Socioeconomically Divided Los Angeles
This past week we have been exploring the founding of one of the most diverse cities in the world. I know New York boomed because of its geographic location, but I never quite understood why Los Angeles became the city it is today. The main question I had before this week was: What sets Los Angeles apart from any other major city? I think Reyner Banham’s The Architecture of Four Ecologies gave a good summarized answer. Reyner states that this city has been “produced by such an extraordinary mixture of geography, climate, economics, demography, mechanics, and culture” (6).
When I think of Los Angeles today, I think of its incredible variety of food, languages, backgrounds, and perspectives. However, I also think about the regions of greater Los Angeles, spanning from the beaches to the mountains, along with the demographics and stereotypes associated with these regions. I think about the wealthy Bel-Air area and the poorer Downtown. I think about Malibu Road and Skid Row.
Referring back to the features that make up LA, what do you think caused early LA to become so socioeconomically divided? Do you think the immigrant diaspora groups (such as those from Mexico and China) played a big role? Do you think the rancheros and their legacies played a role? Do you think background/ethnicity played a big role in which rancheros succeeded in the longer run?
When I think of Los Angeles today, I think of its incredible variety of food, languages, backgrounds, and perspectives. However, I also think about the regions of greater Los Angeles, spanning from the beaches to the mountains, along with the demographics and stereotypes associated with these regions. I think about the wealthy Bel-Air area and the poorer Downtown. I think about Malibu Road and Skid Row.
Referring back to the features that make up LA, what do you think caused early LA to become so socioeconomically divided? Do you think the immigrant diaspora groups (such as those from Mexico and China) played a big role? Do you think the rancheros and their legacies played a role? Do you think background/ethnicity played a big role in which rancheros succeeded in the longer run?
Alexis- I think that all of your examples, from immigration to rancheros, have all influenced LA’s socioeconomic division in some sort of way. In particular, I think that LA’s ethnic enclaves have sort of created a socioeconomic divide within the greater Los Angeles Area. In my opinion, I feel like the socioeconomic divide also comes from cultural division (?). For instance, when driving through K-Town, one can see that all the billboards are in Korean and all the little shops and restaurants are catered to Korean people, except for KBBQ, but that’s kind of an exception. Regardless, everything in K-Town is meant for Koreans who live there and not many other people. Their specific economy relies on people who identify with that culture in order to succeed, and I feel like it’s that way for a lot of the enclaves. This idea definitely impacts the social and economic divide of Los Angeles.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, I think that the evolution of transportation, more specifically freeways, has heavily impacted the socioeconomic divide. Freeways make it easy to get from one neighborhood to the next without having to drive through a bunch of other neighborhoods to get to the final destination. They are convenient; however, they hide the diversity of neighborhoods within LA, and I think that that is why we are so divided as a city: It’s because we don’t really know what the in-between looks like. Let’s say that an upper-class constituent lives in Pasadena and works in a high-rise in DTLA. That person will hop on the 110 freeway all the way down to whatever stop they have to get off at and will literally never see any of the neighborhoods in between Pasadena and a very high-class area of downtown. Thus, I believe that the socioeconomic divide is due to the lack of knowledge that the majority of people do not possess.
I agree with Sophie about the transportation aspect of Los Angeles and its affect on the socioeconomic divide. However, I would also add that there are different diasporas scattered around Los Angeles that perhaps were formed even before the freeways were established. Therefore, people of different backgrounds resided in the communities of which they were comfortable and familiar with. The more privileged Angelenos took advantage of the prime real estate leaving the rest of the people, mostly people of color, in the more urbanized and underdeveloped areas of Los Angeles. Jobs were definitely harder for people of color to get, especially during a time period where racial tensions were high; consequently, people of color lacked the recourses and opportunities to create financial stability. I feel like we should all recognize that even USC is still a much more conservative atmosphere because of its history as well as location. It is also not as diverse as most people believe it to be and this is a direct result of the socioeconomic divide. Most people of color of lower and middle class could simply not pay for tuition leaving the spots for the white and/or privileged students to take. SO YES, to answer Alexis' question to some degree: I think ethnicity and background play a massive role in the socioeconomic divide here in Los Angeles.
ReplyDeleteI believe that one of the greatest reasons Los Angeles initially became so socioeconomically divided is also one of the reasons that Los Angeles was/is one of the most desirable places to live in, and that is because of its unparalleled diversity of land. Naturally, when L.A. was just getting started, those with wealth and power were attracted to the swaths of land that would reflect their wealth - the beaches, the mountains, the places that were different from the rest of America just made up of flat, dry land. That, I believe, is why one can easily differentiate areas of Los Angeles by socioeconomic status often times solely based on geography - the beaches and mountains normally tend to be the wealthy ones. If Los Angeles were one big metropolis of flat land, I think that socioeconomic diversity might look a lot different.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that different immigrant diaspora groups have played a large role, especially in how many cultures tend to stick in one area, as Sophie said. Many areas of one ethnic background in Los Angeles tend to cater towards those within the same background, which often times creates a singular economy that relies on only those who are familiar with such food, resources, and culture. Such problems aren’t the fault of those backgrounds, but that there was never much more available and not many willing to completely integrate all cultures in Los Angeles. While it is a city of great diversity and backgrounds, I also think that is it interesting in how much of the diversity doesn’t necessarily mesh together at times.
I agree with Sophie as well, but as Cole said, I also think that there were boundaries that were set before the formation of freeways in Los Angeles. For instance, in the video that Cole shared, we learned how the white police officer did not feel comfortable in the Korean store, which affects the economics of lower class areas, as more wealthy people do not want to shop there due to a fear for their safety. Without the customers that stores in more wealthy areas get, there is a economical divide created. In conclusion, I do think that race and economic status play a big role in the socioeconomic divide.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I was aware Los Angeles was socioeconomically divided, I felt obligated to research the issue before I any drew conclusions. In doing so, I found there's no clear answer to how LA became so divided. While some research supports the argument that socioeconomic division has progressively got worse, some data suggests the exact opposite.
ReplyDeleteI read a piece in the L.A. Times which analyzed research that concluded that "America's most racially integrated neighborhoods and cities are on a path to become segregated again." For example, in Los Angeles, data shows vast proportions of East and South East LA are single race populations. Interestingly enough, the change was not just formally white areas but all races. In Compton for instance, over two-thirds of the population is now Latino which is surprising when over three-quarters of the city was African American just 30 years before. While immigration is one obvious factor that led to an increase in the Latino population in Los Angles, there are still many unknown factors as to why Los Angles became so segregated.
Segregation, however, is not necessarily imminent. A statistical model was used and found that of the 20% of LA cities examined, African Americans, Latinos, Whites, and Asians have been living together for over 10-30 years with little to no population variation. "In fact, among L.A., Houston, Chicago and New York, Los Angeles had the highest proportion of these 'quadrivial' neighborhoods." Therefore, while I do still believe Los Angeles is still economically, socially, and racially divided, I do believe major media has often exaggerated the extent of this division. In the meantime, I hope as a class we can investigate how Los Angeles has become both diverse and divided.
Link: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-bader-resegregation-los-angeles-20160401-story.html
DeleteI agree with Sophie as well. I believe the cultural divide in Los Angeles has created a socioeconomic divide, like in K town or China town. I also agree with Cole about how socioeconomic divide happened even before the freeways were built. I think background and ethnicity play a huge role in the socioeconomic divide in Los Angeles. I think in the early days of Los Angeles wealthy ,mostly white, people were able to purchase large plots of land which allowed them to have a better lifestyle than those of immigrants. Privileged people were able to buy the prime plots of land opposite of people of color who had to move in to more "urbanized" areas. The idea of keeping neighborhoods white also affected the divide in Los Angeles, with many neighborhoods being "ruined" by people of color. People also tend to stay in the same area they grew up in which further strengthens the divide in Los Angeles.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there's a very straightforward answer to the this question- I think it's a super complex and ongoing issue, and needs to be thought about with respect to the varying issues that contribute to it ( which I obviously don't know all of these issues, but I'll talk about a couple that I've noticed or thought about recently)
ReplyDeleteI know that this issue is much bigger than LA, so the first thing that comes to my mind when thinking about why LA is (one of many cities) divided along economic lines is the history of housing and property ownership in the United States. Although we know that racial segregation and discrimination against minorities and minority communities existed long before there was research about it, practices like redlining, zoning regulations, and flat out not selling property to minorities, continually discriminated against POC/other groups and kept them, in a sense, trapped in certain areas of the city. These types of systematic cycles of segregation are not easy to dismantle, therefore, the effects of it are still alive and noticeable in LA today. In addition to this, I think the geographic layout of LA exacerbates and encourages segregation throughout the city. It is SO easy to self-segregate when your city spans such a vast amount of land and doesn't have very good public transportation, or when there's not really any "motivating" factor to leave your area. I think we are all guilty of this to varying degrees. Some other topics I think tie into this issue are gentrification in LA, school zoning (and the huge amount of private and charter schools) in LA, and, like what Sophie talked about, cultural division that is catered to a specific group of people in an area. Like how an area like Koreatown caters to a very different individual than an area like Silverlake. I wonder if this is a effect of the socioeconomic divide in LA or a contributing factor to it.
Ditto @Rachel. The Becoming Los Angeles exhibit presented a series of photos depicting the effects of and responses to housing discrimination in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s. Many white L.A. homeowners resisted the Supreme Court's landmark decision to band discriminatory housing practices, resorting to bribing neighbors not to sell to African Americans, vandalizing minorities' properties, cross burnings, and other acts of violence.
ReplyDeleteIt's also worth noting that the diverse pockets of minority communities in Los Angeles have formed due to common cultures and interests. Immigrants arrive in Los Angeles and reside in neighborhoods that they can afford but also in neighborhoods of their common demographic.
What sets Los Angeles apart? Like Banham said, our city faces the sunset.
I agree with Cole and Sophie on the key role that both socioeconomic opportunity and the construction of cultural enclaves have played in the development of a shockingly segregated Los Angeles. When I think about this issue, I think back to the zoning map we looked at a few weeks ago in the UCLA online archives, which showed how Greater Los Angeles was divided up early-on among wealthy settlers, each of whom seized plots of undeveloped land. As Los Angeles grew and experienced an influx of immigrants from all of the country and the world, many of these landowners established the foundations of urban segregation by refusing to lease or sell real estate to people of color or Jews. When I researched this subject, I found an LA Times article on the history of racist zoning laws in Los Angeles, and the article confirmed that landowners were allowed to discriminate against people of color and religious minorities when selling their properties until the early 1900s. After that, a subtler form of discrimination took hold through single-family housing zoning laws, which basically stipulated that designated areas in Los Angeles (almost exclusively white, upper-class areas) could only have single-family detached homes, and no apartments or multifamily complexes. This, I think, is an example of the intersection of socioeconomic and racial segregation that Cole mentioned: since families of color and new immigrants were statistically less likely to be able to afford a single-family home, they were excluded from whole regions of Los Angeles. As a result, Los Angeles became more and more segregated through the 20th century, and only recently have lawmakers begun to consider ways to rewrite racist zoning laws.
ReplyDeleteAs the city formed and began to grow, racist real estate practices contributed to racial segregation, but immigrants with shared heritages also gathered and built neighborhoods centered around their cultures, languages, and foods. The Jewish, Korean, Chinese, and Filipino communities of Los Angeles, for example, gathered in different parts of the city to celebrate their traditions and develop local economies, and these cultural enclaves also contributed to the segregation of the city. One thing to note, however, is how gentrification and “white flight” have influenced these cultural centers, continuing a cycle of gentrification. Boyle heights, for example, began as a highly diverse neighborhood but saw its Jewish population move to the suburbs because of redlining, nearby freeway construction, and probably internal racism. Conversely, Echo Park has historically been mainly Latinx, but in the last five years, skyrocketing housing costs have pushed out many of the Latinx residents and brought in white homeowners, drawn to the neighborhood’s “trendy” character.
Like Rachel said, this question doesn't have a clear cut answer. There are many factors, stories, and events that have influenced the socioeconomic divisions and they span well beyond L.A. To respond to Sophie, yes, I agree that socioeconomic divide comes from cultural division, and I certainly resonate with this. When my grandfather came to L.A. from Greece, he settled in Burbank simply because there were a lot of Greek people in Burbank and he felt more accepted. But my question is where does that cultural division come from in the first place. I am interested in looking back at what we did the first day of class with the maps. I remember seeing that Los Angeles was initially divided based on plots of land owned by wealthy white men. I don't really know specifically how that initial layout of L.A. has influenced the divides we have today, but I am interested in learning more.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Sophia and Rachel's point about housing discrimination, and I think that one of the reasons this segregation is so pronounced in LA compared to other cities is that housing in LA is heavily made up of houses and single-family homes rather than apartment buildings. I would assume that this landscape would cause redlining etc to have much more pronounced effects. Additionally, because the LA we know today was largely built after the invention of cars, those with wealth chose to live outside of the downtown/professional areas and commute into work, exacerbating socioeconomic/racial divisions.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Sophie about the transportation being a big part of LA's cultural divide– and to add onto that, I think it also has to do with the bubbles that we live in for most of our lives. In the late 1980s, LA attracted countless immigrants from mostly Asia and Mexico, as well as from other regions in the United States, and the economy boomed. While this helped unemployment rates decrease, newly created jobs were often filled by immigrants who, in turn, received low pay and the number of poor families in LA increased substantially. LA is known to be one of the most socioeconomically divided cities in the nation. I am writing all of this because I think it still applies to us as Poly students. I have lived in Pasadena my entire life and it wasn't until the summer between eighth and ninth grade that I went to DTLA for the first time. I have lived in this very sheltered community for so long and I think I was just really oblivious to the world around me. I believe LA is so socioeconomically divided because people really just don't know what's going on outside of their own lives.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything that has been stated above, however, I particularly agree with the fact that race and culture played a large role in LA being socioeconomically divided. This is very present in the idea of gentrification because in many neighborhoods that are occupied by individuals who fall in the lower classes live in areas that become places of interest for younger and wealthier individuals. In these cases many of the people who happen to be in the lower classes are minorities and they are usually forced to find other places to live due to the rent constantly increasing. Another reason that I think race and culture play a large role in this topic is because if you look at our neighborhoods today, areas like South Central are more populated by African Americans while the areas around the Rose Bowl are populated by mostly whites. This segregation is obviously not as bad as it was in the past but it still is somewhat segregated.
ReplyDeleteOur country is very socioeconomically divided and Los Angeles is not exempt from this. We live in a great representation of this divide, we can see the effects of the ballooning house prices pushing working class citizens out of the city, and towards the outskirts. Rancho Cucamonga is a representation of this and the home to a growing black population who commute fours a day to the city. This designs to benefit the wealthy and oppress the poor in both our cities and country. In the future, I would like to explore society's design and their impact on cities.
ReplyDeleteHousing discrimination has contributed greatly towards the segregation and redlining of Los Angeles. It has both trapped and isolated people without the means to move improve their current situations. People of color have been historically denied loans and housing on the basis of racial stereotypes. While I was to young to understand completely my own family experienced racism while looking for our first home. People would make us jump through unnecessary hoops just to prove that we would be able to come up with the money to purchase a house. In addition to being forced to prove that people of color belonged in conversations regarding purchasing a home in a predominantly white neighborhood, we experienced pushback from the neighbors who tried to convince the previous owners that selling a house to us was not a good idea. These personal stories share similarities with those mentioned in Alexis's original post because it highlights an overall resistance to coexist with people who lead different lifestyles.
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