Blogging Social Difference in L.A: Week 5

I am responding to Nadia’s week 2 blog post on the car and Venice Beach trip.

 

Having so much diversity really does show a urban setting when different people are doing different things. When you mentioned there are so many shops, performers, poor, rich, etc, I think about organic solidarity, which is that different people who do different things work and complement each other so that they are able to build a successful society. This also brings me back to Darwinism and how ecology and resources are able to sustain itself because different species need different things. No one competes for one resource so resources do not get used up.

This can be applied to Venice beach because of its diversity. For instance, the shoppers are helping the shop keepers by buying from them and the shop keepers are helping the shoppers by giving them pretty souvenirs or a jacket when it’s cold, or a hat when it’s too sunny. Same with the performers there, they perform to get money and the tourist watch and give the performers money for their entertainment. Here, organic solidarity really makes Venice Beach work and keep it from being boring. Because everyone is different, they must have social differences. For example, the shop keepers probably do not have as much money as the shoppers, who can afford the luxury of taking a walk on Tuesday or affording products such as souvenirs that are not necessities. In fact, it is our culture to travel and buy souvenirs for family and friends, thus, this idea of traveling for fun and buying nonfunctional things, things just to have as a memory, and gifting, gives a clear sign that one who buys souvenirs can afford to spend their money on luxuries. In Venice social differences such as the shopper and shop keeper help to build an amazing place such as this beach. 

(Updated: 12.8.2012) After finishing this class, and learning about the nature and social difference lecture and topic, I wonder, would Venice Beach act as a counter example for showing social difference with nature. I say this because beaches are generally for the higher class because Americans have a culture to enjoy playing or tanning at the beach and beaches and oceans are natural landscapes that the rich or white are attracted to. However, there are many homeless people and the performers on the beach do not seem to be considered of higher class or wealthy, so wouldn't this mean that nature is not only accessible to the rich but here, it is accessible to everyone? From the two pictures of the same beach, one can see there are two perspectives to the beach. One picture looks much more like the beach is for the wealthier class because it really does look like a calming landscape of nature, while the other seems to show many campers with can food and tents.

This photo makes the beach look like its more natural and a nice place compared to the picture on the bottom. 

Blogging Social Difference in L.A: Week 4

This is my comment about Marina Magana about her week 3 blog post on Silver Strand and near downtown area, near La Colonia Street.

I think your descriptions of the homes you saw really relates to the "growth of the city" circle because one feature of it is that different neighborhoods can be right next to each other and share nothing in common. In fact, they are pretty much the opposite. According to the Blackwell Reader “in the expansion of the city a process of distribution takes place which… relocates individuals and groups by residence and occupation” (Blackwell Reader pp. 341). This can definitely be applied to your observations. Silver Strand is where all the wealthy people are located, and they probably want a place here because it’s near the beach, a very attractive location that Americans usually enjoy.  Just a couple of blocks later, there lives a completely different group: the low income group. The people in the low income group probably work low ended jobs and thus live together because those “one-story [and] small two bedroom” (Blog) homes are all they can afford. Whereas, compared to the group that lives in Silver Strand probably earn similar high income, and income is correlated with which type of occupation one has, thus, this supports the statement from the Blackwell Reader that residence and occupation go together.

The Blackwell Reader also goes on to state that “encircling the central business…are… the so called “slums” and “bad lands,” with their submerged regions of poverty degradation, and disease, and their underworlds of crime ad vice” (Blackwell Reader pp.342). This statement is saying that slums are found right outside the central area, however, in your blog, you noticed that there is no central area in Silver Strand so this really makes me wonder if this statement from Blackwell Reader applies to your blog. Everything Blackwell describes about slums next to where wealthier people are is true. I wonder, does this statement mean that the wealthy are the “central”? Could this statement also apply to residence and not only the business central district because it seems to apply here?

Additionally, this observation of separate types of people living in separate neighborhoods due most likely to social differences such as occupations, education and race. I used these as examples because I hypothesize that occupations are a common factor to the groups due to the expensive and inexpensive homes. I also believe there is a strong correlation between occupation and education level. The higher your education, the more income you will earn through your occupation. From your blog, you state that usually whites live in Silver Strand and Latinos live near downtown. Thus, these social differences cause separation in residency, which is the difference that difference makes in this case.

Blogging Social Difference in L.A: Week 3

This week, I took the Culver City bus line 6 from Westwood Village to Culver City. I took pictures of some of the things, people and places that I saw outside of the bus or throughout my ride. My main observation that I saw was that as I was traveling, I was going through the “growth of the city” circle that Burgess describes. This circle represents an “ideal construction of tendencies of any town or city…from its central business district” (Burgess 2010: 340). If I apply this circle to my bus ride, I see that Westwood Village is the “factory zone” and as I went farther away from Westwood and deeper into Culver City, I entered the “zone of workingmen’s homes” then to the “residential zone”.

Westwood would be the center to the circle because here is where the “department stores, skyscraper office buildings…the theaters [and] the art museum” (Burgess 2010: 341) are located. Westwood is so lively with many small business and large stores such as Target, Trader Joes and Ralphs. The intersection of Westwood and Wilshire is surrounded by skyscrapers and offices. Westwood also consists of so many places for entertainment and social activities such as theaters, museum, cafes and restaurants. Not surprisingly, this is the place where there is more public transportation, traffic, and people walking on the streets. The bus ride begins very slowly and it took about ten minutes to go four short blocks from the local traffic and the bus speeds up later as it approaches the residential areas.

I eventually move onto the residential zone which is very different from the central district of Westwood. Instead and populated sidewalks, there are very wide streets with many cars on the road and people rarely walked on the narrow sidewalks that are fit for two people. The style of the geographic landscape here reminds me of postsuburbia which is the “spatial formation…[that]… evolves from the organization of a low density suburban region” (Kling, Olin, Poster 1995: 5). First, tradition suburbs are described here as quiet places where working people and their families live. However, this document later contrasts suburbs to the new term “postsuburbia” which includes both residential and commercial features. This commercial feature is things like malls and shopping centers which are all around Culver City. I've noticed that these malls, recreational and common places such as churches, stores and clinics all have very large parking lots. This is very opposite to what I see in Westwood because there, I mostly see street parking and if there are parking structures, people need to pay. Along with the wide streets, free, large parking lots, and locations that are too far to walk to, this bus ride in Culver City supports a postsuburban area.

(Updated: 12.9.2012) (After learning about gender as a social difference and how it is related to urban planning, I think back to this bus trip and realize that this supports what Watson says about how "transport system is constructed to support the needs of the worker [and it] links centers with peripheries but rarely links suburbs to each other" (Watson City A/ Gender, Blackwell reader, 237). I was on this bus and now I think back and this bus line links from this Culver City suburb to Westwood and Wilshire where the businesses are but this bus doesn't link Culver City's suburbs to other housing communities. You would have to transfer to get to those other suburbs.)

Now in response to Park’s statement, I think that the circle that I observed supports his claim that worlds touch but do not interpenetrate just because the circle has boundaries and draws border lines to different areas of a city. However, I see all the parts of the circle expanding as time passes and if all parts are expanding, all parts have to overlap and this is when the different areas begin to pick up and mix culture and then they do interpenetrate. I think the best example of this is forming postsuburbia because at first, residential areas were only for sleeping but now there is the invention of enclosed shopping malls which encourages consumerism and moves this residential area to a more urban evolution because now it shares the features of entertainment, spending, and liveliness of the urban city. These differences in areas such as factory and residential zone help introduce different cultures so people can mix them together and create something very new and thus, new ideas and traditions emerge from difference.

Blogging Social Difference in L.A: Week 2

Ready for Santa Monica Beach

This Sunday I visited Santa Monica Beach for the first time where it has a typical reputation of a place full of fun in the sun. With its ferris wheel, carousel, volleyball courts, relaxing cafes, and a clean walk and bike path, this place really does seem to be a place of happiness with families and friends spending quality time and interacting with one other. From my observation, this beach really does live up to this thought. Couples were riding their bikes, people playing volleyball, tanning, surfing and simply enjoying themselves. However, there are people who are not very happy on the beach as well and who do not follow this perception of “fun in the sun”. These people are the homeless, the community service workers and the maintenance employees.

I observe that these types of people rarely or do not communicate and associate themselves with each other.
While lingering around the public restrooms, I noticed that surfers, wearing expensive wet suits and holding their fancy patterned surf boards only spoke to their friends or strangers who were also surfers while washing up. They would completely ignore the homeless that passed by. In this way, this community at the beach supports the claim that "societies are formed by a certain number of segments of unequal size that overlap" (Durkheim, The Causes, pg 204). Here at the beach, I see people of many statuses such as a higher class surfer to the working class janitor to the lower class homeless and these classes can represent Durkheim's segments that overlap. In another sense, Robert E. Park’s statement: “The City is a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate” is supported at the beach because there are so many people that come from different backgrounds. Even when people are next to each other, they do not communicate and mingle with one another. They stick to their same group and do not associate themselves with other groups which means they do not interpenetrate, but because these different groups are present in one beach, one place, it means their worlds do touch.

Diversity of the Beach, top left: maintenance employee, top right and bottom left: recreation, bottom left: homeless. 

While I was walking around the beach, I approached a man who looked homeless and asked him why he was giving away clothes. I began to get to know him more and I learned from our conversation, that even he separates types of people and puts a subgroup to the group of homeless people. From what I understood, he identified himself as a certain type of homeless and thus, there are different kinds of homeless. Here is a link to the video of our conversation. He states “I don’t go to Venice… you got a bunch of gang members down there, bunch of drug addicts…” I feel like these gangs and addicts can also be living without a home, therefore, the homeless group branches out to even more groups.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=3611113168439

Another observation I see is that this beach follows what Emile Durkheim says about differentiation. Differentiation is born from stratification, which is the physical separation and status separation. This beach shows differentiation because at first everyone belongs to a different group, then they become physically closer to each other as they approach the beach and this forms moral density which is many people crowding in one place. Then these different groups of people do different things, and have different interests when they are at the beach. These different goals complement each other to make the beach a mostly compatible place, where different groups can still be around each other and not cause problems. For instance, the maintenance employees clean the restrooms and clear the bike path to earn money. This money comes from the city of Santa Monica and the city gets the money from tourists and the community that spend money. For example, tourists and residents pay for parking at the beach which goes to the city and pays for the employees. The employees are useful because they keep the beach clean to attract consumers to play there and spend their money on parking and food places around the beach. It’s basically all a cycle and everyone needs each other to perform different task in order to keep this cycle successfully spinning. This can be an example of organic solidarity which means that different people do different things in a community and it is because this system works this way that makes a successful community or city. Also, in this economic cycle of passing money around, it can be a counterexample of Park’s statement of “worlds touching but not interpenetrating” because even if tourists are not directly paying and giving thanks to the employees for making the beach a nice place to have fun, that money tourist spend does go to employees, thus, the people are exchanging money for services, but it’s indirect.   

I think that the effect of the difference and diversity of people at the beach is that it makes the beach a great place and it gives this geographic landscape a positive meaning and reputation because this difference in people’s tasks build the economic cycle to keep the beach clean and fresh. In summary, I think even if people do not realize that they do connect with everyone in the beach, that connection is still there and it is what keeps the beach running and working, so it keeps society going.

Blogging Social Difference in L.A: Week 1

Hello,

Hello and welcome to my blog. Here, I will tell and record my many adventures that I have planned for the Fall in Los Angeles. Because Los Angeles is the most populated city in California there must be some many different people living in it and by exploring the city, I will be expanding my knowledge of social difference and solidarities among the people of Los Angeles and learning how these features produce a contemporary city. In other words, I will attempt to find answers to the main question: What difference does difference make?

To start off, I'm Anne and this is my second year attending UCLA. I moved to Los Angeles about a year ago for college. I'm from Oakland Chinatown which is located in California Bay Area and I've lived there all my life until now.

Honestly, I wanted to attend college in Berkeley because it was just twenty minutes away from my home. I thought I would never have to leave home and all would go well. However, I ended up here in Los Angeles and completely starting over by moving to a new place, meeting new people, and of course, learning all about "So-Cal" life, people and environment. At first I was really afraid to leave and live without my family; I did not want to leave my family because I used to be one who loves to stick around familiar faces and places. When making arrangements for my trip here, everyone warned me that there are differences between Southern California and the Bay Area but I wondered what are the differences? I am happy that I asked this question a year ago, and I am in the process of finding the answer through my experiences living in Southern California. Before I left home, I wondered how my life living here would be so different because both Oakland and Los Angeles are big, metropolitan and urban areas.

I thought that it was not a big deal to adjust to here because I've lived in the urban for all my life but I was wrong, and the more I stay in Los Angeles, the more differences I find. Of course, I also do find similarities as well. For example, I observe different cultures present here that aren't present in the Bay Area and transportation systems are so much more complicated here than in the Bay Area.

I miss my family while I'm here, however, I do like to travel and see new places. I think that one down fall of traveling and vacationing is becoming home sick, but by moving to Los Angeles, I have chosen the traveling path and I would like to continue to get to know Los Angeles better. This class will certainly help me because it forces me to leave the campus and explore more and this is one reason I am interested in this class. I am also excited about this course because I like geography in general and I am very curious to learn more about urban life for my minor in Urban Planning and Regional Studies.

The fact that there is a minor and one can study for years about the urban and cities can only mean that there are so many complex systems and aspects. Some feature that make up a city or is present in one is social differences such as race, class and status. With these differences mingled together, there become conflicts, inequality and solidarity. Furthermore, these results result in exclusion, groups and separated communities. I'm sure there is more to this and I am ready to learn more about this through the course.