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My favorite part of this story–a series of stitched sequences of Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles (above)–was inspired by Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip, which Ruscha made by driving a pickup truck down a mile and a half of the famous boulevard with an automated camera. Our four images of different neighborhoods on Vermont Avenue are published in the magazine as a double gatefold, which means two facing pages have flaps that fold out, letting you see the images four pages across.
“I love that Ruscha’s book is an accordion foldout, 25 feet long,” writes Sam, who immediately saw the possibility in such an approach for our magazine. “Digital may reign, but print is still such a tactile treat!”
But this isn’t just art.
Visualizing the legacy of discriminatory housing policies is a challenge, and this approach solves for that. Redlined neighborhoods have fewer trees due to underfunding over decades, explained Sam. Trees are sparser in neighborhoods that had long been considered less suitable for investment. The shift is subtle, but the stitched sequences allow us to see leafy “Grade A” neighborhoods (at top in the stitched-together photos above) adjacent to hotter, baked-concrete, lower-grade neighborhoods (also pictured below). The temperature difference in just a few miles can be more than a dozen degrees, which has become even more searing in a warming world.
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