The Los Angeles river changes dramatically as it snakes into and through the city, and these different design proposals carry that legacy forward while envisioning new, user-friendly, flexible and sustainable nodes of activity. The L.A. River Downtown Design Dialogue celebrates ten years of working to revitalized areas and create connections along the river’s route.

Currently, this often-dry river, encased in concrete, feels about as much like a river as Silver Lake feels like a lake, or anything can feel natural when so artificially contained. Seven architecture firms were given one-mile strips to work with and created a wonderful array of designs featuring lush green parks, bike paths, kayaking zones, climbing walls and more.

Gruen Associates tackled a section near Chinatown, created a series of elevated paths and natural meadows all tied into an existing railroad yard.

WSP placed walkways and terraces along the sides of the river while also offering stepping stones for people wanting to walk across.

CH2M took its zone near the Arts District and added bicycle paths and other amenities around a winding and widened section of river made to look and feel more like a local creek.

AChee Salette took over old railway tracks to create a series of gardens spilling down from the road grade above to the level of the river below.

Curving and wrapping paths and walls create an organic wrapper for the section designed by Mia Lehrer + Associates, creating a space to canoe and kayak.

AECOM’s  playfully integrated climbing walls, basketball courts and other sporting amenities, while adding light and color through mosaics and murals spanning their area.

Tetra Tech designed a new bridge to cross the river as well as a river walk, all taking advantage of the existing sloped sides, reflecting the river’s historic form.

Together, these schemes reflect a rich diversity of design strategies as well as usage possibilities — given how prominent and central the path of the river is, it makes a lot of sense to make it a more accessible and vibrant resource for the city and its citizens.

Somewhere between data visualization and civic artwork, these info-driven diagrams reveal wealth disparities in the centers of America’s second and third largest cities. Herwig Scherabon‘s project, titled simply Income Inequality, uses a matrix of blocks (minimicking magnetized iron) to highlight rich and poor neighborhoods.

The city grids form a recognizable backdrop for these axonometric representations, allowing viewers to read the baseline built enviroment against the overlaid information. In turn, the millions of stacked pixel blocks end up forming an alternative landscape of skyscraper-like structures in the urban environment.

The net result is a map of the city’s invisible patterns and correlations shaped by power, money and time, revealing inequalities and mechanisms of segregation. Above: Chicago’s infamous low-income South Side (with Lake Michigan for reference). Below: poor areas of Los Angeles located directly next to the downtown core.

The final presentation was mounted on a pair of wooden boards with the city names shown on the cites, exhibited at the Glasgow School of Art graduate show. Captions on the side give more details on the diagrams.

From the artist/designer: “The two large prints (150x75cm) are visualizations of income inequality in Los Angeles and Chicago and are currently shortlisted for the Information is Beautiful Awards. They are printed on matte Somerset Velvet paper and mounted on thick wooden boards. The images are abstract diagrams of these cities that show a high resolution matrix of blocks. The height of these blocks corresponds to the income in the respective output area.”

“It is part of the design idea to inspire the viewer to look for their own neighborhood or other areas that interest them. I want to trigger a train of thought for what the reasons behind inequality might be. I am always fascinated by the patterns and correlations in the urban fabric. The politics behind urban planning tell us a lot about the people who live in these places and the powers who shape them. I think that it is utterly important to try to unveil the inequalities and the segregating mechanism that we got used to live with.”