Blogging Social Difference Week 10: Highland Park

This week I decided to go to Highland Park to highlight the gentrification, which according to a study by Wyly and Hammel, is an aspect of neoliberal urban policy. They define gentrification as “spaces and places created by diverse and often countervailing processes, by artists and architects, builders, buyers, and speculators, whose collective decisions inscribe new environments into widely divergent metropolitan settings.” The gentrifiers themselves are not to blame, but are enabled by neoliberal investment policy. This produces “capital expansion at a rate more than twice the suburban rate.” What gentrification also brings is an increased exclusion of lower class minority groups who  had previously inhabited these neighborhoods. Highland Park has been cited as one of the most recent gentrifying neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Looking at Simply Maps, I found that much of the population of Highland Park is over 60% Hispanic, and some census tracts are over 80%. The LA Times “Mapping LA” project states that the overall Hispanic population of this district is 72.4%, with most of the other population split evenly between white and Asian. Also looking at Simply Maps, I found that the EASI Total Crime Index in Highland Park is normally above 119, well above the average of 100. Some of the census tracts were above 154.

Crime rate in Highland Park, Simply Maps

Hispanic Population in Highland Park, Simply Maps

I began my trip into Highland Park from the 110 freeway exit onto Avenue 64 and then down Figueroa Street. My route also took me down York Boulevard. As I drove through, I noticed many Mexican and Salvadorean restaurants and Spanish language stores, including a Fallas Paredes. Off of Figueroa St, I found a small Vietnamese restaurant and stopped to get lunch. The Vietnamese fare was contrasted with the decidedly American diner atmosphere and furnished with Mid-Century American furniture. The crowd was much different than the people walking outside.

A Pupuseria on Figueroa

Good Girl Dinette

The inside of Good Girl Dinette

After lunch, I went looking for more signs of gentrification. I stopped by an art gallery I knew of but it was closed. However, there was a record store next door that caters to a younger, hipper crowd, with industrial and neo-folk music playing. I found other art galleries, vintage furniture shops, and vintage stores pressed up against exclusively Spanish language businesses. Most of these places were newer establishments, and reflected the ongoing gentrification of Highland Park.

The record store on Figueroa, right next to a Spanish language business

Another record store on York

Cluster of Art Galleries in Highland Park, via Google Maps

The houses in Highland Park are older than ones seen on the Westside of Los Angeles, owing to Highland Park’s long history. They are comparable to what one would find in the Angelino Heights neighborhood of Echo Park or other older neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Most of the ones I saw around Figueroa, however, were much more rundown than in Echo Park. This most likely will not be the case in a few years; with capital investment and a foreseeable housing boom the area will most likely see a rapid increase in upkeep as people revamp and sell or rent these historical homes. However, this will most likely bring an increase in home prices and as Wyly and Hammel predict, an increase in exclusion of the lower class minority residents of Highland Park.

What I found in Highland Park was gentrification happening before my eyes. The hipper shops, art galleries, and cafes were all new, yet investment still hasn’t taken advantage of the many homes in the area. But this will change, as it did in Echo Park and Brooklyn. Neoliberal urban policy will bring rapid investment to this gentrifying neighborhood, and the boom in the housing market will marginalize those who lived before.

Blogging Social Difference Week 9: Response to Danielle Reppen's Blog Post

Outline of Inglewood, CA

This week I wanted to respond to Danielle Reppen's post on Inglewood and Brentwood, specifically the part about Inglewood. I found her comments on Inglewood very interesting! Especially where she showed the billboard for gambling, which of course would be unseen in richer, majority-white neighborhoods. I decided to look into the demographics of Inglewood in detail.

Based on data from the LA Times’ Mapping LA project, I found that Inglewood is approximately 46.4% Black. At first thought, it would seem integrated, yet looking at it by census tract, it appears Inglewood is actually segregated by neighborhood. There are some census tracts that are about 85%-90% Black and some with only 5% Black, all within the same small city of Inglewood.

The white population is at 4%, and remains consistently at this statistic throughout the all census tracts in Inglewood. There is an explanation for this too, and I will expand later in the blog post/comment.

In addition to its black and white population, Inglewood is 46% Hispanic. Furthermore, those census tracts that are 5% black are also 90% Hispanic. The neighborhoods that are more mixed follow a gradient from a majority Hispanic to a majority black. It seems as though, based on this analysis, that there is Hispanic/black segregation, and a clear color line.

The color line. Hispanic is yellow and black is represented by blue. The darker shades are above 80%. The gradient between majority/minority is clear.

Inglewood didn’t always look like this. In fact, Inglewood used to be one of the whitest neighborhoods in the US. It was so white that it was a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan in the 20’s. Signs saying ‘Caucasian-only” were posted in Inglewood and racial covenants, discussed in Massey and Denton, kept it that way. Interestingly enough, an incident involving a suspected bootlegger, the Klan and Inglewood police made national headlines.Inglewood continued to have a majority population through the 60’s, but by 1980 it was 20% and kept dropping in half in continuing censuses until the year 2000 when it reached 3% (link). This is due to the phenomenon of white flight, explicitly referenced in an obituary for Inglewood’s first black mayor. Massey and Denton state that “White prejudice is such when black entry into a neighborhoods is achieved, that area becomes unattractive and whites begin departing at an accelerating.” This is how the demographics in Inglewood shifted.

Looking at Inglewood, I also found it has a budding arts district. These tend to be indicators of gentrification. Whether or not that happens is speculation, but this would raise rent prices and drive out the mostly lower/lower-middle class population as it did in Echo Park and as is currently happening in Highland Park. This is a possible future demographic shift for a city that has seen a few.

Theoreticals aside, Inglewood today is a city of equal black/hispanic mix but it is also one with a clear color line. Yet it is interesting that a minority-majority city was once a hotbed of racist ideology. The radicalism faded, yet fear and racism led the whites to flee Inglewood and the white population divided with each census. Though Danielle stated that this did not seem to be a low income area, Inglewood is still a ghetto. A ghetto is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure.” Today’s demographics of Inglewood were created by the social structure of racism.

Blogging Social Difference Week 8: Bus Route 232

232 Bus Route 

This week I took the 232 Bus from Long Beach to Wilmington. This bus took me through Long Beach and Wilmington. I chose to pass through these locations to examine the lower class communities along the highly polluting ports of LA and Long Beach. The many cargo ships that pass through the port are a source of pollution, and in addition many other polluting industries are located around the two ports. I believe that the clustering of lower class and minority communities around the port is due the the “class” side of the debate detailed in the Elliot and Pais reading; that is, that low-income minority communities emerge around environmentally-degraded sites because of lower property values.

I began by waiting at the Long Beach Transit Mall for the bus. This is a transit hub serving Long Beach, and the end point for the Metro Blue Line. Downtown Long Beach itself is fairly nice, a business district with a thriving bar scene and restaurants. The bus takes me north on Long Beach Boulevard towards Anaheim Street. The bus contained a mostly hispanic clientele throughout the trip.

The bus made a left on Anaheim. What I saw in Long Beach from Long Beach Boulevard to the LA river is a fairly economically deprived area. However, there were still businesses thriving there. The bus then took me across a bridge over the LA River. Long Beach west of the LA river is “West Long Beach” and directly north of the port. It is one of the poorest neighborhoods and very close to polluting industries. The median home prices for these two areas of Long Beach, 90810 and 90813, are $234,000 and $208,000, respectively. There weren’t many business seen here on this street other than industry. There were also a few strip clubs, which I’ve also usually noticed in Downtown LA. North of Anaheim there were more residential zones.

Industrial area near the Port of Long Beach

Wilmington continued this trend. There were other industrial areas seen besides the port. I believe I saw a refinery and also close by I saw a pile of what looks like sulfur. The area containing the east of Wilmington and west of Long Beach also had a lot of salvage yards. The industrial part of Wilmington gave way to an area of mostly shops and a few grocery stores. This lasts until Figueroa. Most of the signage in Wilmington was in Spanish.

Spanish Language Signage

Mapping LA tells me most the residents of Wilmington are Hispanic, and that approximately 44% of the residents are foreign born. In addition, asthma levels for children who live in communities around the port is about 21.9%, compared with 15.6% in Los Angeles. This leads me to believe that this is a destination for new Hispanic immigrants, drawn by lower property values in an environmentally degraded area. This exemplifies the argument detailed in the Elliot and Pais reading.

The bus made a right on Figueroa and then another on PCH, which allowed me to see some of the housing first hand along Figueroa. There were many small single family homes and a trailer park. I’ve driven the rest of Anaheim Street many times before, and past the 110 Freeway there is another large refinery.

A neighborhood along Figueroa Street

The concentration of highly polluting diesel ships, oil refineries and other large scale industry create a high risk area around the Port. The low income communities around there are at higher risk for pollution-related maladies than other areas surrounding. In addition, the areas are a destination for new immigrants drawn by the lower rents. The revenue created by the 6th largest port in the world is contrasted with lower class communities surrounding it.

Blogging Social Difference Week 7: Response to Madison Beall's Post on West Hollywood

Last week Madison Beall detailed a trip through Beverly Hills to West Hollywood. She drove there on Sunset Boulevard and ate at Griddle Cafe. On the way there she observed that the houses were huge and expensive looking. At the restaurant she observed many races except for African-Americans.

She links her experiences to the chapter in Massey and Denton’s American Apartheid to explain why she didn’t see any African-Americans. She paraphrases their assertion that the black-white contact is at a minimum in cities like Los Angeles and that like in West Hollywood, little or no segregation is needed. She then details Massey and Denton’s argument that race is what shapes neighborhoods. I have come to understand that these two arguments contradict each other if used in reference to the same place. The first argument implies that segregation occurs because the area has a low population of African-Americans. The second argument implies that segregation happens to keep one area free of other peoples.

Although West Hollywood is not a part of Los Angeles itself, it is surrounded by municipal Los Angeles. West Hollywood can be better understood if looked at as a neighborhood rather than an entirely separate city, as well as how the greater city and region influence it. The Los Angeles Metro African-American population share is approximately 7.1%, greater than the threshold Massey and Denton (5%) use to classify regions that need little or no segregation to keep black-white contact at a minimum. The Los Angeles population itself has an African-American percentage of 13% (Fact-Finder). According to Massey and Denton, segregation throughout the Los Angeles area has indeed shaped the distribution of African-Americans in of the region.

Miracle Mile's changes in population since 2000 (LA Times)

There is an interesting trend occurring in Mid-City (including Miracle Mile), one of the closest areas to West Hollywood, which has a significantly large African-American population. This area is fairly integrated, with an equal mix of white, black, Hispanic and Asian peoples. The African-American population is declining there, and the populations of other races are increasing. This may be a result of gentrification (there are many art galleries in the area) or possibly black suburbanization. The point is that the assertions Massey and Denton make are not exactly 1:1 in Los Angeles. Its true that LA is hardly a model of integration, but the evidence is harder to pin down than areas like Detroit.

Blogging Social Difference Week 6: Palos Verdes Peninsula

This week I went to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. I chose this location partly out of convenience, since it is where my parents live, but also because it exhibits a concept discussed in class: restricting access. Palos Verdes is a collection of four cities (Rancho Palos Verdes, Palos Verdes Estates, Rolling HIlls and Rolling Hills Estates) on a peninsula in south Los Angeles county (approximately 25 miles from UCLA). The peninsula is also a hill which makes it an ideal location for an exclusive, and restricted, community. The four cities have combined median income of $156,517.50 (data from Mapping LA), which is extraordinarily high. Entry into Palos Verdes is limited to only 8 points, with approximately only two bus routes running throughout the area.

Crest Dr. gate entrance to Rolling Hills 

I traveled to locations around Palos Verdes that I knew reflected this restriction of access. My first stop was at the gate of Rolling Hills. The gates here block off the public, even within Palos Verdes to an entire city. There are only three points of entry, and I stopped at the Crest Drive entrance. Entry is only granted to residents and their visitors. This is the extreme side of restricting access, where an entire city denies entry to anyone who does not need to be there. This is an active way of restricting access, requiring security.

Border between Palos Verdes Estates and Redondo Beach

I then drove to another aspect of the restriction of access in Palos Verdes, on the border between Palos Verdes Estates and Redondo Beach. Here, the streets of Redondo Beach and Palos Verdes Estates are cut off from one another by a walking trail. The streets show evidence of once being continuous and part of the same grid, but they end at the trail. One can see the other side easily but cannot drive across to another city; instead one would have to drive around to another point of access in order to reach it by car. This also makes shortcuts through the neighborhood on the Palos Verdes side unusable, thus restricting traffic to the main streets and points of entry. Exclusivity is reinforced.

Palos Verdes Drive North, a major street through Palos Verdes that does not have sidewalks or street lights.
Navigating through here is made even more difficult by small, hidden street signs.

This neighborhood also shows other signs of maintaining exclusivity, which can be seen in areas throughout the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Many streets have no sidewalks, no crosswalks and no street lights. The lack of sidewalks and crosswalks make walking through here difficult. The lack of streetlights make it inhospitable at night to anyone without a car. All of these aspects of this area reinforce the notion that anyone who doesn’t have to be there, shouldn’t. These are passive and subversive methods for maintaining exclusivity and restricting access, which stand in contrast to the more active tactic of a gated community.

The exclusivity of the Palos Verdes Peninsula can be seen in a few different manifestations, but the point is clear. This is an affluent and upper class neighborhood isolated, largely by choice, from the surrounding cities. The urban planners who designed the various neighborhoods wanted to create a suburb that is safer and quieter than surrounding cities and they succeeded, with crime rates being lower than neighboring Lomita and Torrance and traffic being fairly light. In regards to our class, the exclusivity represents the limited access to an undifferentiated public. What reinforces exclusivity ultimately reinforces social difference.

Blogging Social Difference Week 5: South Los Angeles

This week I decided to cover South Los Angeles. Although I am a Los Angeles native, I have never truly explored this area in detail. South LA, known previously and infamously as South Central, is ingrained in the collective national consciousness as the definitive inner city or “ghetto”. After all, this is the site of two of the worst riots in American history: the 1968 Watts riots and the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the latter having its 20th anniversary last April. This image of “ghettoness” was also brought to the attention from LA rappers and “hood movies”, who came to national spotlight to highlight the reality that they were facing. Our readings from last week from William Julius Wilson and Peter Kerr deal with the issues African-Americans faced immediately preceding and following the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Is South LA still a bastion of inner city strife? Is it really a homogenous contingency of a mostly black, lower class that is depicted in the movies and news of the 1990’s?

Since covering South LA is a big task (akin to covering West LA), I decided to do a wide traverse by car from the Florence exit of the 110 Freeway through to Culver City. I picked Florence because it would take me through the intersection of Florence and Normandie, where the 1992 LA riots first started. I ended up circling a few times to get the feel from of a few communities. Looking at Mapping LA’s section of South LA, I see that I passed through Vermont-Slauson, Harvard Park, Chesterfield Square, Hyde Park, Leimert Park, and View Park. My trip did not exactly give me a detailed look at South LA’s true character; instead I got a glimpse of the division of Los Angeles I have seen or known very little of. What I found is an area more diverse than I had anticipated.

Exiting from Florence, I immediately observed that many of the signs were in Spanish. This may come as a surprise to someone who buys into the stereotype of South Central being a largely African-American enclave, but South LA has seen a demographic shift towards hispanics. At Hoover and Florence I came across UMMA, which is a free clinic run by Muslim-Americans serving South LA. I continued to the infamous Florence and Normandie. At this intersection I did not see anything quite out of the ordinary. People waiting at the bus stop, two gas stations and cars driving through.

One of the few differences from other areas of Los Angeles was the empty space. From here to Crenshaw, and in other parts of South LA, I noticed empty lots with overgrown weeds, fenced off at every couple of blocks. This could be an example of disinvestment in this area post-1992 as forecasted by Peter Kerr in Riots Raise Concerns About Insurance Redlining. I also noticed the space in the streets. As I made a right onto Crenshaw, I found that this street is massive. It is six lanes wide, with the business on the street blocked off from the rest of the street by medians.

I also noticed a lack of grocery stores; I only observed one grocery store throughout my entire trip. Using the USDA Economic Research Service Food Desert Locator I found that there is actually food desert around Florence and Crenshaw. Food deserts are areas (defined by the USDA by census tract) with minimal access to fresh food. This area, as shown in the map is one of the few food deserts in Los Angeles. As for other indicators of poverty, the houses here are small, almost all in this area were fenced off, with some having junk on their lawns. I also saw some homeless people walking and bicycling while pulling shopping carts filled with recycling in the middle of the streets.

I found this mural of African-American Progress along Crenshaw

Eventually I came to Leimert Park, which is a center for black culture nation wide. The park itself had many people standing around, staring off into space which was strange. But the Leimert Park neighborhood had a look to it that would surprise many who have never been to South LA. The neighborhood was clean and well taken care of and many of the homes had security systems. The scene could have been set in neighborhoods like Pico-Robertson or Mid-Wilshire. Across Crenshaw in the neighborhood of of View Park I found even nicer homes. No home was without fresh paint and gardening trucks were parked outside tending to their lawns. View Park is as nice as Mar Vista or Santa Monica, yet I personally have never heard anyone in person or in the media talk about. Mapping LA describes these neighborhoods as being 79.6% and 86.5% black, respectively.

What my trip answered for me is that the national idea of South LA is fairly inaccurate. South LA is not a monolithic block of black poverty, at least anymore. The more poverty stricken areas I saw had signs of a Latino population. There were neighborhoods with homes as nice as any I have seen in West LA.

Blogging Social Difference Week 4: Cheviot Hills

As Los Angeles moves to re-establish its rail system, communities along the proposed expansions have come to protest the building of rail lines in their backyard. LA Metro has built a fairly extensive rail system in Los Angeles, with the most recently built being the Expo Line. The Expo Line closed the much needed gap from Downtown to the Westside, yet the gap to the Ocean has not been closed. Beverly Hills has protested their proposed subway lines to the ocean, and the neighborhoods of Cheviot Hills and Westwood have put forward a full fledged lawsuit against the Federal Transit Authority. The neighborhoods of Cheviot Hills and Westwood are along the proposed expansion of the newly constructed Expo Line. This dispute relates to our reading of Sibley’s “Mapping the Pure and the Defiled”. Similar to Sibley’s discussion regarding the rich avoiding “pollution” and the Neighbors for Smart Rail’s (NFSR, the homeowners in the area) criticisms involve pollution: noise pollution, traffic pollution, and not as obvious but certainly on their minds, human pollution. In addition, crime is a concern for NFSR: the Expo Line phase 1 passes through many high crime areas and they insist that “Stations and parking lots have the highest crime rates in transit environments.”  What I saw in Cheviot Hills was a picturesque, suburban-like neighborhood, that would also serve as an easy route for the Expo Line to reach the sea.

Mapping LA describes Cheviot Hills as being bordered by Beverly Hills, Beverlywood, Century City, Palms, Pico-Robertson, Rancho Park and West Los Angeles. It is among the lowest density areas in Los Angeles but average for the country. The median income is $111,813, comparable to Bel-Air or Rolling Hills. The majority of the community are homeowners (64.3%) with a 78.8% white population.

I began my survey at the start of Phase 2 of the Expo Line, behind a mini mall on Venice and Robertson. The existing Expo Line stops at Washington and National in Culver City. I drove along Exposition Boulevard which borders the right-of-way of Phase 2 throughout Palms. Along the way, I observed many working class apartment buildings.

Cheviot Hills has a different character, with the city defined by mostly single family homes, cul-de-sacs, well-tended lawns, and very little trash visible. Trees line the streets and almost enclose the narrow roads, much like an East Coast suburb. Some of the houses even had white picket fences and most had some sort of security system. The cars I saw parked and driving were all newer, mid-tier cars. Overnight street parking is prohibited in Cheviot Hills. Manning and Motor are the only major thoroughfares passing through Cheviot Hills, so this neighborhood is somewhat exclusive. There is a country club on Manning, signifying the exclusivity of this neighborhood.

To get an idea of the impact of Expo Phase 2, I surveyed the area bordering the proposed right-of-way and entered the area itself. Northvale Road is the street bordering the proposed right-of-way. The area I observed had mostly multi-family homes that were still characteristic of Cheviot Hills. The right-of-way was hidden from Cheviot Hills by a thick green wall. A pedestrian bridge linked this neighborhood to a park on the other side of the right-of-way.

The planned right-of-way will be established in a trench that was previously a right-of-way for an old railroad built in 1875. From the inside, I could see that houses bordered along both sides. However, the thick foliage between the right-of-way and housing could serve to block some of the noise produced by the trains. The hiss of the 10 freeway resonated throughout the area. As a result of being unused for years, the area underneath the 10 freeway has been a magnet for graffiti artists. This right-of-way looks to be the most logical place to construct a railroad to the sea.

What the residents of Cheviot Hills are fearing, ultimately, is the kind of “pollution” that Sibley talks about. The development of Phase 2 of the Expo line disregards the boundaries of this isolated community and threatens the stability of geographically established class divisions. The exclusivity of Cheviot Hills is being inundated by the city: the noise of trains, the danger of at-grade crossings, the increase of traffic through the major thoroughfares, and the threat of crime and homeless the Expo Line may bring. This community which is secluded from the rest of Los Angeles could become much more accessible to outsiders. In addition, the drop in property values is a concern for residents here, as home ownership is high. The defilement of their neighborhood is their central fear.

However, there are additional concerns over the crossings that are at grade and the potential dangers they create. The crossing located at Westwood and Overland, in nearby Rancho Park are due to could increase traffic and block off local access to streets and housing. Access is already restricted to Westwood and Overland because of the 10 freeway, and the right of way cuts the grid system off from each other except at Westwood and Overland.

The fight over Expo Phase 2 is not an easy one. Residents of Cheviot Hills do not want Expo to pass into their backyards, yet rail access to Santa Monica is a necessity. The proposed right-of-way makes sense since it builds on existing trenches. NFSR have proposed that MTA takes the money for Expo Phase 2 and use it for the extension of the Purple Line, but that extension has its own movement against it in Beverly Hills. Rail access to the sea has a difficult ride ahead of it, shaken by homeowners who just don’t want it in their backyard. The entrenchment of the city into their previously isolated communities threatens their perceived safety.

Update: Jim Newton's LA Times article discuses the building of the Expo Line tracks and these neighborhoods' efforts to stop it.