Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 3

Palos Verdes Estates: A Modern Exclusion of the Defiled?

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

For this week’s exploration of Los Angeles, I returned to an area very close to but decisively different from Lomita.  Only a few miles west of Lomita, Palos Verdes Estates, my destination this week, is definitely a different world.  A neighborhood knows for its wealth and status, I wanted to see how it relates to nearby Lomita and if any of Friedrich Engels’s or David Sibley’s observations on excluding the “defiled” urban city people or hiding them from the eyes of the privileged apply.    

The drive along Palos Verdes Dr into Palos Verdes Estates from Lomita

Approaching Palos Verdes Estates.
Some of the thousand words contained in this picture: What a beautiful place!!! Not pedistrian friendly. 'MURICA!

Although many of the houses in Palos Verdes Estates rest back on large well-kept lawns, I was surprised by how close to one another all of the houses are.  In “The Emergence of Postsuburia: An Introduction”, Rob Kling, Spencer Olin, and Mark Poster comment that many would-be Los Angeles residents migrated to Orange County because of its temperate climate and open space outside of the urban city.  The houses are so near to one another probably because of the limited space so close to the ocean.  Even though the proximity of surrounding homes do to some extent limit privacy, each house is still on a sizable plot.  More importantly, the neighbors are most likely of similar economic status if not ethnic background as well, so exclusion in Sibley’s terms does not really apply to the proximity of other houses within Palos Verdes Estates.

Beautiful houses in a beautiful place...and right next to the neighbors' beautiful houses!

A commuter shuttle to Downtown LA  serves Palos Verdes Estates on weekdays

Metro Trip Planner finds no direct routes between DTLA and Palos Verdes Estates

In their discussion of “Postsuburbia”, Kling, Olin, and Poster emphasize that such areas are “designed to accommodate the automobile driver.”  Stores and business are located within a few miles of the houses but, as Kling, Olin, and Poster observe, “are too far to be a convenient walk for most residents” (p. 7).  The authors also note that postsuburban areas do have a substantial bus system although the private automobile is much more used.  Palos Verdes is not necessarily an example of a postsuburban development, but some aspects of “postsuburbia”, including this dependence on personal cars and denial of public transportation ring true in Palos Verdes Estates.  There are some bus stops around Palos Verdes Estates but there service seems to be very limited.  I used Google Maps’ directions by public transportation function and the Metro Trip Planner to see that Palos Verdes Estates is not very accessible by public transportation.  There is a commuter express that regularly runs from Downtown LA to Palos Verdes, but only on weekdays.  The Metro Trip Planner could not find a direct route from DTLA to PV with the site’s restrictions on travel time and walking distance for the trip.  Google Maps did have some routes from Downtown to Palos Verdes Estates, but they included multiple line transfers and walking between bus stops.  This finding did not surprise me because I did not see any hint of public transportation while I was there and because the residents of Palos Verdes Estates with their abundance of cars do not seem like the type to use public transportation.  Even if the commuter shuttle is used by PV Estates Residents, it is almost like a modern version of the transportation routes Friedrich Engels describes in his critique of the industrial city of Manchester.  Engels explains how what he refers to as the middle and upper bourgeoisie living in “remoter villas with gardens […] or on the breezy heights […] in free, wholesome country air, in fine, comfortable homes” have access to the industrial center by regular omnibuses which pass through the city on thoroughfares that disguise the squalor and slums of working peoples’ homes (Engles 12).  The Palos Verdes Estates houses with their lawns and ocean air seem similar to Engels’s suburbs of Manchester.  Wall along the freeway, and the freeway itself as opposed to surface streets, separate any commuters from poverty or unclean “others” on the way downtown.  More so, the commuter bus itself, which specifically serves Palos Verdes, acts as a way to separate the upper-class commuters from the often less-privileged and definitely more diverse crowd on regular city public transportation. 

This relative inaccessibility of Palos Verdes Estates without a car could be a manifestation of excluding non-residents in particular and lower socioeconomic classes in general.  David Sibley’s editor remarks how Sibley emphasizes how “people’s feelings about others are translated into spatial practices which map exclusionary sentiments on to real spaces” (p. 380).  Sibley explains how the ordered design of a European Baroque city used internal boundaries to exclude the general population from the sacred palace in the city center, in this way he states, “geometry expresses power” (p. 383).  Although Palos Verdes Estates is obviously not a central location or religious or political palace, its residents do control a desirable and valuable feature: the proximity to the ocean and access to its views.   “Nature […] can provide images of purity, often in contrast to the defiled city” (Sibley, p. 386).  Palos Verdes Estates’ breathtaking vistas of the Pacific do give its residents something to look at besides the urban sprawl visible to the north.  The limited access to the neighborhood and the views also suggest that not only do the inhabitants of Palos Verdes Estates get to look at the pure ocean instead of the defiled city, but also they alone have access to the views.  Their status and wealth grants them access to their location and their location brings them special closeness to aesthetic and natural beauty.  Whether it is a conscious decision or not, by choosing to live in the grand houses and stunning vistas the residents of Palos Verdes Estates without a doubt separate themselves from and exclude people of lower social and economic classes. 

The urban sprawl is visible from some points in Palos Verdes Estates

My wonderful brother who drives me all over Los Angeles,
including the sidewalk-less streets of Palos Verdes :)

Additionally, the residential streets of Palos Verdes Estates are wide but do not have sidewalks.  In a way this makes sense because there is really nowhere close to go besides to a neighbor’s house.  I think the lack of sidewalks really indicates that there is no walking culture in the neighborhood.  Residents can walk along the bluff overlooking the ocean, but this implies that in this place walking is an activity for recreation or exercise, not a form of transportation.  Indeed, many homes had multiple luxury cars parked in front of the house.  Almost all of the plots have garages along the sides of the houses, but perhaps the cars parked in front are on display as an indicator of wealth and taste.  One house had two shiny Mercedes sedans and BMW SUV.   It also could just be more convenient to park your car right outside the front door, which further suggests a culture of constantly driving to and from places.  Either way, the residents of Palos Verdes Estates are clearly not concerned about theft or damage to their cars while in their neighborhood.  This suggests that residents are not surrounded or accessible by anyone who would steal their cars; they are effectively apart from any culture of crime or vandalism, most usually seen in areas of poverty.  

Campaign signs in front of a house Palos Verdes Estates.
Also, notice the proximity of the neighboring house.

As in many non-urban residential areas, Palos Verdes Estates is free of signage and advertisements beyond its stylized street signs.  Some lawns displayed campaign signs, but these are chosen and put on view by the residents and are not permanent or sponsored advertisements like billboards.  While I was on the bluff overlooking the cove a plane towing a banner advertising Malibu Rum flew over the ocean, but again this advertisement was temporary and could easily be missed or ignored.  According to David Sibley, advertising is counted among urban “pollutants” like social disorder, litter, and roadside cafes and has historically been a feature of working-class areas and a concern of middle and upper-class individuals in more removed, less urban areas (p. 384).  The absence of permanent advertising in Palos Verdes Estates holds true to this observation; the residents have taken themselves away from and barred entry of advertisements in the “pure” “sanctity” of their neighborhood. 

A rare advertisement sneaks into Palos Verdes Estates

The manicured lawns, luxury cars, beautiful vistas, and custom-built houses of Palos Verdes Estates do seem pure and perfect, especially compared to more urban, high-density areas in Los Angeles.  Additionally, with views of the ocean and private cars and local shuttles to access other areas of the city, Palos Verdes residents do not have to come into direct contact with undesirable places or people.  It’s not clear, however, if the residents of Palos Verdes Estates are purposefully trying to exclude lower classes of less “perfect” people, but I don’t think that this matters.  Whether it is a conscious decision or an implied consequence of living on limited expensive real estate, the inhabitants of PV are effectively removing themselves and making themselves inaccessible to what Sibley refers to as the constant “threatening difference” and “imperfect people” of modern urban cities. 

"Extreme exclusion on the edge of the world" 

References: 

Engels, Friedrich. "The Great Towns." The Blackwell City Reader. Ed. Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. 2nd ed. Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 11-16. Print.

Kling, Rob, Spencer C. Olin, and Mark Poster. "The Emergence of Postsuburbia: An Introduction." Introduction. Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County since World War II. Berkeley: University of California, 1991. 1-23. Web. <http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft0k40036b/>.

Sibley, David. "Mapping the Pure and the Defiled." Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West. London: New York, 1995. 380-87. Web.