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Buses, bus stops, trains, and train platforms represent sites of shelter for many of the over 500,000 Americans who are unhoused every night. This study seeks to understand how transit agencies are responding to them. Based on interviews with staff members and partners at 10 different transit agencies and on program performance data, where available, we provide detailed case studies of four sets of strategies taken in response to homelessness on transit systems: hub of services, mobile outreach, discounted fares, and transportation to shelters. We analyze each strategy’s scope, implementation, impact, challenges, and lessons learned. Reviewing these strategies, we note that they may differ depending on the context, need, and available resources. We find value in transit agencies fostering external partnerships with social service organizations and other municipal departments and keeping law enforcement distinct from routine homeless outreach. We also underline the key need for funding from other levels of government to allow transit operators to adopt, expand, and refine homelessness response programs.

This paper discusses challenges to and promising practices for making infrastructure improvements that enable persons with disabilities and all system users to safely reach public transportation stations and stops to access fixed-route transit options. Although tremendous strides have been made in national transit system accessibility since the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, far less progress has been made in ensuring that pathways to accessible transit stations and stops are in place. This reality poses a critical mobility concern as the nation’s aging population continues to rise, as does the percentage of the population with disability who may need to utilize public transit to access life enhancing and sustaining services. The study uses a national survey and targeted case study analysis to identify effective best practices for facilitating improvement to pathways to transit. These include approaching cost and funding creatively; pursuing partnerships; initiating and maintaining open communication and collaboration; exploring the use of data and new technologies to reduce cost and improve outcomes; and thinking holistically to identify and address pathway to transit improvement needs. Useful to both practitioners and policy-makers, the findings presented offer insights on how agencies can successfully achieve infrastructure improvements that extend beyond their own facilities and that allow people with disabilities and others to more easily access public transit.

Over the last four decades, comparative urbanism has flourished, triggered by a desire to identify, compare, contrast, or juxtapose parallel phenomena that happen in multiple sociospatial contexts and likely influence one another. Starting in the 1970s, a number of scholars began touting the need for comparative urban research that opens the eyes to broader urban phenomena that can be compared across municipal boundaries and national borders. Underlying comparative approaches carry the notion that urban imaginaries are “sites of encounters with other cities” mediated through travel, migration and the circulation of images, goods, and ideas. In more recent years, a transnational perspective has gained favor in urban studies, arising in response to criticism that comparative urbanism suffers from a static perception of the urban. Transnational approaches focus on interdependencies, movements, and flows across borders in regions and subregions, the goal being to understand urban settings and experiences, as composed by multiple regional, ethnic or institutional identities and forces. In other words, transnational urban studies wish to take down arbitrary divisions between entities so that both their interconnections as well as collisions become more apparent. There are three interrelated ways that urban humanities go beyond conventional comparative urban studies and contribute to our understanding of the urban. In this essay, the matter is fleshed out through a comparative study of Los Angeles and Mexico City.

High-speed rail (HSR) will link California's first-tier cities to one another and to second-tier cities; this innovation may increase both mobility and accessibility in an unprecedented way. The system is also expected to have important physical impacts on station-adjacent neighborhoods and station cities, but to date, limited research exists to guide public policy efforts directing development around HSR stations. The urban design variables that may influence urban change in the context of HSR remain largely understudied. A state agency, the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CaHSRA), is charged with designing and managing the implementation of the HSR network, while local station cities will be responsible for development around their stations. Although CaHSRA has issued general urban design guidelines for cities, more urban design guidance is necessary to address the specificities of local contexts. Most Southern California cities have not yet started station-area planning, and the few that have are focusing attention on their stations as isolated entities in the system and city. In this limited focus, the cities often ignore the possible complement that adjacent stations on the HSR corridor may provide and how the station may integrate into the city and region. A review and a content analysis of documents and guidelines issued by the CaHSRA and its consultants to guide design in station areas were conducted and 16 planners, urban designers, and public officials in Southern California's Phase One station cities were interviewed extensively. The challenges of urban design in HSR station areas are discussed, and policy recommendations are offered.

High-speed rail (HSR) will link California's first-tier cities to one another and to second-tier cities; this innovation may increase both mobility and accessibility in an unprecedented way. The system is also expected to have important physical impacts on station-adjacent neighborhoods and station cities, but to date, limited research exists to guide public policy efforts directing development around HSR stations. The urban design variables that may influence urban change in the context of HSR remain largely understudied. A state agency, the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CaHSRA), is charged with designing and managing the implementation of the HSR network, while local station cities will be responsible for development around their stations. Although CaHSRA has issued general urban design guidelines for cities, more urban design guidance is necessary to address the specificities of local contexts. Most Southern California cities have not yet started station-area planning, and the few that have are focusing attention on their stations as isolated entities in the system and city. In this limited focus, the cities often ignore the possible complement that adjacent stations on the HSR corridor may provide and how the station may integrate into the city and region. A review and a content analysis of documents and guidelines issued by the CaHSRA and its consultants to guide design in station areas were conducted and 16 planners, urban designers, and public officials in Southern California's Phase One station cities were interviewed extensively. The challenges of urban design in HSR station areas are discussed, and policy recommendations are offered.

In the last thirty years, ethnic museums have mushroomed in American cities. Although this is certainly a national phenomenon, it has been particularly evident in Los Angeles. In this paper we examine the genesis and evolution of these emerging institutions. We survey the mission, scope, and role of ethnic museums in Los Angeles, and we contrast them with the stated mission and scope of "mainstream" museums in the city. We further present case studies of three Los Angeles ethnic museums. The museums vary considerably in the ways they perceive their role in the community, the city, and the nation and in the preservation and display of ethnic culture. At their best, ethnic museums serve to make new art and histories more accessible and visible and provide a forum in which to debate contemporary issues of politics and identity. The paper highlights some of the tensions faced by ethnic museums as they seek to define their audience and role(s) in multi-ethnic, twenty-first century Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is a city shaped by its freeway system. Superimposed on the physical and social landscape of the city, the freeways have tended to split and destroy the fine grain of residential neighborhoods. The design and implementation of the freeway system exemplifies the dictum of top-down planning, envisioned by transportation engineers and city fathers with little or no input from the affected communities. Emblematic of this treatment of the urban landscape is the “first freeway of the west,” the historic Arroyo Seco Parkway in Los Angeles. Located within the Arroyo Corridor, the freeway includes in addition to the transportation artery, a sub-watershed of the Los Angeles River, which has also been channelized and built upon. The article discusses recent grassroots efforts that offer a “counter-strategy” to the narrative of hegemonic, top-down planning, by allowing participation, input and action from the neighboring communities. The goal is nothing less but to make the freeway a connector rather than a separator of the diverse neighborhoods along its banks and to craft a core strategy for urban environmental renewal in a region long characterized as hostile to environmental goals.

Over the past two decades, many parts of metropolitan Los Angeles have been transformed by incoming immigrant groups who have modified the urban space in accordance to their cultural practices and local conditions. These "landscapes of difference" demonstrate forms of urban adaptation and innovation that reflect the new cultural patterns of everyday life and the new social organization of cultural diversity. In the past two decades, many ethnic commercial strips have appeared as vibrant economic landscapes in the place of formerly obsolete commercial environments. This article analyzes the physical, social, and economic profile of three strips that have been transformed by three different ethnic groups: the Latinos on Huntington Park's Pacific Boulevard, the Chinese on Valley Boulevard in the city of San Gabriel, and the Vietnamese on Little Saigon's Bolsa Avenue. The analysis includes three components: (a) it examines the architectural representation and imagery of the strip to detail how the built environment is adapted or changed to reflect ethnic identify, (b) it documents the social uses and processes encountered on the strip, and (c) it examines the economics of the strip to understand the prospects and challenges faced by ethnic entrepreneurs.

Can we understand why some bus stops are safe and others are crimeridden? Can we predict which features of the bus stop environment are likely to encourage or discourage crime? Can we design safer bus stops? These questions are addressed by exploring the relationship between environmental variables and bus stop crime. An earlier study used crime data, along with environmental indicators, for a sample of 60 bus stops in downtown Los Angeles. Crime rates were higher for bus stops near alleys, multifamily housing, liquor stores and check-cashing establishments, vacant buildings, and graffiti and litter. In contrast, good visibility of the bus stop from its surroundings and the existence of bus shelters contributed to lower crime rates. This earlier study was indicative but not predictive of the elements that contribute to bus stop crime. With the geographic and temporal expansion of the data (covering a larger city part over a longer time span), a series of regression models was generated that identify environmental predictors of bus stop crime. These models show that the most important predictor of crime is location. If the environment is controlled, undesirable facilities and litter result in higher crime rates, whereas visibility and many pedestrians lead to lower crime rates. The presence or absence of certain characteristics in the bus stop microenvironment can affect crime. Also, the appropriate design and layout of the physical environment can reduce opportunities for criminal actions.

Can we understand why some bus stops are safe and others are crimeridden? Can we predict which features of the bus stop environment are likely to encourage or discourage crime? Can we design safer bus stops? These questions are addressed by exploring the relationship between environmental variables and bus stop crime. An earlier study used crime data, along with environmental indicators, for a sample of 60 bus stops in downtown Los Angeles. Crime rates were higher for bus stops near alleys, multifamily housing, liquor stores and check-cashing establishments, vacant buildings, and graffiti and litter. In contrast, good visibility of the bus stop from its surroundings and the existence of bus shelters contributed to lower crime rates. This earlier study was indicative but not predictive of the elements that contribute to bus stop crime. With the geographic and temporal expansion of the data (covering a larger city part over a longer time span), a series of regression models was generated that identify environmental predictors of bus stop crime. These models show that the most important predictor of crime is location. If the environment is controlled, undesirable facilities and litter result in higher crime rates, whereas visibility and many pedestrians lead to lower crime rates. The presence or absence of certain characteristics in the bus stop microenvironment can affect crime. Also, the appropriate design and layout of the physical environment can reduce opportunities for criminal actions.

Inner city neighborhoods in the U.S. remain poor and neglected. Community initiatives in such neighborhoods have rarely managed to influence planning processes or outcomes. Community mobilization is often in opposition to a proposed action. The intrusion of a freeway, the building of a prison, the proliferation of liquor stores have been issues that have forced neighborhoods to react, resist, oppose. But only in few occasions have poor communities come together proactively, to envision, plan, and implement positive changes. Planning in the U.S. remains guarded in the distant and insular offices of city planning and redevelopment agencies. Of course there are public hearings and Environmental Impact Reports of proposed projects, where the public is allowed to listen, read or comment. But these are venues of participation that are usually utilized by a very limited segment of the public. For the most part, residents of American inner city neighborhoods are unable to control or change the public spaces of their everyday lives.But there are also exceptions. This paper details the experiences of a Los Angeles inner city neighborhood in its attempt for revitalization. It describes a collaborative community process that stands in stark opposition to the hierarchical notion of rational planning. A core community group composed of residents, merchants and representatives of local institutions with the help of a university student team, initiated a revitalization process that was able to engage the larger community. Neighborhood watch groups, church groups, parent-teacher associations, local merchants, and neighborhood children were given the opportunity to voice their concerns, debate the issues and participate in a series of revitalization projects. At the core of the revitalization effort was the reclaiming of the neighborhood's small urban spaces from the condition of neglect, disrepair, and crime, and the forging of a sense of identity. This essay details the victories won and the challenges faced by the group as it attempted to create community in Los Angeles' inner city.

The term 'crack' is used in this paper as a metaphor for the fractured discontinuities encountered in the physical and social context of American cities. Cracks are the 'in-between' spaces - residual, underutilized and often deteriorating - that frequently divide physical and social worlds. The paper sets out to explain why cracks are a common characteristic of the American urban landscape, by investigating the factors that have contributed to their formation. The study also lays out some normative objectives for transforming in-between spaces, and for practising a socially responsible urban design, by discussing issues such as user empowerment, collaborative design, contextualism and flexibility of form. The role, responsibility and constraints of the urban designer in effecting change are discussed, and a call is extended for broadening the cultural, moral and political content of the profession.

The term 'crack' is used in this paper as a metaphor for the fractured discontinuities encountered in the physical and social context of American cities. Cracks are the 'in-between' spaces - residual, underutilized and often deteriorating - that frequently divide physical and social worlds. The paper sets out to explain why cracks are a common characteristic of the American urban landscape, by investigating the factors that have contributed to their formation. The study also lays out some normative objectives for transforming in-between spaces, and for practising a socially responsible urban design, by discussing issues such as user empowerment, collaborative design, contextualism and flexibility of form. The role, responsibility and constraints of the urban designer in effecting change are discussed, and a call is extended for broadening the cultural, moral and political content of the profession.