How Do You Envision a Riverfront District?: Josef Taylor
On April 27, 2013, the Northeast L.A. Riverfront Collaborative hosted the River Bike + Walk Spectacular at Marsh Park in Elysian Valley. During the festivities, community members and visitors shared their stories and experiences of the river as part of the KCET Departures StoryShare event. Here are their stories.
Name: Josef Taylor
Occupation: Structural Engineer/Movable Parts
What has been your experience with the L.A. River?
My experience with the L.A. River has mostly been from a bike on the trail up here. It's kind of a frequent crossing for me. I live in Mid-City, kind of north Koreatown, and work in Culver City. But everything that I do on the weekends, and everything I do after work and so on is in Highland Park. So the L.A. River is kind of the boundary for me, of moving out of the day and into the things that I do for fun at vocations.
How would you envision a "Riverfront District" in Northeast L.A.?
Obviously there would be a lot of this green space. I see kind of something between Atwater Village and Highland Park, literally, being a lot of small shops and places to eat, and kind of a good place to be and also a good place to pass through, and stop for something.
What is your involvement in today's event?
We at Movable Parts have brought our system called Movable Party to the event, and that's powering the PA right now. There's a couple of random audience members who showed interest and got on our stationary bikes, and that's pumping out line voltage for the DJ there. And so we had put this together for CicLAvia last week, and then some of our friends at L.A. River Coalition came to us and asked to bring it here.
How do you think the transformation of the L.A. River will affect your community?
I think that increased open space and increased livability of an area helps everybody. I mean there is obviously the sensitivity towards gentrifying, and often when we get too excited about new developments you forget to let things happen organically. And then you end up with too many new buildings that attract kind of only one strata of the population. And yeah that's a problem. But I think we, you know, it's possible to do this right.
