Michigan Avenue Neighborhood Greenway (MANGo)

The Michigan Avenue Neighborhood Greenway project (MANGo) is a greenway corridor that was developed through an urban and landscape design and community outreach effort to assess the potential of a three-mile corridor in the City of Santa Monica as a greenway. As part of a larger consulting team, Community Arts Resources (CARS) provided community outreach and engagement, and event programming and production services for the MANGo project. Working closely with Meléndrez, the consultant team lead, and graphic designer, Colleen Corcoran, CARS designed an outreach and engagement strategy that was both innovative and highly effective, ensuring that the project team received the necessary feedback from a diverse and large group of community stakeholders. Pop-Up MANGo utilized a 0.2-mile stretch of the proposed three-mile corridor to demonstrate in realtime what the Greenway could look like once permanent improvements were made. The event featured temporary installations and stations of possible improvements for the corridor, including chicanes (mid-block, landscaped sidewalk bulb-outs), a traffic circle, traffic diverters, a mini park in the street, enhanced landscaping and wayfinding signage. Through the development of attractive and readable outreach and marketing collateral, and a fun and out-of-the box community festival and workshop entitled Pop-Up MANGo, CARS helped to elevate this project in the minds of Santa Monica residents and the region at large.

After the MANGo planning effort, the greenway was approved and implemented within 18 months following broad community support.