Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 5

Here is my reply to a fellow classmates piece on Sunset Blvd: http://streetsignsucla.blogspot.com/2012/11/blogging-social-difference-in-la-week-5.html?showComment=1351911430332#c7142783756582570975


Hi Brandon,

Really interesting trip you took down Sunset and back to Downtown Los Angeles. You hit on some very interesting points that I think are worth re-mentioning and working into a little bit, mostly notably the idea of pushing “foreign” or “undesirable” people out of a community and keeping it that way.

While you didn’t mean to ride west on the bus, I think it made for a really interesting look at how the development of Sunset Blvd goes from the coast all the way to downtown, and how it varies throughout the trip. In some areas (mostly the wealthy ones) there are no sidewalks along this main thorough fare, while in other parts like Hollywood, there are as a way for people to walk around locally. I think this development can be viewed in two ways.

First, is the idea you discussed earlier and what Sibley talks about, in an effort by cities to keep people out and limit access, especially by walking. This is a notable theme in a popular piece by Mike Davis called “City of Quartz” which discusses this phenomenon especially in L.A. around the times of the major race riots in the early 90s. Groups of people go through sometimes extreme measures to insulate themselves and prevent from those unknown to enter and we definitely see that on Sunset as this street that connects large parts of L.A. is really only drivable the whole way through. For pure safety reasons, notwithstanding social ones, walking on Sunset with no sidewalks and its curvy roads is a death trap for the pedestrian.

There is another lens that the development of Sunset can be viewed through, and that’s its purpose. For some neighborhoods, usually the residential heavy ones, it just a main road that allows you to elsewhere in the road system, it is not a place to stroll along as distances from a home to any place of utility are too far for the common Angeleno to brave. But in Hollywood, there are sidewalks as it becomes denser and people want to move from a home or apt to shop or restaurant without having to necessarily drive. Whether the local retail determined Sunset Blvd here or vice versa, there is no doubt that it exists for a reason outside of social exclusion, which I think, is a point worth looking into more.

Great piece once again,

Nick