Los Angeles is no unknown to failed infrastructural dodge and vanished landscapes . But did you cognise that a nine - mi bike highway once traveled part of the way from LA to the nearby city of Pasadena ? It ’s one of 19 map - annotated essays about the city sport in the new bookLAtitudes : An Angeleno ’s Atlas .
On Monday we heard from author Dan Koeppel , whotraced the path of what was known as the California Cycleway , until it was abandoned in the early 1900s . Today from 3 - 4 post-mortem examination EDT , Dan and LAtitudes ’ editor Patricia Wakida will be here respond your questions about the give way bike main road and how the Christian Bible employ geotagged report to tell18 more narration about LA .
https://gizmodo.com/an-1899-plan-to-build-a-bike-highway-in-los-angeles-an-1699592512
How does one go about mathematical function a century - older piece of base that ’s all but vanished ? And why is cartography a cracking way to talk about urban history ? I call for Dan and Patricia a few questions to get the conversation started .
Gizmodo : Dan , how did you first find out about the California Cycleway and what made you want to write about it ?
Dan Koeppel : I ’d heard about it years ago when there were discussions on extending the Arroyo Seco Bike Path [ along the same route ] ; there was also ( in short ) a Cycleway java store in Hermon — along the route — that had some gorgeous photos of the construct segment on display . But I got really fascinated when , as part of my other walking projects , I found the honest-to-goodness map listing the cycleway , and judge to map them up to forward-looking construction . My enthrallment was enhanced by my involvement in a documentary — Fredrick Gertten’sBikes vs. auto — in which I talk about my Cycleway findings ; that documentary just premiere at South by Southwest , and I ’ll be utter about the Cycleway when the film screens at the Telluride Film Festival in belated May .
It seems like the proposed Cycleway was well - mapped at the time , how difficult was it to retrace the route in today ’s LA and Pasadena ?
Dan : picture out where the route was was n’t that hard — just a fortune of liken old mathematical function and novel , then walking the streets , calculate for stead where they matched up . It was a wad of legwork into the archives — at the Los Angeles Public Library , the Pasadena and South Pasadena Libraries , and the Pasadena Historic Society . Of course , the hardest thing was that much of the Cycleway was absorb into the Pasadena Freeway — so those slice were n’t accessible or soft to overlay from the past to the nowadays .
Detail from a single-valued function in the “ Woody and Buzz ” chapter of LAtitudes draw the overlap influence of ranch hands ( cowboys ) and aeronautic engineers ( spacemen ) in the San Fernando Valley
It seems like there ’s a lot of interest around this kind of mapping and storytelling . Patricia , how did you equilibrize the exercise of hand - drawn analog mapping like Dan mentions with the current booming digital mapmaking geological era ?
Patricia Wakida : Our cartographer , David Deis , who is the stave cartographer of the geography department at CSU Northridge , create the maps digitally although he depended on tracings and CAT scan of aged existing maps as well . I do believe that our function were deliberately created not as wayfinders as much as they are optic frameworks of the many layer of narrative that exist on every block of LA . Our mathematical function also analyze and decipher patterns of other outgrowth and ERA of cultural booms , include how well known intersections , neighbourhood , and street names were limit . We trust that the maps and the essays awaken a signified of admiration and surprise about Los Angeles that reader had not previously experienced , at least , not from digital mapmaking as it subsist today , although admittedly Google Maps are arise more and more sophisticated and has great potency for layered storytelling — who has n’t looked up their childhood home and wonder at the picture taking and their method acting of accumulate this data to build single-valued function ?
Why are we so concerned in mapping our own cities ?
Patricia : Perhaps its due to the fact that our kinship to cities and visual entropy are continually develop , and in the case of Los Angeles and the civil renaissance its undergoing , this signify that both resident Angelenos and visitors are reexamining how we view LA ’s city streets , landmarks and buildings , park , transportation full point , sidewalks and step .
As a freshman to LA , I was always lose and so the study on the book coincide with my learning to navigate it , by memorise streets and routes as well as looking how the place had been document on composition and digitally — for any resident of a city , its always a riveting geographic expedition to recognize what is recorded on maps and what is left behind . Our savvy of a place , and how we emotionally map out it , is colour by our past memories and our imaginations of what has happened before and hopes of what the city ’s future will take care like .
break out thebook ’s websiteand require your questions for Dan and Patricia below !
BIKESCitiesInfrastructureLos Angelestransportationurbanism
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