Blogging social difference in Los Angeles: Week 4

For week 4, I decided to do my first comment on someone else's blog. I chose: http://efgeog151.blogspot.com and commented on her last week's blog post. 

Comment below:

Hello Elizabeth!

I'm commenting on the part of your Week 3 blog that referencing centralized decentralization in Venice. This is a characteristic in all cities, but is especially prevalent in Los Angeles. Los Angeles has so many of these decentralized hubs, because it is so sprawling and therefore allows the space necessary to accommodate many different cultural hubs in one centralized area. Venice also takes on slight characteristics of the Carceral Archipelago, where there is a very high homeless population yet Venice is still an affluent area. Another place in Los Angeles with this character is Skid Row, where it is more impoverished than all the surrounding affluent areas surrounding it. Venice has this class divide demonstrated in this weeks reading The Urban Process Under Capitalism by David Harvey. The wealth gap exists in Venice due to the wealthy citizen’s desire to live near the beach while the large homeless population congregates in Venice due to its nice weather and social programs that the city provides. Another comment I would like to make about your blogging on Venice is the way a decentralized hub like Abbot Kinney exists in this small city. Even though the area of Venice is quite small, there is still a way for there to be a cultural artsy area. 

Blogging Social Difference in Los Angeles: Week 3

Hello readers of my blog!

This week I'm focusing on a trip I have made many times before, but now I'm viewing this bus ride through the scope of social difference. This is taking the bus down Sunset Blvd. to Hollywood/Mid City. And then other buses if you wish to go to Downtown LA. I found this blog post to especially relevant to the class at hand due to the fact that analyzing social difference while traveling down Sunset was the original final project. As reluctant as I am to take the Metro for as long of a trek as it is to get to downtown, I do enjoy watching the social and physical infrastructure of the city change the farther one goes down Sunset.

The start of my journey was taking the Metro 2 line. This just takes you down Sunset. I was going to visit my good friends in Hollywood and then we wanted to go downtown. Starting from the beginning, the first city the metro takes you through is Beverly Hills. This is certainly one of the most affluent parts of Los Angeles. Besides the tremendous wealth of the area, the most notable factor of the landscape is it's suburban qualities. It is almost entirely residential, as all the streets are lined with multi million dollar mansions. The next city is West Hollywood. There is an immediate change when you leave Beverly Hills and enter Hollywood. This is where the metropolitan qualities of Los Angeles begin to form. I also noticed a more dense population. The bus began to become more filled as a result. The stops also became more frequent as the city had to accomodate much more traffic outside of the suburban conditions of Westwood and Beverly Hills. As we passed through Hollywood and got more into the mid city. I noticed a drop in the quality of the roads in terms of the grid and symmetric nature of the streets. 

This relates back to our reading of "The Great Towns" by Frederich Engels. One of the main criticisms Engels has of Manchester is it focus of commerce and wealth in one part of the city. This comparison would be equivalent to Los Angeles in the sense that there is so much wealth focused in specific parts of west LA, while the more you go east, poverty increase and the conditions decrease. Engels also criticizes the way Manchester is built. I relate that to Los Angeles, in the sense that the more east I got on Sunset, the more I felt like there was less of a grid and less streets parallel to sunset. Basically, I felt a less cohesive grid the more east I went. The notorious ghettos of east LA, reflect Engels complaints of how the infrastructure of the city segregated the working and middle classes. This is essentially the focus of the course; how the unique compositions of cities segregate the people and commerce of the city. 

By looking at a trip I have made many times before through the lens of cultural geography, I see how social difference can manifest itself even by just traveling down one street. I also definitely see how writing a paper about this was a relevant endeavor for the original final project. 

Here is a photo from the bus while driving down Sunset. 

Week 2: Blogging Social Difference in Los Angeles

Hello fellow bloggers,

This week is my first post regarding my adventures in Los Angeles. On Sunday, October 7th I went to Silverlake/Echo Park for a block party concert featuring the headlining bands Of Montreal and The Wombats amongst many others. To be honest, when I entered this event all I could think about was how the social and physical infrastructure of Los Angeles influenced its location and sentiment after the lectures in this class. The concert was entitled Culture Collide. Its purpose being to provide a melting pot of music in a diverse area in the eastern part of Los Angeles.

This brings me to the assignment at hand by focusing on the area that this block party was in. The Silverlake and Echo Park area of Los Angeles are very unique amongst its area in the city, as well as how they came to be. This area of LA is definitely the cultural hub of the city in terms of art and anything hip and upcoming by cultural means. However, this area was not always like this. This only began with the gentrification of the area. Gentrification in this instance is the influx of the middle class non minorities into the area, culturally revitalizing it. This process is typical in many American metropolises. These areas were originally very densely populated with minorities, especially philipinos due to its proximity to Filipinotown. As the gentrification occurred, the middle class ("gentry") moving there, focused on making Silverlake a cultural hub.

This area is an example of the changing "city metabolism" from this week's reading The Growth of the City by Ernest w. Burgess. The reading discusses the way the constant fluctuation of social differences and other factors such as division of labor compose what is the metabolism of the city. Burgess explains how an area with high delinquency and crime has a high metabolism. This metabolic process is the fluctuation and stability for citizens and class difference amongst the surrounding areas. Essentially, the metabolism of an urban slum is fast and sporadic. The transformative gentrification of Silverlake/Echo Park effects the metabolic processes of the area dramatically. When this influx of the middle classes occurred, there was an influx of wealth into the area. With this influx came commerce and invesment into the revitalization of the area as a whole. Essentially, this slowed the metabolism of the city in terms of the definition provided by Burgess. This integration of an entirely new demogrpahic in this area has made it one of the most diverse area in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The proliferation of this new condition of Silverlake can be elucidated through by the concept of social organization and disorganization through metabolism described in the Burgess reading. Burgess states "The natural process of acquiring culture is by birth." I relate this to Silverlake by seeing the more the area is socially organized to be a certain way, the more the life that flows through it will proliferate it into such. Essentially, the social order of the city is becoming more and more fortified as the conditions are seen as favorable by the surrounding city as well as the Silverlake residents. The deterioration of crime and the increase of money, are being fueled by the areas new metabolism. Burgess discusses how an areas metabolism creates its social order, and this is what is exactly happening here. This change of culture makes Silverlake/Echo Park very different than the surrounding area of the eastern portion of Los Angeles. These incidents are more an example of social expansion than physical expansion described in the readings.

I also saw this as a good time to try out the simplymap.com feature. With the website, I examined the average household incomes of the Caucasian population compared to the hispanic population. I found this a good comparison because of the gentrification of the area, and the recent influx of a White population. As you can see from the data, the White population has a higher average income than the hispanic population.

Here is a picture of the band Of Montreal perfoming. This concert in the middle of block in Silverlake shows the cities openness to the arts and the revitalization of culture. This new social organization ahs forged live music and the arts as its own niche in the Los Angeles cultural scene.

I am linking the website of the Culture Collide event here: Culture Collide

Blogging Social difference in Los Angeles. Week 1

Hey all!

I'm Logan Linnane. I'm a second year at UCLA, currently enrolled in geography 151. I am proud to say that I live in the awesome city of LA and couldn't imagine a better place to spend my undergraduate career. My initial interest in this class roots from my interest in my Environmental Studies/Geography major. However, I do love the city and feed on the hustle and bustle of a huge city. Fueled by my young adventuresome spirit (and my desire to do well in this class) I'm about to take a ten week journey through the city of angels.

Now on the major pillar of this class; social difference in the city. It is truly impossible to look at the population of any American metropolis and not see the amalgamation of social, racial, economic positions that the people of said city tend to be. Essentially, a city is its diversity. From Bel Air to Crenshaw, the walks of life that coexist in this massive city are something can span much beyond the scope of a ten week study. I find the study of the social infrastructure of the city as interesting (if not more) than its physical infrastructure. How can we drive a few miles down sunset and go from sprawling mansions to sprawling squalor? Well, if I can't yet answer that question then I will just have to do my best to observe it. Join me as I embark on trying to find what what difference keep us separated while still living under the urban umbrella of being a citizen of Los Angeles.