Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 4 - Sherman Oaks

My mom recently moved from Phoenix, Arizona to Sherman Oaks, California. I would definitely categorize this move as a very drastic one. In Phoenix, we lived on the outskirts of the city. I do not mean the actual downtown area of Phoenix that someone might think of when they hear the term city, but I mean the city limits. We lived right near the border separating Phoenix and Anthem. In fact, to even reach downtown it would take around 30-40 minutes depending on the traffic. As we have mentioned in class, Phoenix is similar to LA because it is also very spread out and a car is necessary to get around. This refers back to the heavy dependence on the automobile, which I mentioned in last week’s post when I referenced the reading about Orange Country by Kling, Olin, and Poster.

While I lived in Phoenix, I would mostly only visit during the summer when it would be too hot to take a walk around my neighborhood or do any sort of activity outside. The community that I lived in was quite spread out so I even needed a car to drive down to the fitness center since it would be over 100 degrees on most days. Since I rarely spent time outside, I seldom interacted with my neighbors. We had our separate lives and our separate worlds, similar to what I described in Bel Air last week. However, these separate worlds were mostly kept segregated due to the inability to do much outside in the sweltering heat. There was no place for us to communally build our sense of community. I’m sure that all areas of Phoenix are not this inhospitable to social interaction, but due to these spread out nature of my neighborhood and the seclusion that came about from this distance, I did not feel a sense of community. To use Park’s words, while our apartments and townhouses touched, they did not interpenetrate.

My new home in Sherman Oaks already proves to be a departure from this sort of segregated environment.  I had never been in Sherman Oaks before we moved there, but I had always heard of the community because my aunt used to live there when she was in her late twenties. When my mom and I were moving in, we ran into one of our neighbors. She told us she was an actress and that she lived with another actress in their unit across the hall. From this first encounter, I could already tell a difference from my old community because I didn’t even see my first neighbor for at least two weeks after we had moved in. Not only did I meet our first neighbor in Sherman Oaks within a few minutes of arriving, but she was extremely outgoing.

This past week my mom was out of town so I decided to go and check on our new apartment while she was gone. While I was there I did not run into any neighbors and the entire street seemed to be quiet. Since I had some time I decided to walk around a bit, something that I could never do back in Phoenix. The area around our apartment is very walkable. There are trees lining the streets, a wide sidewalk, and a variety of restaurants. The street that we live on is very calm and I did not see many other people walking around, but once I walked around two blocks I found myself at the very busy intersection of Van Nuys Boulevard and Ventura Boulevard. The three to four floor vintage apartment buildings that I had been surrounded by had become replaced by gas stations and larger complexes like the Sherman Oaks Shopping Center. While there were still some trees along the roads, there were not as many as there had been on my street. There were also many more cars speeding by, and it was hard to believe that I had previously been on such a quiet street just a block or two away. The personalities of these two streets were almost polar opposites.

While my visit to Sherman Oaks this week doesn’t relate to our recent topics of the underclass and the race riots, these two different environments of the busy street and the quiet street reminded me of the two extremes in Manchester that Engels talks about. I’m not saying that Sherman Oaks is like Manchester, which has the extremely poor hidden from the rich, but it does display another place where two such different environments can be so close. Engels describes Manchester when he explains “true poverty” has its area, which is “removed from the sight of the happier classes” (The Blackwell City Reader, 11). Later he goes on to explain that the way this is done is through constructing boulevards that lead the rich into the city. These boulevards are filled with shops, which obstruct the view of the poor from the rich. Even though these poorer people only live on the other side of these shops, the rich do not view them or the filthy living arrangements they share. Manchester is obviously much more extreme than Sherman Oaks, but I find it intriguing that my mom’s street is quaint and quiet, but very nearby lies bustling Ventura Boulevard.

Unfortunately, I cannot say from this experience that Sherman Oaks is one large world instead of the “mosaic of little worlds” Park describes. Even though my neighbor was more outgoing than I had previously experienced, we still have our separate little worlds that have not intertwined or combined. As the weeks go on, I beginning to feel as though Park is correct and that while many people live in the same city, they still have their own worlds that do not interpenetrate. Every place that I have seen thus far seems to have human interactions, but nothing to the point of the interpenetration. 

Requirement: Never Seen Before

Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 3 - Bel Air

The automobile. As we have talked about in lecture, the automobile changed how cities evolved and LA is the perfect example. Since LA rapidly grew during the period when the automobile became popular, the city was able to expand in every possible direction.  This is why the automobile is necessary, in order to easily get around to the many parts of the city. While it is possible to travel using other methods, the car is the most efficient vehicle, even with all of LA’s traffic and congestion problems.

Last week’s reading by Kling, Olin, and Poster talked about how the automobile also played a part in shaping Orange County. Since the county is organized with different specialized zones that are “difficult for pedestrians to navigate,” a car is necessary to get around and the county was actually “designed to accommodate the automobile driver” (Olin 7). This past week I visited my dad’s house, which is an area within LA that is designed very much in the same way. This is area is Bel Air.

When I first think of Bel Air, the first thought that always pops into my mind is how unfriendly the area is to pedestrians. Every time that I walk down the street I’m worried that I am going to be hit by a car turning a blind corner. This past week I had an experience that validated this fear. My mom wanted to walk down the street to look at how some houses had decorated for Halloween. In Bel Air, there are many very large, beautiful houses with well-groomed landscaped grounds that decorate quite intensely for the holidays. As we were walking in the road, because there aren’t any sidewalks, my mom kept reminding me to walk as close to the cars parked on the side of the road as possible since drivers wouldn’t be able to see us in the dark. The simple fact that there are no sidewalks makes it clear that this neighborhood is not catered to pedestrians. Like Orange County, it seems as though the area was designed with the use of the automobile as a necessity.

Examples of how unfriendly the roads are to pedestrians 

During our entire walk up and down the street, the only interactions we had with any other people were when cars drove past us. We did not see any other people out walking and since the only people we saw were driving in their cars, we did not have any direct interactions with anyone. This sense of isolation and separation supports Robert E. Park’s statement of “the City is a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate” (Blackwell City Reader 171). In this case the little worlds aren’t neighborhoods or census tracts, but rather individual houses. The lack of community ties in Bel Air and the un-invitingness of the streets makes each home its own world, virtually unconnected from the rest. I’m not saying that every household does not speak to their neighbors, but there is not sense of wide scale community or interaction. To use Park’s wording, these houses touch each other, but they do not interpenetrate.

This is very different than my experience last week at Justice Corps where I spent the day interacting with different litigants from different parts of LA. During my walk in Bel Air, I didn’t speak to anyone new, and I didn’t take anything away from interactions with others because there simply weren’t any. This goes to show how different the diverse places in LA can be, and how complete dependence on the automobile tends to keep people apart. Maybe Bel Air would be different if all of its streets had sidewalks. Or maybe Bel Air would be more inviting if it weren’t on a mountain with steep winding streets. But, the truth of the matter is that Bel Air has all of these uninviting and segregating qualities that make it the aggregate individual worlds that it is.

Another major difference between Bel Air and Downtown is that Bel Air is a residential area that has people that are in the same, or close to the same, class ranking. In downtown, there was a wide range of class distinctions, since each person coming into the courthouse had a different story. I would think that since the residents of Bel Air are of a common socio economic class, they would form a community through this similarity, but they don’t. I’m not sure if this is because the geography and lack of sidewalks or if it some trait of this class. I believe that it is a mix of these that make Bel Air the way that it is.

All I see are cars

Requirement: Walking Trip

Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 2 - The Stanley Mosk Courthouse

Every Thursday morning, I bear the commute from UCLA to the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, which is located in Downtown LA. I leave my apartment around 7:00 am in order to arrive in time for work at 8:00 am. One would think that in an hour of driving it would be possible to travel somewhere between 40 to 60 miles, but that’s not the case on the LA freeways. The Stanley Mosk Courthouse is only 16.1 miles away if I take the 405, the 10, and then the 110 freeways, yet it takes me around 45 minutes to arrive at my destination.

I endure this traffic every Thursday morning because I am volunteering with Justice Corps for this academic school year. Each week I am required to serve around 6 to 8 hours a week at my assigned courthouse. Even though I had never driven in LA before, I decided to be bold and to opt for the courthouse downtown instead of the ones in Santa Monica or Van Nuys. I made this decision thinking that it would push me to learn how to drive in LA and that it would introduce me to another side of LA that I don’t see in Westwood Village. So far, after 4 weeks of service I can claim that both of these wishes have already become true.

A view of the 110

This past Thursday I set out around my usual time of 7:00 am. Unlike most Los Angeles residents I have set up a carpool with another girl in my program. This week it was her time to drive, which was perfect so that I could focus on my experience of waiting in traffic. While most people I have talked to who commute regularly lament about the congestion, I actually enjoy it. It isn’t as though the freeways are at a standstill and I feel as though I am accomplishing nothing, but rather there is a slow constant moving forward even in the most congested areas. It is the one time during the day I am forced to slow down because I have no choice!

Once I arrive in the downtown area, the streets are not as congested. I usually get off the 110 on 9^th street so that I don’t have to wait on the freeway any longer and can navigate the gridded streets of downtown instead. The strongest observation that I have noted during this part of the commute is there are always many buses. I am always trying to get around a bus or stopped behind a bus, which would suggest that public transportation is widespread and accessible within the confines of downtown. I tried to observe the populace walking along the streets, but since it was raining this Thursday I was not able to see that many people walking around.

Third Street - One of the streets I drive on to get to the Courthouse

Once I pull into the parking lot, I shuffled into my location of focus, which is the Stanley Mosk Courthouse. Since I enter the building from the staff entrance, I do not come into contact with any litigants. As I make my way upstairs to the Self-Help Resource Center, the halls start to come alive with men and women dressed in suits and other assorted business attire. However, since it is early, there doesn’t seem to be many other people present besides lawyers and court employees. The main entrance does not open until right at 8:00 am when I am already in the building.

Most service days I have been scheduled to work on the floor, which means I help the assorted litigants with a myriad of issues ranging from child custody request for orders to trial setting requests to dissolutions of marriage. I help a wide range of people, however since many are choosing to represent themselves in court due to the inability to pay for an attorney, many come from lower income brackets.

The biggest takeaway that I noticed at the courthouse is how evident the division of labor is. Durkheim mentioned many times in his chapter called “The Causes”, that as “societies become more voluminous and concentrated” labor becomes more divided due to the higher level of competition that stems from this concentration and volume (208). Downtown LA appears to a very dense area, which would mean a courthouse in the area would be a perfect candidate to demonstrate this division of labor Durkheim expanded upon. Since litigants do come into our center to receive help from expertise in the field, division of labor is evident. If there wasn’t a division of labor then all people would be able to equally represent themselves in court and would be able to complete all of the necessary paperwork on their own. The issue is that many of these self-represented litigants are not able to do this and need the help provided by attorneys, who did specialize in the field of law through additional education.

As an undergraduate volunteer, I also demonstrate the division of labor. I am on the floor in this self-help center in order to help the litigants fill out their paperwork. I am not able to do much more. Or in other words, I do not have a high enough level of specialization in order to be able to review the documents and provide all of the necessary information. It is the responsibility of the on site attorneys to carry out these tasks. They are specialized to the point where, for the most part, they do not need to help the litigants fill out the forms, but rather use their knowledge to correct the forms and inform the litigants of any relevant court information. I am able to do the job of helping the litigants fill out the forms because this task does not require a law degree.

The division of labor has always been an abstract concept to me, but through the examples provided by Durkheim and by my experience downtown in the court house, I feel as though I am much more conversant with the subject. The division of labor is manifested all around, since LA is quite vast and concentrated. It’s hard to conceive of life without the specialization of labor. I cannot imagine doing every single task for myself, without any help from others.

A final view of Downtown as I drive away on the 110

Requirement: Car Trip, 15 Miles Away (15.9 Miles)

Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 1

My name is Michelle and I will be spending the next ten weeks (maybe longer) blogging about the city of Los Angeles. I am a student at UCLA and I am currently taking a class about cities and social difference. Since I attend school in Los Angeles, I am lucky enough to get to explore the city on my own time while also seeing the topics we explore in class out in one of the better known cities in the US. This is an invaluable experience that I will attempt to share while I write about the places I visit and observe.

I grew up in Hawaii so Los Angeles is a very different scene. During my first two years here I didn't have the chance to explore Los Angeles as much as I thought I would. Last quarter I took two class about Los Angeles and left campus much more than I had before. My experiences of seeing other parts of Los Angeles are what piqued my interest in this topic of cities and social change. Cites are intriguing. The processes that create them and the growth that occurs in them over the years are motivated by many different factors. All of these factors make them very dynamic and very unique around the world. 

While I was taking my two classes about Los Angeles last quarter, I learned a great deal about the history of the city. Since I didn't grow up in California I didn't know much about the history of the area. I found it fascinating when I heard about the Watts riots and their effect on the city as a whole. The riots are a perfect example of how social difference actually changed the urban fabric of Los Angeles. Social differences created a crisis that caused restructuring. There have been many more historical events caused by social difference that have brought about change that I can't wait to explore. Cities push people with social differences together and that's why they are the perfect place to study how change comes about and the effects of people's interactions. 

Source: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/north-america/usa/los-angeles/