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.