We’ve told you all about our Kickstarter campaign and the awesome dinner party honoring our pedestrian coordinators that you can attend if you pledge just $100 to our project. But we also have some pretty awesome rewards at the $250 and up level that include TWO tickets to the dinner as well as custom walking adventures with our steering committee members! We’ll be featuring them here all week. Be sure to back our project before May 31 to grab one of these one-of-a-kind tours and get up-close-and-personal with these smiling faces (and their feet, of course)…
Hold a walkability workshop with urban designer Deborah Murphy and pedestrian coordinator Valerie Watson
Want to learn how to make your own neighborhood more walkable? Then you’ll want to nab one of these rewards where our founder Deborah Murphy and the pedestrian coordinator Valerie Watson will not only join you for a walk, but will pass along practical, actionable ways to improve your street or block. In addition to being the founder of Los Angeles Walks, Deborah is a consultant to cities and community-based organizations throughout Southern California. Deborah is also the Chair of the City of Los Angeles Pedestrian Advisory Committee, a member of the Green LA Coalition’s Living Streets campaign, and has conducted Walkabouts in three communities—Hollywood, Glassell Park/Cypress Park and Downtown Pasadena. Deborah’s walkability workshop will engage community members in evaluating the safety and accessibility of their neighborhood, and work to create a pedestrian safety action plan for an improved streetscape design and other programs to build a stronger local community. This would be a great reward for a neighborhood group, community organization, or a school.
Go here for a walkability workshop with Deborah and Valerie!
Experience a customized architectural tour with design expert Alissa Walker
Have a favorite neighborhood in Los Angeles? Or one that you’d like to get to know better? Perhaps you have some burning questions about a bizarre building or find out the truth about a secret staircase? Our walking architectural guidebook Alissa will take you on a design adventure anywhere in the city you’d like! Alissa writes about design, architecture, cities, transportation and walking for publications like Dwell, Fast Company, GOOD, Wired, Details, LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and the KCRW public radio show DnA: Design and Architecture. In 2010 she was named a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow for her writing on design and urbanism. She has lived car-free in LA for six years and loves riding around town on her orange Public Bike or an orange Metro bus (they’re actually the exact same color). This architectural walk would be a great gift for the design fan in your life, or maybe the gelato fan, too—it also includes a stop for ice cream.
Go here to take an architectural tour with Alissa!
Get a private parklet tour with architect Daveed Kapoor
You’ve seen those parklets popping up all over town, now learn exactly how these tiny pedestrian plazas came to be—and how you can get one started in your own neighborhood! Join Daveed for a tour of the Spring Street Parklets, which he designed and permitted with other team members. As the founder of utopiad.org, a land development and architecture collective focused on redressing social justice issues in Los Angeles, Daveed works with developers and operators to design, entitle, permit and construct multiple housing, hospitality, live/work, and manufacturing places in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and San Francisco. Before that, he was at Johnston Marklee where he led the design of artist’s studios, restaurants, offices and custom homes, as well as participated in multiple award winning projects. This would be a great reward for a neighborhood group interested in making their own parklet a reality.
Go here for a parklet tour with Daveed!
Have a progressive meal in Chinatown with foodie My La
Chinatown is one of the city’s most pedestrian-friendly districts with plazas and alleyways built for exploring. It’s also a great place to eat your way through an afternoon. Discover all the hidden spots as you dine and stroll with My, our food-loving urban planner. My is the Planning Assistant for the Los Angeles Department of City Planning with experience focusing around environmental consulting, GIS, and transportation planning. She has been working on updating the City’s Mobility Element since October 2011. She’s currently a Master’s Candidate of Urban Planning at Cal Poly Pomona where her thesis examines pedestrian collisions and safety in Los Angeles. If you’ve ever wanted to explore Chinatown’s delicacies—from dim sum to French Dip—this is the way to do it!
Go here for a Chinatown food tour with My!
Join an exploration of urban nature with artist and designer Colleen Corcoran
We might think of LA’s topography as parking lots and freeways, but LA’s filled with rolling rivers, hidden meadows and a certifiable mountain range slicing through the center of town. Head out to explore this inner-city wilderness with Colleen, who draws inspiration for her awesome design work from LA’s natural beauty. (She also organized our hugely successful LA River walk a few weeks ago.) Besides designing our amazing Los Angeles Walks merchandise, Colleen has collaborated on design projects with a variety of local organizations including Metro, The City of Santa Monica, Los Angeles Walks, The Museum of Contemporary Art, LA Alliance for a New Economy, Climate Resolve, Center for the Arts Eagle Rock, and many others. She’s also a founding board member of CicLAvia, where she also does all of their awesome branding and design. If you want to take a one-day vacation without leaving LA, join Colleen to discover the wilderness in your own backyard.
Go here for an urban wilderness adventure with Colleen!
Take a tour of LA’s transportation history with policy expert Mark Vallianatos
Have you ever wondered why LA looks the way it does? Interested in learning what laws and policies shaped the city and made it what it is today? Then you’ll love this walking and transit tour surveying the LA landscape with Mark, who serves as the Policy Director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute and an Adjunct Professor in Urban & Environmental Policy at Occidental College. (We just call him “The Professor.”) At Oxy, Mark works on issues of food, transportation, urban design, and campus greening and is a co-author of the Next Los Angeles: the Struggle for a Livable City. Plus he loves exploring the region by food, bike, bus, and train—you can often spot him on the streets thanks to his colorful clothing. This would be a great tour for an architecture or urban design class to take together to gain some awesome insight into what LA has been and what it can become.
Go here to tour LA’s transit landscape with Mark!
Learn how to be a FitBit whiz with master tracker Jessica Meaney
Maybe you’ve been meaning to buy a pedometer so you can track your daily steps, but haven’t quite gotten around to it—then this reward has your name all over it! Jessica will show you how to incorporate more activity into your daily routine, working your way up to a goal of 10,000 steps per day. And this reward includes a free FitBit, which Jessica will show you how to use (and host fun competitions with friends and family). Not only has Jessica has lived car-free in LA for 15 years, she works as the Southern California policy director for the Safe Routes to School National Partnership. There, she works on transportation policy priorities like creating equity in communities, data collection and evaluation, and making sure transportation programs receive adequate funding. If she can inspire kids and families to walk to school, just think what she’ll do for you!
Go here to become a FitBit whiz with Jessica!
Plan your car-free commute with active transportation guru Alexis Lantz
If you’ve ever wanted to try walking, biking or taking Metro to work, but you’re just not sure how to do it or which route to take, this is the reward for you! Alexis will not only teach you everything you need to know about commuting car-free, she’ll actually go with you on your first commute to make sure everything goes swimmingly. Why’s she a such expert on active transportation? For many years Alexis was the Planning & Policy Director at the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, where she conducted the first ever citywide bicycle (and pedestrian) count for the City of Los Angeles and had a hand in shaping policies to improve the city’s bicycling infrastructure. She’s currently a policy analyst with the PLACE Program at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, so she’s extra-interested in seeing people switch to walking and biking to get to work. This would be a great reward to share with your co-workers, don’t you think?
Go here to take a car-free commute with Alexis!
Check out our Kickstarter now or tuned to learn about more of our custom walking adventures—we’ll be posting more here all week!
