Road to Resilience
A plan for the Pacific Coast Highway that pioneers an integrated approach to coastal road planning in Southern California.
Overview
I led narrative strategy and design for a plan that weaves together active mobility and resiliency solutions for a troubled stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway in Southern California, providing the state’s transportation agency with a game-changing approach to saving lives and strengthening critical infrastructure for the next 100 years.
Activitiesconcept development
narrative strategy
design direction
workshop facilitation
spatial analysis
spatial design
community engagement
Design TeamEmanuel Papageorgiou, Alex Ford, Ryan Coughlin, Joanna Ferro, Megan Waller, Ezgi Gul, Cansu Seki
Date2022-2023
LocationVentura County, California
StudioArup Cities, Planning & Design
PartnersAlta Planning + Design
Arrellano Associates
The Cost of Business-as-usual
There’s nothing quite like chasing the sunset on the California coast. But the Pacific Coast Highway can be deadly if you travel by foot or bike, and it’s crumbling into the ocean at an increasing rate.
Caltrans was tired of the road’s bad safety record and having to spend millions of dollars on emergency repairs, so they enlisted my team at Arup to analyze a 7.5-mile segment of the road in Ventura County and come up with a way to tackle both issues at once.
Bridging Minds
Working with our transportation engineers and resiliency specialists, I served as a bridge between minds - drawing inspiration from the area’s history and landscape design thinking to synthesize everything from analysis to final concept.
Identifying a common source for our problems and crafting an overall narrative strategy to weave our solutions together.
Design Direction
I led a team of eight designers to shape the visual language for the report, blending best practices in active mobility and resiliency strategies with a visual style that evokes the experience of traveling the coastline. The goal was for the report to be as inviting and intuitive to use as the future landscape we envisioned.