The River Project

Have you ever played SimCity & thought “Wouldn’t it be cool if this virtual city was an accurate representation of Los Angeles?” Our geography, our neighborhoods, our roads, freeways, buildings, landmarks - from South LA to the San Fernando Valley & down to the Port… Wouldn’t THAT be interesting?

How about we do that? How about we build a 3D virtual LA using actual GIS data on all the natural & built environments here, add in social & economic data, make it relational & run it all through existing hydrologic & climate models that’ll let us move through time to 2050?

Ooh, ooh! What if we took that & made a game the public could use?! That would be some SERIOUS GAMING!!

Imagine what you’d learn from that game. You’ve always had GREAT ideas about how we could do things better. What choices would you make to create a healthier, more resilient LA in the face of climate change? How can we integrate & prioritize the cycles of air, water, soil & fire in urban planning & design for a truly sustainable LA? Can we do that & be economically vibrant, too? Can we do it quickly enough so that our investments help us ADAPT rather than RECOVER?

What if you could play the game with that friend who also has ideas about how to run the city, but….he’s just wrong, y’know? Play the game WITH that guy, & watch the impacts of his choices & yours as you play! What happens if we invest in public transit, add park space, revitalize existing neighborhoods, ramp up home solar, install cool roofs, capture stormwater, revitalize the river? What happens if we expand freeways, demolish crumbling neighborhoods to make way for new development, build more in the mountains, add concrete to the river walls, invest in desal? You can play until you find an approach that meets common goals. In fact, that’s a major objective OF the game: to prompt informed collaboration.

Imagine doing this with students in a classroom, or with your local Neighborhood Council? Making sound decisions about how we invest scant resources is challenging. The problems involved are complex & the various interests are often at odds. A solution seems logical to one partner, but makes the problem more complex for another. Playing the game, all parties see impacts of any approach & work toward common ground, learning that collaboration really does reap better solutions. Imagine being able to show the results of your choices to the public by projecting it on the side of a building downtown? Cool, huh?

LET’S DO IT! ‘Cause guess what? We need to make serious decisions NOW. And now we have the technology to make those decisions more quickly, in a more informed & equitable way – collaborating on what LA 2050 will be. Let’s start with 2013 & see what challenges the game presents:

20th c. LA relied on the idea that resources could be extracted from afar & that the city should promote car culture. This had huge ecological & social effects: air quality degraded, resource lands paved, groundwater depleted, agriculture extirpated, public health & quality of life in decline. Our freeways’ promise of mobility gave way to the reality of congestion & immobility - neighborhoods are physically & socially isolated, the single-family housing model turned people inward rather than toward community gathering spaces. In addition to ambient air pollution, freeway traffic directly affects the health of people living & working nearby. The flow of goods inland from the Ports exacerbates this effect & compromises the livability of communities near goods movement corridors. As LA grew, so did its dependence on imported water, with impacts to distant communities & regional competition for water resources. The energy needed to deliver & treat water, & to mimic compromised ecological functions, caused environmental impacts on a scale reaching well beyond metro LA.

Reestablishing ecosystem services is key to ameliorating impacts & rethinking urban form for the future. As the city reshapes itself with public transit & density, the time is ripe to require strategic, concurrent open space set-asides that provide critical ecosystem services. Strategic densification, coupled with green streetscapes that enhance pedestrian, bicycling, & public transit opportunities, can provide local water supply, reduce air pollution, increase public health & significantly enhance our quality of life. But how do we accomplish this while supporting existing key services & keeping the economy strong?

Angelenos hold an illusion that the existing grid & infrastructure are permanent, yet our long-term success may depend on re-shaping that grid to integrate natural processes with sustainable urban design - to see ecosystem functions as critical infrastructure, while anticipating the need for resiliency & local resource security. Serious Gaming provides a means to test both the reality & the value of that permanence in the face of a climate change & post-carbon world.