http://uclageography.blogspot.com/2012/10/week-4-not-so-decentralized-la.html
Hi Laiza,
I enjoyed reading your blog because it had a lot of personal character to it! You experience the hassle of riding public transportation for long hours every day in order to make it to school. Not many people I know would make this sacrifice in order to attend this university, and I found it very interesting to see how you personally attributed how public transportation serves you but is also difficult. I cannot relate taking public transportation every day like yourself but I have also ridden this bus line and can understand the ‘gradient’ nature of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region.
I enjoyed reading your blog because it had a lot of personal character to it! You experience the hassle of riding public transportation for long hours every day in order to make it to school. Not many people I know would make this sacrifice in order to attend this university, and I found it very interesting to see how you personally attributed how public transportation serves you but is also difficult. I cannot relate taking public transportation every day like yourself but I have also ridden this bus line and can understand the ‘gradient’ nature of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region.
As you stated, the center downtown area and East part of Los
Angeles differ greatly from the west areas. I too, have seen the poor, polluted areas of downtown and have related it
to our previous reading by Friedrich Engels, “Great Towns.” The way he
describes the center of Manchester and all of its industry, reminds me slightly
of how the downtown area is not well maintained and sort of a dangerous area. I
have family that lives in East LA, and where they live is what I pictured of
Los Angeles before I came to UCLA. However, I was glad to see how fortunate I am to live in a nice area that is still crowded, but with much lower crime
rates and no gang activity.
You made a good point attributing the Chicago School Model
to Los Angeles and its counterparts. I think Downtown L.A. is where most people
think of L.A, and the surrounding neighborhoods revolve around it as people
commute to and from their work places and homes. However, I think throughout
time and with the wide-use of automobiles and public transportation, Los Angeles has been more separated
from the typical city model where there is a prominent political center. What I would call the
center, would not be what someone from another part of L.A. would call it. The
city of Los Angeles is similar to New York, where it has diverse neighborhoods
and boroughs that might be spatially close, but very dissimilar in terms of
demographics, wealth, and appearance. Because of this, each borough has its own center, and that is why I think Los Angeles is more of a decentralized large
area, than a centralized Metropolitan city. However, transportation networks have
helped to connect these diverse areas after the third urban revolution we learned about in lecture. Trains,
buses, trolleys have been essential in Los Angeles to make the area function as
a decentralized post-modern region.
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