Blogging Social Difference in L.A: Week 9

Today's post is a response comment on my classmate Narine Papazyan's post about her trip to Staples Center and L.A Live area.

Her blog address is: http://geonar.blogspot.com/2012/11/blogging-social-difference-in-la-week-7.html

Hello, Narine Papazyan!

I am your classmate Joo Yung Seo.

Your observation about the Staples Center and its surrounding is very interesting. You are clearly describing how the Staples Center and its surrounding is very different from the other parts of Downtown LA, like the fashion district, which do not have the "same kind of appeal" as the Staples Center surroundings.

Few months ago, I had to visit the fashion and the toy district, but what I remember from this experience is that these areas were very messy and complicated, and I did not feel it was the most desirable and clean street to walk. I could not see any luxurious buildings or relaxing restaurants around. Instead, there were many people who were busy working. Although I haven't been to Staples Center and its surrounding, I could imagine how this area is highly developed and capitalized by your observation of this place, which has an entertainment center of a 5,600,000 square feet of apartments, ballrooms, bars, concert theaters, restaurants, movie theaters, and a 54- story hotel and condominium tower". This is clearly showing how this area is towards making people to enjoy, relax, and spend money, which is very different from other parts of downtown LA.

These facts are definitely showing social difference and as you mentioned, it is related to injustice and inequality. The neighborhood within the Staples center area having very luxurious and expensive houses compare to the other parts of downtown LA having low income housings is a strong example of the geographies of difference, you've incorporated here. I liked how you said, "this region of downtown was not representative of the entire area" because the Staple Center and the LA Live is definitely not the whole picture of downtown LA. Not everyone can enjoy in luxurious restaurants and afford lots of money and spend time on entertainment. This is a very good observation of the geographic difference that exists within the downtown LA, which makes the inequality and injustice and separating people.

An example of that is the article "Developers to Seek OK for Luxury Hotel near Staples Center" written by Roger Vincent in Los Angeles Times (here is the link: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-property-report-20121105,0,7337810.story). This article talks about the developers who want to make the condemned buildings into 31 million dollar luxurious hotel near Staples Center. This is a good attempt to turn an old building into a new one, however, in terms of social difference, it will make more inequality and separation of rich and poor people. Once again, the money is spent on rich people rather than spending the money evenly.

I like how you tied the issue of inequality with geographies of difference in which there's different neighborhoods in different geographical areas that make social difference. However, I would like to incorporate another idea that contributed to this social difference. During the past few weeks, we learned about the axes of difference that resulted from race, class, gender, and sexuality. I would like to focus on the axis of difference by class, which brings a difference based on socioeconomic status, income level, and one's position in larger economic system of capitalism. Marxian view sees class determined by that people own, and sees how class difference determines urban form and function, just like here in Downtown LA. David Harvey then continued with Marx's idea and saw the city as a gigantic machine to reproduce a surplus value and produce a workforce that will continue working (known as the term "city as a tool to produce surplus value, reproduce labor, and legitimize capitalism"). These factors are also can be seen here near the Staple center and other downtown LA areas. For instance, the downtown LA consists of highly differentiated economic system with division of labor where people specialized to work in districts like art, fashion, financial, flower, jewelry, toy, wholesale, etc. Also, the Staples Center can be seen as a place where laborers can happily rest and relax to gain more power to work the next day.

Thanks for sharing your experience in downtown LA!

Joo

Blogging Social Difference in L.A: Week 8

On Thanksgiving Day, I've decided to take a car trip around Encino neighborhood. Encino is located in San Fernando Valley. In the past, this location was an outcome of the suburbanization where there was no more one center but an expansion of centers around different cities. Now it is an urbanized valley with many residents including many well known celebrities!

As you can see in the pictures, this neighborhood is really clean and well maintained. The houses are very unique, and there are no trashes on the floor. The trees and plants are well managed as well. Unfortunately, I could not see any people walking; however, I could feel that people who live here are above middle class because there were many fancy cars and fancy houses.  

After driving around few streets, I've drove to see other components in Encino. For instance, just driving down to the main road, I could see many restaurants, stores, and high buildings (companies, banks, etc.) that were conveniently located near these houses. Seeing all these houses, I wanted to explore more to see differences in city.
I've decided to visit the Budweiser brewery in Van Nuys to see the social difference in city, between the factory area and Encino neighborhood. I particularly wanted to visit this site because it is not too close nor too far from Encino, but is a very different neighborhood and has a very different atmosphere. The Budweiser brewery is located in 15800 Roscoe Blvd., in Van Nuys. This was built during the 1950s with the capacity of 920,000 barrels.

Information from LA Public library, photo collection: http://photos.lapl.org/carlweb/jsp/FullRecord?databaseID=968&record=3&controlNumber=50672

Budweiser brewery is located right next to the 405 freeway, so you can see the factory just by driving by. The area surrounding the brewery was totally different from the area I've seen in Encino. Here, I could not see a long line of pretty houses nor conveniently located restaurants or stores. I just saw few small retail stores, little apartments, and this factory. It was my first time seeing the factory in a close distance. It was much bigger than what I thought! The factory was huge. Unfortunately, there were no people working due to Thanksgiving holiday, but I could imagine how there are many people who are working there, who are charged with different responsibilities and work load.

 

The reason why I wanted to see the difference between the Encino neighborhood and the Budweiser brewery is to see how in the past there's a social difference in city, where gender plays a role as a "floating signifier" with geographical and cultural expressions. Meaning that, there's a western notion of gender difference embedded in the cultural narrative that divides workplace and home, which leads to the gendered meaning of home and suburbia that divides men and women. 

Since, men and women are different, we have different perspectives and views towards each gender. We expect to see men with power and women being more supportive; we expect to see men with short hair and women with long hair. These perspectives are all coming from the cultural background. These cultural thoughts are embedded in our life, and lead unto forming a family, a community, and a city. This is why we have difference in city that can be caused by gender difference. As well as that, in the past, a home or a workplace had different meaning to men and women. (Update 12/8/12:The different gendered meanings of home and suburbia was divided into masculine and feminine perspectives).  For instance, home for men was a refuge/retreat from the society and a place of resting whereas home was a place of labor, abuse, empowerment, confinement, and neglect for women (a multifunctional space for women). According to Sophie Watson in her work, "City A/Genders", home could be a hostile environment to women: "the home, while seen as the domain of women...the women's space is a site of labour" (237). Here she furthermore gives an example of a kitchen being women's labor place, where women cook for the family, clean dishes, and take care of all the massy situations. Sophie Watson then says how this situation of 'home is a labor site' for women is a result of industrialization and suburbanization pushing women to nurse and take care of the family members at homes while men are out working.

Encino neighborhood and the factory, Budweiser brewery is an example of the home/working place separation that can be explained by social/gender difference. Please note that I am not saying that women in Encino are all housewives! This is just an example to explain how in the past the setting of "home" and "work" separation had a different meaning to men and women that formed the social difference in the city.

 

Blogging Social Difference in L.A: Week 7

Gushi (picture from www.ilovegushi.com/)

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             On Thursday evening, I decided to eat at a place I’ve heard good reviews on, but never had a chance to visit. That place is called “Gushi”. Gushi is located in Westwood Village, around the corner of Gayley and Weyburn Avenues along other casual dining places around. Gushi was established in 1999 and run its business until now.  They sell Korean food in affordable price; they sell the most famous known Korean food like kalbi, bulgogi, kimchi fried rice, spicy squid, and much more. In addition, they also sell other Asian food that is familiar to us, like beef and chicken teriyaki, fried rice, udon, ramen, and more. 

The line to order

             As you see in the picture, this dining place is very small. There are about 20 seats in a small patio, which is connected to their small indoor counter and kitchen. On the evening I’ve visited, all the seats were full of students, doctors, and other people who seem to come to enjoy gushi’s food. When my friend and I got the seats, we were ready to eat the food we’ve ordered. While eating, I’ve paid attention to the atmosphere and the people who were eating in the dining place. 

The food that my friend and I ordered

One of the reasons why I chose to go to Gushi was to observe people. I thought it is a great place to do so because it is near my school and near the UCLA hospital, so many people with different ethnicity come to eat here. In fact, there were lots of students from my school, people working at the hospital, couples, and others.  What made it even better to do my observation was the dining place size. Since Gushi is a small place, I could see people more closely with more details. This allowed me to observe the cultural signifiers, which is part of the cultural approach of race when we talk about the axis of difference due to race. 

“Race is a floating signifier,” said Stuart Hall. He believed that race is not related to some foundational thing, but he believed it could change from time to time with geographical aspect within it, becoming the reality of our life. Examples of cultural signifiers are accent, hairstyle, voice tone, body markings, makeup, gestures, and clothes. During my dinner at Gushi, I concentrated on ‘gestures’ and ‘accent’. I could see that most of the people had no accent while talking regardless of their skin color or physical appearance. This then made me to think that cultural aspect is very important, sometimes more than biological aspect, because you learn from the environment that you are surrounded. For instance, there are two groups of Asian students. One group speaks English with an accent, and the other speaks with no accent. This is due to where they’ve spend their life when they were younger because the first group may start learning English as they were older, but the second group may start learning English as they were born or as a child. According to Stuart Hall, this shows how people are changing over time regardless of biological aspects. 
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Another interesting point was ‘gesture’. Although it was a place where people eat, they also are engaged in a conversation. I could see people with diverse hand or body motions with different face expression. Again, this could not tell that all the white people’s gesture was looking like ‘white people’, black people with their gesture, Asians, with their gesture, nor Latinos with their gesture. But, it was depend on the culture they were exposed to. Through that, I could definitely see that the difference due to race cannot be explained just by biological aspects, but in some levels, it is related to cultural aspects. This explains that race changes from time to time and place to place. Our cultural symbols show that race is a story of individuals, communities, and so on. Meaning that race is a part of our lives, which giving meanings to our lives.

Blogging Social Difference in L.A: Week 6

In modern days, city is a place with lots of diversity; it is because various race, class, gender, and sexuality play role in making the city we've formed over the last hundreds of years. After learning about axes of difference by class in the lecture, I've decided to take a closer look at the urban environment and structures. Class is a very important component when we talk about difference in city. In fact, William Julius Wilson talks about this issue in his work "The Truly Disadvantaged". In his work he talks about difference in the city across different categories and argues that it's not simply race and ethnicity that caused segregation, but it is mixed with class difference in broader economic changes.
Mainly, I wanted to concentrate on David Harvey and marxian view of class difference -- the 3 ways that a city is used by the upper class to produce surplus value -- while observing the urban areas.To do so, I went on a 1 hour bus trip from school to van nuys. I took the metro 761 from Hilgard/ Westholme and ended up at Van nuys/ Vanowen. The photos below are my observations: (Please understand the weather condition and the moving bus..!)

Through riding the bus, broadly I've seen parts of West Los Angeles, Sherman Oaks, and Van Nuys. Each area had distinctive look and buildings. Along Hilgard and Sunset, there were many expensive houses. I did not see any people except for students running around the school. After the bridge above the freeway 405, there were few stores and Getty center on Sepulveda Blvd. Sepulveda Blvd. was very long. It contained broad and curvy roads towards Sherman oaks, in which many houses and gated communities were built with no sidewalk. When it got close to Sherman Oaks, I could notice that there were high buildings and work places surrounded by many stores and restaurants to provide easy and convincing way to get food and items while working; I saw lots of people walking, driving, and taking public transportation as well. On the other hands, there were lots of car shops along Van Nuys blvd., which promoted consumption of different cars such as Honda, Fiat, Benz, Lexus, Audi, and much more.

Looking at these things, made me to think about how all these buildings and structures can be seen as the outcome of capitalism in terms of Marxian view. Marxian view sees the city as a part of capitalist movement, in which the bourgeoises produce surplus value by exploiting proletariats who own nothing but their labor power. In this view, the city is a tool for production of surplus value, for reproducing labor, and a site of cultural ideology that legitimizes capitalism (drawn from lecture note). The pictures above are the examples of this idea. For instance, the roads and bridges (fig. 4, 8, and 9) are not there to provide us a way to get around, but it is to move surplus value, goods and labor in Marxian view. Also, the Walmart truck (fig.7) is an example of transporting goods from factories to other stores in order to support factory production  (supporting differentiated economic system).

According to Marxian view, city is a tool for reproducing labor. In the modern society people work and those who work the means of production want to keep them happy and alive in order to reproduce the labor so that they will keep working for them. Examples for this idea can be shown in buildings/structures like schools, entertainment places, and consumption places. In figures 1, 2, 6, 11, 13, 14,15, 16, 17, and 18 you can see how there's lots of places to make workers spend money and enjoy the life. School (fig. 1) is there to produce educated workers to learn new skills. Church and  hospital (fig. 2, 16) are good to take care of worker's physical and mental health. Also, there's entertainment places where workers can enjoy and produce labor and profits; examples of that are the Getty center (museum), Sherman oaks galleria (buildings with movie theater, restaurants, stores, and cafes, and many other stores along Sepulveda and Van Nuys Blvd. (fig. 6, 11, 15, and 18). Another example of reproducing labor is through consumption, making workers to consume to have social ideal. For example, party city, cvs, TJ max, and honda shop (fig. 13, 14, and 17). The last point of a city being a site of cultural ideology could be seen through our society that shapes our mind and idea to think that capitalism is a good choice to make.  

Below are the maps showing West Los Angeles, Sherman Oaks, and Van Nuys' population percentage of 18 years and older in 2012 (data from simplymap). I wanted to show how there's high percentage of people who are legal to work near these locations with lots of places where workers can enjoy and consume to feel good about their work. It can also be a way to explain the Marxian view of workers and consumption place relationship.

 

 Van Nuys

 West Los Angeles

 Sherman Oaks

 From UCLA to Van Nuys

Blogging Social Difference in L.A: Week 5

          About two weeks ago, I’ve decided to take a short trip to Los Angeles Zoo. LA Zoo is located in Los Angeles next to Griffith Park. It is about 20 miles away from UCLA, so you have to take either a car or a longer trip with a public transportation. At first, I was not there to write about the place on my blog post. However, when I got there and saw how the Zoo is operated, diverse people, site environment, and more, it led me to think about the social and geographical differences we have in the modern urban life and share my thoughts here in the blog.

From google map

       
             According to the wiki website, “the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens is a 133-acre (54 ha) zoo founded in 1966.” It manages over 1,100 animals and holds exotic exhibitions of different charismatic species to educate people and also save the species as well. 

It was windy and gloomy Saturday when I visited the Zoo, so I thought the Zoo will not be packed with people; however, I realized upon entering the Zoo that it is Saturday, a family day for most of people with young children. In fact, I saw lots of families with babies, kindergarten, elementary, middle, and even high school kids with their family. It was a very heartwarming moment for me to see how people were very happy, laughing and smiling while enjoying the weekend with families and friends at the zoo. I could see how diverse the visitors were in terms of ethnicity. There was no dominant race, but there were balanced ethnic groups ranging from Latinos, Asians, Blacks, and Whites speaking all difference languages. It was very nice to see how the Zoo provides to be a place where every race or ethnicity can come and enjoy. 

LA ZOO 1

 LA ZOO 2

 My ticket!

 Animals at the zoo

 Reptile at the new exhibit at the zoo

The Zoo is spread over huge area with different habitats for animals, buildings to serve people, care centers for animals, education buildings for visitors, and much more.  The Zoo is well managed, so the roads and trees are also well managed. What I really liked about their tree managing system is that they put name tag on every tree, providing scientific name, origin place, and current name of each tree. Also, they settled a lot of diverse type of trees from all over the world, providing much experience and knowledge to get to know more about world vegetation.  Moreover, the surface of the Zoo was all clean, and they set lots of trash cans to make it more environmental friendly place. 

Nowadays, zoos provide entertainment and recreational reasons for people to visit and enjoy looking at animals that cannot be seen in daily life. The zoo allows seeing and experiencing things that are extraordinary and exotic while providing education to young people as well. Also, due to zoos, many animals are taken care of, can reproduce, and even be safe from extinction. 

            Thinking of the LA zoo, it remains me of the geographical difference we learned in class. In the modern society where we have the ability to travel across places, cities are becoming more diverse with more difference within it, difference in social, class, work, politics, economics, religion, and much more. Though the most seen geographical difference in our life is seen through the physical access to a certain place. There are spaces that can be easily accessed and which cannot be accessed due to the social difference. For instance, the gated communities are not accessible for everyone; it is only restricted to certain people with different class or ethnicity. 

LA Zoo is one of the examples of the place that can be easily accessed by most of people due to decentralized urbanism. Since many people have access to mobility, they can come to LA Zoo by riding their own cars; or, even people with no car can take public transportation to get to the Zoo. (I took the bus to LA Zoo with my friend in the past and it worked!)

David Harvey, in his work “The Urban Process Under Capitalism: A Framework for Analysis”, mainly talks about capitalism is due to crises and contradictions. He then connects these ideas to class conflict and over-accumulation. While reading that piece, there was one phrase that caught my attention. Harvey says: "we should first say something about the concept of the built environment and consider some of its salient attributes. It is a complex composite commodity comprising innumerable different elements – roads, canals, docks and harbours, factories, warehouses, sewers, public offices, schools and hospitals, houses, offices, shops, etc. – each of which is produced under different conditions and according to quite different rules” (Harvey 33). 

I thought this paragraph relates to my trip to LA Zoo in terms of the built environment, which provides “the setting for human activity, ranging in scale from buildings and parks or green space to neighborhoods and cities” and is “a material, spatial and cultural product of human labor that combines physical elements” (from wiki- built environment). Although LA Zoo includes things that are from nature (animals and plants), the zoo itself is a built environment in a human surrounding. Many people having different specialties came and worked through to establish the zoo. For instance, people who worked as planners, architects, painters, designers, and labor workers. Also, people who were engaged in economics, business, sales, marketing, animal keepers, and cleaners came together to operate one zoo. These people are held together to provide a place, which other people can easily access and enjoy the social life. It is very interesting to see how people are incredibly organized and intelligent enough to develop a place or a city allowing people to access and enjoy them.