Slums,Ghettos, and Urban Marginality

This paper gathers potent visual images of one city, Los Angeles (L.A.), by examining three contemporary films— L.A. Story (1991), Boyz N the Hood (1991), and Grand Canyon (1991). It argues that popular culture, and in particular popular film, is an integral part of the portrayal of the cultural landscape. This paper primarily uses the assorted visual images of the urban landscape in considering how this one city has been recently depicted. The three films reveal a city shaped by rapid changes in urban America, depicting Los Angeles as an urban area composed of a fragmented landscape divided into many geographies: L.A. as a realm of simulations and void of consequences; L.A. as a city under siege, a place of epidemic violence and fear; L.A. as a place obsessed with security and control; L.A. as an increasingly ambiguous and chaotic place. Far from concluding that cities have become so fragmented that they are ageographic, these films reveal various geographies that are rooted in economic, political, and cultural contexts. Attention to the “restlessness” of cities and the postmodern focus on the instability and chaotic nature of urban experience actually challenge geographers to uncover the multitude of geographies of place. Interpreting the many geographies of Los Angeles shows that film can reveal a uniquely visual catalog of human experience of place, supplementing the ways in which we decipher place image and representation. This paper suggests that film is one way by which previously marginalized groups, such as blacks, can disseminate ideas from the margins and provide alternative experiencesof place. Geographers should add film to the cache of qualitative data that constructs an urban experience through images and representation, widening the discussion of what is place     

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 In recent years, a “Los Angeles School” in geography and urban studies has dismissed the Chicago models as outdated.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.     

DEFINING JOB CONCENTRATIONS: THE LOS ANGELES CASE

This paper aims to develop a simple technique for defining employment concentrations, suitable for application to any large North American urban area, and to implement it for a major area. Following a review of earlier work, the 1990 distribution patterns of population, resident workers, and jobs in greater Los Angeles are mapped, summarized in tabular form, and compared. After a consideration of alternative approaches, employment concentrations are delineated using census tracts, with the 1990 employment/residence ratio as chief criterion, rather than job density. Of 120 concentrations defined, 11 have more than 100,000 jobs each and 28 have at least 50,000. Downtown Los Angeles, still the region's largest concentration, now is rivaled by the relatively new Irvine. Comparable 1980 data show job growth in most concentrations, although increases Downtown have been modest. The industry profiles of the largest concentrations vary widely, especially as to the significance of manufacturing, which dominates some concentrations but is relatively unimportant in others. The data are inconclusive as to whether jobs in the region became more or less concentrated during the 1980s. The paper also questions two of Garreau's "edge cities" criteria by showing that most such developments in the Los Angeles region are not wholly new and already existed as job concentrations 30 years ago.     

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.     

Linked and Independent African American Migration from Los Angeles

This paper examines African American migration from Los Angeles County, 1985–1990, utilizing Census Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) data to identify linkages between Los Angeles migrants and others in destination households. Increased migration to suburban counties and to regions outside of the South, since 1975–1980, suggests an overall diversification of African American migration. The majority of outmigrants were “independent” because they moved into 1990 destination households that contained only migrants from the same origin, Los Angeles County. Others were linked either to nonmovers or to migrants from other places in destination households. A discriminant analysis suggests that many migrants linked to nonmigrants were moving for assistance, depending on others at the destination for housing and financial resources. In contrast, independent migrants have the personal resources to set up their own destination households.     

SPECIALTY CROPLAND IN CALIFORNIA*

ABSTRACT. Census data do not support the widespread popular perception that urban encroachment on cropland in California is serious enough to justify programs of farmland preservation. Between 1949 and 1997 the acreage of harvested cropland declined near Los Angeles, in the San Francisco Bay area, and near Sacramento, but the high‐value specialty agricultural production displaced from these areas has been relocated to more distant areas, where it has replaced lower‐value field crops, and specialized agricultural production has increased steadily in the state. Vegetable production in the Salinas Valley and dairying near Los Angeles illustrate the twin processes of relocation and replacement. Urban encroachment actually has been a boon to California agriculture, because it has transferred massive amounts of urban capital to cash‐strapped farmers and enabled them to develop efficient modern operations. Much of the concern about loss of farmland really is concern about loss of open space and amenities, and urban demand for water probably will be a greater constraint on California agriculture than will urban demand for land.     

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.     

Emerging Asias: Introduction

This focus section explores what it means to think geographically about an emergent Asia. The four articles are based on presentations given at the Presidential Plenary session at the 2013 Association of American Geographers annual meeting in Los Angeles. In this Introduction, I briefly examine the temporalities associated with the term emergent and the spatialities evoked by the label Asia, arguing that mainstream conceptions of emergence, as progress into the light, and territorial conceptions of Asia require critical reflection from the perspective of contemporary geographical thought. These issues are taken up in the subsequent articles, examining when is Asia, the U.S. role in constructing representations of Asia, the Japanese origin of global supply chains, and the question of whether Western urban theory suffices to account for urbanization in China.     

Korean Americans in Los Angeles: Decentralized Concentration and Socio‐spatial Disparity

This study analyses the socioeconomic and demographic make‐up of Koreans in Los Angeles metropolis, the largest hub of Koreans in the United States, to better understand the decentralized concentration of Koreans by addressing their within‐ and among‐group variations. By employing the rarely used measures of correspondence and typology analyses, we delineate the boundaries for Korean clusters using Getis and Ord G* local statistic, wherein each cluster's neighborhood and demographic characteristics are compared to gain nuanced insights of within‐group variations, and its evolution during 1970–2010. Cluster level analysis of Koreatown suggests that even though it was classified as a Korean cluster, Korean Americans were unevenly distributed across these clusters, with underrepresentation in white‐dominant neighborhoods, whereas much of their intraurban spaces were shared with Hispanics. All clusters except extended Koreatown exhibited Li's ethnoburb‐style spatial patterns. The Koreatown and suburban clusters were also distinct in terms of their demographic/ethnic, socioeconomic, educational, age/life cycle, and housing characteristics, suggesting socio‐spatial polarization. Our analysis, challenges the commonly perceived notion of Koreans being a homogenous group and Asians being model minorities. We illustrate significant within‐group differences among the Koreangelos. We, thus, propose innovative measures to analyze population groups to flesh out rich narratives of America's fast changing social geographies.     

From Chicago to L.A. and Back Again: A Chicago‐Inspired Quantitative Analysis of Income Distribution in Montreal*

In a recent issue of Urban Geography (2001) , a number of key players in the 1960s and 1970s school of quantitative urban geography (called Chicago II in this article) set out some of the approach's key methodological premises and assessed its influence in the wider arena of urban studies. At about the same time, the 1920s and 1930s Chicago School of urban sociology (called the Chicago School in this article) was being reassessed in France ( Huet 2000 ), and deconstructed in Los Angeles ( Dear 2001 ). In this article, we outline a selection of basic models of urban space proposed by the Chicago School and further elaborated by Chicago II. We then consider certain aspects of three important critiques: humanist/aesthetic, Marxist, and postmodern. We argue that none of these invalidates the Chicago II approach to the study of urban areas, and we demonstrate its resilience and usefulness by way of the empirical example of Montreal. Though the results are of interest in their own right, the principal purpose of the analysis is to illustrate the type of insight that a structured quantitative approach provides and the way this approach rests on a theoretical understanding of processes at work in cities. We conclude by arguing that the humanist and Marxist critiques shed important light upon the possibilities and limits of the Chicago II approach, but that the postmodern claim that the spatial development of urban areas is not structured by at least some general processes is inaccurate.     

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. .     

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.     

Narratives of the Mother Road: Geographic Themes Along Route 66

One of the most culturally significant roads in the world, U.S. Highway 66 (commonly referred to as Route 66) has connected Chicago and Los Angeles since 1926. In order to explore what heritage themes Route 66 sites convey to tourists, we assessed the information presented to visitors at nearly four‐dozen museums and interpretive sites astride the road using the qualitative software Nvivo 10. Five themes dominate interpretation. Route 66 thematically flows east to west with Chicago as the beginning and Los Angeles as the end of the road. Mobility and personal freedom of movement via the automobile are encapsulated in the history of the road. In addition, Route 66 highlights nostalgia for the 1950s with classic American automobiles, music of the era, and neon lights representing this golden age of the highway. Economic decline, and often the economic continuity of communities, is frequently found in interpretive materials. Finally, Route 66 museums are repositories of community memory as oral histories preserve the narratives of individuals and families who owned businesses on and lived near the road for multiple decades. We conclude with several observations about interpretative themes that are overlooked as well as regional differences in the geography of memory along Route 66.     

Beyond Postmetropolis

Three recent developments have created new challenges and opportunities for urban geography and geographers: the rediscovery of the generative power of cities, the cross-disciplinary diffusion of critical spatial perspectives, and rising interest in regions and regionalism. With these new developments as background, I reflect upon some of the ideas and themes introduced in Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions, published in 2000. Like the book, this effort to move beyond Postmetropolis is divided into three parts: Remapping the Geohistory of Cityspace; Six Discourses on the Postmetropolis; and Lived Space: Remembering 1992 in Los Angeles. Some of the same themes are taken up, often with a different emphasis, in the accompanying essays by Robert Beauregard, Mona Domosh, and Deborah Martin.     

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.     

Local Labor Market Restructuring and the Employment of Welfare Recipients in Los Angeles County

Although welfare rolls have dropped considerably in recent years, most welfare recipients who find work are employed in low-wage, insecure jobs. The problem of "working poverty" is especially acute in large city-regions such as Los Angeles, where local labor market restructuring has created an expanding, low-wage economy, increasingly dependent on immigrant labor. This paper analyzes the employment outcomes of 6,931 women who completed the county's welfare-to-work program in 1996. I evaluate their earnings, labor market segmentation, and job stability. The results show that women were highly concentrated in low-wage service jobs and experienced high levels of turnover and unemployment. Many were unable to obtain employment in the formal labor market. I argue that the struggles of the working poor in a growing regional economy are explained not solely by human capital limitations, but by processes of local labor market restructuring that have contributed to widespread economic insecurity in Los Angeles County.     

Siberian Village: Land and Life in the Sakha Republic

Bella Bychkova Jordan and Terry G. Jordan‐Bychkov. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. xii and 140 pp., maps, photos., glossary, notes, refs., and index. $32.95 cloth (ISBN 0‐81663‐5692). Reviewed by Glen M. MacDonald, Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA.     

Nonprofits and park equity in Los Angeles: a promising way forward for environmental justice

Disparities in park provision raise environmental and health justice concerns. With public agencies stepping back from providing environmental amenities in increasingly neoliberal urban regimes, nonprofits in the U.S. have assumed a prominent role in the parks and recreation sector. But very few studies have comprehensively assessed whether and how park nonprofits contribute to increasing or closing the equity gap in park provision. Focusing on Los Angeles, I analyze how park nonprofits operate and which demographic groups benefit from new and improved parks supported by nonprofits. Based on interviews with local practitioners and geospatial analyses, I find that nonprofits are leading a park equity movement in Los Angeles and helped address park disparities. To do so, nonprofits built diverse coalitions, leveraged complementary strengths, coalesced with public agencies, and helped generate public funds for parks. These findings show that equity-oriented nonprofits can successfully challenge the unjust outcomes of neoliberal governance.     

What can we learn about changing ethnic diversity from the distributions of mixed-race individuals?

It is hypothesized that self-defined mixed-race persons live in residentially mixed areas in the largest metropolitan areas in California. The hypothesis is tested by examining the distribution of mixed-race persons among ethnically and racially diverse and nondiverse neighborhoods in the San Francisco and Los Angeles Metropolitan Areas. The research confirmed that mixed-race individuals are more likely to live in areas with ethnic diversity and that the tendency is greater for the mixed-race population in the San Francisco–Oakland Metropolitan Areas than in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. Mixed-race individuals live in neighborhoods which are diverse with mixes of all four major ethnic and racial groups, and in “well-off” (but not the most affluent) neighborhoods. The study also shows that the mixed-race population is youthful. The association of mixed-race individuals and racially integrated neighborhoods will have important implications for the evolving nature of spatial integration in California specifically, and the United States more generally.     

EDITORIAL: MAKING SPACE FOR LAW

Using data from a multi-city survey of urban inequality, we assess the effects of bridging social networks—ties that connect individuals to different worlds of information, resources, and opportunities—on Black, Hispanic, and White female labor-force participation in metropolitan Los Angeles. Our findings indicate that these types of networks are far more important in explaining the labor-market experiences of females in Los Angeles than the kinds of cultural forces that serve as the foundation of much contemporary conservative social policy making in the United States. Implications for current efforts to transition women from welfare to work are discussed.