"Dignity Infused Community Engagement in Los Angeles"

 https://ladotlivablestreets.org/programs/vision-zero

“A dignity infused planning process involves community members in the process from the beginning” argues Caro Vera. Vera, of Fehr and Peers in Los Angeles, offered an inspiring and illuminating presentation about their firm’s community engagement process while trying to implement a Vision Zero policy on Avalon Boulevard in South Central Los Angeles for PSU TREC’s Friday Transportation Seminar Series on October 16, 2020. 

She summarized their approach as intentionally and holistically incorporating the viewpoints, lived experiences, and perspectives of those most impacted by the planning project at hand. “It seeks to restore and atone for historic, systemic, and institutional injustices.” To put this mission statement into action, they employed a street team that reflects the faces of the street they were working on and trying to make safe. They hired locals who were housing insecure, employment insecure, low-income, and formerly incarcerated. Accessibility and equity were core values from Day 1, and this showed in ways beyond just engagement for potential street improvements. They hired local vendors to activate the local economy, and they created Rainbow Halo, an art project to memorialize individuals who had died in accidents on Avalon. This was developed through their “social climate analysis” which allows for a customized community engagement strategy for each corridor that they work on: “You can’t plan for a community without understanding local dynamics and reaching community members.”

In the team’s 35 day marathon engagement (as Vera calls it), they engaged 12,000 residents of the corridor and received 700 completed surveys. 90% supported a bike lane on Avalon Blvd, 96% supported adding more crosswalks and traffic signals, and 78% were willing to add 3 minutes to their commute to improve trip safety. It is easy to call this a successful exercise in community engagement when compared to other case studies, such as the North Williams Traffic Safety Operations Project, which has become an infamous example of earnest but problematic community engagement. North Williams is a rapidly gentrifying corridor in Portland, and home to a sizable portion of the city’s Black community that is being increasingly displaced. When conducting community engagement of the area before adding a new bike lane and other improvements to address safety concerns on the busy street, Portland’s planners attempted to reach diverse stakeholders through a variety of approaches. Still, they weren’t able to engage many members of the Black community. They moved forward with improvements, and faced backlash from Black community members who rightfully felt that resources were only entering the street once white people were living there, and that their input had not been respected or heard before moving forward. 

This was a learning opportunity for Portland’s planners about how to engage historically excluded groups, though it is unfair that a specific community had to feel further disrespected to provide that lesson. Caro Vera described a much different process, where engagement was thorough, broad, and enthusiastic. Though I am left curious at how the Vision Zero for Avalon Boulevard would have looked moving forward if they had not been able to engage residents in such high numbers. Would they have gone ahead with improvements even if they hadn’t had such impressive numbers? Would they have moved forward if those numbers had reflected a community disapproval for the project? The community engagement process she described was wholly impressive and definitely dignity-infused, but how would things have looked different if the results of the engagement process had not mirrored Vision’s Zero for a safer Avalon Boulevard?