many in converted houses or low-rise apartments, often bear names that recall a counterculture across the Pacific: the Village Vanguard Diner, Haight Ashbury, Mojo Rising. But a shadow has fallen straight across the heart of this pulsing neighborhood. In four years, city officials plan to start building an 81-foot-wide thoroughfare that will slice Shimokitazawa in two. The road has set off a rare battle for preservation in a country where big construction projects have long been welcomed as progress and used to grease the wheels of politics.