The Brief

Free Wi-Fi is available to the public along a 1.5-mile stretch of the Crenshaw Corridor as part of an effort to get more people in South L.A. on the internet and close the area’s digital divide.

“Access to secure, reliable internet is essential to full participation in democracy,” L.A. City Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson said in a statement. “The Crenshaw Community Connectivity Pilot is more than infrastructure. It is digital justice.”

Why it matters

Natalie Gonzalez, director of Digital Equity LA, says the idea started during the pandemic, when it became clear some communities were lacking the infrastructure needed to keep students and families online.

Streetlights along the Crenshaw Corridor are now embellished with a Wi-Fi symbol.

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Courtesy Natalie Gonzalez

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Digital Equity LA

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“We heard stories all about how people were having trouble connecting, and just down the street from us was a private charter school that had students that were exchanging laptops every week because they did not have enough tech,” Foster said.

A survey conducted by the nonprofit Designation Crenshaw found that many families weren’t connected to the internet.

“The overall sentiment was that it was too expensive,” Gonzalez said. “Destination Crenshaw came to us and was like, 'How do we figure this out? How do we build a network that is sustainable, affordable and reliable, most importantly?'”

Foster said some parts of the Crenshaw corridor have never been connected to any form of broadband — a familiar issue for other L.A. neighborhoods.

“We don't want Crenshaw to be the last. We want to absolutely be the first and to represent an opportunity for Little Tokyo, Chinatown, Olvera Street, historic Filipinotown and all the other ethnic enclaves that are in our city that need this type of solution,” he said.

More about the project

The Wi-Fi project was a partnership among the city of L.A., Cisco and a coalition of community organizations, including Destination Crenshaw and Digital Equity LA.

The L.A. Bureau of Street Lighting installed fiber optics cable underground, stretching from Leimert Park Plaza to the Hyde Park Metro Station.

“We did our investigation around their existing infrastructure and found out that the strip of Crenshaw is actually not connected to any broadband,” Jason Foster, president and CEO of Destination Crenshaw, told LAist. “In this kind of core area, where we have the highest concentration of Black ownership of resident and commercial spaces, we were not connected.”

How is this connected to the Olympics?

L.A. is preparing to host several world events such as the FIFA World Cup, Super Bowl 61 and the LA28 Olympics.

As the city prepares to see more visitors, public Wi-Fi could help keep more residents and tourists stay connected and explore what the neighborhoods have to offer.

“Folks are going to be taking the train from LAX, and they're going to take the K Line and connect to Expo,” Foster said. “Hopefully, we want them to get off and we want them to kind of shop and, you know, do business in the Crenshaw district, and Wi-Fi connectivity is a big part of making that transaction as seamless as possible.”