Transcript Slide 1

Human and Social
Hazards in Los Angeles
Source: http://i.askask.com
The United States of America
Source: http://mapsofwprld.com/usa
Los Angeles the
City of Angels?
Source: http://www.beach-cities-la.com
Los Angeles
• “The capital of the 20th
century”.
• LA has become increasingly
important as the world
realises it is facing a Pacific
century.
• 60 mile city.
• Population c.12 million.
• Gross annual output of
c.$250 billion.
• LA as a window through
which to view rest of the
world.
Source: http//www.hellolosangeles.com
The Growth of LA
• Multi centred region. Five counties: LA, Orange,
Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura.
• Hard to over emphasis how much LA is growing,
changing, expanding.
• Centrality of cars in contemporary cities. Exacerbating
fragmentation, privatisation, segregation.
• LA’s inhabitants have been energetically, ceaselessly and
sometimes carelessly unrolling urbanisation over natural
landscape for more than a century.
• Uninhibited occupation has engendered its own range of
environmental problems e.g. air pollution, habitat loss
and dangerous encounters between humans and
animals.
The Economic Restructuring of
LA
• 4 elements :
– Closures in smokestack manufacturing, during 60’s,
70’s and 80’s.
– New jobs created in high tech sectors.
– Increase in sweatshop industries.
– Large scale inward investment in property from
Japanese and overseas Chinese interests.
• Contrast between low tech garment industry and
high tech (aerospace) industry – a bi polar
economy.
Changes in World Economy and
Impacts on LA
• Shifting world market for labour coupled with shifting world
market for production sites.
• Disinvestment and unemployment in one country can be linked
to employment in another nation.
• Pockets of affluence created in core cities in turn generate
demand for customised production and personal services
performed by low wage workers, thereby contributing to
uneven development within growing cities at core.
• Sweatshops: employ immigrants from Asia, Mexico and Central
America. Availability of illegal immigrant labour lacking basic
right of citizenship and willing to work for low wages is a major
factor contributing to rise of new sweatshops and their spatial
concentration in large US core cities.
Changes in World Economy and
Impacts on LA 2
• Number of low paid service jobs has increased dramatically =>
sometimes viewed as a distinct type of economic restructuring
– in LA “almost a third world in a first world city.”
• Corporate centre restructuring often involves migration of
better paid managerial/professional people to inner city, often
to luxury apartments or gentrified homes, whose construction
involves displacement of middle/low income households.
• Government investment is important to economic health of LA.
Defence and aerospace contracts for huge projects like space
shuttle and high tech weapons systems fuel growth of region.
• Perhaps more than any other place, LA is everywhere. Global
in fullest sense of word. Nowhere, is this more evident than in
its cultural projection and ideological reach.
“With exquisite irony, contemporary LA has come
to resemble more than ever before a gigantic
agglomeration of theme parks, a life space
comprised of Disneyworld's. It is a realm
divided into showcases of global village cultures
and mimetic American landscapes, all embracing
shopping malls and crafty Main Streets,
corporation sponsored magic kingdoms, high
technology based experimental prototype
communities of tomorrow, attractively packaged
places for rest and recreation all cleverly hiding
the buzzing workstations and labour processes
which help to keep it all together” (Soja, 2000).
Social Exclusion and the
“Revolt of the Elite”
• Perhaps most heterogeneous city in world.
• Shift in ethnic composition of LA county population from
70% Anglo in 1970 to 60% non Anglo in 1990.
• Shift from African-American to Latino population.
• LA less a ‘melting pot’ than NYC. Lots of different
nationalities but tend to live in ethnic enclaves.
• LA police have a reputation for being racist.
Social Exclusion and the
“Revolt of the Elite” 2
• Obsession with physical security systems and architectural policing
of social boundaries.
• “We live in fortress cities brutally divided between the fortified cells
of affluent society and places of terror where the police battle the
criminalised poor (Soja, 2000)”.
• In cities like LA unprecedented tendency to merge urban design,
architecture and police apparatus into a single, comprehensive
security effort.
• Market provision of security generates its own paranoid demand.
Security becomes a positional good defined by income, access to
private protective services and membership in some hardened
residential enclave or restricted suburb. Security has less to do with
personal safety than with degree of personal insulation from
unsavory groups, individuals and crowds in general.
Social Exclusion and the
“Revolt of the Elite” 3
• ‘Fear proves itself’ – social perception of threat becomes a function
of security mobilisation itself, not crime rates.
• Today's pseudo public spaces – sumptuary malls, office centres,
cultural acropolises and so on are full of invisible signs warning off
underclass other.
• Universal and inevitable consequence of crusade to secure city is
destruction of accessible public space.
• Fredrick Law Olmstead conceived public spaces and parks as social
safety valves, mixing classes and ethnicities in common recreations
and enjoyments.
• Quality of any urban environment can be measured by whether
there are convenient, comfortable places for pedestrians to sit.
Social Exclusion and the
“Revolt of the Elite” 4
• Bunker Hill, LA’s new Downtown: tens of millions spent on ‘soft’
environments for office workers and upscale tourists. In
contrast, few blocks away city is making public facilities and
spaces as ‘unliveable’ as possible for homeless and poor.
• Skid row – outdoor poor house, one of most dangerous ten
blocks in world.
• Many homeless try to ‘escape’ to safer areas but city tightens
noose with increased police harassment and ingenious design
deterrents e.g.
– Barrel shaped bus benches, minimal surface for comfortable sitting
while making sleeping impossible
– Outdoor sprinklers
– Ornate enclosures to protect waste
– No public toilets
– LAPD regularly sweep streets, confiscate ‘cardboard condos’
The 1992 Riots
• Rodney King an African-American who — while being videotaped by
a bystander — was severely beaten and arrested by the LAPD
during a police traffic stop in 1991.
• Incident raised a public outcry, especially in African-American
community, among people who believed incident was racially
motivated.
• Subsequent acquittal in a state court of 4 officers charged with
using excessive force in subduing King led to 1992 LA riots and
mass protest around country.
Source: http://www.historycentral.com
Source: http://www.stamford.edu
• Left hundreds of buildings severely damaged or
destroyed, caused more than $1 billion worth of
damage, killed 55 people, injured 2383, and led to arrest
of more than 8000 people.
• Smaller riots occurred in other U.S. cities.
Source: http://www.temple.edu
Source: http://www.law.umkc.edu
Conclusion
• Fragmented and polarised city.
• Symbolic and high tech industries stand in stark contrast to
industrial firms and Sweatshops that underpin city.
• Highly diverse ethnic mix, but live in segregated areas. How
is empathy and understanding of difference engendered if it is
never or rarely experienced?
• Crime and fear of crime have lead to a ‘culture of fear’.
• Physical environment reflects this with a decreasing amount
of public space and an increasing amount of fortified
development.
• Problems boil over in re-occurring events such as the 1992
riots.
Bibliography
• Dear, M. (2000) The Postmodern Urban
Condition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
• Dear, M. and Flusty, S (2001) The spaces of
postmodernity : readings in human geography.
Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
• Soja, E. (2000) Postmetropolis: Critical Studies
of Cities and Regions. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.