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.