ABSTRACT
Urban rivers support ecosystem services and biodiversity, but they also facilitate connections linking communities to nature, and to each other. Like other urban streams, the Los Angeles River has been massively modified to address flooding. For years, the city turned its back on the river, while it still supported wildlife and a grab bag of filmmakers, artists, unhomed Angelenos, and a diverse population of fisherfolk. In the past few decades, however, the river has become a focal point for efforts to restore instream and riparian ecosystems, provide recreation and connection to nature, and programs seeking to utilize the waterway as an economic driver. However, the LA River offers an extreme challenge, both as an arid land flashy hydrologic system and as an ecosystem whose management is shared by numerous government levels, and its setting in one of the most ethnically and economically diverse megalopolises in the world. We critique the LA River Revitalization Master Plan for including misleading green rhetoric, classism, inequity, and colonialism. We then explore whether river re-development can sustain this novel ecosystem and the human communities connected to it, support biodiversity, avoid displacement, and become an asset that provides equitable benefits and supports inclusive uses.
