`Over the coming decades, climate change and a growing population could significantly disrupt the economy, health and quality of life for every person in Los Angeles County. These challenges could also endanger
the ecosystems that share our landscape, help shape our culture and enhance our well-being.`
As SLA Grand Challenges describes, sustainability is a broad problem which can not be solved with individual interventions. It is aimed to create new policies that will face this problem in a bigger scale. Los Angeles differs with its suburban characteristics, the city of sprawl with single families, great lawns. Yet the city is facing drought, climate change, high level of emissions.
Thom Mayne`s Suprastudio, Now Institute, aims to tackle the complex problem of sustainability in global, national, regional and local scale, tries to find the solution for %100 renewable energy, %100 locally sourced water and enhanced ecosystem health in 2050 Los Angeles County. Studio started with intense research phase to understand the problem. With several existing and proposed policies, the main focus was on urban densification, how densed environment can help sustainability and SLA goals. How can we protect 99% of the county with only interfering 1% of it? To test different scenarios, Wilshire Corridor was selected as test field of densification with its upcoming subway line.
