Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 10

In the TED Talk, "Greening the Ghetto" Majora Carter discusses issues of environmental justice, and her effort to bring green spaces to the low income communities of the South Bronx. Carter states that environmental justice means that "no community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other." Both Carter and David Harvey's "The Environment of Justice" claim that race and class are the best predictors in the location of nature degrading sites like toxic waste facilities as well as nature preserves and parks. Carter says, "As a black person in America, I am twice as likely as a white person to live in an area where air pollution poses the greatest risk to my health. I am five times more likely to live within walking distance of a power plant or chemical facility - which I do."

True to Carter and Harvey's theory, it seems that race and class are huge factors in the locations of parks in Los Angeles. South Los Angeles is a relatively low income area that according to the Los Angeles Times has "historically had less recreation space than other parts of the city." However, South LA has recently seen the opening of two parks, which mayer Villaraigosa claims is the first of more than 50 new parks for the city. The South LA Wetlands Park is a nine acre park built in the place of a former bus and rail storage yard that is a welcomed green space in the densely packed area. The park includes an artificial wetland that will filter storm water with bacteria and plants and help in cleaning up the Los Angeles River Watershed.

South LA Wetlands Park

Having arrived midday on a Saturday, I was surprised to only see one other person there. The park's main attraction are the kidney shaped pools with a snaking dirt path around them. There are informational signs describing the plants and animals often found in wetland habitats, as well as explanations of the storm water filtering process that takes place within the park. The lights lining the walking path are all solar powered, which shows a commitment to building a more sustainable community. (This also makes me wonder why everything in LA isn't solar powered, seeing as though its sunny maybe 360 days out of the year…) The park was funded partially by Proposition O, a bond measure passed in 2004, and partially by funds from the EPA's Urban Water Federal Partnership. 

Augustus F. Hawkins Natural Park

The South LA Wetlands opened this past February and therefore looks a little sparse as far as plant development goes, but this park was modeled after another artificial wetland only a mile away which I visited as well. The Augustus F. Hawkins Natural Park, which opened in 2000, was more inviting as well as lively. In addition to a fully developed, lush wetlands habitat there were grassy areas, BBQs, picnic tables and areas devoted to lemon trees and succulents. There were also more people at this park, mostly Latino families with young children. 

South Los Angeles has a high population density made up of 56.7% Latino and 38% African American residents according to the Los Angeles Times. It is great to see the city of LA investing in the wellbeing of areas that usually have more environmental degradation and less common space than wealthier neighborhoods. As Carter also mentions, the lack of parks in low income neighborhoods is a huge factor in the poor health of its residents. Hopefully these parks will encourage residents of south Los Angeles to be outside and active. Not only is it important to note the parks as an educational tool for children to learn about the animal species and plant varieties in wetland habitats, but also these parks can be seen as a tool for sustainable water, clean energy, and a welcomed addition to the ecological infrastructure of Los Angeles. 

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 9

In "The Environment of Justice" David Harvey describes the standard view of environmental management, which is centered on the idea that the environment exists to support economic development. Environmental problems  in the standard view are dealt with after the fact. Harvey claims, "This strategy in part stems from the belief that no general environmental concerns should stand in the way of 'progress' (more precisely, capital accumulation)." We can see a clear example of the standard view of environmental management in the response to Hurricane Katrina. Little was done before hand to prevent damage, and much of the work was after the damage had been done, along the vein of "how do we clean this up?" While Hurricane Katrina or the location of toxic waste facilities are examples with much more severe consequences, we can see that the city of Los Angeles has also taken a sort of standard view approach to the thousands of cracked and buckled sidewalks in the city.

An article in the LA Times prompted this blog post about the crumbling sidewalks in the city. The article states that "Of the city's 10,750 miles of sidewalk, roughly 4,600 miles are in need of repairs, at the projected price of $1.2 billion…" This is more than 42% of the city's sidewalks that are in disrepair. Up until the 1970s property owners were responsible for mending broken sidewalks in front of their homes. When funds were available in the 70s the city decided to take on the responsibility of fixing sidewalk damage caused by tree roots, which according to UCLA professor of urban planning, Donald Shoup, is the cause for most sidewalk damage. However, those funds disappeared in 1978 which left the city without sidewalk maintenance and now with a 1.2 billion dollar problem on their hands. 

Although I could have picked any of the 4,600 miles of sidewalk in need of repair, I chose to walk a couple miles in Westwood (mostly because parts of the sidewalk on my walk to school can be rather treacherous). There are many cases in which part of the sidewalk had been lifted and then filled in with asphalt, which is the city's 'quick fix' for sidewalk complaints. There are also cases in which the sidewalk is broken and lifted and nothing has been done to fix it. While these buckled sidewalks can be inconvenient for anyone who isn't paying close attention (ie. texting while walking), they can be particularly hazardous for the disabled, wheelchair users, and stroller pushers of Los Angeles. An article on The Atlantic Cities states that many civil rights groups have sued the city of Los Angeles arguing that the poor condition of sidewalks violate the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Here are just a few examples of sidewalks in need of repair in Westwood: 

So, what's the solution? Pass the responsibility to someone else! The city may overturn the policy of city-funded repair which would return the financial and legal responsibility back to property owners. This is (obviously) not popular with homeowners of Los Angeles who are rarely the ones responsible for planting the delinquent trees that cause most of these problems. Not only would homeowners be responsible for the cost of sidewalk repairs, but they would also assume legal responsibility for sidewalk related 'trip and fall' injuries, which currently costs the city of LA between $3 and $5 million a year to settle or defend these cases.

The school of Public Policy at Pepperdine University published an article called Los Angeles: Who Takes Care of Sidewalks? The article discusses how some Playa Del Ray residents are taking things into their own hands and fixing the sidewalks in front of their homes. While this may be a refreshing example of citizens using their resources to fix something the city cannot afford to fix, this doesn't seem like a likely solution for sidewalks in low income areas. Another alternative that the LA Times presents  is "a shared-cost program in which residents voluntarily covered a portion of the repairs to move to the front of the line." This program was launched in 2005 and "last year, city funding for that so-called 50/50 program also ran dry." While this is good that the city was trying to get sidewalks fixed in any way they can, putting residents who could afford to repair their sidewalks at the top of the list can become problematic for those who cannot afford it. If having the money to repair the sidewalk is the only way to fix the problem this ensures that low income neighborhoods will be kept in a perpetual state of disrepair. This also plays into what William Julius Wilson calls "entrenched poverty" which can have lasting effects in the creation of stagnant populations in low income areas. 

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 8

This week I wasn't able to travel anywhere so I commented on Ellen's blog post about Leimert Park. Here it is: 

Hey Ellen!

I really enjoyed reading about what sounds like the thriving community of Leimert Park. As someone who is new to Los Angeles, it can sometimes be hard to navigate the city's many different areas, and it's great to hear about an area that has such a sense of community - something that I am regrettably not finding in Westwood. 

You make a great point about desegregation and how although African Americans favor desegregated neighborhoods, they do not necessarily want to be immersed in white culture. It is surprising that the reading by Massey and Denton does not touch upon this point. It is also I think unfair that clustering of African Americans in certain neighborhoods is seen as residents in favor of segregation when an area of solely white residents would probably never be labeled in this fashion. 

It's interesting that a resident you spoke to says the area would not have the same level of solidarity if Leimert Park was a racially mixed neighborhood. This makes me wonder if reasons for solidarity among a neighborhood are mostly based off of racial homogeneity. We see organic solidarity in the post-metropolis of Los Angeles, but perhaps a close-knit community feeling is more easily attainable if there is some semblance of mechanical solidarity as well. Not to say that Leimert Park has a clan or tribe mentality, but it seems that through racial commonality an area's residents can also share in cultural and social commonality. 

I thought the Ta-Nehisi Coates article was really interesting while also highlighting some disturbingly persistent racial inequalities. Looking at the way Obama has handled the issue of race, which Coates claims is largely by tiptoeing around the subject, shows that there is still a huge amount of racial tension in the country that exist. In many senses, Obama's presidency is a huge symbolic step toward racial progress, but unfortunately social patterns can persist over time. We can see this in the example of redlining or discriminatory housing practices. Although racial discrimination is illegal, it takes time for the actual discriminatory practices to subside. 

The article, "Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina" by James Elliot and Jeremy Pais discusses the way different ways race played a part in the response to Hurricane Katrina. The authors share that there is a difference in the way African Americans and Caucasians understand race. The article states, "Research has long shown that blacks think and talk about race much more often than whites, in part because whites have difficulty recognizing the privilege that their skin color generally affords them in the US society." In this context, perhaps we can see President Obama's tiptoeing around certain racial issues as a reflection of how many would rather not talk about race in America. The article then goes on to state that "even if racial hatred ceases, persistent social patterns can endure over time." Although these cultural patterns can help enforce and continue racial tensions, they can also lead to better cohesion among racially homogenous neighborhoods - perhaps similar to the cohesion among Leimert Park. 

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 7

The Marxian view of economic classes is that they are determined by what each class owns. The Bourgeoisie owns the means of production, while the Proletariate only owns their labor power, and it is these differences in class that determine urban form and function. The Marxian view claims that if we want to understand the spatial patterns of a city, we must first understand the differences that exist between the classes. In terms of production in a capitalist society the main goal of the upper class - those who own the means of production - is to produce a surplus value by exploiting the labors of the working class. As David Harvey puts it, "a class of capitalists is in command of the work process and organizes that process for the purposes of producing profit…The domination arises because the laborer must yield the capitalist a profit in return for a living wage." This system of producing surplus value at the expense of the workers is especially apparent in factories, where large scale production happens rapidly and the workers only make a fraction of the value that they add to each product. 

Los Angeles is a predominant city in the American fashion industry not only because of its many fashion schools and designers but because of the huge amount of clothing manufacturing that takes place in the Fashion District. The Fashion District in downtown Los Angeles spans 100 blocks and is packed full of textiles, men's, women's, and kid's apparel, jewelry, accessories, luggage, flowers, perfume, etc. for both wholesale business and retail shopping. Today I walked up and down Maple, one of the main streets in the area, but also explored some of the side streets which were equally packed with shops. Each store front I passed was spilling out onto the sidewalk, displaying the products they had to sell and usually accompanied by workers advertising the great deals and low prices they could offer you. I saw a few people bargaining with shop owners and a surprising number of ATMs in many of the stores (I'm assuming) to encourage cash purchases. An overwhelming majority of those working in the shops as well as shopping were Latino. 

Map of the Fashion District

It is this same Latino demographic who make these clothes in the many garment shops above the store fronts of the Fashion District. The article, Fashion Victims: Inside the Sweat Shops of Los Angeles states that "the workers are all newly arrived Latino immigrants; the owners tend to be Korean, Vietnamese or Iranian." It's interesting that racial divisions occurs among the different occupations within the Los Angeles fashion industry. 

While a lot of American production has been moving off shore and over seas, there has been an increase in apparel production in Los Angeles largely because of a large amount of (usually undocumented) Latino immigrants who are willing to work for extremely low wages. Behind the Label, is a book that examines the Los Angeles garment industry by Richard Appelbaum, a Sociology professor at UC Santa Barbara and Edna Bonacich, a professor of sociology and Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside. Appelbaum shares some of the findings from the book in a lecture at UCSB. He states the garment industry is essential to the local economy of Los Angeles and accounts for 10% of the 300 billion dollar economy. The industry employs 160 thousand people, 120 thousand of which are sewing machine operators and primarily women. Unfortunately, these workers are often paid below minimum wage, and work for long hours in horrible working conditions. Appelbaum shares that a seamstress would earn on average about seven to eight thousand dollars a year (which is 2/3 of minimum wage) and that two out of three factories in Los Angeles have violations of wage and hour laws.

David Harvey in "The Urban Process Under Capitalism" sees the city as a site of cultural ideology that legitimizes capitalism. The American dream encompasses the domestic ideal of owning a car and a home, which for Harvey is part of the reason that capitalism is perpetuated. Workers trade their labor power for a living wage that enables them to purchase these necessary goods. In the case of garment industry workers in Los Angeles, the trade is a little different. Since  many of these workers are undocumented citizens, instead of working for a living wage, unfortunately they seem to be working for any wage they can make. The fashion industry is also regrettably a highly anti-union industry which leaves many of these garment workers unprotected from unfair working conditions. Luckily, Appelbaum and other activists are working hard to rectify the injustice of the garment industry. For example, the student anti-sweatshop movement has pressured many American universities (including all of the UCs) into forming new codes of conduct that guarantee that all apparel with the university's logo on it must come from factories that pay their workers minimum wage and provide clean and safe working conditions. Hopefully, further actions like this will help to improve working conditions for those in the Los Angeles garment industry.

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 6

This past weekend I walked over to the farmers market in West Los Angeles to stock up on fresh fruit and vegetables that are sometimes hard to find at nearby grocery stores. The farmers market had about 40 or so stalls with a great variety of fruit, vegetables, organic coffee, hummus, freshly baked bread, freshly made enchiladas, etc. After this trip to the farmers market I felt lucky to have this weekly source of fresh food at my fingertips.  I saw a mixture of ethnicities, and ages, some were with families, and some by themselves. I observed more than one customer who was obviously a loyal customer of a stand and had friendly relationships with the stand operators. Farmers markets have many logistical benefits - the food is usually locally sourced, everything is sold by the producers themselves, and almost everything is organic. Farmers markets also benefit the local community and local economy by stimulating social interaction between residents of the area but also encouraging interaction between rural and urban communities. 

When discussing access to resources in an urban environment, the first things that come to mind are often physical access to transportation or urban mobilities, access to financial resources such as loans or insurance, or social access to neighborhoods or places of consumption. So, how about access to food? This trip got me thinking about how the resource of food affects residents of different neighborhoods and if we can observe social difference through the lens of access to food. 

An article on KCET claims that access to healthy foods in low income areas of Los Angeles is compromised. Karen Lincoln, associate director of the USC Roybal Institute says, "if you know someone's zip code, you know their health. It's very clear when you look at Los Angeles County." The assumption that affluent neighborhoods have more access to healthy foods and poorer neighborhoods don't is maybe a little too simple. An article in the LA Times claims that proximity to supermarkets doesn't mean that people consume a higher amount of fruits and vegetables. "Instead, income - and proximity to fast-food restaurants - were the strongest factors in food choice." 

The LA Times has a great interactive map of all of the farmers markets in the Los Angeles area along with the hours and days they operate. There has been a lot of attention on the amount of fast-food in South Los Angeles, one of the poorest parts of the city. In the screenshot of the map you can see that there are far fewer farmers markets in south LA than in other areas. In 2008 there was a one year moratorium that banned any new fast-food chains from opening in the area, which has now become a permanent law and has been called one of the nation's most radical food policies. The New York Times states that the motivations for the ban came from the fact that 45% of the area's restaurants are fast-food chains along with heightened rates of obesity and health problems among residents of the area. 

Map of the farmers markets in the Los Angeles area

This high concentration of fast-food restaurants in a relatively low-income neighborhood is not particularly surprising because people often claim that fast-food is cheaper than food from grocery stores (real food?). However, Mark Bittman, food journalist and author claims that this is a misconception. He states "You can serve a roasted chicken with vegetables along with a simple salad and milk for about $14, and feed four or even six people. If that's too much money, substitute a meal of rice and canned beans with bacon, green peppers and onions; it's easily enough for four people and costs about $9." Although fast-food may not be technically cheaper, it is an easy solution that requires little to no work. 

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 5

Much of the social difference we see in urban environments is expressed spatially through physical or psychological divisions of economic classes. Unfortunately these divisions (and apparent hostility towards a lower class) have been present in cities for quite some time now. In "Mapping the Pure and Defiled" Sibley states, "By the eighteenth century, socio-spatial separation was becoming characteristic of large cities, like London, Dublin or Philadelphia, and boundary maintenance became a concern of the rich, who were anxious to protect themselves from disease and moral pollution." Today we see boundary maintenance in the form of gated communities but we also see more subtle ways in which physical access is discouraged for certain people, like communities that are only accessible by car, or neighborhoods with no sidewalks. Today I visited Bel-Air and observed the many traits of socio-spatial separation that essentially act to discourage access to the area for those who do not live there.

 Bel-Air is an affluent neighborhood just north of UCLA and is one of the points in what the LA Times calls the "Platinum Triangle of Beverly Hills, Bel-Air and Holmby Hills." I entered the neighborhood at the West Gate at Sunset Blvd and Bellagio Road. I passed the country club and many homes which were tucked away behind dense foliage or pushed up off the street with a gate and long driveway. As I continued driving I noticed that almost every house had a sign in front advertising the various surveillance or security system installed. Before arriving in Bel-Air I figured I would park and walk around the neighborhood like I had done in Beverly Hills. However, Bel-Air has little to no sidewalks, an obvious sign they do not want people walking around the neighborhood. I continued driving around spotting other signs of a highly protected neighborhood - a private security guard driving around and signs on a couple of the streets that said "Local access only, no thru traffic." 

Map of median family income for 2012 (from Simply Map)

This was my first time visiting Bel-Air and it became very clear, very quickly that not only is the area  under 24 hour surveillance but the residents don't necessarily want you there. Bel-Air is one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country with a median family income ranging between $95,640-$447,720. According to the LA Times the neighborhood has a below average crime rate for the country with one violent crime and 46 property crimes over the past six months. It's generally not surprising to see surveillance systems in place in wealthy neighborhoods but in an area with such a low crime rate the cameras and security guards do seem like more of a symbolic statement of protection than a practical one. 

Michel Foucault, a french philosopher, studied the way surveillance controls social behavior in urban spaces. His term "carceral archipelago" refers to the prison like environment that surveillance creates, arguing that we are constantly being watched, judged, and evaluated. LA's many gated communities could be seen as a carceral archipelago as well - with islands of defended space that are preserved for the selected few. 

Because the physical environment of Bel-Air seems like it was designed to limit access to outsiders, I'm interested to know how much of a sense of community there is in Bel-Air (outside of the country club, of course). If the walk from your house to your car is the only time you are outside, that doesn't seem to leave much room for interfacing with neighbors or fellow residents of the area. Perhaps an atmosphere established with such a pronounced emphasis on protection and seclusion from the outside also translates into a lowered sense of community with more isolated residents. 

Unfortunately this concept of socio-spatial separation has been a feature of the urban environment for centuries now. Although it seems that now there has been an increased importance put on the seclusion of wealthy areas which has only heightened the spatial difference and discrimination. Mike Davis states in the City of Quartz, "this obsession with physical security systems, and, collaterally, with the architectural policing of social boundaries, has become a zeitgeist of urban restructuring." When taking the countless social inequalities and severe economic disparities into account, it is a bit disheartening to hear that the defining spirit of urban change is something that will work to strengthen isolation between socio-economic classes. 

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 4

For a city that loves their cars so much they will sit in hours of traffic, it’s not surprising to read about the stigma of riding buses in Los Angeles. This city owes much of its current layout to the rise in popularity of the automobile and although its sprawling nature almost encourages and intensifies the need for a car, Jarrett Walker thinks otherwise. Walker, a public transit planning consultant and author of the blog Human Transit claims that the “regular grid of arterials” that link the many city centers is “the ideal infrastructure for that most efficient of transit structures: a grid network.” And it turns out that LA has one of the most accessible transit systems in the country. The Huffington Post reports that “99.1 percent of no-car households in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana area have access to public transit.”

So why is the idea of social stigma surrounding the use of public transportation so prevalent in Los Angeles? The LA Times discusses Jacquelyn Carr, an LA resident who started using the bus because she could no longer afford to lease her car. Carr saw this lifestyle shift as so monumental that she launched a blog, Snob On a Bus, which catalogs her travel experiences on public transportation. She told the LA Times that she felt as though she were “too good for the bus.” She claims, “there’s a social understanding and a construction around that if you take the bus, you take it because you don’t have money. There’s a social standard. Obviously I had bought into that.”

This is especially curious to me, coming from San Francisco and being an avid MUNI rider. In San Francisco riding public transportation (much like biking, walking, and composting) adds to your stripes as an intelligent urban inhabitant. Here in Los Angeles it seems that riding public transportation goes along with this “social standard” that Carr mentions and brands you as someone who cannot afford any other mode of transportation. Another point of interest is that this stigma only seems to be associated with bus travel and not with train travel. This is probably because, as the Atlantic Cities bluntly puts it, "train riders are richer and whiter." 

So, I decided this week I should experience LA’s public transportation system for myself. I wanted to ride both a train and a city bus because these modes of transportation offer different experiences, attract different riders, and have different social implications.

Union Station

I began downtown at Union Station which is the bustling crossroads of Metrolink, Amtrak, and many municipal bus and rail lines. Union Station, built in 1939 is full of marbled surfaces and terra cotta tiling. The building’s well preserved elegance offers a clean and comfortable place to sit and wait. I made my way to the platform where I waited for the purple line that was scheduled to arrive at 11:41am. As a transit rider who thinks of MUNI time much like the concept of dog years (where a minute in MUNI time is about two minutes in real time) I assumed the worst. However, I was pleasantly surprised when the purple line train pulled up at 11:41 like promised. Almost too civilized to be true.

I rode the purple line from Union Station to the last stop of Wilshire and Western. There were about twenty people on the car I was on and it was a smooth and quiet ride. After the 7th Street/Metro Center stop, which is a transfer point to a couple of other metro lines, there were just three others left on the train. There were clear announcements at each stop with a reminder in English and in Spanish that this was the purple line headed to Wilshire and Western. I got off at the last stop and headed upstairs where I hopped on the 720 towards Santa Monica to get back to my apartment in Westwood.

On the 720 Bus

The bus was definitely more crowded than the train had been but I was able to get a seat and it still was generally pretty clean (although I think BART has taught us that cloth seats are definitely not the most hygienic...). Just as I was wondering if this prompt service was an everyday occurrence in Los Angeles, or if I just had good transit juju today the bus got a flat tire. We all emptied out to wait for the next 720 which came in about 10 minutes.

Overall my experience on LA’s public transit system was pretty smooth and although comparisons have been made about the average race and income of bus riders compared to that of train riders, I didn’t notice a very big distinction. An article on the Atlantic Cities, “Race, Class and The Stigma of Riding the Bus in America” claims that 92% of bus riders in Los Angeles are “people of color” with an annual median household income of $12,000. Compared to the aforementioned "richer and whiter" demographic who rides the train it's easy to see where this bus stigma comes from. However, discussing it in terms of racial and income disparities will only continue the negative line of thought and ultimately justify the stigma.  

There are many ways in which our society views inequalities as a natural phenomenon - whether they are gender, class, or racial inequalities. This tendency to naturalize inequality stems from early theories of sociology like structural functionalism. This is a theoretical framework for society that is often described with the analogy of an organic being where a society would represent a body, social groups would represent organs, and individuals would represent cells. Every part has its own function and exists because it serves a specific purpose. This line of thinking cannot accurately represent a society because it justifies difference and repression. Jarrett Walker wrote a response piece to “Race, Class and The Stigma of Riding the Bus in America.” He points out that discussing the social stigma around bus travel really just, “tells everyone that an incurious aversion toward buses is a normal part of being a successful person.” Essentially, discussing unwarranted cultural stigmas just works to perpetuate those feelings and naturalize the racial and economic differences we see on public transportation. The idea that the bus system functions to serve low income citizens is flawed and will be a roadblock to a greater acceptance of public transportation as a distinguished and sustainable way to get around. 

Proof!

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 3

"The city is a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate." - Robert Park

At the surface (and coming from someone who moved to LA a month ago) it seems that this statement holds a lot of truth. Los Angeles is a post-metropolis that has no one city center. Decentralized cities like this one have many segmented pieces and by consequence have less of a feeling of public solidarity or common good. Historically, city centers were sustained and accessed by public transportation, but since the rise of the automobile Los Angeles became more spread out and rendered the concept of centrality unimportant. People could (and still do) go anywhere they want to in the privacy of their own car, which works to further separate the communities that make up this city. Although automobility - the car as a technological extension of the body - and unrestrained car culture is still a facet of Los Angeles, the city's public transportation infrastructure has been progressing by leaps and bounds. 

Map of the seven projected subway stops of the Purple Line extension
From the New York Times

In 2008 the City of Los Angeles passed Measure R, which is a (voter approved!) half-cent sales tax that is estimated to generate $40 billion for transit. Measure J, a proposed 30 year extension of this half-cent tax was just approved for the November ballot. The potential proceeds from Measure J would speed up the extension of the Purple line (aka the Subway to the Sea) which would make it considerably easier for those on the west side of Los Angeles to get around without a car. However, the plan of westward expansion involves tunneling under Beverly Hills High School, which has caused quite a stir with Beverly Hills residents. The Parent Teacher Association of Beverly Hills High School claims that tunneling under the school will be unsafe and put the students at risk. The MTA has done numerous studies, like the Tunneling Safety Report which was released in 2011 and outlines safe ways to complete the project with its projected route under the high school.  

Today I visited the high school and the surrounding area of Beverly Hills with this controversy in mind. Beverly Hills is famed for its wealth and privilege and when walking around the neighborhood, it definitely feels like a world of its own - one of the isolated pieces in the mosaic that makes this city. The streets are wide, many newly paved. The residential streets are lined with trees, manicured lawns, and many luxury cars. Walking around the school during the middle of the day, there were very few people around except a security guard patrolling in a golf cart (which I have never seen at a public school before). Painted on the side of the school there was a big blue ribbon specifying that it was a "Blue Ribbon School of Excellence." The surrounding area had a little more action, with visitors on Rodeo drive and lunchers sitting outside of the many cafes and restaurants lining Beverly Drive. According to a neighborhood profile from the LA Times, the residents of Beverly Hills are 87.5% white. Most of the ethnic diversity that I observed (which almost seems too cliche to be true) was a hispanic woman walking two dogs and a couple of groups of hispanic men doing yard work and some construction work on a few buildings.

While walking around this finely manicured neighborhood and thinking about the strong opposition to the subway under the high school it is hard not to think about the socio-economic status of the Beverly Hills residents compared to the status of those who ride the trains in Los Angeles. According to that same neighborhood profile from the LA Times, the median household income for Beverly Hills is $169,282, while an article on the Atlantic states that the median household income of train riders is $26,250. On the surface it's easy to think that residents of Beverly Hills want to keep their oasis of wealth and privilege inaccessible and sheltered from those who ride public transportation. While this was my first instinct, the theory is an unfair assumption. It seems that most residents are in favor of the subway extension but just opposed to the path it will take under the high school. In addition to the controversy that this rail extension has produced, it has also brought about some highly entertaining YouTube videos from both parties. The Parent Teachers Association of Beverly Hills High School made this dramatic video that details why they are opposed to the plan.

And here is a video in support of Metro's expansion plan, which is a satire that mocks the Beverly Hills stance.

David Sibley, author of "Mapping the Pure and the Defiled" discusses object relation theory, which is the process of creating a positive self identity by excluding others. By putting up boundaries, whether physical, social, or psychological, the "other" is kept away. This language is perhaps a bit extreme in the context of Beverly Hills and mass transit, but the new subway could be seen as a physical fracture of some of the neighborhood's social boundaries. While this particular issue involves political, fiscal, and environmental factors, it seems to be deeply rooted in social difference as well. Beverly Hills is a community that is able to harness their collective resource of wealth to combat the MTA's plan in costly court hearings. If the purple line were planned to go under a different school in a different neighborhood I'm not sure we would see such a drawn out and publicized conflict. While most residents in Beverly Hills are in favor of the subway extension it seems like there is a bit of a not-in-my-backyard attitude when it comes down to the actual construction of the subway.

Hopefully the increase in public transportation will change the way people navigate the city and break some of the spatial and social boundaries that keep the communities of Los Angeles isolated. 

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 2

When imagining the core of a city, we all have expectations of what that area should posses. A downtown will have high-rise office buildings, subway stations, art museums, theaters, luxury hotels (and maybe a few business professionals jetting to the closest Starbucks). Downtown should be vibrant. It should attract visitors from the region and elsewhere. It should be the loud clanging heart of the city. As vivacious as this sounds, there is also the coexistence of homelessness and low-income housing in underdeveloped areas. This juxtaposition is especially pronounced in downtown L.A. because the area houses so many vastly different communities.

Ernest W. Burgess, an urban sociologist, created a land use model that describes the expansion of a city starting at the core and moving outward in concentric rings. Although this model is perhaps a product of its time, and not wholly applicable to the city of Los Angeles, I ventured downtown to consider how the physical development of the area has influenced the social organization of its residents.

Entrance to the Chester Williams Building being restored

I began in the financial district, on Fourth and Flower. Arriving mid-day, I navigated the streets with many a suited professional out on their lunch break. There seemed to be your usual mix of large contemporary skyscrapers as well as stately, historic office  buildings. I continued to wend my way through the historic core, trying to get a feel for the area. Walking southeast along Fifth, I stumbled upon the Chester Williams Building on Fifth and Broadway. This is an ornately decorated historic office building that has been repurposed into a mixed-use building with 88 residential units for rent upstairs and a Walgreens that will soon move in on the ground floor. I acquired a form for potential renters with leasing information for the loft-style units, which are starting at about $2,000 per month for a one bedroom apartment.  

After leaving the building I turned to continue down Fifth. Very abruptly the scenery and demographic changed and soon after that I was in an unexpectedly seedy neighborhood. Although I was just one block away from the Chester Williams building I knew this was not the demographic who would be occupying those newly renovated units. I continued walking for a couple blocks when an older black man who had been walking ahead of me turned and in a concerned manner asked just how far I intended to keep walking in this direction. I took this as a gentle hint and turned around to head back to the clean, wide streets of the financial district.

The San Fernando Building - one of the first adaptive reuse
projects to be completed in downtown LA

I then walked over to the Roosevelt Lofts on Seventh and Flower. This large stone structure was built in 1926 and now holds 222 lofts. Upon further research I learned from la.curbed.com that not only do some of these units rent for $9,000 but they have attracted renters like actor David Arquette and LA Laker Lamar Odom. Next I saw the San Fernando Building, which was one of the first historic bank buildings in the area to be converted into residential units. Two more that I did not get to see were the Title Insurance Building with 250 residential units, and the Hellman Building with 212 units. 

Adaptive reuse projects like the ones that I saw today are a ubiquitous facet of downtown Los Angeles. The city passed the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance in 1999 which makes it easier for developers to turn unused commercial or office space into residential units. According to a 2011 study on ladowntownnews.com, “the community now has 29,429 apartments and condominiums and 46,400 residents. In 1999, before the ordinance, there were about 18,000 inhabitants and 11,626 residential units in Downtown.” 

There are many upsides to adaptive reuse projects. Redevelopment preserves historic buildings and cuts down costs and material consumption by using an already existing building. These adaptive reuse buildings are allowing people to inhabit the same area they work in and can create a more sustainable, less car-dependent community. It can also revitalize some not so nice or unsafe neighborhoods. However, this revitalization also brings higher rents, and almost always displacement of the area’s original residents. In Burgess’ discussion of the growth of a city he notes that as a city expands it is not just the physical growth, but “a process of distribution takes place which sifts and sorts and relocates individuals and groups by residence and occupation.” What may have been "sifting and sorting" in Burgess' time is now the hot-button issue of gentrification.

Luckily the downtown area has many community activist groups like The Figueroa Corridor Coalition for Economic Justice (FCCEJ) which provides a community voice for local developments. "In the Face of Gentrification" found on urban.org there is a detailed case study of downtown's Figueroa Corridor. The article describes how in 2001 the FCCEJ made an agreement with the LA Arena Land Company (owners of the Staples Center) which required the developers to include "living wage and union jobs, affordable housing, local hiring" and significant improvements to the area before further expansion could take place. The Esparanza Community Housing Corporation, another advocate group, played a large role in the development of the Housing Trust Fund which provides money for affordable housing developments. 

This tension between these advocate groups and developers seem to represent the tension between the vastly different social groups in downtown LA. While recent development projects have brought new residents to the area along with new shops and businesses, they have also forced many residents out of their homes. After being downtown and seeing the great inequalities of the area's inhabitants it feels callous to hear Burgess describe this as merely the natural process of expansion and contraction of a city. 

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 1

Robert Park, famous urban sociologist stated, “The City is a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate.” Whether this city is a mosaic or a melting pot, I will be exploring social difference in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area with this thought in mind. I have had an ongoing fascination with urban geography because of the diverse population that cities attract, and the way people interact with the urban environments that they inhabit. Although cities provide a great platform for social diversity, social inequality is an unfortunate facet of any major city. Having moved to Los Angeles just a couple of weeks ago, I am still new to the fabric of this particular metropolis, but I do know that social inequality, and by consequence social tension plays a role in the structure of any urban setting. I look forward to exploring the city and observing the various cultural groups and built environments that make up the Los Angles area.