Embedded Files
Mobolaji Olagbaju
Mobolaji Olagbaju
Introduction
Introduction
The history of housing, especially public housing, in Los Angeles would be incomplete without a recollection of the discriminatory tools that were used to shape the built environment right from the inception of the city. Racial covenants, redlining, and enforced segregation were active parts of the landscape and their legacies are still tangible in the present day, almost frozen in place by the highway system that moves thousands of people in and out of the city daily, but pollutes adjacent residents and permanently divides once bustling neighborhoods.
One of these neighborhoods was Sugar Hill, a wealthy part of West Adams west of downtown Los Angeles, and home to a number of prominent Black Angelenos, who moved there in spite of the forces that conspired to keep them out. A white homeowners’ association sued on the grounds that restrictive covenants were being violated by their black neighbors in a case that reached the United States Supreme Court in Shelley v. Kraemer, with the court ultimately ruling that such covenants were nationally unenforceable. This victory was decisive for black people across the country, because they were at least given the legal backing to decide to live anywhere they wanted in the city.
Housing was an essential door that opened up better access to well-paying jobs, good schools, and healthy living. However, reality often finds a way of getting in the way of progress.
Not long after Shelley v. Kraemer, word spread that the Federal Highway Administration planned to build a freeway through Sugar Hill in lieu of another proposed route through the fringes of the University of Southern California and other majority white residential neighborhoods.
Sugar Hill again banded together to preserve their neighborhood, but it was a lost battle; the California Highway Commission had little appetite to again alter the route of the freeway.
Urban planning has a mixed legacy in the United States, and the meter tilts more to the negative side in the context of Black America. But planners know that urban environments are malleable and places for change when needed. Changes to the urban landscape might include expanding city limits, retooling streets and pedestrian thoroughfares, introducing innovative technological systems that allow for data-backed solutions to be implemented, converting a waste site to a park, or reconnecting and reintegrating neighborhoods that have been cut off. The rationale behind these initiatives can be economic, social, environmental, financial, safety-based, or justice-oriented.
Site Location
Site Location
This project visualizes a repurposing of a large space ceded to car-oriented infrastructure in Los Angeles, specifically the section of the I-10 freeway that tore through Sugar Hill. In this reality, the Santa Monica Freeway is capped between Hoover Street and Arlington Avenue while in its former place exists multi-family housing units surrounded by green space, playgrounds, an urban farm, and other community amenities.
Freeways collectively use up a lot of valuable square miles for their numerous, limited-access ways. The volume of cars traversing these roadways daily produces a slew of negative externalities including noise, air pollution, congestion, surface runoff, poor neighborhood access, etc.
Removing the freeway components from a rendering of the study site reveals the sheer amount of space within a stretch of a few miles that a large city gives up for the ultimate purpose of rhythmically moving residents towards and away from its urban core.
Social Housing Solution
Social Housing Solution
Top View of New Housing Development Over the Path of the Santa Monica Freeway
Project Goals
Project Goals
Visualize the amount of space we cede to a lifestyle that is oriented towards the car and think about what it means for cities.
Correcting a prominent issue from the past while tying it to a present one in social housing in an area that is still very diverse.
Incorporate green areas within and around housing to address the park equity concern highlighted by the COVID pandemic.
References
References
Harman, H. (2019, January 17). Highways of History: The Santa Monica Freeway and Sugar Hill, Los Angeles. Retrieved from Medium: https://hharman.medium.com/highways-of-history-sugar-hill-los-angeles-69a0dfb57567
Meares, H. (2018, February 22). The thrill of Sugar Hill. Retrieved from Curbed: https://la.curbed.com/2018/2/22/16979700/west-adams-history-segregation-housing-covenants
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