Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 6

Gender in Commerce

My blog post this week is in response to my classmate Gurdeep's exploration of the City of Commerce, particularly the Citadel Outlets and public transportation in the area.  You can read Gurdeep's original post and my interpretation here.

Here are a few reference maps of the area Gurdeep discussed in her post.  The maps are screenshots taken from Google Maps.

My response to Gurdeep's post:


Hey Gurdeep! 

I enjoyed reading your posting about the City of Commerce! I especially likes how you included so much about the history of the area as an industrial zone and especially the history and reasoning behind the Citadel Outlets. 

I think it would be really interesting to look at Commerce and the outlets from the view of a feminist geographer (or a geographer considering how the city defines, limits, reinforces, and works with gender and gender roles. Many of the places and feelings you observed in your exploration of Commerce fit well with Sophie Watson's piece "City A/Genders". Watson explains how the earlier industrial cities were possibly set up, and definitely interpreted, as reflecting and reinforcing "traditional assumptions about gender" (237). 

Watson describes how in the radial, concentric circle city model transportation linked the suburbs to the central business district so that the commuting men could get into the city center for work and then home again each day. Public transportation and boulevards did not, however, link suburbs to one another or suburban homes to other suburban resources. Especially without cars during the day, women were excluded from daily life in the city and made to stay in the house taking care of the children and the home. 
In your post, you talk about how it was relatively easy to access the city and shopping without a car. Maybe this could be interpreted as the post modern city being more inviting and accessible to women. Or maybe it isn't even far to think of any city as consciously or unconsciously excluding and limiting the activities of women as a social class. Watson explains how more current geographers and spatial thinkers now usually take a post-modern approach to thinking about gender in the city as they consider the multiple truths and reasons in the complex and subjective factors which contribute to social difference and city life. 

I found it especially interesting and relevant that you warned against walking in the industrial area alone. Along with the early analyses of gender in the city, Watson states, "The lack of safety associated with the public spaces of the city, the lack of street lighting and te imagined and real dangers of public transport, particularly at night, curtain women's easy movement, particularly older and younger women and migrants for rural areas" (237). According to Watson, this lack of safety and even the feeling of being in danger is key to excluding women from city centers. I too have often felt unsafe or uncomfortable walking in certain areas of Los Angeles, even during the day. The fact that you mentioned this in your post even though it was not the main point of the post shows how safety and the awareness of safety in spaces is always on our minds. I think that this ever-present concern about safety, especially as a woman being alone in an unfamiliar area, is something that could indeed limit to some extent and continue to constrict the full participation of women and reinforce feelings (and truths) of inequality and exclusion in the urban centers. 

I think your post could have benefited from a map with your bus routes highlighted so your readers could see where the City of Commerce and the Citadel Outlets are located within Los Angeles. I don't know how to post a photo as a comment, so I'll post a map of the area on my blog http://findlostangeles.blogspot.com/. 

Thank you for your insightful and descriptive post about the City of Commerce. Your post along with the readings for this past week have made me start to think about the city in a different way and I will keep my eyes open for more examples of how gender may (or may not) play a role in defining the city or life in the city, or how it is defined by the city. 

Thanks again!

-Teresa Pilon




References: 
Kaur, Gurdeep. "Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 5." Web log post. L.A. Next Exit. N.p., 2 Nov. 2012. Web. 09 Nov. 2012. <http://lanextexit.blogspot.com/2012/11/blogging-social-difference-in-la-week-5.html?showComment=1352527235363>.

Watson, Sophie. "City A/Genders." The BlackwellCity Reader. Ed. Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. 2nd ed. Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 237-42. Print.