East San Gabriel Valley Area Plan Components and Environmental Impact Report

JKA was asked by Environmental Science Associates (ESA) to develop the urban design component of the East San Gabriel Valley Area Plan, in essence, the General Plan for this portion of unincorporated Los Angeles County. The area includes 24 communities that range in scale from semi-rural to urban. JKA’s responsibility was to assess their character and develop design goals, objectives, and overarching guidelines for their evolution, while conserving their best environmental design characteristics.

JKA observed the built form conditions and found that most were single-family neighborhoods that lacked sidewalks, which in turn limited walkability. Additionally, there was little sense of connectivity between neighborhoods, auto-oriented commercial centers, and natural areas such as the arroyos that slice through the area. JKA put together policies that focused on building orientation, landscape enhancement, and connectivity along trails and between places to ensure that new zoning and projects would relate new projects to alternative transit modes, i.e., walking and biking, and provide for enhanced gathering that could both serve existing communities and foster a sense of place.

Utilizing photographs of precedents, JKA created an illustrated design element that detailed how with careful design, higher density single-family and multi-family projects, as well as mixed-use projects could fit within the existing community by community surrounds. The illustrations are broad enough to anticipate both small and large projects, open space projects such as new parks and trails, and are at the same time selective, based upon East San Gabriel Valley contexts. When adopted, the design element will establish a framework for future built forms that both acknowledges existing contexts while introducing contemporary best design practices.