The City Project is featured in two articles highlighting our work in Los Angeles:

A New Chapter in Social Justice
Downtown News staff writer Evan George writes:

“Amid all the chatter late last month about the winning design for the new Los Angeles State Historic Park, it was easy to forget that just five years ago, the 32-acre site seemed doomed to hold industrial warehouses.

Had it not been for a cadre of organizations and committed advocates, including Friends of the Los Angeles River and the Downtown-based Center for Law in the Public Interest, the land long known as the Cornfield might today be just an afterthought.

All of which makes it ironic that on Tuesday, Nov. 21, just days after the State Parks Department announced the winning design, the 35-year-old CLIPI shut its doors. Instead of closing shop altogether, however, Executive Director Robert Garcia is heading a spin-off organization whose seeds were planted six years ago and have grown too big for their pot. The City Project, he said, will continue CLIPI’s social justice work, albeit with a different strategy.” More…

Refurbishing L.A.’s Soul

“Robert Garcia, executive director of the City Project, a nonprofit group that focuses on parks, health and transit issues for low-income Los Angeles residents, said a pedestrian trail and bus route should link [the Los Angeles State Historic Park] with El Pueblo to the south, and another state park planned on the east bank of the Los Angeles River to the north. ‘They should not be treated as isolated, separate parks but as one continuous parkway system,’ he said. . . . ‘This is a wonderful opportunity,’ he said. ‘Los Angeles is hungry for its history.’”

Refurbishing L.A.’s Soul
Development of historic district is similar to one in San Diego that builds on bygone eras.
The Daily Breeze
By Gordon Smith
Copley News Service

Developers and civic leaders are trying to reinvigorate Los Angeles’ languorous downtown with a pair of billion-dollar redevelopment projects brimming with condominiums, entertainment venues and hotels.

On the edge of the urban core nearby, however, a more loosely organized effort is under way to restore the city’s historic soul.

The Los Angeles State Historic Park, which officially opened in late September, aims to highlight the early history of the 225-year-old pueblo that grew into the nation’s second largest city — including remnants of the original canal that furnished water from the Los Angeles River to the first settlers. More…