Hasta La Ideas

At USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, groups presented on their ideas for improving the city.

Los Angeles is a city without a center. A recent exhibition across the street from LACMA gave away donuts as a testament to this fact—concentric circles that are quite good, which literally have nothing in the middle. And yet, as the second largest city in the United States, with a record number of people moving in and out, it’s certainly dynamic and lively, and anyone who lives hear knows it’s a hub for creativity.

Recently, I’ve encountered a number of groups trying to create some kind of civic center to Los Angeles. One of the more compelling is the City Works Campaign, an effort, as they say on their site, to “improve cities and spur innovation by mobilizing creative people to find varied solutions for urban problems.” Part of their platform is LA Here and Now, a solutions-based workshop in collaboration with USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab.

I had the pleasure of attending their workshop this past weekend, which aimed to gather the creative, civic set of Los Angeles in exploring five themes: improving city experiences, fostering local economies, volunteering and (re)connecting, re-skilling and education, healthy and happy cities, and creating greater access to city services.

Group discussions included a discussions session with post-its centered around what-if possibilities of an improved city.

This weekend’s workshop, A Smart Cities Incubator, broke up into groups by geographical region, recognizing that Los Angeles is more of a patchwork of communities with distinct needs, rather than a single, urban entity whose challenges can be tackled with broad policy changes. In our groups, we discussed the five themes and proposed to focus on one, and in the course of a couple hours then narrowed down that theme into a more actionable issue.

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