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.
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| 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.
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| All I see are cars |
Requirement: Walking Trip
I really enjoyed reading your blog post about Bel Air. I personally have never been and your observations were so interesting. Having this blog for 4 weeks now, I never thought of applying Park's statement to just one community. As we visit more and more places, it's so interesting to realize that this quote applies not only to Los Angeles as a whole, but to the communities within Los Angeles as well.
ReplyDeleteI connected your blog post with the idea of naturalizing difference as well. Like you, because of the similar socio economic standing of the people who live in Bel Air, I imagined it to be a tight-knot community as well. I guess I just imagined that "naturalizing difference" was more of a conscious effort, like a band of all the wealthy people in Bel Air working together to ensure that other socio-economic groups won't infiltrate their community. However, I guess there is a reason why the word "naturalization" is used. The separation between different groups just happens naturally. It makes me wonder if the lack of sidewalks was a subconscious decision or a conscious one.
I also like how you compared Bel Air to Orange County. I have been, however, to communities in Irvine that are a little more pedestrian and bike friendly, and i definitely see more human interaction in Irvine than what your pictures portray of Bel Air.
I think this post is really insightful. I never really gave a second thought as to why Bel Air neighborhoods have no sidewalks. The lack of a space for pedestrians blocks social access to this area for a lot of people. Having a gated "entrance" to Bel Air right across the street from the UCLA dorms blocks social access to all the students that go for a run around the area. Furthermore, having no sidewalks implies that the people who are socially welcomed there have to own a car (which means they also have to be able to afford the lifestyle that comes with owning a car).
ReplyDeleteAlso, I like how you applied Park's statement to houses in a community. It makes me think of the street I grew up on and how my friends and I would walk down the street (on the sidewalk) to each other's houses, ride our bikes in the street, and other things like that. There's no way that a community like Bel Air is welcoming to that kind of activity. It's interesting how something as simple as sidewalks can play such a large role in having a sense of community in a neighborhood. I wonder if that was an outcome that the people who first started building in Bel Air considered? Maybe privacy is a reason that people choose to live there?
I like the way you connected Bel Air with Orange County as well. I took the Metropolitan LA class in Spring and there we discussed how and why Orange County developed. Originally, it was sort of an extension to Los Angeles. A lot of business moved down there, and slowly suburbs began to emerge from there. The highway system that connects the city of Los Angeles with the rest of the metropolitan area reinforces the impact and even necessity of the automobile on Southern California life.