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!