Blogging Social Difference in L.A: Week 8

I read the Los Angeles Times article “Merchants join in bid to give Westwood Village a brighter future” by Martha Groves. This article gives an overview about how Westwood Village was before, about ten years ago, and how it is right now. So I took a walking trip to Westwood Village to observe this urban area, and compare it to the article.
The website of the article and the photos from the article:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/13/local/la-me-westwood-village-cleanup-20111113

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1113-westwoodpictures,0,3673776.photogallery?index=la-me-1113-westwood06_ltln1fpd

From what I observe, Westwood is very lively, clean and attractive. I did my exploring on a Tuesday night and there were still a good amount of college and non-college students on the streets. I felt that it was a very safe place because there were lights, people, and open food places and shops around.

Clean streets and businesses, bright lights, entertainment, very lively, populated, beautiful decorations on the streets,      awesome shops open at night                                                                                 

This article discusses how Westwood Village used to be a poor neighborhood because the streets were dirty and businesses would not rent there. However, the district started hiring “ public safety ambassadors" -some of whom patrol the village on Segways — to provide directions to visitors and roust the neighborhood's entrenched ranks of homeless people” (Los Angeles Times). These ambassadors cleaned up the streets by picking trash, driving out the homeless and removing graffiti and gum. This attracted a lot of businesses to come and make Westwood more lively and economically better.




This type of urban planning and system is a good example of how cleaning the streets and only allowing a certain type of people in the area correlated with an abundance of wealthy classmen and good economy. It is only when the district sent ambassadors who are basically guards of the area to fix Westwood up that there are now middle and upper class people. The ambassadors serve as guards to a “gated community” (Lecture), where the area suggests that only certain social classes belong in a certain place. By pushing away the homeless, Westwood is showing that the homeless are not welcomed, even though anyone can walk and be on the streets and there is no physical gate surrounding the area.

Additionally, by opening shops in Westwood and all types of stores such as restaurants, cafes, electronic stores, drug stores, and department stores, it makes Westwood Village one of the many “centers” of Los Angeles because this is the area where there is everything, public transportation, food, theater, and shops. However, some will argue that Los Angeles’s center is in downtown or somewhere else. The qualities of Westwood does follow the definition of an urban central spot and it would be the center of the “growth of the city” circle, however, the unusual thing about this is that Los Angeles has so many of these centers, thus so many of these “growth of the city” circles. This can be an example of decentralization which can be described as “sub-business centers…in outlying zones… and… a telescoping of several local communities” (Burgess, “The Growth of the City,” pp.341). In other words, decentralization is when instead of having only one center in a city, there are many centers of populated areas. This can be due to the fact that Los Angeles wanted to be for the automobile, meaning that it does not matter if places are not grouped in one area of the entire city. Nothing needs to be grouped up because everyone have cars and are capable and do not mind driving across town to go grocery shopping and then driving somewhere else to have dinner.

Now putting all my observations together and thinking back to Parks’ statement that cities are filled with little worlds that touch but do not penetrate, I can find examples and counterexamples from my walk in Westwood and from the article. I agree with Park when it comes to social classes because from all my trips so far, I see that social class is always separated. In this way, social difference produces groups that do not meet. The wealthier people do not meet with the poor and lower class because the wealthier people either do not want to associate themselves with the poor or it is society’s norm to block the rich from realizing and seeing that the poor exist.

From what happened to Westwood before, in terms that there used to be “entrenched ranks of homeless people” (New York Times), no one dared to open a business and the upper class and middles class did not come to Westwood. In this sense, the upper class and middle class are showing that they do not want to be around the poor.

Another reason for the class’s separation is due to the normativity of separation of the classes. I do not think anyone sees a security guard as purposely segregating the poor and homeless; people usually see guards as having the purpose of protection, however, they really are symbols of a gated community and class segregation.

Back to Park, a counterexample would be that the worlds do interact because everyone in the city is traveling to so many different places, thus, physically, they are interacting with different people. For instance, if they visit Westwood now, I’m sure they will eat at the same place college students eat at, which means, they are willing to share culture and be around college life and students. In this way, I think, groups are interpenetrating. Even if visitors do not talk to college students, they are still learning about the way things are around Westwood, either consciously or subconsciously.