Lost in Los Angeles: My Relationship with and Understanding of Los Angeles as a Whole Thus Far
Born in San Francisco and raised in the college town of Davis, I have lived my whole life in Northern California. Much of my dad’s family lives in the greater Los Angeles area though, so my life has also included making the long straight drive down I-5 at least twice each year. Even with these numerous visits to LA, I feel like I hardly ever interacted with the city itself while I was growing up. Trips were always “to my grandma’s house”, “to the cousins’ old home in Pasadena”, “to Long Beach to see Cousin/Aunt/Great Aunt _________”, or “to Southern California for family vacation”. My time in Los Angeles as a child consisted of dinners at family houses, errands to Trader Joe’s, and countless afternoons at the beach, but my vacations were all about spending time with my family, not about spending time in Los Angeles.
Although I have lived in Los Angeles for the majority of the
past two years, I still feel as though I have a limited understanding of the
city. Without a car and with a midterm
almost every week, it’s easy to feel trapped in Westwood and isolated from the
rest of the city. I know where things
are, but not how they are connected.
I’ve been across the metropolitan area, but always as independent trips
for specific purposes.
During this course and while working on this blog, I hope to gain a better understanding of Los Angeles as a location and as an entity. As I consider Robert E. Park’s famous observation that
“The City is a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate”,I hope to understand Los Angeles as a whole, even if it really only exists as a sum of its parts—a conglomeration of Park’s independent, little worlds.
Now before my field research of venturing into specific and
different parts of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, I am not convinced by
Park’s statement. Although social
difference unequivocally is found in cities of such a scale, I think that different
social groups and cultures must intersect and come together, both physically
and in less obvious ways. Although
social difference often comes to our attention in the form of conflict and
confrontation, I think that differences in backgrounds, lifestyles, and
ideologies can contribute positively to the city experience. Of course, this is only possible if these
various individuals and groups actually interact in some way or another.
Even with my limited exploration of Los Angeles thus far, I have become
captivated by the city and the concept of urban areas in general. I’m currently considering graduate work in
urban planning or urban economic development, especially focusing on
environmental wellness and public health in the city. I’ve spent several hours and weekends working
with underserved youth from across Los Angeles and a special population of
children and their families living in North Hollywood. The past two years I also volunteered
teaching English to day laborers waiting for work at labor centers in West and
Downtown LA. Again, I have taken part in
these experiences as purposeful and isolated projects, spending time with a
specific population in a specific part of Los Angeles. To this point, I have been somewhat unable to
see these groups within the greater context of the metropolitan
agglomeration.
As a geography student and as a citizen of planet Earth, I
have always been fascinated by the concept of home. During this course, I want to understand the
process by which the individuals and groups of Los Angeles feel at home in
their native area or in a location far from their original homes. More recently, I have studied and reflected
on the homeless and homelessness. I hope
to consider what it means to be homeless in Los Angeles and the lives of those
who sleep on the streets, especially as a choice.
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