After World War II, the United States of America became a much wealthier nation. As America gained wealth and the populations in urban cities and transportation technology increased, many Americans spread out, away from the urban cities, to fulfill the common dream of having a piece of land to call their own. The landscape constructed became known as the suburbs, exclusive residential areas within commuting distance of a city. The popularity and success of the suburban landscape caused suburbs to sprawl across the United States, from the east coast to the west coast and along the borders between Canada and Mexico. By the 1990s, many suburbs surrounding major urban cities developed into being more than merely exclusive residential areas. The new kind of area developed out of suburbia, the post-suburban environment, has the characteristics of the suburbs and the characteristics of the central city, or what postmodern political geographer and urban planner, Edward Soja calls, ‘the city turned inside out' (Foster 1). The post-suburban environment, is “a fundamentally decentralized spatial arrangement in which a variety of commercial, recreational, shopping, arts, residential, and religious activities are conducted in different places and are linked primarily by private automobile transportation” (Kling 1). The multifaceted aspects of the post-suburban environment make it an attractive and dynamic space with opportunities of employment. Topanga Canyon, near Los Angeles, California, is such an example of a suburb space that's developed into a dynamic post-suburban space. Since the post-suburban space of Topanga Canyon is dynamic and filled with employment opportunities, it's attractive to Mexican immigrants who wish to have a better l...
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...xcluding Mexican immigrants and their culture from entering and influencing. The residents of Arroyo Blanco spatial identities can no longer be centered in suburbia, which is exclusive and separate. Their spatial identities will have to become decentralized and hybridized, which are the defining characteristics of the post-suburban landscape.
Works Cited
Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.
Boyle, T. C. The Tortilla Curtain. New York CIty: Viking Penguin - Penguin Books, 1995. Print.
Foster, Tim. “Into the Postsuburban Thirdspace: T. Coraghessan Boyle's, The Tortilla Curtain.”
University of Nottingham, 1995. Web. 6 Dec. 2013.
Kling, Rob. “Beyond the Edge: The Dynamism of Post-Suburban Regions.” University of California Press, 1995. Web. 6 Dec. 2013.
Soja, Edward. Thirdspace. Malden (Mass.): Blackwell, 1996. Print.
Phillips, E. Barbara. City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Several works we have read thus far have criticized the prosperity of American suburbia. Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, and an excerpt from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem "A Coney Island of the Mind" all pass judgement on the denizens of the middle-class and the materialism in which they surround themselves. However, each work does not make the same analysis, as the stories are told from different viewpoints.
In Sueños Americanos: Barrio Youth Negotiating Social and Cultural Identities, Julio Cammarota studies Latina/o youth who live in El Pueblo, and talks about how Proposition 187, the anti-immigrant law, is affecting Latina/o youth in California (Cammarota, 2008, p. 3). In this book review, I will write about the two main points the author is trying to get across. The two main points I will be writing about are how Proposition 187 is affecting the Latina/o community, and about how Latina/o youth are copping in the El Pueblo barrio. Afterward I write about the two main points the author is trying to get across, I will write a brief description of the author and write about the author’s strengths and weaknesses.
Robert D. Kaplan’s articles “Travels into America’s Future” present a description of Tucson, Arizona as it stood in 1998. His articles are based entirely on his personal experiences with the city and with it’s Mexican neighbors to the south, and while somewhat entertaining, contain vast oversights and discrepancies that make his outsider standing obvious to any native reader.
When Gloria Anzaldua writes in The Homeland Aztlan “this land was Mexican once, was Indian always and is and will be again” one can assume or conclude that she recognizes that the land was taken away from the Indians by Americans. Therefore, you can say that she catecterize the border as Indian Land. To my way of thinking,Gloria Anzaldua blends poetry, personal narrative and history to present the view and experiences of people affected by living in the borderlands and to establish credibility to the poem. On the other hand, this chapter and the two poems present a connection because the three of them express the drwabacks of being Mexican- American.
Chavez Ravine was a self-sufficient and tight-knit community, a rare example of small town life within a large urban metropolis, but no matter how much the inhabitants loved thei...
University of California-Berkley geographer and author Michael Johns argues in his novel, The City of Mexico in the Age of Diaz, that the central Zocalo of Mexico City does more than geographically segregate the East from the West, but Mexico’s national mentality as well. During the years of Diaz’s democratic façade, the upper classes thrived upon plantation exports, feudalist economics and the iron fist of Diaz’s rurales while struggling to maintain European social likeness. East of the Zocalo, shantytowns housed thousands of poor pelados that served as societal blemishes of a suburbanite’s experience. In Johns’s work, the penniless and indigenous serve as the scapegoats for the priviledged and their obsession with grooming Mexico City to be a little Europe.
...ewish enclave to a predominantly Mexican community” (Sanchez, 2004, p. 640) due to the fact that the “Jewish community of Los Angeles as a whole was transformed by the demographic changes, clearly becoming “white” in the racial hierarchy of the region both geographically and politically” (Sanchez, 2004, p. 640). The place of the Jewish community changed along with their identity. Once they became “white” they no longer were restricted to living in Boyle Heights. In Los Angeles, it is clear through what happened to this one group of people that one’s metaphorical place in society, meant to be one’s racial and class status in what Sanchez refers to as a hierarchy, has a direct link to one’s literal or geographical place in the city. The ongoing divisions within society caused by stratification have become the basis of the meaning of place in contemporary Los Angeles.
... motivation for wealthy individuals to return to the inner-city core but it also provides impetus for commercial and retail mixed-use to follow, increasing local revenue for cities (Duany, 2001). Proponents of gentrification profess that this increase in municipal revenue from sales and property taxes allows for the funding of city improvements, in the form of job opportunities, improved schools and parks, retail markets and increased sense of security and safety ((Davidson (2009), Ellen & O’Reagan (2007), Formoso et. al (2010)). Due to the increase in housing and private rental prices and the general decrease of the affordable housing stock in gentrifying areas, financially-precarious communities such as the elderly, female-headed households, and blue-collar workers can no longer afford to live in newly developed spaces ((Schill & Nathan (1983), Atkinson, (2000)).
Besides the obvious separation between the haves and the have nots, T.C. Boyle uses the “canyon” as the symbol of the divide as the mansions are perched above it and the temporary shelters of the transients look up from below. This is how the Mossbachers and the Rincon live, separate and segregated. Delaney and Kyra in a private community, comprised of a golf course and houses that sit on a 1.5 acre of pristine real estate while the Rincons live in a make shift shelter with a make shift stove and no plumbing (Boyle, 30). The Mossbachers are protected within the walls and gates of Arroyo Blanco, from the outsiders, the deviant activities of Mexicans, gang bangers and thieves and a home that shelters them from the elements. And on the other side, Candido and America live a life exposed to the harsh and cruel world of nothing but oppression and
Have you ever thought about living in the suburbs? Many surveys that were given to Millennials in the last few years suggest that they are wanting to live in the suburbs. This includes those that are living in the cities and those that already live in the suburbs. Those in the city want more space, while those that live in the suburbs want to keep their way of life the way it is. This will change the way the country will function, so the United States can thrive. Kris Hudson, in the article “Many Millennials Yearn for Suburban Homes,” asked the question “Do Millennials want to remain urbanites or eventually relocate to the suburbs?” (A2). This is one of the biggest question asked among demographers
The struggle to find a place inside an un-welcoming America has forced the Latino to recreate one. The Latino feels out of place, torn from the womb inside of America's reality because she would rather use it than know it (Paz 226-227). In response, the Mexican women planted the seeds of home inside the corral*. These tended and potted plants became her burrow of solace and place of acceptance. In the comfort of the suns slices and underneath the orange scents, the women were free. Still the questions pounded in the rhythm of street side whispers. The outside stare thundered in pulses, you are different it said. Instead of listening she tried to instill within her children the pride of language, song, and culture. Her roots weave soul into the stubborn soil and strength grew with each blossom of the fig tree (Goldsmith).
side of a border town made Smeltertown residents American, Perales looks at how they also never left their Mexican culture and customs behind. The San Jose’ de Cristo Rey Catholic parish served as a place for Esmeltianos to reimagine what it meant to be racially and culturally Mexican in an American border town. The Catholic chapel on the hill became the locus of what it meant to Mexican in a border town. Through their sense of community and the Catholic parish, Esmeltianos retained many aspects of their Mexican culture: Spanish language, Mexican patriotism, Catholicism. “Blending elements of national and ethnic pride, shared language, and a common experience with Catholicism provided a foundation on which Esmeltianos reconfigured what it meant to be Mexican in a U.S.
Furthermore, he attempts to dispel the negative aspects of gentrification by pointing out how some of them are nonexistent. To accomplish this, Turman exemplifies how gentrification could positively impact neighborhoods like Third Ward (a ‘dangerous’ neighborhood in Houston, Texas). Throughout the article, Turman provides copious examples of how gentrification can positively change urban communities, expressing that “gentrification can produce desirable effects upon a community such as a reduced crime rate, investment in the infrastructure of an area and increased economic activity in neighborhoods which gentrify”. Furthermore, he opportunistically uses the Third Ward as an example, which he describes as “the 15th most dangerous neighborhood in the country” and “synonymous with crime”, as an example of an area that could “need the change that gentrification provides”.
Los Angeles is unique in that it captures the essence of a multi-ecological setting bringing the ocean, the skyscraper, and the happiest place on earth under one rooftop. Its deep-rooted culture engulfs the city’s character and overwhelms the spirit of L.A. Los Angeles has encompassed the circle of the Mexican pueblo that began in 1848 and has returned over two hundred fifty years later. Hordes of “land hungry Anglo-Europeans” began to migrate to Los Angeles from various parts of Europe. They viciously took land from the inhabited Mexicans by fraud, force, and imposing ridiculous property taxes. Although Mexican rancheros fought gallantly for their land, they could not afford to pay the property taxes and as a result lost a vast part of their holdings. The Mexican ranchero lifestyle gradually vanished as new settlers took over. As the Anglo-whites became the majority in Los Angeles, they also became the major influence on the development of the city and its capitalist structure.