What It Means to Care for a City
What Los Angeles’ sidewalks, streets, and parks reveal about how the city works
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it actually means for a city to function.
Not in the abstract. Not in speeches or plans. But in the small, daily ways people experience it.
Whether the sidewalk is even.
Whether there’s shade while you wait for the bus.
Whether a park feels cared for, or forgotten.
After years of working on infrastructure in Los Angeles, I keep coming back to the same conclusion:
Los Angeles does not have an infrastructure problem.
It has a governance problem and an operations problem.
And right now, there is a real opportunity to address both.
With the June primaries overlapping with the city’s charter reform timeline, this is a moment to look more closely at how the city functions. Not just what leaders say, but how systems are structured to deliver.
Where everyday life happens
Public space is where Los Angeles becomes real.
It’s where people walk to the bus, stop to talk to a neighbor, take their kids to the park, or grab something to eat from a street vendor. It’s where culture shows up in everyday ways.
From CicLAvia to farmers markets, from commercial corridors to residential blocks, this is where civic life happens.
And in a well functioning city, you can feel that.
The sidewalk is even. The streetlights work. There’s shade. There’s a place to sit. There’s a recently emptied trash can. Crosswalks feel safe. Basic things are there, and they work.
These details might seem small, but they signal something bigger. They show that a city has planned ahead, coordinated its systems, and followed through.
Too often, Los Angeles sends a different signal.
What we’re seeing is not random
A street gets repaved while the sidewalk next to it is still broken.
A splash pad opens, but there’s no shade at the nearby bus stop.
A new bus shelter replaces an older one, often with digital upgrades, while the overall number of shelters remains largely unchanged.
It can feel chaotic. But it is not.
These outcomes reflect how the system is set up.
Los Angeles manages public space across more than 20 departments and agencies, without a shared structure, clear accountability, or a consistent way to set priorities over time.
Even strong efforts are constrained by siloed systems. Funding is fragmented. Staffing is often misaligned with commitments. Projects move forward without a clear connection to long term maintenance.
This is not just a funding issue.
It is a governance issue. And it is an operations issue.
Why this matters now
Los Angeles is facing real pressures. Climate change. Economic uncertainty. Growing demands on public systems.
Public space sits at the center of all of it.
When sidewalks, streets, and parks are well maintained, small businesses do better. Infrastructure investment creates jobs and signals that Los Angeles is a place worth investing in.
Shade, trees, and green space help the city respond to heat. Safe, accessible sidewalks, streets and parks support public health. And public space shapes whether people feel connected to each other.
This is core infrastructure.
Where the gap is
This is not a new problem. For more than a decade, the city’s approach to sidewalks, streets, and parks has been studied and documented, both inside and outside City Hall. The gaps are well understood.
But something continues to separate the idea from the outcome.
The focus is often on policy.
Less attention is given to governance and operations.
How decisions are made.
Who is responsible.
How funding, staffing, and delivery actually line up.
Without that alignment, even strong ideas struggle to translate into consistent results.
What I’m looking for in this moment
As charter reform advances and campaigns take shape, this is what I am paying attention to.
First, urgency and focus.
A Capital Infrastructure Program is a standard tool for managing a city’s physical assets, and Los Angeles does not currently have one. The challenges in streets, sidewalks, and parks are well-documented and provide a clear place to start.
It should be possible to put something in place in the near term, with urgency and focus, starting with the public realm and building from there.
The question is whether city leaders are prepared to move forward in a coordinated way, and to follow through.
Second, sidewalks.
Sidewalks are one of the clearest indicators of whether the city is functioning. And yet Los Angeles still does not have a citywide sidewalk program.
At the same time, access ramps have not consistently been installed alongside street resurfacing, despite legal requirements under the sidewalk settlement.
This is not a marginal issue. It is visible, daily, and tied to basic accessibility.
It also raises a broader question of responsibility and oversight. How is this work managed, and how are gaps identified and addressed over time?
Third, parks.
Los Angeles does not have a clear, long-term, citywide funding and investment strategy for its parks.
Policymakers allowed Measure K to lapse this June without replacing it, leaving the system more constrained. This follows decades in which park funding has not kept pace with the city’s overall growth, staffing has declined, and maintenance needs have accumulated. Today, more than one million Angelenos still do not live within walking distance of a park.
At the same time, the city has completed a comprehensive Parks Needs Assessment, providing a clear foundation for how this work could be prioritized and delivered.
This reflects a broader question of long term planning, governance, and whether the city treats parks as essential infrastructure.
Fourth, alignment.
Governance and operations need to work together.
Plans and policies only matter if they are tied to funding, staffing, long-term maintenance, and clear responsibility for delivery.
This requires a citywide approach, not just a collection of district-level efforts. It applies to every candidate, whether running citywide or for a council district.
What this moment makes possible
Los Angeles does not lack ideas.
It lacks the systems to carry them out.
This moment offers a chance to change how the city plans, delivers, and cares for its sidewalks, streets, and parks. That work will be visible in the neighborhoods people call home, and in the everyday places that make up life in Los Angeles.