Human%20and%20Social%20Hazards%20in%20Los%20Angeles

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Human and Social Hazards in Los Angeles
Source http//i.askask.com
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The United States of America
Source http//mapsofwprld.com/usa
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Los Angeles the City of Angels?
Source http//www.beach-cities-la.com
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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
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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.
• LAs 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.

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The Economic Restructuring of LA

• 4 elements
• Closures in smokestack manufacturing, during
  60s, 70s and 80s.
• 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.

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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.

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Changes in World Economy and Impacts on LA 2

• Number of low paid service jobs has increased
  dramatically gt 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.

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• 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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Social Exclusion and the Revolt of the Elite 4

• Bunker Hill, LAs 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

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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
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• 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
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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.

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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.