Los Angeles was the first product off the assembly line of American urban planning. Turned on in the late 19th century, the city-making machine was fueled by an immense immigration of people who sought to create a new type of city out of the previously quaint pueblo. They also strove to craft the first major city developed primarily by Americans and outside of European archetypes. As a result, Los Angles is not only incredibly diverse, but also nearly impossible to define. Since it is a product of the American machine, understanding the community of Los Angeles becomes vital to understanding the United States. But to fully comprehend the present Los Angeles, one must look at the process that created it. Specifically, Los Angeles was created by upper class Anglo citizens of the 20th century, who strove to materialize their imagined reality of a rural city by establishing a process where affluent citizens fled to the suburbs and left the lower class residents their more urban rundown leftovers. This created world then became the setting for resistance from various groups, such as minorities and youth, who began to undermine the Anglo infrastructure through social interaction.
The humble beginnings of Los Angeles only further emphasize the uniqueness of the construction of the community. Los Angeles morphed from a pueblo into a major metropolis overnight. In the county of Los Angeles, a population of 101,000 people in 1890 soared to a roaring 2.2 million by 1930 (Villa 37-38). These immigrants were overwhelmingly Anglo, a stark juxtaposition to the previous majority of Mexican-Americans. From the moment of their arrival, this new majority began to create a new community. To understand this new community, one must use a socio-geog...
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...ction of the youth and minority groups will continue to push the social norms, a process that will persist, yielding more and more integrated societies as generations pass.
In many ways, today’s Los Angeles can credit Anglo immigrants of the late 1800s and early 1900s as the driving force behind their communal roots. Their imagined reality of a rural city, the process of creating, leaving and fighting for their neighborhood, have left traces in the city. These traces can be seen in the fragmented infrastructure of Los Angeles. They can be seen in the callous, sometimes violent, social interaction within the community. Yet as youth and minority groups continue to socially interact in increased acceptance, Los Angeles will begin to lose some of its fragmented feel. Each generation will continue to unite Los Angeles through shared social interaction and experiences.
The tone of Whitewashed Adobe delivers an ethnic and cultural history of Los Angeles. The author, William Deverell, indicates “Los Angeles has been the city of the future for a long time.” The book takes a revealing and harsh look at prejudice, political power and control in the early vision of 19th century Los Angeles and its surrounding communities. Deverell’s main interest is the economically, culturally and politically powerful Anglos and their view of ethnicity and race that enabled them to distance themselves from the Mexican people. Whitewashed Adobe’s six chapters illuminate how these men “appropriated, absorbed, and occasionally obliterated” Mexican sites and history in going forth with their vision for Los Angeles.
When Spaniards colonized California, they invaded the native Indians with foreign worldviews, weapons, and diseases. The distinct regional culture that resulted from this union in turn found itself invaded by Anglo-Americans with their peculiar social, legal, and economic ideals. Claiming that differences among these cultures could not be reconciled, Douglas Monroy traces the historical interaction among them in Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California. Beginning with the missions and ending in the late 1800s, he employs relations of production and labor demands as a framework to explain the domination of some groups and the decay of others and concludes with the notion that ?California would have been, and would be today, a different place indeed if people had done more of their own work.?(276) While this supposition may be true, its economic determinism undermines other important factors on which he eloquently elaborates, such as religion and law. Ironically, in his description of native Californian culture, Monroy becomes victim of the same creation of the ?other? for which he chastises Spanish and Anglo cultures. His unconvincing arguments about Indian life and his reductive adherence to labor analysis ultimately detract from his work; however, he successfully provokes the reader to explore the complexities and contradictions of a particular historical era.
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.
Through visiting La Plaza De Culturas Y Artes, I have learned a lot more interesting, yet, surprising new information about the Chicano history in California. For example, in the 1910’s and on the high immigration of Mexicans and other Chicanos, into coal mines and farms by major corporations, made California one of the richest states in the US. I also learned that most of California 's economy was heavily reliant on immigrants. Immigrants were the preferred worker for major corporations because they didn 't have American rights and were given the harder jobs for less pay.
Years ago, there was once a small town called Chaves Ravine within Los Angeles, California and this town was a poor rural community that was always full of life. Two hundred families, mostly Chicano families, were living here quite peacefully until the Housing Act of 1949 was passed. The Federal Housing Act of 1949 granted money to cities from the federal government to build public housing projects for the low income. Los Angeles was one of the first cities to receive the funds for project. Unfortunately, Chavez Ravine was one of the sites chosen for the housing project, so, to prepare for the construction work of the low-income apartments, the Housing Authority of Los Angeles had to convince the people of the ravine to leave, or forcibly oust them from their property. Since Chavez Ravine was to be used for public use, the Housing Authority of Los Angeles was able seize and buy Chavez Ravine from the property owners and evict whoever stayed behind with the help of Eminent Domain. The LA Housing Authority had told the inhabitants that low-income housing was to be built on the land, but, because of a sequence of events, the public housing project was never built there and instead Dodgers Stadium was built on Chavez Ravine. Although Chavez Ravine public housing project was the result of the goodwill and intent of the government, rather than helping the people Chavez Ravine with their promise of low-income housing, the project ended up destroying many of their lives because of those in opposition of the public housing project and government mismanagement.
Quarterly . Vol. 56, No. 3, Los Angeles and the Future of Urban Cultures (Sep., 2004) , pp. 583-605. Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/40068235
Los Angeles was the place to find work if laboring was all you knew. Not speaking a word of English, but able to labor in the fields of California's various crops, Mexican immigrants flocked to Los Angeles. Los Angeles quickly became a Mecca for Mexicans wishing to partake of the American dream establishing themselves and creating families. The American dream, however, became just a dream as harsh unequal assessments by white Americans placed Mexican-Americans at the bottom of the social, economic, and political ladders. Whites believed that Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans had no place in their society: a place shared by many minorities (Del Castillo 7). Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in Los Angeles were at a great disadvantage despite their great numbers. No representation existed for the minorities.
This essay will discuss the issue of migration in South California, Los Angeles. This subject is very topical and affects many people. Why thousands of people immigrate to the city? Why other leave Los Angeles? There are a lot of reasons: economic, social, environmental and others. Arguments and all information will be analyzed thoroughly.
The South Bronx, New York City: another northern portrait of racial divide that naturally occurred in the span of less than a century, or a gradual, but systematic reformation based on the mistaken ideology of white supremacy? A quick glance through contemporary articles on The Bronx borough convey a continuation of less-than-ideal conditions, though recently politicians and city planners have begun to take a renewed interest in revitalizing the Bronx. (HU, NYT) Some common conceptions of the Bronx remain less than satisfactory—indeed, some will still express fear or disgust, while some others have expressed the fundamentally incorrect racial ideas studied here—but others recall the Bronx with fondness, calling it a once “boring” and “secure” neighborhood.(BRONX HIST JOURNAL, p. 1) What are we to do with such radically different accounts between The Bronx of yesterday, and the impoverished borough of today? If we speak in known, contemporary cultural stereotypes, then segregation is strictly a Southern design, but natural otherwise—but to record this as a natural occurrence, no different than a seasonal change or day turning to night, would be to ignore the underlying problem. The changing role of white Americans from majority to population minority in the Bronx, coupled with the borough’s title of “poorest urban county in America” (as of 2012), is the result of careful orchestration and a repeating story of economic and political gain superseding civil rights. (GONZALES, BRONX) (BRONX HIST JOURN, HARD KNOCKS IN BRONX @ poorest note ) It is not coincidence.
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...
There is an estimated count of “about 1 million unauthorized immigrants in Los Angeles” (Capp and Fortuny) out of a population of nine million reside in the city (US Census Bureau). Immigrants from all over the world move to Los Angeles because of the wide opportunities the city provides through the numerous schools and various employment occupati...
Los Angeles is a place with a dynamic history. It has grown to be one of the most diverse cities in the world as a whole. Despite the diversity for which it is known for, the city has always had a striving conflict due to racial and class tension. The social stratification of its past continues to take its toll as dividing lines persist in contemporary Los Angeles. Furthermore, these dividing lines redefine place in Los Angeles, whether geographically or personally, to be subject to race and class. Fluidity has become evident recently however it is more common for the identity of people to be fixed in society. Through the novel Southland, by Nina Revoyr, and various means of academic sources, one is further able to explore the subject of race, place, and reinvention in Los Angeles.
Connor, Walker., Heath Shirley B., and Paz Octavio. Who Are the Mexican-Americans?: A note on Comparability. Washington D.C.: The Urban Press, 1985
Despite having to battle discrimination and poor neighborhoods, second and third generation Mexican-Americans have made a great strife to overcome large obstacles. Mexican-Americans are finally gaining representation in city government representing the 9.6 million Mexican residents of Los Angeles. White politicians can no longer ignore Mexicans in Los Angeles, as former mayor Richard Riordan saw in the elections of 1997, in which his re-election was largely in part to the high turnout of Mexican voters in his favor. Although Capitalism still exists in the greater Los Angeles, its influence is not as great as it was fifty years ago. Los Angeles continues to serve as the breeding grounds for new cultures, ideologies, and alternative lifestyles. The pursuit of the American Dream becomes a reality for most immigrants in LA. LA is a great place to live, party, and be from. I knew little about the history of Los Angeles prior to this course, but now I am well prepared to answer the question of, “What makes Los Angeles, Los Angeles?”
When you associate anything with New York City it is usually the extraordinary buildings that pierce the sky or the congested sidewalks with people desperate to shop in the famous stores in which celebrities dwell. Even with my short visit there I found myself lost within the Big Apple. The voices of the never-ending attractions call out and envelop you in their awe. The streets are filled with an atmosphere that is like a young child on a shopping spree in a candy store. Although your feet swelter from the continuous walking, you find yourself pressing on with the yearning to discover the 'New York Experience'.