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.
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