Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 2

Retracing my LA Past: Lomita

(This weeks adventure fulfills requirements:
2. A car trip
4. A visit to a location in the LA metro region that is at least 15 miles from UCLA)

This past weekend I revisited the Los Angeles of my childhood.  My older brother, who has also lived in West LA for the past two years, and I decided on a semi-whim to go back to our grandma Mima's old house in Lomita and to Torrance Beach (a.k.a. "THE Beach" from my trips to Los Angeles).  I was explaining this project and my thoughts on the time our family spent in Los Angeles when we were young to my brother and he suggested driving back to and looking around our childhood Los Angeles because he too had been wanting to orient his early Los Angeles visits within his current understanding and life in the city.

We drove into Lomita from the southeast, up from Orange County and through the Port of Los Angeles.  As we turned onto Palos Verdes Dr. W., I was especially aware of how the houses of her former neighborhood, large and attractive without being excessively elegant or showy, differed from the shabby, one level dwellings, autoshops, and strip markets we had driven through only a few minutes before near the port.  As we neared her house though, we passed the entrance to "Harbor Hills", a clean  but extremely simple apartment complex with parking spaces and some grass between the units.  It wasn't until we had driven past (thankfully I snapped a quick photo out the window though!) that I realized that I knew this place from my childhood too.

Harbor Hills is a government subsidized housing project and it lies directly adjacent to my grandma's old classic suburban plot.  I remember a wall at the back of her large backyard and knowing that behind that wall was "The Projects" but as a young girl I didn't really know what that meant besides that poorer people lived there and it sometimes got loud and rowdy at night.

I thought of  Robert E. Park's observation again.  

“The City is a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate.”

My grandmother is one of the most tolerant, accepting, and socially aware individuals out there.  She has an innate love of people and a sense of responsibility to look out for those less privileged than she; she has actively worked on social justice issues in her local communities and in other countries.  Even so, to my knowledge my grandma never spent time in Harbor Hills or associated with any of its residents even though they were technically her neighbors.  Despite its physical closeness, the world of Harbor Hills was so not a part of my experience on my grandma's residential suburban-type Lomita street and I never heard her more than mention the complex or any of its residents.  Indeed, we were aware that Harbor Hills was there--aware that the complex literally came up against the walls surrounding our world--but it did not interpenetrate our space or our thoughts any more than occasional noise or sirens in the night.

The Harbor Hills housing project in Lomita

My grandma's former neighborhood (above) and house (below)

As we were leaving the neighborhood, we turned around at the top of a hill and saw this view of the city to the east, with the port visible in the afternoon LA haze:

The view reminded me of the representation of "an ideal construction of the tendencies of any town or city to expand radially from its central business district [labeled the 'Loop']" (Ernest Burgess, "The Growth of the City").  Could we be in the Residential or Commuter Zone associated with the obvious industry visible in the distance?

Is it possible for this basic model of city growth and class dispersal to extend from multiple centers of industry within the same city?  For example, could the Port of Los Angeles, the Downtown LA fashion district, the Sunset Strip music industry, and Hollywood's center of film and celebrity culture all be different central "loops" within the boundaries of Los Angeles?

It seems to me that this would make a lot of sense in a metropolitan region like Los Angeles with its characteristic sprawl and several different neighborhoods and municipalities and specialized areas.  It's tempting to see the photo I took as proof of differences in neighborhoods and demographics expanding from the center of industry following the theory of growth Burgess describes.  I think this is definitely something to keep in mind as I continue to explore and attempt to understand Los Angeles, but it is also important not to jump to conclusions and see correlations that either do not actually exist or do not actually signify a cause and an effect or prove a theory.

Looking back to the Lomita view and Burgess's observations about the growth of the city, my grandma's old neighborhood could very well be Burgess's district of single family dwellings of the Residential Zone.  It brushes up against the Harbor Hills housing project which could be the edge of a Zone of Workingmen's Homes, outside still of the obviously poorer streets of ethnic diversity closer to the Port of Los Angeles which could be the Zone in Transition around the center of industry.

I do not, however, know very much about the cultures, backgrounds, occupations, or daily lives of the individuals living in this area.  I doubt that many of my grandma's neighbors lives were directly associated with industry in the port.  Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that quite a few of the other residents of her streets were retired as well.  I do know that the higher class neighborhood of Palos Verdes is northwest of this area, which could be the Commuters' Zone of more affluent and wealthier individuals.  Again though, I'm not convinced that this observable difference in housing types and social class corresponds to Burgess's model.

The possibilities and potential conclusions about the layout of Palos Verdes and Lomita seem overwhelming: In this case is this kind of diagram representation even applicable to an urban area as large and complex as LA?


For me personally, going back to Lomita provided a type of closure as I finally made geographic sense of the small island of familiarity in sea of Los Angeles sprawl.  At the same time, however, seeing Lomita in the context of the whole and approaching the familiar as a critical observer alerted me in a new way to the social/class diversity and inequity in the area, its significance, and how it ties into the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

References: 

Burgess, Ernest W. "Chapter 37: The Growth of the City." The Blackwell City Reader. By Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2010. 339-44. Print.

Image from "Growth of the City" and found at http://www.geneseo.edu/~bearden/?pg=socl217/burgess.html