As rivers get cleanups, can city residents still afford to live nearby?

By Henry Gass April 3, 2017 Articles, Photography

LOS ANGELES AND WASHINGTON—When Daniel Paredes was growing up in the Elysian Valley neighborhood, the nearby Los Angeles River felt like a dangerous place to visit. From the nearby factories to the gang elements that would often be there, the risks sometimes deterred him and his friends from going down to the water to collect tadpoles and crayfish.

The neighborhood – more commonly known as “Frogtown,” after the Western toads that would flood the streets on their way to the river to breed and lay eggs – has changed a lot since Mr. Paredes was a boy. Plans to restore and develop the LA River have helped send the surrounding real estate market into overdrive, and what was once a neighborhood full of working-class Latinos like his parents is now one of the most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Last summer, after living there for 40 years, Paredes’s parents got priced out of the Frogtown and moved to the Silver Lake neighborhood nearby, and they are not alone.

“I like the idea of the river becoming a better place for the residents there, but it’s coming with this whole change,” Paredes says. “You’re at a point where the people who might’ve benefitted from the river project, like, 15 years ago, might not be around to benefit from it by the time it’s done.”

After a century of neglect and pollution, cities around the world have been restoring their rivers and riverfront areas. Cities from San Antonio and Pittsburgh to Seoul and Bilbao have already restored their rivers. Chicago and Cleveland are exploring doing the same.

But cleanups under way here in L.A., and across the country in Washington, D.C., show how the success of one form of advocacy is giving rise to a whole other kind of advocate: those trying to ensure that river-linked development plans benefit working-class residents, not just upscale newcomers…

Click here to read the full story.

Tagged on: , , , ,