Week 10 - Single-Family Segregation in Los Angeles

After learning about social difference throughout the entire quarter, I was curious to see how single-families lived. To do that,  I wanted to locate where the largest concentration of single-families with children under the age of 18 lived in Los Angeles. I also wanted to see if there was a significant difference between incomes and/or the amount of single-mothers raising a family versus single-fathers raising a family. Using simplymaps, I was able to generate these two maps:

# Families, Male Householder, No Wife Present w/ Children Under 18, 2012 by Zip Codes

Light Pink      =   0 - 390

Medium Pink =   391 - 1,570

Red                =   1,571 - 1,580

Maroon          =   1,581 - 2,154

# Familes, Female Householder, No Husband Present w/ Children Under 18, 2012 by Zip Codes

0 - 980

981 - 3,950

3,951 - 4,350

4,351 - 4,500

4,501 - 8,666

Judging simply the legend, the amount of single-families with female head households is a lot larger in the Los Angeles region than the amount of single-families with male head households. This doesn't surprise me as gender continues to be a "floating signifier" in society. Although legally women have the same rights as men, it's still common that women are held more responsible of raising the children and most domestic affairs. This is reflected in legend (measured by local natural breaks in the statistics by zipcode) which counts a significantly higher number of females at the head of single-families than males in the area as a whole.

After my experience in Cypress Park, I didn't want to travel to these areas as a woman because I knew I would feel unsafe. Despite any knowledge of the actual crime rates of these zipcodes versus others, I knew that the carceral archipelago was real enough to make me uncomfortable. However, comparing these zipcodes using the LA Times neighborhood website, I pulled up some statistics about the diversity and average incomes of the areas.


The two zipcodes that have high levels of single-family households with both male and female heads are Hawthorne, CA 90250 and Historic South-Central, CA 90011.Hawthorne has a high percentage of black residents, but is also highly diverse. The average income is low;  $43,602. Historic South-Central has a high percentage of both black and Latino residents and is not very diverse. The average income is even lower than that of Hawthorne; $30,882.
The two zipcodes that have high levels of female-headed single-family households are Westmont, CA 90044 and Long Beach, CA 90805. Westmont has a high percentage of Black residents and is moderately diverse with an average income of $31,572. Long Beach has a high percentage of Asian and Black residents in the area and is highly diverse with an average income of $50,985.

The two zipcodes that have high levels of male-headed singe-family households are Cudahy, CA 90201 and South Gate, CA 90280. Cudahy isn't very diverse with a large percentage of Latino residents and an average income of $39,048. South Gate has a high percentage of Latino residents as well with an average income of $48,312.

The average of the two areas with high levels of male-headed single-family households is $43,680 and the average of the two areas with high levels of female-headed single family households is $41,278. As I expected, the areas with more mother single-parents have a lower income average than areas with more father single-parents. Gender is a floating signifier just as much as race and not only are they considered more responsible for taking care of the children than men (8,666 single mothers in the zipcode with the highest number of families with female householders, no husband present and children under 18 years of age versus the 2,154 single fathers in the zipcode with the highest number of families with male householders, no wife present and children under 18 years of age), but they're also discriminated against in the workplace, receiving less job offers and lower wages that's contributing to the lower average income levels in single-parent mothers' neighborhoods than single-parent fathers' neighborhoods.

Week 9 - Bus or Car - which one's better?

This week I set out to explore the public transportation systems of Los Angeles. I will be completely honest and admit that taking a bus trip sounded absolutely horrible to me. My prior experiences with the Santa Monica blue buses have included grumpy drivers, crazy passengers, getting off too early, getting off too late, and getting completely lost... and the Santa Monica blue bus I took only went from UCLA to Santa Monica and Venice and back! After my freshman year I begged my parents for a car and never used public transportation in Los Angles again until today.

With the many different types of public transportation, including the Metro Rail system, Metro Bus system, Dash, Flyaway, and Santa Monica Blue buses it's difficult to even decide which public transportation to use, let alone which lines to take. There's no doubt that prior research is necessary for first timers attempting to use public transportation in Los Angeles. It was only after taking Geography 151 that I realized why this transportation system was so difficult; as a city of the 4th Urban Revolution, Los Angeles has decentralized social institutions connected by decentralized transportation networks. Unlike cities of the 2nd and 3rd Urban Revolutions, Los Angeles doesn't have one core surrounded by a periphery, but instead has many different cores that specialize in different areas of interest. Also, we learned in lecture that twentieth-century labor is concentrated into office spaces more than factories. America's suburbs contain more office spaces than the cities, and therefore the workers in the post-metropolis go to different office spaces in different parts of the city (in contrast to the metropolis laborers that all went to the same few factories). Because of the multiplicity of cores in this decentralized city, public transportation is complex. The multiple different types of buses with their complicated line systems is the result of an attempt to cover a vast amount of travelers with destinations in all directions. If you add in the amount of traffic caused by individual cars, forming a decent public transportation system with the highways and roads that are currently in place is nearly impossible. All that being said, the buses of Los Angeles are pretty reliable. Nevertheless, I still prefer my car. Why?

Pros of taking the bus:
cheaper
safer
no parking hassles
gives you time to do other work

Cons of taking the bus:
Must remain punctual or might miss the bus
Possibility of unpleasant passengers and/or bus drivers
Have to walk some distance to the bus stops
lots of stops
confusion with changing lines/missing your stop
without traffic, taking my car is much faster

When there's no traffic, there's no doubt that taking a private car is much faster than using public transportation. The one question I didn't know, however, was which one was faster during Los Angeles's rush hour?

To test this, I had my friend Melissa drive her car while I took the bus to MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) in downtown Los Angeles. We both left our apartment at the same time ( 4:50 pm) and said we would race each other to see who could get to MOCA first.

Melissa got a head start as she rushed passed me in her car while I had to walk to the bus stop at the corner of Hilgard and Le Conte. I then paid $1.50 and boarded the Metro Local Line 2 at 5:10. I luckily didn't have to transfer lines or buses and got off the same bus an hour and 33 minutes later (6:43pm) at the South Grand Los Angeles stop. Melissa had been waiting for me for 37 minutes.

Despite a few payment issues with passengers boarding at some stops, the other passengers were pleasant enough and the bus driver kept to himself. Regardless, it wasn't fun. The bus was crowded and I was forced to stand for most of the way, limiting my ability to do any homework or reading comfortably.

This experience confirmed what we learned in class about the importance of auto mobility in cities of the 4th revolution. You can get around Los Angeles without your own car, but it certainly isn't easy. The layout of the city with its multiple centers combined with the structure of the roadways creates an urban design that favors individual automobiles over public transportation. This poses a real problem for people that cannot afford their own cars and intensifies social difference in Los Angeles. Poorer people without the ability to purchase their own cars are limited in their mobility around Los Angeles, making it hard for them to leave their carceral enclaves.

Update: Week 10

Also, although the bus was cheap, it wasn't free. This is one of the results of a neoliberal city. As we learned in lecture, "in the 19th century up until the 1970s, urban infrastructure in the West was seen as centralized, unified and standardized. Infrastructure was a common good." Now that Los Angeles has been "neo-liberalized," "access to urban resources becomes dependent on a resident's ability to pay for them." Public and social goods (like public transportation) have been given a price tag. 

Week 8 - Baldwin Hills , "The Heart of Black L.A."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-black-voters-20121108,0,661227.story

This article in the L.A. Times titled,"Among voters in the heart of black L.A., pride pride in Obamaabides" perfectly embodies the description of the "floatingsignifier" that Stuart Hall says race is. The newspaper implies thatBaldwin Hills, a neighborhood home to "middle-class, black LosAngeles," votes for Barrack Obama mostly because of his race.

Stuart Hall describes three types of perspectives to racial difference in his lecture. First, he explains therealist approach in which real genetic differences area  reality and manifest themselves in real things in the world "i.e. behavior, intelligence,disposition etc." Second, he describes the purely textual/linguisticapproach which argues that there are no real differences between races but instead these differences are created in cultural stories of racial differences and deeply embedded in cultural representations and practices. Thirdly, he presents his position, the "floating signifier" perspective, which argues that there are racial differences between people, along with a lot of other differences - but these differences are only given meaning andhighlighted by the discursive position given to them. Therefore these meanings aren't fixed, but change over time. 

This article doesn't take the purely textual/lingistic approach because it highlights how black middle-classAmericans in Los Angeles support Obama because he gives blacks more power in a world where they still feel discriminated against. It quotes one man who says "America continues to be and always has been culturally biased, Jim Crow standards of beauty." It also doesn't take a realist approach because there is nothing in the article that suggests that African Americans are any physically or mentally different from any other race. Instead, it presents the "floating signifier" perspective. Because of our historical and cultural stories, there are culturally-embedded practices that segregate blacks from whites. Many times in the article  interviewees mention historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Jim Crow and although these people, living in a nice neighborhood in Los Angeles, have a similar social status to many other whites, they still feel that a black presidential figure will help them more than a white one. "Not just for blacks, but all races - schooling and medical insurance and jobs and so many different things. Everyone needs someone fighting for them," one woman says. 

 

I visited Baldwin Hills in order to see where and how the interviewees lived and whether it was actually any different from the white middle class in Los Angeles. Besides the color of skin of the residents, I could not find one single difference. The neighborhood was situated on top of a hill overlooking Los Angeles (similar to many other middle-upper class neighborhoods in the Los Angeles region) and had wide,nicely paved roads and sidewalks with colorful trees and beautiful houses. They even had "Neighborhood Watch" signs - adding the security and protection dimension necessary to keep middle-classes feeling safe. I actually found myself wondering why there were only black people living there. Besides race as a floating signifier, I could find no reason as to why there weren't a multitude of middle-class people of all races living in Baldwin Hills.

  My observations coincided with the arguments made in the article in the course book by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, "The Continuing causes of Segregation"  which said that "As the proportion of blacks in an urban area rises, progressively higher levels of racial segregation must be imposed in order to keep the probability of white-black contact within levels that are tolerable to whites" and that "African Americans continue to be denied full access to US housing markets." Whether this neighborhood was originally inhabited by whites who then left once a larger percentage of blacks moved in, or whether they moved here because they felt unwelcome in neighborhoods with a white majority in Los Angeles, Baldwin Hills is evidence of race as a floating signifier that enhances social difference.

 

As I exited the neighborhood, I noticed an oil drill on the side of the road. I couldn't help but wonder if this sort of environmental manipulation would've been located so close to a middle-class neighborhood if it had been one of white instead of black majority. 

Week 7 - Cypress Park and the LA River

Week 7 - Cypress Park and the LA River

After reading David Harvey's article, "The Environment of Justice" and finding an article in the Los Angeles Times about water pollution laws in the area ( http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-storm-water-20121109,0,4497794.story?track=lanowpicks),  I set out to explore the areas of LA with pollution problems.  I've heard that the Los Angeles river is extremely polluted (when I asked one of my friends to join me on my trip there he responded with, "Isn't that just one big sewage runoff?") and so this week I decided to make a trip to a neighborhood next to the Los Angeles river and see if it was a poorer community, like Harvey's article suggested.

I looked up "LA River" on the maps application of my iPhone and came upon several links to institutions that might be of interest, and the one I figured would be the most informative was titled "Los Angeles River Center and Gardens." Just as I would've guessed from Harvey's article, I ended up in a poorer area of town completely foreign to me, but I think I learned more about social difference by looking for the Los Angeles river in Cypress Park than I have on any of my other trips.

When I did find the Los Angeles River Center and Gardens, it was located on the LA River like I expected and was an information center providing education on the history and environmental issues of the Los Angeles River. The center's beautiful landscape with fountains and gardens was soothing but completely opposed the surrounding neighborhood.

When I got off the highway, I immediately noticed how different the main street, Ave 26, was to any of the main streets I was familiar with - Wilshire, Santa Monica Ave, and Sunset Blvd. all seem relatively clean with lots of nice restaurants, houses and boutiques located on either side of them. In contrast, Ave 26 was littered with trash and had mostly gas stations, fast food restaurants and car shops on the sides of the street. There were a lot more pedestrians - mostly Latino and/or unaccompanied children with their backpacks (most likely coming back from school). The cars were also very different - while high-end luxury vehicles such as BMWs, Bentleys, Lexus and  Mercedes fill the streets of Wilshire, Santa Monica and Sunset, most of the cars on Ave 26 were older models of more affordable brands like Ford, Honda and Nissan. The buses that I saw were the red buses that I normally see on highways, not the blue buses of Santa Monica that I'm used to seeing near Westwood. There were also many more of them on Ave 26 than I had ever seen on Wilshire, Santa Monica Ave. or Sunset Blvd. The abundance of police and security vehicles found in the areas of Westwood, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica were not at all as common in Arroyo Seco. In fact, I did not see one police car the entire time I was there. 

Here is an abandoned grocery cart with
 trash filled in it on the side of Ave 26.

3 gas stations, an IHOP and a McDonalds
on one corner of Ave 26. 

Here they have barbed wire fences outside of their business
 instead of hired security.

I'm embarrassed to say that in spite all of all I've learned about stereotypes and social differences, the second I saw Ave 26 and noticed all of the above differences I was terrified. I felt completely out of place as a white upper-middle class female in a poorer community that housed a lower-income demographic. Without the policing I was used to in Westwood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and other areas near me, I felt insecure and unsafe. In short, I experienced first-hand the carceral archipelago talked about in class and wanted to leave Arroyo Seco the second I got off the highway. Interestingly enough, the flourishing LA downtown district was only 5 minutes away from Ave 26. In fact, if I had stayed on the highway, I never would have seen any part of Arroyo Seco and continued on to Pasadena without noticing any poverty at all. Only after learning about the decentralization of the 4th urban revolution and reading Friedrich Engels, "The Great Towns" do I know that it was purposefully designed that way so that the upper-classes that do not want to see poverty don't have to.

It was interesting to me that the Los Angeles River Center and Gardens was located in Cypress Park instead of another community next to the river and although I have no concrete evidence, I have a guess as to why the center was located in this area in particular. Unless you pay to host a private event there, admission is free into the center and therefore most of the funding comes from Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. I was at first curious why the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy wouldn't locate this center in a nicer area to attract more visitors, but then realized that this location was probably the most affordable. As Harvey explains in "The Environment of Justice," capital accumulation and pollution are positively correlated. The article I mentioned earlier in in the Los Angeles Times further confirms this. Therefore, it's likely that the conservancy doesn't receive much funding. Upper-class citizens and large corporations are more unlikely to donate to a conservancy than to other public institutions because environmental conservation limits their ability to accumulate wealth. Also, Harvey's article claims that environmental pollution normally gets dumped on the poorer communities, so as a center trying to prevent pollution, the Los Angeles River Center and Gardens probably chose to locate somewhere that was most effected by the pollution - specifically Cypress Park. 

Week 6 - A Response on Beverly Hills

 The following is a response to a fellow classmate's blog, which can be found here: http://uclageo.blogspot.com/

Hi Itay! I totally agree with your analysis of Beverly Hills as a carceral enclave, or "island" in which it attempts to exclude people of lesser socio-economic status. I also, however, wanted to point out that Beverly Hills, as a central business district with economic importance for the region, also tries to encourage people with the desired socio-economic status to visit and consume/spend money in the region.

For example, when comparing Beverly Hills to Bel Air, Beverly Hills has wide streets, sidewalks that you said "gave a pleasant feeling to walk around," and high-end restaurants and shops lining both sides of the streets (especially on Wilshire and Rodeo). In contrast, Bel Air has extremely narrow, winding streets with no sidewalks and walls and/or lush landscapes hiding most views of the buildings/housing from the street. While both of these areas have high-end security, the Bel Air security guards drive inexpensive yellow cars (see my Week 4 entry for pictures) while Beverly Hills police officers own a fleet of SUV Escalades and Mustangs to drive around the area.

These differences exemplify the decentralization and specialization of the fourth urban revolution. While Bel Air specializes as an exclusive, serene, and highly expensive residential area, Beverly Hills specializes as an exclusive, serene and highly expensive central business district. While they both want to attract the same people, Beverly Hills wants more of them while Bel Air wants less. This plan can be seen from the way the roads are structured; the wide roads with sidewalks in Beverly Hills are meant to encourage lots of traffic and pedestrians (as long as the cars in the traffic are extremely expensive, and the people are wearing the latest high-end fashion) while the narrow roads without sidewalks present in Bel Air discourage large amounts of pedestrians or cars to enter. Beverly Hills specializes in money - attracting business and investment for the region while Bel Air specializes in residential housing - keeping homeowners provided with the privacy and safety they desire.  These different specializations are exemplified through urban design.

Week 5 - Malibu

Malibu is famous for its "beach and vacation" culture.

Malibu, a region of Los Angeles sprawled out along 21 miles of the coastline, provides a perfect example of how automobility, radical individualism and post-Fordist capitalism has allowed decentralization and carceral enclaves in cities during the 4th urban revolution.

The city of Malibu's physical borders narrowly follow the four-lane CA-1 highway along the coast's beautiful beaches and rolling hills. Only Los Angeles's wealthiest elite can afford to live in this highly-desirable neighborhood. It's formed a carceral enclave by limiting physical access through urban design - there are no sidewalks and the only way to reach Malibu is by car along the CA-1 and very little (if any) public transportation is provided.  Most of the houses are hidden away from the highway in the Malibu hills and appear "policed off" by hiding behind gated communities, lush landscapes, or high hills. It also follows the higher altitude = higher cost of housing pattern seen in modern cities. 

This is a house in Malibu on the beach hidden from the road by lush landscape.

Malibu has very little public transportations or institutions - there isn't a central shopping center, hospital, or large business area - the entire area is only connected to the rest of the Los Angeles region by the four-lane highway. Without automobility of the 4th urban revolution, Malibu wouldn't be a desirable location to live because of its distance from the "center" where social institutions and transportation are provided. However since automobiles became individually owned and considered essential to modern living, the residents of Malibu have been able to embrace their own radical individualism create their own "beach and vacation" culture without having to worry about distance to the "center" of Los Angeles.

Malibu along the CA-1 with the housing up on top of the hills.

 

 

A picture of the beach on one side of the highway, the hills and housing are on the other.

Another example of Malibu's layout - with the beach on one side of CA-1 and expensive housing up on top of the hills on the other side.

Week 4 - Bel Air

Bel Air Neighborhood 

The Bel Air neighborhood is one of the most infamous wealthy neighborhoods in the country. Spread over a beautiful hill overlooking Los Angeles, the windy roads and personal security building at the front entrance make it look safe and exclusive. Known for its beautiful streets, lush landscapes and gorgeous mansions, Bel Air is one of the most desired neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area.

In lecture this week, we learned about the fourth revolution in which the metropolis city turned into the postmetropolis city - a city that has its own core, periphery and semi-periphery. The segregated areas formed in a postmetropolis city emphasize social differences through a phenomenon called the "carceral archipelago" in which wealthier areas appear "walled-off" in order to discourage the poorer populations from entering them. The carceral enclaves are formed by developing certain types of architecture like large gates and bum-proof benches, limiting public transportation options so that only individual cars can navigate successfully through the area, or staffing a large amount of security to guard the area from any unwanted disturbances.

The roads of Bel Aire have no sidewalks
and very few houses are visible from the street.

  After learning about the "Carceral Archipelago" in Professor Wilford's Lecture Wednesday, I realized how much of Bel Air's architecture made it seem policed and "walled-off." There were no sidewalks, which made it extremely difficult for pedestrians or even bikers to travel safely up and down the narrow, windy roads. The only comfortable way of getting through the neighborhood was by car - no public transportation buses came through. The only type of transportation besides car I saw were tour buses, which cost enough money to discourage any poorer Los Angeles locals from using them. Therefore, only people with enough money to afford either a car or a tour guide could navigate successfully through the neighborhood.There were also "keep out", "private property", "beware of dog" and especially alarm protection warning signs in front of the majority of the houses. Every single house had its own large personal gate in front of it, and most of the houses had either tall trees, big walls, or fences so that their house was not visible from the street.  Finally, there was an entire building at the front entrance of the neighborhood strictly for security. It also fit into "the higher the neighborhood, the more expensive" rule that we talked about in lecture on Monday. Overall, it was the perfect example of a wealthy area separating itself from the lower classes in the area of Los Angeles through architecture and security.

The view of Los Angeles from the top of Bel Air.