URBAN SPACES OF AMERICAN INDIANS IN THE EXILES

Released in 1961, The Exiles is a low‐budget docudrama that chronicles the lives of three American Indians over a period of twelve hours in a downtown Los Angeles neighborhood in the late 1950s. Contemporary neorealist filmmaking appears to have influenced the film, whereas itsg narrative is ethnographic in form. An examination of the film and its dialogue reveals the ways in which American Indians who recently migrated from their reservation to the city have socially constructed the urban spaces within the framework of the physical setting provided to them. The nature of the engagements of the male and female protagonists with the sites and with other American Indians in this small urban sphere provides substantive clues to the nature and level of their respective transitions into the realm of the white‐dominated society of Los Angeles and beyond.     

THE LOS ANGELES COAST AS A PUBLIC PLACE

ABSTRACT. In the public‐space discourse Los Angeles is usually portrayed as more “anti‐city” than city. Its landscape is overrun by houses, “private‐public” squares and plazas, theme parks, shopping malls, and so on and lacks inclusive public places. Yet this discourse has essentially disdained to contemplate a major public space that contradicts its general thesis: the Los Angeles coast. The coast is meaningful public place in two specific senses. First, it symbolizes Los Angeles as a whole and therefore provides a basis for regional public identity. Second, Angelinos themselves take the coast seriously as a public place, and they have striven to make it inclusive in practice.     

Connecting the local and the global in post‐secular urban settings

Postsecular geographies seek to examine how place is linked with identity and how religious identities in turn can be accommodated in public space. Postsecular practices in urban contexts have been researched extensively, but they do not always fully engage with a relational approach to place‐making. This paper argues that through the place‐making practices seen at Virgin Mary statues in Dublin city, Ireland, a relational approach to examining postsecular practices and representations provides a more productive way to understand how the secular and the religious coexist in cities. The paper uses archival and contemporary data gathered from a sample of Marian statues in Dublin city to locate the relational geographies of the religious and the secular. By focussing on the ways that the statues remain uncontested within a changing urban landscape, the paper re‐examines the political significance of religious place‐making practices. It concludes that if geographies of religion in the postsecular city are to have a broader relevance to geography, they need a relational approach to place‐making.     

Path Dependency and Patterns of Collective Action: Space,Place, and Agency in Long Beach,California, 1900–1960

Drawing on the insights of the geography, structural, and social movement literature this study analyzes the interactive effects of structure, space, place, and agency on patterns of collective action in Long Beach, California. Long Beach and Los Angeles occupy the same regional landscape with similar economies, yet the logic of collective action varies considerably. It is argued that preceding 1960, pro-business elites in Long Beach allied with their Los Angeles counterparts to spatially restrict labor organizing and foster patterns of noncontiguous interdependencies within and among labor and community groups. Through violence, cultural references, local and extralocal political policies, and regional coalition building before 1960, the Long Beach ruling elites fragmented the labor and community sector and inhibited the emergence of an organizational infrastructure necessary to foster community-based change after 1960. The legacies of this period are reflected in a fragmented labor and community sector set against a powerful ideologically driven, business-led opposition.     

More than gentrification: geographies of capitalist displacement in Los Angeles 1994–1999

Little is understood about displacement in urban contexts. While some of the difficulties are methodological, the more serious problem is conceptual. Outside of the rent gap hypothesis or the philosophy of property rights, there has been little theoretical inquiry into the causal dynamics of displacement. In this article, I present a study of evictions in Los Angeles that addresses these conceptual and empirical shortcomings. A spatial analysis of more than 70,000 georeferenced evictions between 1994 and 1999 documents the existence of four distinct geographies of displacement, each produced by separate types of causal circumstances. Gentrification explains only one of the four displacement geographies, while the other three are nongentrifying or pre-gentrifying contexts and more appropriately described through growth machine models, global city theory, and financial restructuring. The extent of displacement in pre- and nongentrifying areas reinforces Mark Davidson’s emphasis on Lefebvre’s production of space as a crucial framework for understanding displacement processes.     

Urban geography as pretext: Sociocultural landscapes of Kuala Lumpur in independent Malaysian films

Current independent filmmaking in Malaysia has the potential to be an alternative and viable space for creative and political expression, relative to mainstream national cinema (Malay cinema) and to the state. I focus on alternative imagery and sociocultural mappings of Kuala Lumpur in three ‘indie’ films. All three films contain documentary elements capturing social geographies of the city not represented in mainstream Malay cinema, or even if represented not subjected to a critical gaze by the filmmaker. The Big Durian centres on the perspectives of the city's urban middle class of all ethnicities; Bukak Api portrays the daily struggles of Malay transsexual sex workers in Chow Kit, a predominantly working‐class Chinese neighbourhood and red light district; and 18? highlights the opinions of the nongovernmental organization community, bohemians, artists, anarchists and media activists mostly in the cosmopolitan suburb of Bangsar. These representations of the Malaysian urban landscape are pretexts for and politicize the national landscape through a discussion of ethnicity and race politics, sexuality, and the lack of space for freedom of creative expression and critical thinking.     

George J. Miller award for Distinguished Service

Abstract

With this paper, I elaborate the use of the movies American History X and Mi Familia in classroom settings to highlight issues of ethnicity and the social construction of identity through families and communities. Taken together, these movies draw attention to racial geographies of Los Angeles but in very different ways. I contrast the ways they involve familial reactions to geographies of exclusion and betrayal, and how racial space is structured through larger community and institutional relations. I speak to how these issues are broached in a large introductory, interdisciplinary class.     

洛杉矶工业产业升级的主要经验及启示

随着世界进入全球化时代以及信息技术的广泛应用,工业发展的自身特点和外部环境都发生了变化,转型升级成为新的主题。本文通过研究洛杉矶从西部边缘小城市最终成长为全球经济中心的工业升级历程并深入探讨其成功经验。结果表明,选择发展具有前瞻性和潜力的新兴行业,并始终把握价值链的最高环节是洛杉矶实现产业优势的核心,而洛杉矶广阔的地域使得其产业选择具有多样性。同时经济行为背后的社会、制度关系也非常重要,洛杉矶宽容多元、创新进取的文化氛围以及有利于企业经营模式和产业结构变革的制度环境,共同帮助其实现地区产业升级。     

RULING LOS ANGELES: NEIGHBORHOOD MOVEMENTS,URBAN REGIMES,AND THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

This paper examines a social movement among affluent homeowners in Los Angeles. It argues that the social movement is highly institutionalized and durable, and that it has achieved many important citywide and statewide goals during the past 20 years. The paper further argues that this social movement should rightly be considered a stable branch of the urban elite along with local business and local government. However, the homeowners movement pursues a fundamentally different sociospatial agenda than either local business or local government, and those differing agendas suggest the absence of a unified governing regime in the city. The paper examines the structure, agenda, and political alliances of the movement through the case study of the debate surrounding the spatial and political reorganization of the City of Los Angeles, the most salient element of which is the possibility of San Fernando Valley secession.     

THE MAGNETISM OF MIAMI: SEGMENTED PATHS IN CUBAN MIGRATION*

ABSTRACT. Miami is the primate city in a system of urban settlements that make up a Cuban ethnic archipelago in the United States. The city is also a national magnet, attracting Cuban migrants from metropolitan regions across the archipelago. Four large secondary cores of Cubans outside Florida serve as major “feeders” to the Miami enclave: northern New Jersey, New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Currents of migration to Miami are especially strong among older, foreign-born, and disadvantaged Cubans, an indication of segmented paths in Cuban assimilation. Although concentration in Metropolitan Miami has been the Cuban story over the past three decades, processes of deconcentration now may well be under way.     

Burgess and Hoyt in Los Angeles: testing the Chicago models in an automotive-age American city

For much of the twentieth century, the “Chicago models” proposed by E. W. Burgess in the 1920s, Homer Hoyt in the 1930s, and Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman in 1945 dominated discussions of the spatial form of cities in the United States. The changes that have subsequently occurred in American urban geography naturally raise questions about the continuing relevance of the models. In recent years, a “Los Angeles School” in geography and urban studies has dismissed the Chicago models as outdated. But the critics have provided little empirical evidence in support of their claims. Identifying exogenous amenities—those of distance from the city center, terrain, and waterfronts—as central elements in the Chicago models, we analyzed the relation of these factors to the patterns of income in Los Angeles and Chicago using spatial statistical regression. The newer, automobile-age city closely follows, while the older city of Chicago deviates substantially from, the patterns predicted in the classical Chicago models. These models may best describe the most recently built American cities and may be more relevant than ever today in explaining the dynamics of urban form.     

A GEOGRAPHY OF U.S. INSTITUTIONAL INVESTMENT, 1990

This paper examines the geography of institutional stock ownership for 603 major publicly traded companies. Linkages between cities are created using the stockownership levels between headquarters cities of investors and headquarters cities of firms. Both cartographic and statistical methods show that the urban connections describe a highly selective network of high-order urban centers. New York City is the dominant city, followed by Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. A simple gravity model, used to test the level of the effect of space on market perfection, explains a substantial portion of the investment-defined network. Differences between the levels of investment by different classes of institutional investors also are revealed.     

高星级酒店外籍管理者对广州地方景观的感知与跨文化认同

全球化是当今世界最重要的特征之一。有关跨国移民对城市景观的感知和跨文化认同研究也得到越来越多的关注。在文献回顾的基础上, 以广州高星级酒店外籍管理者作为研究对象, 通过定性研究进行数据的收集和分析, 构建了外籍管理者对城市地方景观感知和跨文化认同的形成演变机制, 并得出以下结论:① 在职业影响下, 外籍管理者对迁入城市产生了被动的地方认同, 进而形成了被迫同化的跨文化认同模式;② 外籍管理者基于身份构建对城市地方景观进行感知, 对反映“他者”、“我者”和“世界人”身份的景观感知度较高, 反映出他们对故乡和迁入城市的地方认同, 从而产生了同时具有整合和边缘特征的跨文化认同模式;③ 外籍管理者通过迁入城市的地方景观感知而产生地方意义的解读, 基于对迁入城市正面的地方意义解读, 对城市产生了地方认同和整合的跨文化认同模式, 基于对迁入城市负面的地方意义解读, 对城市产生了地方不认同和分隔的跨文化模式。研究结论丰富了城市景观研究和跨文化认同研究的相关理论成果, 并为中国跨国移民政策和国际化城市建设提供了可供借鉴的实践参考。     

基于神经网络模型技术的南京市主城区城市森林遥感调查

城市森林调查是城市森林研究和规划建设的前提和基础工作,而遥感和GIS技术已成为现代城市森林调查的主要方法。遥感信息源和遥感分类技术是决定城市森林遥感调查质量的两个关键因素,研究认为,根据城市森林特点及城市森林研究和规划建设的要求,城市森林遥感调查采用的遥感影像分辨率以8¹0m为宜,神经网络模型分类技术应用于城市森林遥感调查效果较好。本文以南京市主城区为例,以10m分辨率多光谱spot卫星图像与2.5m分辨率全色spot卫星图像的融合图像作为解译信息源,采用dARTMAP神经网络模型进行监督分类,提取了一套具有较高精度的南京市主城区城市森林空间属性数据和图件,并在此基础上分析了南京市城市森林基本特点及规划建设方向。     

Residential adjustment and gentrification in Los Angeles, 2000–2015: theoretical arguments and empirical evidence

Knowledge-intensive economic resurgence and social restratification are evidently reshaping the intra-urban space of Los Angeles .In particular, the expansion of white-collar employment is inducing marked readjustments in the geography of housing for these workers, and is promoting significant gentrification of inner-city neighborhoods. Existing accounts of gentrification in the United States are briefly adjudged in relation to (a) the recent historical record of urban change and (b) the theory of land redevelopment. A cartographic and statistical analysis of white-collar residential change in Los Angeles County is then undertaken. The analysis points to the evolving spatial structure of pertinent job opportunities together with related land redevelopment dynamics as the dominant factors underlying recent shifts in white-collar residential activity in the County. Further investigation suggests that gentrification trends in Los Angeles represent a special and problematical case of this broad process of white-collar residential change. .     

后城市景观中的乡愁与地方批判：基于“珠江夜游”艺术展的图像分析

景观研究是地理分析的关键单元。以往景观研究往往囿于物质景观的一面,忽视了观念景观的存在。本文以“珠江夜游——后珠三角景观”艺术展为案例,采用德国符号学家弗里克的“拟态理论”和焦点小组访谈法对其展开图像和内容分析,重新审视后城市化时代中观念景观所折射出来的乡愁与地方批判。研究发现,景观是研究人地关系议题的文化图像工具;观念景观是对物质景观的拟态,是基于真实世界之上的景观;“珠江夜游”艺术展通过大量的符号和观念景观的呈现,展现了后城市化时代珠三角地区民众独特的地方感知和地方记忆,也从直观和批判的视角展现了快速变化的社会现实下城市居民和城市之间的人地关系——城市本土居民表现出一种“不离地的乡愁”,并对人地关系失调的环境进行反思。研究对城市观念景观的图像和叙事分析是对传统文化地理学物质景观分析的有效补充,有利于从人的主体视角更深入地理解城市发展及其影响。     

Spatial heterogeneity of urban land-cover landscape in Guangzhou from 1990 to 2005

Urbanization has been the most important process that changed land cover landscape in Guangzhou since reformation, especially since 1990. It is essential for monitoring and assessing ecological consequences of urbanization to understand landscape quantitative characteristics and its changes. Based on four land-cover type maps interpreted from remote sensing TM images of 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005, combining gradient analysis with landscape metrics, the quantified spatial pattern and its dynamics of urbanization in Guangzhou was got. Three landscape metrics were computed within different regional areas including the whole study area, two transects along two highways (one N–S and the other W–E) and radiation zones with equal distance outwards the city center were set. Buffer zones for transects N–S and W–E were outlined along highways. The following questions should be answered in this paper: What responses were implied with changing spatial grain size or extent for landscape pattern analysis? Could gradient progress of urbanization be characterized by landscape pattern analysis? Did landscape metrics reveal urban expanding gradually? Were there directional differences in land cover landscape pattern during urbanizing development? The results gave some affirmative answers. Landscape pattern exhibited obviously scale-dependent to grain size and extent. The landscape metrics with gradient analysis could quantitatively approach spatial pattern of urbanization. A precise location for urbanized area, like city center and sub-center, could be identified by multiple landscape metrics. Multiple adjunctive centers occurred as indicated by analysis of radiation zones around the city center. Directional differences of landscape pattern along the two transects (N–S and W–E) came into being. For example, fragmentation of landscape in the transect W–E was obviously higher than that in the transect N–S. All in all, some interesting and important ecological implications were revealed under landscape patterns of two transects or radiation zones, and that was the important step to link pattern with processes in urban ecological studies and the basis to improve urban environment.     

POLYCENTRICITY OR DISPERSION?: CHANGES IN CENTER EMPLOYMENT IN METROPOLITAN SYDNEY, 1981 TO 1996

Much recent literature in urban studies, geography, and planning portrays an inexorable evolution toward polycentricity as a new “postmodern” metropolitan form. However, detailed and comparable empirical investigations, at once both comprehensive and disaggregated, are more elusive. A study by Gordon and Richardson (1996) of employment trends in Los Angeles—the archetypal polycentric metropolis—produced the surprising conclusion that a process of generalized dispersion rather than a clustering in major suburban subcenters seemed well established for the period 1970 to 1990. This paper adapts the Gordon-Richardson methodology to an investigation of centered versus noncentered employment trends in Sydney, Australia, between 1981 and 1996. Based on a detailed statistical analysis, the study suggests some parallels to the Los Angeles experience in the 1980s but uncovers a recentralization trend in the 1990s. The findings underline the importance of locality-specific factors and the need for further systematic and comparative research.     

The Disappearance of Dense Fog in Los Angeles: Another Urban Impact?

Incidences of dense fog have been gradually disappearing from large cities around the world. In Los Angeles, the climate records show that dense fog may become another extinct specie. In the last 50 years, dense fog has been reduced by about half at two, busy, coastal Los Angeles airports. Not one, but two factors, can be seen as possible causes. Both the downtown Los Angeles urban heat island and the city's air pollution clean-up show a significant relationship to decreasing fog. This study correlates monthly and annual dense fog data recorded at Los Angeles International and Long Beach International airports since the 1950s with downtown Los Angeles temperature and particulate air pollution data. The El Niño—Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) values also explain interannual dense fog variability, with PDO showing a stronger relationship. Coastal sea surface temperatures also closely follow dense fog frequencies. Recent coastal cooling, since 1998, associated with a shift to the cool phase of PDO, has been associated with a rise in dense fog incidences.