Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 10

     With only one blog post remaining in the quarter, I came to the troubling realization that I have neither been to a location I am not at least somewhat familiar with, nor have I utilized Simply Maps (LINK). Under the pressure to combine these two aspects into a single blog post, coupled with the stresses of this week’s impending midterm and the fact that Neo-Liberalism confuses me beyond words forced me to take the easy way out this week. To elaborate, for this week’s blog post, I decided to stay near UCLA and travel to Beverly Hills, a location I had only ridden the bus through for a previous blog post, to explore the presence, or lack thereof, of the hallmarks of the post-metropolis. Specifically, I used Simply Map’s distribution of clothing and accessory sales along with clothing and accessory consumption to observe the presence and effects of hyper-consumerism, cosmopolitanism, decentralization, multi-centrality and automobility. While I doubt a girl traveling to Beverly Hills to study shopping trends was exactly what Professor Wilford had in mind for our blog post visits, the previously complained about culmination of stressors more or less forced me into a corner. For this reason, I will do my best to elaborate and conceptualize my observations to mitigate this blog post’s adventurous and exploratory shortcomings. Without further adieu…

     As stated above, this week I explored Beverly Hills for the first time, which is simultaneously surprising, since I consider myself to be quite the fashionista, and completely expected, since I barely have enough money to park on Rodeo Drive. Anyways, I ultimately chose Beverly Hills after screwing around on Simply Maps for awhile. After countless tedious minutes of exploring the many variables that you can adjust on the website, I found a combination of two that reflected an embodied a class concept, or, depending on how you look at it, several class concepts. The variables I chose to explore and compare were the distribution of clothing and accessory sales in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area crossed with the data on clothing and accessory consumption in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. Although these concepts may seem relatively random, they do in fact relate rather directly to concepts covered in lecture. Specifically, these concepts relate to the idea of the post-metropolis. Before all you readers get too impressed that I was somehow able to relate a map of Los Angeles with the type of city that Los Angeles embodies, give me a chance to elaborate further on the subject.

     Let me start off by describing the map, or the parts that are relevant to my point at least. The main points of the map I would like to draw attention to are the facts that both the heavy concentrations of sales and consumption are scattered, but in differentiated way that eliminates potential confounding variables, such as geographic or political barriers, and the fact that neither sales nor consumption match up perfectly across both maps. These are relevant because they all directly speak to the hallmarks of the post-metropolis. First, the fact that there are so many concentrations of clothing and accessory stores in such a relatively small area speaks to the increased sense of consumerism and cosmopolitanism discussed by Kling, Olin and Poster in their book, Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County Since World War II. Second, the fact that these sales centers, and consumption centers are so distributed speaks to the decentralized, and multi-centralized aspects of the post-metropolis. Thirdly, the fact that these sales centers are strategically situated around relatively affluent areas, as made obvious by the fact that they spend a lot of money on clothing and accessories, speaks to the emergence of the information economy. Finally, the fact that these areas are so widely distributed reinforces the post-metropolis’ dependency on the automobile.

     Now, on to my trip itself. Like a typical touristy first-timer in Beverly Hills I spent the majority of my time window shopping on Rodeo Drive. I say window shopping both because I can not afford anything in the Rodeo Drive stores and because there were several stores that would not even let me in, which is a microcosm of restricting physical access, but that is beyond the scope of this post. While the decentralization and multi-centration was obvious throughout the area, as car dealerships were located together, as were clothing scores, department stores and supermarkets and the residential areas, the most obvious hallmarks of the post-metropolis was the overwhelming presence of consumerism and cosmopolitanism. While consumerism in Beverly Hills is such an obvious observation it does not even warrant an explanation, I was not prepared for the near-strictly cosmopolitan nature of this consumerism. This cosmopolitan nature was seen in both the city and the city’s residents/visitors. In terms of the city itself, there was an alarming large amount of foreign brand stores, whether it is clothing or automobiles. To that same extent, the visitors/residents of the city were also dressed in expensive international brands and drove almost strictly expensive foreign cars. I saw a Bugatti parked on the street! 

      Even though I picked a nearby safe location and wrote about somewhat obvious observations and concepts, I still feel that I gained a deeper understanding of the Los Angeles area by (finally) visiting Beverly Hills, which is, hopefully, the point of these blog posts.

     I’d like to close by saying, and I am not sucking up for a better grade, that I actually enjoyed doing these blog posts week in and week out. While most students would be thrilled on the weeks that they did not have to leave UCLA and could simply comment on another’s blog, I found those week’s to be somewhat boring and disappointing. I hope all my readers, yes all 2 of you, enjoyed this project as much as I did.

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 9

Hello again! I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving! Because I ate so much stuffing and pumpkin pie over the weekend, I am spending most of my time at the gym this week so I decided to comment on another one of my classmate’s blogs. The blog post, done by a student named Amy, discussed the way in which she used an online mapping website to look at different neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area. I liked that Amy’s blog included an external source (the map), as the visual aspect supplements and personalizes the blog post. I think that if she directly visited a neighborhood in one of the maps she posted, it would have made the blog post even more personal and added more depth to the analysis portion of her blog posts, which were minimal if not absent. Also, if she visited a location she could have detailed specific aspects of a neighborhood that relates to social difference and ideas covered in class, such as the presence of bum proof benches, social access, consumerism, or automobility. This is the comment I left on Amy’s page:

Let me start off by saying that I loved several aspects of your blog post. I loved the way your vivid writing style draws the reader in and I especially loved the way you incorporated a map into your post. With that being said, I feel that there are a few suggestions I could make that would help in your future blog posts. Firstly, make sure you are actually visiting the locations that you are talking about. Secondly, the most important aspect of these blog posts is relating a Los Angeles location to a class concept. Now that we are approaching the end of the quarter, there are seemingly countless concepts to choose from that we have discussed in depth (and occasionally ad nauseum) in class. The concept that I believe is the most visible in cities that I have personal visited is the carceral enclaves of the post-metropolis. Carceral enclaves is a fancy way of saying parts of the cities are walled off to the undesirable public. There are many examples that we can see in cities in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area that embody these carceral enclaves. Physical access is one way that cities restrict access to those that they deem to be undesirable. For example, gated communities are very common in cities where people want to differentiate themselves from others they deem to be inferior. Some gated communities do not even have physical gates, but rather they rely on the symbolic nature of gated communities to keep these undesirables out. Central to the idea of restricting physical access is the concept of automobility, which is a critical aspect of the post-metropolis. Because there are still many people who rely on the public transportation system, certain cities take advantage of this fact and restricts the extent to which public transportation penetrates the city. Finally, the existence of bum proof benches is a final aspect of restricting social and physical access. Bum proof benches are benches that are made in such a way that someone cannot lay down without it being extremely uncomfortable that way “bums” cannot sleep there because they are undesirable to the public. These ways that cities restrict social and physical access are amongst the easiest to identify while visiting a location.

Another class concept that I believe fits in the cities of Los Angeles is the concept of decentralization. The post-metropolis, or the 4^th urban revolution, broke away from cities being strictly centralized like in the 3^rd urban revolution. An example of how Los Angeles is decentralized is the way that there are patches of mini-centralization, such as the centralized locations of car dealerships. In a centralized city, like Chicago and Manchester, there would not be these patches, but rather everything from manufacturing centers to family owned business would be found in the middle or the center of the city.

Finally, a class concept that is easily seen is the absence of factories and manufacturing centers in modern cities such as Los Angeles, which is indicative of the rise in the information economy.

Hopefully these suggestions make you future blog posts easier. Happy Blogging!

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 8

      Since I knew I was going to be home for thanksgiving weekend, I knew I was not going to have enough time to visit a new location, so I decided to comment on a classmate's post for this week.  In her blog she talks about how she visited Santa Monica and 3^rd street promenade. She did a great job explaining her experience and I really liked the pictures that she put up because I think that it captures Santa Monica really well. Providing a map of where Santa Monica was an excellent touch! I also liked how she related her trip to a reading that we were assigned in class which is about the concentric ring model or “the loop”. In her blog, my classmate states that Santa Monica is a concentric ring model city by describing how there are obvious differences the closer one is to the center, but I would have to disagree. My classmate does describe what “the loop” is very well but she just relates it to the wrong city. Los Angeles is not a concentric ring model city (like Chicago), it is a post-metropolis city made clear through decentralization, post-fordism, auto mobility and consumerism. To be a concentric ring city there needs to be a designated center which is seen very clearly in the city of Chicago. In the 1^st and 2^nd urban revolutions, the center of the city was the most important aspect because all transportation systems would come and bring people into the center and all work was located there. Los Angeles is highly decentralized because it does not have a clear cut center; it could actually be seen has having multiple centers. One aspect that has made Los Angeles a post-metropolis city is auto mobility, which is where everyone relies on their own automobile to get from place to place. People now have the luxury of going wherever they want to go and do not have to rely on a public transportation system. Another aspect of Los Angeles that sets it apart from being a concentric ring city is post-fordism, or the rapid movement of labor and capital. Because the communal center is always changing, businesses do not stay in one location for a long period of time and capital is gets deported overseas where there is cheaper labor and production, which makes work for people very short and contingent. This type of capitalism in the city produces a lot of instability for not only the workers, but the city as well because it is constantly changing. Even though Los Angeles is not a concentric ring city, I do commend my classmate for being so creative and applying this theory to a single small city like Santa Monica because if someone was just relating this theory to just Santa Monica, it does relate to the concentric ring model in some aspects.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!

Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 7

     With two midterms this past week it would have made tons of sense to simply review another student’s blog post. Unfortunately, nothing I do ever makes sense, so not only did I hitch a ride down to Huntington Beach, but I also spent countless hours, by which I mean two, skimming through articles from the LA Times, desperately searching for one that connected to class concepts. I’ll be sure to post my midterm grades in a later post, so any followers can see to what degree I shot myself in the foot. Anyways, I was able to find an article online that directly relates to the rise of the information sector, as was discussed in Kling, Olin and Spencer’s Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County Since World War II.

     Let me start off by discussing the article itself. The short article, published less than two weeks ago, describes Boeing, an aerospace giant’s, plan to trim their executive workforce by up to 30% and to shut down, sell or demolish its properties in Anaheim, Seal Beach and Huntington Beach respectively.

     Let me now transition to discussing the rise of the information sector, and other features of what the authors have coined, the postsuburbia. Before I proceed, for those readers that do not remember this reading, it is incredibly similar to the idea of the post-metropolis discussed in class. The postsuburbia, as described by Kling, Olin and Poster is characterized by four aspects, decentralization, or more specifically, multi-centrality, an economic dependency on the informal economy, and the emergence of both consumerism and cosmopolitanism. This postsuburbia, according to the authors not only represents Orange County, but is an emerging trend that not only represents numerous other recently established cities, but foreshadows a trend that will characterize all future major cities. Briefly rushing through the three non-essential aspects of the postsuburbia, the postsuburbia is characterized primarily by a shift from the previous spatial layout, wherein which the city was organized by a central hub, to a more dispersed and specialized collection of centers. As far as consumerism and cosmopolitanism are concerned, the postsuburbia is also characterized by a shift toward the extensive buying of non-essential, international and sophisticated goods. Most importantly in this context, however, is the shift from an economy based on manufacturing, to an economy dependent on the information sector, that is, dependent on the distribution of information that is useful in marketing any other similar fields. This concept is easily seen in the article, as the shift toward the information economy has affected a manufacturing giant, in this case Boeing’s, ability to stay financially afloat.

     The only question that is left unanswered, however, is can this shift toward the information sector be easily seen in Huntington Beach? I decided to explore that idea by exploring the city in depth, spending over an hour studying the area, specifically its commercial districts. While I did notice a far larger amount of commercial businesses than manufacturing centers, I could not effectively tell whether the increase in the information sector was in anyway causing a decrease in the manufacturing center, at least when you take out the Boeing example. Seeing as how Kling, Olin and Poster’s book was written about Orange County, I found it somewhat surprising that this idea was not easily visible. In any case, even though my journey was not exactly inspiring, I feel incredibly fortunate to have found an article that connected to class concepts in a place that was both safe and interesting.

Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 6

            Needing a “geography of social difference” break after a full week of studying for my last midterm, I decided to stay in Westwood this weekend and comment on another student’s blog. One thing I can say after reading countless blogs is that I may need to step up my game, as some of the blogs I read were informative, eloquently written and incredibly insightful. The blog I am commenting on is, nearly one of those blogs. The blogs I read range from nearly incoherent to nearly perfect and the blog I chose to comment on is certainly on the far right of that spectrum, although not as perfect as some of the other blogs. I chose to write on a “near perfect” blog simply because it allows me to compliment on the blogger’s writing, while still leaving me enough room to make constructive criticism and suggestions that may help to better their future posts. The post itself describes the blogger’s trip to Lemonade, a delicious restaurant I might add, and the observations they made both at the restaurant and the surrounding area of Brentwood. I especially liked this blog because the blogger was making his first trip to Brentwood, in fact the student had never even heard of it, which ensures an unbiased observation of the city. I left the following comment on the blog post…

            Let me start off by saying that while I would like to say that it was your eloquent writing and insightful commentary that prompted me to comment on your blog, although those were both factors, it was ultimately your blog post’s inclusion of Lemonade that drove me to leave this comment. I am a huge Lemonade fan and have been surprised by how few people have heard of it around here! One final tangent before I get into the meat of your post, let me just emphasize how awesome it was that you saw Guiliana Rancic there. Anyways, Lemonade and celebrities aside, I really liked your blog, especially because I too have never been to Brentwood, which allowed me to view your post as representing the absolute reality of the area, without my own past experience in the area subconsciously shaping the way I viewed your blog post. Let me reinforce an earlier statement by saying that I found your description of the area to be incredibly vivid and eloquent and your connection to class concepts to be insightful and informative. Specifically, I enjoyed your detailed description of the affluence of the area, choosing to describe women’s yoga pants and children’s eating habits rather than just saying that Brentwood’s residents are wealthy.

            As for the content and explanation of your post, I loved how you related the racial and class segregation you saw in Brentwood to the idea of fragmented inequality and post-Fordist capitalism that characterize the post-metropolis. I cannot, however, see the connection between the segregation in Brentwood and the concepts of automobility and radical individualism. While it is incredibly likely that I missed an obvious connection here or there, I just thought I would bring it to your attention that I found it somewhat confusing. Furthermore, I loved the way you compared the ethnic makeup of Brentwood to cities like Long Beach in order to give the readers a better idea of the racial homogeneity that Brentwood boasts. I also enjoyed how you related the segregation you observed in Brentwood to the larger theme of the post-metropolis by emphasizing the sense of decentralization found in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. One small suggestion, however, is that you elaborate on and/or better defend your stance on what you said about the transportation network tying the city together, since a centralized transportation network is not a hallmark of the post-metropolis.

            By far my favorite aspect of your post was your comparison of Brentwood’s inequality to patches on the Los Angeles’ quilt. Aside from the clever metaphor and symbolism, it grabbed my attention most in the way it related to the overriding theme of this blog project, Robert Park’s belief that the city is made up of small independent worlds that touch but never interpenetrate.

            Overall, other than the few constructive critiques I have made, I found your blog incredibly well written and it is clear that you have a true mastery of the class concepts, a rarity based on the other blog posts I read through. Keep up the good work!!

Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 5

For this week’s blog I thought that since I was going home for the weekend, I would do my blog on my hometown of Glendora. Glendora is about 45 miles south of UCLA nestled between San Dimas and Covina. It is a relatively small town located at the base of the foothills. I decided that my hometown would be appropriate because, after the lecture on the post-metropolis, I realized that the concept of the carceral archipelago is represented in Glendora. 

To illustrate this point, I noticed that there are hardly any bus stops in Glendora, nor are there many buses from other cities that even enter Glendora’s limits. This is designed so that unwanted people, often those without cars, are not allowed easy access into the city. Also, there is a noticeable lack of sidewalks in Glendora, yet another way Glendora discourages access to an undifferentiated public. Furthermore, Glendora is also known for its abundance of gated communities. Even though there are a few of these communities that are physically enclosed, many gated communities do not even have gates, but are characterized by ominous community names that further segment the city. While the use of physical gated communities restricts public access in a very blatant way, the use of community names relies on restricting the social access of the community. Glendora’s spatial layout also makes it very difficult for an unfamiliar public to navigate the city. The majority of residential space is designed in such a way that there are only a few points of entry into large residential plots, turning common neighborhoods into virtual labyrinths to non-residents.

I can also relate my hometown to David Sibley’s “Mapping the Pure and the Defiled,” specifically his overriding theory that humans have a deep sided need to separate “us” from “them,” the civilized from the uncivilized.  Glendora boasts an incredibly low crime rate and a relatively affluent community and appears to have taken the necessary precaution to preserve these values. Furthermore, Sibley’s objects relations theory, which holds that “individuals and groups form positive identities of themselves by excluding others that are thought to be deviant,” perfectly embodies the essence of Glendora. By viewing outsiders as potential threats to the status quo of the city, Glendora relies on both physical and social boundaries to turn its city limits into city borders.

Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 4

            This week I decided to comment on a fellow classmate’s blog. The blog post was about a student’s trip from UCLA to Manhattan Beach via Sepulveda Boulevard. The blog post depicts and details nearly every aspect of the student’s trip, ranging from cleanliness of the city to the width of the road to the types of buildings, stores and homes in the surrounding area. This is the comment I left on the student’s page:

            I really enjoyed reading your blog especially because I am very familiar with Sepulveda Boulevard, which made it easier to picture everything your blog illustrates. To your credit, however, your strong and detailed description of your surroundings would draw in readers with no previous exposure to Sepulveda. I also liked that you noted when entering new municipalities, as it allows your readers to more easily apply class concepts to your trip. Finally, I found the way you kept track of and described the number of lanes open to drivers as you progressed down Sepulveda Boulevard to be incredibly clever. While I’m not entirely sure if it can be applied to a class concept, it is nevertheless a very unique way of observing your surroundings and something I will certainly make use of in my future blog posts.

            The one suggestion I must make, however, is to apply your trip to class concepts in a more blatant way. For example, seeing as you were detailing some of the obvious differences between the different cities you passed through, it seems appropriate that you apply Robert E. Park’s theory that, “The City is a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate.” While there may or may not be evidence to support his belief, it seems to be a good starting place when applying class concepts to your trips. Alternatively, since you were keeping track of the economic culture of each city, both in terms of municipal quality and economic foundation, it seems appropriate to apply the idea of the post-metropolis that was covered in class. Because it appears that you noticed the differences in economic strategy between each city, that is whether the city was largely occupied by businesses in the information sector or businesses based around the idea of consumerism, such as shopping centers, perhaps you could discuss the way this differentiation relates to the concepts of decentralization and automobility that are the hallmarks of the post-metropolis city which Los Angeles embodies. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog and I hope these suggestions help with your future posts. Happy blogging!

Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 3

     For this week’s blog post I decided to take a car trip from the perceived center of the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, Downtown LA to it’s the eastern edge of its periphery, Ontario California, about 40 miles away. I decided to take this trip to examine to what extent Los Angeles represents the post-metropolis concept of modern cities rather than the previous concentric ring model. In addition to the drive, I made several stops in a few different municipalities along the way to obtain more in-depth understanding of both the larger Los Angeles area and its individual parts. While I made several short stops, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga and Claremont best represented the post-metropolis idea. The concentric ring model states that the main city has a designated political, cultural and economic center marked most notably by the presence of a manufacturing district. Surrounding this center are a series of rings that describe both the residents and quality of life within each specific ring. The first, most immediate, ring is characterized by a zone in transition or the slums, which are poorly maintained and unsanitary areas that house the poor, but only, in theory, until the residents can move out into the next ring. This next ring houses the working class, those that are likely to work in the manufacturing district at the city’s hub. While the residents within this ring are better off than those in the zone of transition, the housing and sanitation in this ring is often sub-par. Finally, the outer ring of the concentric ring model is composed of more expensive houses, improved sanitation and inhabited by the relatively affluent. On the other side of the coin, the post-metropolis, which has emerged relatively recently largely in response to the automobile, is characterized by decentralization, an enhanced sense of individualism and a web of specialized ‘centers” that are all accessible by automobile. While it is had been proposed that Los Angeles is strictly a post-metropolis city, I decided to explore some of Los Angeles’ suburbs to see if the concentric ring model was in anyway present. 
     While driving through the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, I found that while there are several impoverished areas surrounding downtown Los Angeles that are, in turn, immediately surrounded by more affluent areas, there was a striking lack of consistency, something should have been observable had Los Angeles followed the concentric ring model. This was most easily seen in a comparison between Rancho Cucamonga and neighboring Ontario. While Ontario is further from downtown Los Angeles then many other, more affluent communities, it was characterized by a manufacturing economy and several impoverished areas. Rancho Cucamonga, on the other hand, directly neighbored Ontario, but was notably cleaner and had an economy built on shopping centers and other forms of quasi-tourism. Had the concentric ring model been an accurate representation of the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, cities such as Ontario would be located closer to downtown LA. Instead it is clear that the Los Angeles region is best described as a post-metropolis community, defined by a differentiation between its individual municipalities. 

This is seen in Ontario, which can be identified as a manufacturing “center” within Los Angeles, Rancho Cucamonga, which can be seen as a consumerist shopping “center” within Los Angeles and even Claremont, which is most easily identified as a college town within Los Angeles. The presence of these small, specialized “centers,” which are obviously easily connected by automobile, further proves Robert E Park’s theory that the city is made up of small touching, but never interpenetrating, circles. Who knows where I’ll be next week, but stay tuned to find out!

Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 2

     With minimal homework and no midterms to study for this past weekend, I decided to make my first trip for this blog, the most time consuming trip, a bus trip through Los Angeles along its famous Sunset Boulevard. With only Emile Durkheim’s concept of division of labor to connect my observations to, I made sure to pay special attention not only to the surrounding environment, but also to the environment within the bus’ doors. Perhaps I would be best served, at this point, to introduce Emile Durkheim’s concept of division of labor to my readers. In a nutshell, Durkheim believed that as societies became more materially dense, that is, the population increased, problems arose from overpopulation and under availability of resources. In response to these issues, citizens within these modernizing cities adopted an idea of job specification, or the division of labor, in order to make living in such a “materially dense” area more efficient. To this extent, this division of labor serves a practical, functional purpose. Durkheim believed, however, that this original functional state is replaced by a state of class inequality when this job specification creates a society that is too differentiated to be unified by a common culture. 

     With the obligatory introduction to Durkheim’s concept of division of labor completed, it is time to turn to my actual trip. On Friday, October 5^th, I took the 2/302 bus from UCLA’s Strathmore/Gayley station all the way to Downtown Los Angeles and back, a trip that took a collective 4 hours and passed through a variety of cities, ranging from Beverly Hills to Echo Park. While the areas I passed through certainly represented the concepts of inequality and social difference, it was the people that boarded the bus that best epitomized both Robert E. Park’s and Emile Durkheim’s views. First, let me start with the surrounding area. While class difference was relatively easy to identify in the different cities I visited, as roads were smoother and cleaner in Beverly Hills than they were in Echo Park or even Hollywood, the most blatant example of social difference I encountered was through the Los Angeles Department of Transportation itself. In a city, county and even state where citizens rely heavily on personal automobiles as their primary means of transportation, it is a widely held view that public transportation is used primarily by those who cannot afford their own vehicle. It appears that the Department of Transportation designed their bus routes with this view in mind, as not only did the route have far fewer stops in the affluent regions of the route, such as Beverly Hills, but the driver seemed surprised when people on the bus requested a stop or when there were riders at these stops waiting to board. While this may be a very limited sample to base such a conclusion, I could not help but notice that neither the Department of Transportation, nor its employees, seem to expect many riders to travel to or from the more affluent parts of town. Finally, I will move within the bus’ doors. While there were several riders that embodied the idea of class differences stemming from the division of labor, as the majority of riders were blue-collar construction workers, gardeners and other manual laborers, the most striking example of social inequality as it relates to job specification came from a comparison between two riders. On my way to Downtown LA, I noticed a maid board the bus in Beverly Hills and later get off in the Echo Park area. It was clear that she felt very comfortable on the bus, as she had a bus pass, knew the driver by name and initiated conversations with other riders throughout her trip. On my return trip to UCLA, I noticed a male rider, in an expensive looking suit, board the bus, presumably, after work. I noticed that the rider paid in cash, kept his head down upon entering and walked to the back of the bus looking ashamed and embarrassed. At first I did not think much of it, as he seemed like just another quiet, semi-depressed looking passenger. That view changed when we approached the Beverly Hills area, as he sprung from his seat, smashed the “request a stop” button with his fist and darted to the doors in an impatient manor. As he stepped off the bus, he turned to a man who was sitting by the door, smiled and said, “The Benz is in the shop.” This is a striking example of how division of labor can lead to class differences, as the rider with the low-paying, low-prestige job had no issue taking the bus, while the rider with the high-paying, high prestige job was not only clearly embarrassed to be on a bus, but felt he had to justify his riding to the other passengers. In summation, my trip down Sunset Boulevard embodied Durkheim’s claim that job specification can lead to class inequality while simultaneously strengthening Robert E Park’s view that the modern city is merely a collection of touching, but never interpenetrating entities.

Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 1

For many years I was part of a Girl Scout troop that would regularly volunteer with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Although I spent countless years volunteering with the foundation, my experience was marked by a single, defining moment. I entered the third floor of St. Jude’s Research Hospital where I met two young boys, both the same age, with the same life-threatening disease that was in the same stage, and with the same survival rate. The only things differentiating these boys were 4.4 miles and the city limits separating Claremont, an upscale, affluent college town, from Pomona, a poverty-stricken, dilapidated town. Shortly after meeting them, I asked the boys what their wishes were and received surprisingly diverse answers. The boy from Claremont asked for another Nintendo 64, so that he could play from his hospital bed, while the boy from Pomona asked that his mother receive more flexible work hours so she could go to his soccer games upon his recovery. Beyond the obvious question of how just a few miles could serve as the defining boundary between such economically diverse neighborhoods, this story left me wondering, even at such an early age, how two boys, nearly identical in every way, could be so fundamentally different. This blog was born out of my desire to answer these, and hopefully other similar questions, as well as to contribute to my research on the psychological debate of nature vs. nurture. More than that, this blog was created to document social difference within the regions of Los Angeles through my eyes, a UCLA student. Over the next 10 weeks, I will be exploring the different parts of LA, ranging from the high-class, elitist yacht clubs to the crime-ridden streets of skid row, describing not only my experiences, but my perception of how the different areas of the city interact with the themes of social inequality and social difference. While I will be addressing a plethora of themes and concepts throughout my next 9 posts, the basis of each post will be around a central concept proposed by Robert E. Park, who stated that, “The City is a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate.” Although I’m sure that I will find evidence that conflict with this statement, I believe this statement to be true and assert that any evidence to the contrary is merely the exception, not the rule.