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A beautiful new blue playground with kids on swings and a mat below with bright pink flowers

The state of play

Last year, I wrote about how LA's ParkScore had dropped from 80th to 88th out of 100 U.S. cities. This year, I'm sorry to say that we sank even lower — LA is now 90th out of 100.

Dying to host the Olympics

Dying to host the Olympics

During this week's budget hearings, councilmembers repeatedly asked if improvements around Olympics venues were taking precedence over obligations to their constituents to deliver safer streets

Val Kilmer as Iceman in the iconic beach volleyball scene from Top Gun spinning a volleyball on his finger

Bump, set, spike

Santa Monica mounted a sustained, publicly transparent campaign to challenge what LA28 was offering. And, in the end, that's probably what sent the organizing committee packing for other shores

Councilmember Tim McOsker speaks at an LA City Council meeting holding up a "zero" with his fingers

Significant headwinds

On Friday we saw the first serious challenge of LA28's venue plan, which had gone largely uncontested by LA city leaders. And we saw an LA city councilmember openly accuse LA28 of making backroom deals to create that venue plan

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