Venice Beach, CA - A Visionary Design

Venice Beach, CA is a vibrant city with a very interesting history. The way the city sits today is much different than the way Mr. Kinney designed it in the early 1900s. Venice Beach was originally supposed to be a Venice similar to the Italian city in California. The original city had canals, a miniature railroad and eventually amusement attractions. The purpose of re-designing Venice Beach was to bring historical value back to the city that it has lost over the years, as well as create more community centered areas and efficiency for tourists. After analyzing both visual and quantitative data, I created a problem statement which defined the four-fold problem thusly: tourists are present in all parts of town, lack of/poorly planned parking causes major problems, the city has lost some of its historical roots, there is a large socio-economic disparity between the rich and the homeless in the city and there is a need for a community center. The requirements for the project were then defined as: (1) Shall make parking more available. (2) Shall restore the historical properties of the city by adding more publicly visible canal(s) (3) Shall make new parking areas within 5 minutes of a walk to the new canal(s) (4) Shall create a sanctuary for the homeless. (5) Shall create a community center (for learning and community programs). The four alternatives for solving the problem were created as design options for this community centered city design. Alternative 1 created a new canal where Speedway Road is currently. Alternative 2 and 3 were an expansion of Alternative 1. Alternative 2 created bridges over the new canal as well as a new open space between North Venice Blvd and South Venice Blvd, from Pacific Way to Venice Way. Alternative 3 was a culmination of the Alt 1 and 2, plus added mixed-use buildings, as well as a homeless shelter, community center and new parking garages. The mixed-use buildings would be erected on both sides of the new canal. The homeless shelter and community center would replace some businesses and houses in the triangle between Marr St., Oxford Ave. and Washington Street. The additional parking would be created in two places, on the northeast corner of Washington Ave and Pacific Ave as well as the northeast corner of Windward Ave and Pacific Ave all the way to Westminster Park. A Digital Logic Parameterization Weighting System Table was used for the evaluation of alternatives. The properties used for analysis were: increased tourists, capital cost, long term cost, feasibility, schedule, restoring historical value and better community involvement. The first step was to compare each property against each other in order to figure out which one should have the highest emphasis or importance to further the evaluation (creating an emphasis coefficient). After finding the emphasis coefficients, I evaluated each alternative on the properties defined in the weighting table. Then, I compared each seemingly incomparable data set to alternatives through scaling by using the maximum and minimum properties and the emphasis coefficient. The overall performance index was created by compiling the scaled properties, determining that Alternative 3 was the best option. It was determined that lean methods could be used in the project construction. Also, many system engineering heuristics and lessons learned from other projects could be applied to the project. The principles of quality and verification of requirements can all be applied to the project. Many models were used to determine the activities, structure and principles of the design. Using this new design for Venice Beach could create a great future. This design would attract more tourists and provide the community with resources needed. Future work includes finding the resources to make my re-design become a reality