In thinking about cityscape and living experience, I admit Los Angeles is one big paved over concrete and asphalt uglyscape. There are very few places that look attractive and those are largely found in affluent areas. If you read my 10 TED Lectures you must watch post, there were two lectures that addressed this very issue. The first was by Pam Warhurst who challenges the notion of bureaucracy being able to change something like the plants in and around the city or create open natural spaces, so in a way like the Succulent Vandals, her group of folks in English town of Todmorden went about transforming the landscape by making it edible. Yes, you read that correctly. The second talk was by Kent Larson who proposed that building in the future city requires us to examine the fundamental notions we have about cites by considering a rule of 20 minutes. You can watch both the lectures here, along with the 8 others that I recommend you to watch.
So it was not to long after watching those TED lectures that I ran across these planting vandals who turn up on a abandoned, ugly and neglected Los Angeles city lot and transform it over night into a city garden. The practice known as Guerrilla Gardening is spreading, and for good reason, lots of ugly cement/asphalt cites need to greenified. I think this is just another great example of civic engagement and people saying enough with the bull shit, if government can’t get it (changing the cityscape) done, we will do what we can.
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