2026 Researcher-in-Residence
Sixth Street Viaduct as Next Generation Infrastructure

The new Sixth Street Viaduct bridge does more than replace the historical car connection between the east and west sides of the Los Angeles River. Selected via a two-stage design competition, the bridge was designed by an interdisciplinary team of architects, landscape architects, and engineers and incorporates the voices of more than a dozen agencies, nonprofits, community interest groups, and private property owners as well as a broad swath of Boyle Heights and Arts District community members. Incorporating high-tech earthquake responsiveness, water harvesting, wide biking and walking lanes, and intentional public space considerations (including space for protest, recreation, arts events, and informal gathering), the result is a next generation infrastructure project that has quickly become both an icon and a lively, if somewhat contested, public space.

As developed in my book Infrastructural Optimism, next generation infrastructure is multi-functional, public, symbiotic, eco-conscious, locally specific, driven by design, technologically smart, developed collaboratively across disciplines and agencies, and reparative. This research emerged from my time at UCLA’s cityLAB where I developed and ran the WPA 2.0 (Working Public Architecture) competition in 2008–2009 with cofounders Dana Cuff and Roger Sherman. The first set of criteria came from analysis of our top competition entries, and the rest came from testing infrastructural urbanism theories and practices with students and partners at the University of Arizona and Washington University in St. Louis, where I currently teach. My studios, focused on systems-based urban design, ask students to consider how we move from last generation, obsolete and resource-intensive infrastructure, to symbiotic, ecologically, and socially conscientious alternatives.

In 2021–2022, I returned to LA for a year-long sabbatical where I consulted with the Bureau of Engineering and the Mayor’s office to build an Infrastructure Equity Scorecard pilot project. This GIS-based tool, developed with colleague Bomin Kim and representatives from Engineering, focused on prioritizing equity and community desires in determining distribution of infrastructure funding. Using existing indices like the Healthy Places Index and CalEnviro Screen, we created a user-friendly tool that identified neighborhoods most in need in combination with the direst infrastructure gaps. As a designer and scholar, this kind of high-tech tool building was new and exciting for me and has broadened my interest in bringing together data-based design decision making with those led by experiential, aesthetic, and qualitative factors. This time in LA also enhanced networks that support my continued engagement and investment in the city. I have since run three design studios focused on LA, including two on the Festival Trail (the proposed car-free network for the 2028 Olympics) and the LA River, and one on the Sixth Street Viaduct PARC (Park, Arts, River and Connectivity Improvements).

Written before the bridge was completed, the brief case study in Infrastructural Optimism on the Viaduct speculates on its fulfillment of the next gen infrastructure criteria through analysis of documents and conversations with project management. Now the bridge is complete, and the PARC is slated to open this year. How is the Sixth Street Viaduct faring as a next gen infrastructure example? How is it performing socially, environmentally, and economically with the specific next gen criteria in mind? As a piece of infrastructure intended to connect two very different socioeconomic populations—the gentrifying Arts District and the resistant Latino community of Boyle Heights—what role is the bridge playing in stabilization, further gentrification, and/or civic expression?

This research project will answer those questions through a combination of data-based analysis and empirical, qualitative, on-the-ground explorations. It will intentionally compare and combine quantitative information—demographic data, property values, modal usage—with lived experience—photography, video, interviews, sketches, storytelling—evaluating next gen performance as a combination of abstract and empirical worlds. The result, to be presented in public discussion and drawing format at the end of the residency, will be a multi-dimensional assessment of the bridge and its next gen performance, and an exploration of how different modes of research can inform the design of socially and environmentally productive mobility infrastructure. For example: How do we compare the value of graffiti as a sign of ownership and engagement with a formal survey? What strategies can we employ to “measure what matters”—things like social cohesion, improved quality of life, and repair—as alternatives to a highly capitalistic, quantitative focus on economic growth? Though the process will shape the final media, the goal is to produce a series of thick mappings, similar to the maps produced in my studios and book, but with a deeper, multi-dimensional and humanistic dive into the assessment of the Sixth Street Viaduct as a mobility conduit, public space, and prototype for next generation infrastructure.

Large, multi-agency infrastructure projects take years to complete, so it is often a challenge to study them from design through implementation and use. The Researcher-in-Residence program allows me to revisit a project I first studied during its design phase more than four years ago: the Sixth Street Viaduct that connects two sides of the Los Angeles River in downtown LA. Since completion, the bridge has become a new LA icon, but also a destination for graffiti artists, cruisers, thrill seekers, and protesters. Coming back to the bridge in its complete and activated form allows a more immersive, personal, and experiential analysis, with the luxury of dedicated time and resources. The 2026 theme for the residency, Exploring the Potential of Mobility Corridors, also helps legitimize the claims I make in my research for infrastructure as socially and environmentally productive civic space where architects, landscape architects, and urban designers are essential from the start. I am honored to be named the 2026 SOM Foundation and MAK Center for Art and Architecture Researcher-in-Residence and hope to further share the value of next generation infrastructure with the design community and our partners.
Linda C. Samuels