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
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