The Brief

For a century now, the United States has prioritized the automobile over the pedestrian. Major cities slice up their neighborhoods with thick highways and some suburbs don’t even bother installing sidewalks. Even in deep-blue San Francisco, a battle broke out this year over whether to close a coastal highway to cars permanently.

It might seem obvious that making a neighborhood more friendly to pedestrians encourages people to walk more, improving public health and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from driving. But it’s surprisingly tricky to demonstrate that with data, since other factors influence how much a person walks, like their socioeconomic status. Cities need such data to prioritize which neighborhoods to make more walkable, and then public health officials need still more research to confirm the benefits of any interventions.

To that end, a new study in the American Journal of Epidemiology used 11,000 twins to show that whenever a neighborhood becomes 1% more walkable — by, for instance, adding sidewalks to make it easier for people to get from parks to restaurants and other businesses on foot — residents walk 0.42% more minutes a week.

So if a city boosts an area’s walkability by about 50%, an average resident might theoretically walk about 20 more minutes a week, according to the study. That’s important, the researchers write, “because even small increases in physical activity at the population level can contribute to improvements in public health.” (You can find the walkability score of your neighborhood here. The service is separate from the study.)

Experts have long encouraged people to walk for their health. But by targeting walkability overall, cities can bake that encouragement into the landscape itself.

“Individual behavior change just isn’t doing it. We’ve kind of done that to death, in my opinion,” said Glen E. Duncan, the lead author of the paper and a professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at Washington State University. “We just tell people to eat your fruits and vegetables and get more exercise, without really thinking about the larger structural problems that hinder people from eating better and getting more activity.”

A key component of the study was a database of twins, which allowed the researchers to look at pairs of similar people living in different neighborhoods. The researchers could investigate the objective measurements of walkability in the twins’ neighborhoods — such as plenty of destinations readily accessible by sidewalks — to determine if the built environment influenced their activity.

They found that the twins who lived in more walkable neighborhoods reported walking more weekly minutes than their siblings. Now policymakers can use this information to make their cities more walkable, Duncan said. “That could be a really good thing for public health.”

The study could help city governments looking to take climate action, too. Cities are prime candidates for “multisolving” techniques, interventions that solve multiple problems at once. New sidewalks or zoning laws to get more businesses within walking distance for residents don’t just make it easier to get around on foot.

“Every trip taken on foot instead of by a fossil fuel-powered car reduces greenhouse gas emissions,” said Elizabeth Sawin, the director of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Multisolving Institute, who wasn’t involved in the new research. “Walkability also helps connect people with the neighbors and local businesses, and increases a sense of connection and economic vitality.”

With more people opting to walk instead of drive, fewer cars on the road would improve local air quality and put fewer pedestrians and cyclists in danger of getting run over by cars: Every day in the U.S., an average of 20 people are killed by motor vehicles. But it’s not necessary to close off roads to cars to make a place more walkable; a city government simply needs to improve the existing infrastructure to make people feel safer walking and cycling. That might be particularly welcome in underserved neighborhoods.

“I think it is going to make a world of a difference for many people — marginalized groups in particular,” said Bunmi Akinnusotu, director of city innovation at the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Aspen Institute, who wasn’t involved in the research.

Cities can change more readily than you might think. San Francisco voters ended up closing that coastal highway in the November election, clearing the way for it to become a two-mile-long park for pedestrians and bicyclists. And ever since the lifting of COVID restrictions, cities across the U.S. have been experimenting with slow streets and other ways to improve pedestrian safety and human health.

“If we really want to move the needle on public health,” Duncan said, “we need to be thinking about things that we can change that impact a large percentage of the population.”

Meta will lay off 10% of its staff in May, according to an internal memo which was published by Bloomberg. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the report's accuracy to NPR.

The layoffs will take place on May 20 and affect some 8,000 workers. Meta will also not hire for 6,000 open roles that it had intended to fill.

In the memo, Meta's chief people officer Janelle Gale wrote, "We're doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we're making. This is not an easy tradeoff and it will mean letting go of people who have made meaningful contributions to Meta during their time here."

Calling it "unwelcome news" that "puts everyone in an uneasy state," Gale wrote, confirming the layoffs to employees now "is the best path forward, given the circumstances."

Meta and other big players in artificial intelligence have been spending vast amounts of money to build data centers and try to win the AI race — one in which Meta lags behind competitors such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.

In January, Meta forecast record capital expenditures this year of up to $135 billion — almost double what it spent last year.

The pivot to AI comes at a time when Meta seems to be backing away from its previous focus on its virtual reality Metaverse products. The Metaverse was once key to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's vision for the company's future — so fundamental that in 2021, he changed the name of the company from Facebook to Meta.

In a separate round of layoffs this month, the company announced that it was laying off some 700 people as part of its efforts in "right-sizing" its investment in Reality Labs, the division that runs the company's Metaverse products.

Meta is also facing a string of costly legal challenges. The company lost two pivotal court cases earlier this year: a New Mexico jury found that Meta failed to protect young users from child sexual exploitation. Penalties in that case could reach $375 million.

Meanwhile, a jury in Los Angeles found the company — along with Google — liable for the mental health problems experienced by a woman who used social media as a small child, awarding her $6 million.

In the Los Angeles case, the woman's lawyers argued that Meta's products were designed to be addictive to kids.

Meta has said it will appeal both lawsuits.

The company faces similar lawsuits, including one brought by several school districts against Meta and several other social media companies, which will be heard in Oakland, California this year.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The first thing you notice when you unwrap the fried chicken sandwich from Hokkaido Fried Chicken is the craggy crust, almost geological in its texture — the kind of fry that makes you want to reconsider every other fried chicken sandwich you've ever eaten.

The craggy, crunchy Hokkaido fried chicken

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Courtesy Hokkaido Fried Chicken

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The chicken itself — shattering on the outside, improbably juicy within — holds its own against everything surrounding it. With the miso vinaigrette slaw, the pickled cucumbers, the chili truffle shoyu sauce, it’s a revelation — and for me, the best fried chicken sandwich I’ve ever eaten in L.A., hands down.

Hokkaido by way of Arcata

Hokkaido Fried Chicken, which is online-only, has been running since January out of an unassuming ghost kitchen on the edge of Koreatown. It’s the brainchild of Ronuk Patel, an Indian American who grew up outside Chicago, fell in love with snowboarding, and relocated to Arcata, a Northern California town about three hours from the Oregon border.

Ronuk Patel, chef and owner of Hokkaido Fried Chicken and Hokkaido Soup Curry, at his ghost kitchen on Olympic Blvd on the outskirts of Koreatown.

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Courtesy Hokkaido Fried Chicken

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There, he built a career as a cannabis farmer — and began making regular snowboarding pilgrimages to Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, chasing powder and, eventually, some of the most interesting food he'd ever eaten. It was on that first trip to Sapporo, over a decade ago, that he met Gory, a Japanese chef who would become a close friend and, eventually, his collaborator.

In 2024, Patel sponsored Gory's visa and brought him to Arcata to help launch Susukino Ramen Bar — named after the Sapporo neighborhood where they first met. It was there, with Gory's family zangi recipe on the menu as an appetizer, that the seed of Hokkaido Fried Chicken was planted.

What is zangi?

Most Angelenos with a passing familiarity with Japanese cuisine know karaage — the lightly battered, juicy fried chicken that has become a fixture on Japanese menus across the city. Zangi is Hokkaido's answer to that tradition, and it plays in a different register entirely. Where karaage tends toward a lighter touch — a brief marinade, a delicate crust — zangi goes deeper. The marinade is heavier on soy and sake, more aggressive with garlic and ginger and almost always incorporates a fruit component that varies by chef.

Patel and Gory pushed it further still, applying a dry batter separately after marinating — rather than mixing everything together in the traditional wet batter method — for a crust that fries up dramatically craggier and crunchier. The result is chicken that is deeply seasoned all the way through and improbably juicy — both of which hit you immediately on first bite.

The HFC sandwich up close — the craggy, dry-battered crust is the first thing you notice, a direct result of Patel and chef Gory's decision to depart from zangi's traditional wet batter.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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Inside the sandwich

Bite into the sandwich ($10.99), and you immediately understand why it took four or five months to get here. Every detail is thought through. The miso slaw cuts the richness of the chicken without competing with it. The cucumbers, pickled in a brine riffed from Patel's own recipe, add brightness and snap. The chili truffle shoyu sauce, born from mixing his ramen shop's house chili with a white shoyu-truffle product he'd been experimenting with, ties it together with a depth that sneaks up on you.

Just getting started

Fried chicken sandwiches aren't all that's on the menu at HFC. Nuggets and tenders round out the chicken offerings, along with the fries, which are definitely worth ordering — particularly the loaded pork belly fries ($10), topped with chashu pork belly, spicy truffle aioli and green onions over crispy shoestring fries, and the furikake fries ($5), whose umami-rich seasoning makes them a natural companion to the chicken.

Patel has also launched a second concept out of the same ghost kitchen: Hokkaido Soup Curry, a Japanese dish that combines aromatic curry spices with a lighter, broth-based preparation rooted in the same Hokkaido culinary tradition that inspired HFC — and one that hints at the Japanese-Indian fusion menu Patel says he's only just beginning to develop.

For Patel, none of it feels calculated — and that, perhaps, is the point.

"It just happened really organically, naturally, just like us being in the kitchen, having a good time."

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

When I first started, I went alone. I couldn’t convince any of my friends to commit to riding 20 miles on a bicycle on a Friday night through a city known for its car culture. It didn’t help that I told them the bike ride would start in Koreatown, among the most densely populated neighborhoods in the whole country. 

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. 

What I discovered is that Los Angeles Critical Mass (LACM) is the largest community bicycle ride in the United States, drawing almost 4,000 riders each month, according to the group’s own records. 

The modern Critical Mass movement began in San Francisco in 1992 as a grassroots effort to reclaim the streets has since grown into a global movement, with Los Angeles now hosting one of its largest rides.

LACM Vice President JoJo Valdez, told The LA Local that the event is ”a living example of what safer, more human-centered streets could look like” in the City of Angels. 

Critical Mass Los Angeles riders roll through Koreatown, January 2026.

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Courtesy of LACM

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The ride takes place on the last Friday of every month on the corner of Western and Wilshire across from The Wiltern. Routes change monthly, turning each ride into a moving tour of the city. Some rides head west toward Marina del Rey, others east toward Mariachi Plaza, passing through neighborhoods that rarely feel connected outside of car travel.

As the ride moves through different neighborhoods, it often brings energy — and customers — to local businesses along the route as riders stop for food, drinks and supplies throughout the evening.

Valdez said, “Cyclists, skaters and riders moving together make the demand for alternative transportation impossible to ignore.”

A cyclist takes off on a monthly Critical Mass ride in Koreatown on Nov 8th, 2025.

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Steve Saldivar

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The LA Local

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L.A. is the last place you’d expect a mass cycling movement to take hold. That’s probably why it did. In a city defined by gridlock, LACM offers something rare — movement through neighborhoods at a human pace.

I’ve experienced it firsthand. 

For me, LACM became an alternative to the typical night out. Instead of bars or clubs, it became a way to decompress, stay active and explore the city differently.

Over time, I built connections that turned into a consistent group of six friends I now ride with each month. I’ve even brought my girlfriend along, and it’s become one of our favorite end-of-month traditions.

Critical Mass Los Angeles riders roll through Los Angeles.

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Courtesy of LACM

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How a ride typically goes

The LA chapter of Critical Mass is led by LACM President Lisa Lundie and Valdez, who both began as volunteers before stepping into leadership roles for the Los Angeles chapter. According to the organization, their focus includes accessibility, community and mental wellness accessibility, community and mental wellness — and those values show up throughout the ride itself.

Valdez said that what people see — the crowds and energy — is only part of the story. There is real coordination and planning to keep the ride safe and organized as it moves through the city.

“We look out for each other. We ride together. If you’re alone, you won’t stay that way for long,” he said.

Critical Mass Los Angeles riders roll through Hollywood Boulevard, December of 2024.

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Courtesy of LACM

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Ride marshals help guide traffic, support newer riders and keep the group together, while a lead vehicle sets the pace and support riders follow behind to ensure no one is left behind. The result is a ride that may feel overwhelming at first, given the number of people, but quickly settles into a relaxed rhythm.

With everyone following the lead car and built-in stops to regroup, it becomes approachable for first-timers and more communal than a typical solo ride through Los Angeles.

As the ride unfolds, speakers carried by riders create a shifting soundtrack — hip-hop, EDM, reggae and Latin music blending with each neighborhood the group passes through, turning the streets into a moving reflection of L.A.’s culture.

Critical Mass Los Angeles riders roll through Koreatown.

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Louie Martinez

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The LA Local

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Some rides carry deeper meaning, including moments of silence for cyclists lost to traffic accidents and ongoing calls for safer streets.

This month’s ride, taking place on April 24 at 7:00 p.m., will celebrate West Coast hip-hop legend DJ Battlecat, who will perform from the lead vehicle, transforming the ride into a rolling party on wheels.

The distance might sound intimidating, but the pace is manageable, with plenty of breaks and lots of potential new friends.  Whether you come with a group or show up solo, Critical Mass offers a new way to experience Los Angeles one ride at a time.

Cyclists gather for the monthly Critical Mass rides in Koreatown on Nov 8th, 2025.

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Steve Saldivar

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The LA Local

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