Designing New Parks for Los Angeles

"Eight decades later, at 6.2 acres of park per thousand residents, the city of Los Angeles ranked in the bottom third for urban park capacity among densely populated cities in a 2010 Trust for Public Land survey.

Still, Angelenos dream green. The exhibit "New Park Design in Los Angeles," which opened last week at the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, is the work of landscape architect Stephen Billings.

An associate of the Santa Monica firm Pamela Burton & Co. Landscape Architecture, Billings is working with the Neighborhood Land Trust and Los Angeles Unified School District on a garden project at Fremont High School. But it was also personal frustration that drove him to organize the exhibit. 'The open space nearest to where I live is the roof of my building,' he said. 'It has no railings.'"

The exhibit looks at project sunder construction, in the process of approvals, and those that are little more than hopeful possibilities for the city.