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.