The Los Angeles City Council last week approved an update to the Los Angeles River Implementation Overlay to encourage good quality river centric development and begin removing some of the concrete that covers the river and its banks.
According to city planner Tom Rothmann, this is the first plan for actually making changes along the river, unlike the Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan, which provided more of a visualization exercise. Rothmann told Curbed today that the overlay "requires changes along the river and a quarter-mile buffer around the river."
According to the LA Daily News, the LA-RIO identifies "areas where the concrete could be removed to increase public access to the river, while not creating any flooding problems." Councilmember Ed Reyes tells the paper "there are commercial areas where we are going to them to say, 'You can do more here than have a back of a building facing the river'...We want them to look at other possibilities of having parkways and bike paths."
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