This area is very clean and neat. Everything looks very new. I passed by a Starbuck’s Coffee that has patio on the wide streets on Wilshire Boulevard. I see many customers dressed in business attire sitting on the patio, drinking coffee and they seem to be having pleasant conversation. Just across the street there is a skyscraper that looks very fancy with marble walls. I see a private security guard standing next to the revolving doors. This security guard is probably a symbol or signal that this area of downtown is a gated community, meaning that this area is only open to certain people or it is suggesting that only certain people, the businessmen and upperclassmen, belong here.
(Updated: 12.8.2012: After reading and learning more about Neolibralism, I believe this street or area reflects a neolibral city or part of a city because as Brenner and Theodore say, neolibralism has the goal "to mobilize city space as an arena both for market-oriented economic growth and for elite consumption practices" (Blackwell Reader, 413). This part of the city shows many businesses and supports the idea that a city is meant to hold capitalism and corporations. The presence of all the firms located here (1,2,3) also support the Marxian view that the urban city is used as a place to "legitimize capitalism" (Lecture). )
As I walk further in the west direction, I begin to notice starting on Burlington Ave and going toward west, the streets start to become dirty and filled with small buildings that look very unmaintained and old. This is right after the little shopping center with Home Depot and Rite Aid. I begin to see tiny markets and liquor stores and one story buildings with gates and bars on windows all around, which suggest an unsafe area. I then come across a 99 Cent store and right across from this, I see an old yellowish building that has the word “Swapmeet” which is a similar to a flea market or a place to jailbreak stolen IPhones. This area is the “ghetto” side and it is next to the clean and rich businesses and its been this way probably for a long time. However, I believe this design of streets still works out because the rich come from the east side and onto the freeway, so they do not go to the west where this poor neighborhood is.
This is a good example of how a city is “lined, on both sides, with an almost unbroken series of shops, and are so kept in the hands of the middle and lower bourgeoisie, which, out of self-interest, cares for a decent and cleanly external appearance and can care for it” (Friedrich Engels “The Great Towns” pp.12). From the 110 freeway and from Flower Street to their work location is the road that “members of this money aristocracy can take… through the middle of all the laboring districts to their places of business, without ever seeing that they are in the midst of the grimy misery that lurks to the right and left” (Friedrich Engels “The Great Towns” pp.12). The “midst of…grimy misery that lurks to the right and left” is starting at Burlington Ave, and the clean road is the street from the freeway to the business area. This plan keeps the rich away from the poor so the rich do not need to see them. In this way, the difference that social difference causes is a physical blind spot of an entire area in the city the wealthy have lived in for as long as they do. In this system, the businessmen will never come in contact with the poor and it supports Parks’ claim that the worlds touch because the business district and the ghetto are right next to each other, however, these places do not interpenetrate because they do not come in contact with one another.
(Updated: 12.8.2012: After reading and learning more about Neolibralism, I believe this street or area reflects a neolibral city or part of a city because as Brenner and Theodore say, neolibralism has the goal "to mobilize city space as an arena both for market-oriented economic growth and for elite consumption practices" (Blackwell Reader, 413). This part of the city shows many businesses and supports the idea that a city is meant to hold capitalism and corporations. The presence of all the firms located here (1,2,3) also support the Marxian view that the urban city is used as a place to "legitimize capitalism" (Lecture). )
As I walk further in the west direction, I begin to notice starting on Burlington Ave and going toward west, the streets start to become dirty and filled with small buildings that look very unmaintained and old. This is right after the little shopping center with Home Depot and Rite Aid. I begin to see tiny markets and liquor stores and one story buildings with gates and bars on windows all around, which suggest an unsafe area. I then come across a 99 Cent store and right across from this, I see an old yellowish building that has the word “Swapmeet” which is a similar to a flea market or a place to jailbreak stolen IPhones. This area is the “ghetto” side and it is next to the clean and rich businesses and its been this way probably for a long time. However, I believe this design of streets still works out because the rich come from the east side and onto the freeway, so they do not go to the west where this poor neighborhood is.
This is a good example of how a city is “lined, on both sides, with an almost unbroken series of shops, and are so kept in the hands of the middle and lower bourgeoisie, which, out of self-interest, cares for a decent and cleanly external appearance and can care for it” (Friedrich Engels “The Great Towns” pp.12). From the 110 freeway and from Flower Street to their work location is the road that “members of this money aristocracy can take… through the middle of all the laboring districts to their places of business, without ever seeing that they are in the midst of the grimy misery that lurks to the right and left” (Friedrich Engels “The Great Towns” pp.12). The “midst of…grimy misery that lurks to the right and left” is starting at Burlington Ave, and the clean road is the street from the freeway to the business area. This plan keeps the rich away from the poor so the rich do not need to see them. In this way, the difference that social difference causes is a physical blind spot of an entire area in the city the wealthy have lived in for as long as they do. In this system, the businessmen will never come in contact with the poor and it supports Parks’ claim that the worlds touch because the business district and the ghetto are right next to each other, however, these places do not interpenetrate because they do not come in contact with one another.
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