Los Angeles exemplifies traffic-clogged urban environments where cars long dominated street design. Current planning reorients mobility toward integrated systems in which people, places, and vehicles coexist in balance. Automobiles are treated as one component within a broader multimodal transportation network rather than the centerpiece of urban life. Design priorities shift toward human needs and experiences, emphasizing walkability, environmental quality, and social equity. Over a century of vehicle-centric infrastructure reshaped cities through freeways, neighborhood divisions, and streets favoring traffic over tree canopy. The present goal is to reverse that legacy by realigning mobility to serve human well-being and more equitable urban form.
Amid the traffic-clogged arteries of Los Angeles, where cars have long ruled the streets, the future of urban mobility is being questioned. The reorientation focuses not on simply removing cars or introducing new technology, but on envisioning the city as an integrated system in which people, places, and vehicles coexist in balance. Automobiles are no longer the unquestioned centerpiece of urban life; instead, they are treated as one component of a broader, multimodal transportation network.
For over a century, cities bent their form to accommodate vehicles - building freeways that sliced through neighborhoods and streets that privileged traffic over tree canopy and walkability. Julia de Bono of BMW DesignWorks describes this as "local culture obliterated by inappropriately dominant infrastructures, harming people and place for the sake of somewhere else." Today, the goal is to reverse that legacy, realigning mobility to serve human well-being, environmental quality, and social equity.
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