A Vision Plan for the Gateway Cities

Home to over 2.1 million people, the plan area encompass 27 cities* and County unincorporated areas in the Gateway Cities region around the lower Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers in Southeast Los Angeles County. The communities of the Gateway Cities are among the densest and most diverse communities in the country. Yet just less than a century ago large portions of this region were rich agricultural fields built on floodplain across which two of the region’s great rivers occasionally merged. The transformation of the Gateway Cities from agricultural fields to densely urban communities makes for a richly told story. However the pattern of urbanization that characterized the rapid development of the region in the 20th century together with climate impacts and growing demands may also present challenges, from air quality to improving health of waterways; from providing sustainable and affordable transportation choices, to needs for parks and community space, and ensuring safe and reliable sources of water.

This project began in 2015, when the Watershed Conservation Authority—in partnership with North East Trees and the Gateway Cities Council of Governments—identified the need for an integrated and multi-benefit approach to watershed planning in the Gateway Cities region. Cities around the world are recognizing the value of restoring urban waterways that have been encased under concrete for a century. Moreover,  we now know there are ways to incorporate landscape functions into everyday urban landscapes that not only contribute to improving water quality in our streams and rivers, but bring shade, greenery, and quality of life benefits into urban communities.  This website presents examples of some of the ways in which we can remake our everyday urban landscapes to serve our communities better in the present and into the future. In today’s unprecedented time of climate change and decline of world biodiversity, our choices today determine how resilient, healthy, and regenerative our future communities will be—even in the midst of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world.

This watershed vision plan is designed to help communities imagine, explore, and organize, and then connect with various sources of support and funding to realize common visions for sustainable cities.

Planning For the Watershed

Through Greenscapes and Opportunity Sites shown elsewhere on this site, this vision plan suggests how everyday urban landscapes can help us to reenvision not only our rivers, but also our communities.

Many of the examples shown in this vision plan are chosen to show how our urban landscapes shape how our communities live together and interact.

This vision plan aims to support organization by presenting ideas to inspire, articles to provoke, and examples to consider. We pose the question, what do we love about the places we call home? We suggest that watershed health is closely linked with plants and soil that clean our water, and that green infrastructure can look many different ways and take many diverse forms.

We hope that expanding conversations about community priorities for each of the diverse cities of the Gateway Cities will also position local communities to leverage watershed funding opportunities for projects with multiple environmental as well as social and health benefits.

Here are some key elements of this vision plan:

The challenges of urban development and climate in Southern California are not unique to the Gateway Cities: regional challenges include ensuring the continued secure supply of water, air quality, improving waterways, cooling hot urban areas, providing parks and public community spaces, and realizing equity through such actions as policy to support people continuing to live in their neighborhoods where these investments are made.

Yet, the communities of the Gateway Cities have always been characterized by adaptability and evolution.

This vision plan offers green infrastructure strategies that if implemented, promise to improve quality of life on a local level, while having regional scale impacts. 

We invite feedback for how this vision plan and website might better facilitate the conversations that lead to community building, organizing, action, and even policy changes that can help guide the communities of the Gateway Cities toward a more sustainable future.