My LA2050 Winners Will Transform Abandoned Places into Usable Spaces

The competition, sponsored by the Goldhirsh Foundation, awarded $100,000 each to ten ideas for improving Los Angeles within the next 37 years. The winners include top designs in eight categories, plus two wildcard picks.

Among the projects awarded grants are four that will transform neglected spaces into engines of the city’s revitalization. The housing category winner, TRUST South LA, will buy up abandoned homes in South LA and rehabilitate them, adding a second house to each site.

LA Open Acres will create a network through which local residents can identify underused spaces and transform them into community assets.

CicLAvia will keep doing what it already does, creating temporary festival spaces through its bike parades.

Finally, the Hammer Museum will create a pop-up artists’ colony this summer at Westwood Village, which has the highest retail vacancy rate in the city.

“No single $100,000 project is going [to] make LA a utopia in 2050, of course,” writes Eve Bachrach, “but the hope is that each of the projects will start a small change in its community that will help make LA a happier, healthier, fairer place.”