Downtown Hermosa Beach, CA, home to one of the top 10 best Complete Streets policies of 2012. Photo via Wikimedia.
On Monday, the National Complete Streets Coalition released its annual analysis of the best Complete Streets policies of the past year. The 10 diverse communities with the best policies of the year include three California cities in the Los Angeles metro area: Hermosa Beach, Huntington Park, and Rancho Cucamonga. Hermosa Beach and Huntington Park tied for second place on our list of top policies, and Rancho Cucamonga came in at number 10.
Part of their success stems from an initiative to improve public health through better street design across the entire Los Angeles region. With the help of federal funds, the Los Angeles Department of Public Health launched its RENEW Los Angeles County initiative, which significantly supported communities that wanted to focus on multimodal, sustainable, equitable transportation. Other public health funds including through the Healthy Kids Healthy Communities program run by Active Living by Design, provided support to other communities in the region.