A group of University of Southern California students spends six days walking the 51 miles of the Los Angeles River and documenting what they found.
Once a meandering, transient body of water that brought alluvium-rich soils to the Los Angeles Basin, the Los Angeles River has been encased in concrete, severed from its groundwater, and treated as little more than a regional storm drain since the mid-20th century. A multidisciplinary student team with expertise in ecology and mapping, urbanism and access, and heritage conservation and narrative ethnography walked the 51-mile length of the river, encountering and documenting ?what has died, survived, and thrived in this industrial and wild landscape.?
Photographs of the Los Angeles River taken during the six-day project. Courtesy Rio Asch Phoenix and Leslie Dinkin, Associate ASLA. Chart showing the group’s progress on day one of the excursion. Courtesy Nina Weithorn, Associate ASLA.
Documenting the ecology of the L.A. River. Courtesy Rio Asch Phoenix and Leslie Dinkin, Associate ASLA.
The team began the six-day hike because they argue that qualitative and experiential perspectives are vital to encouraging public understanding and care. The University of Southern California students documented a surprising level of vitality in the waterway, including thousands of birds enjoying accidental algae mats from low-flow spillovers, native shrubs and trees bursting through cracks in the ground, sanctioned and unsanctioned access ...