Cities 07

OBE #5 what’s next armed neighborhoods like Iraq? (revised)

Fortifies enclaves misrepresent what an urban environment stands for. Generally speaking, cosmopolitan residents are civic-minded and embrace diversity. The results of Calderia’s ethnographic research on Sao Paulo and Los Angeles illustrate just the opposite. Urban residents build private enclaves for security purposes to hide from the crime they produce. “Private enclaves and the segregation they generate deny many of the basic elements which constituted the modern experience of public life.” (404)
The major problem is the Sao Paulo is that residents conform to crime. At the same time they instigate social inequalities from practicing social hierarchies. On the other hand Los Angeles, also known as “La-la-land,” perpetuates this sort of class segregation by typifying cultures in the media. Although there are apparent cultural differences between the two cities, both appear to produce equal civic harms in their city from spatial segregation.
San Paulo citizens hide from violence and the City of Angels is promoting it, so who’s really worse? Both cities are responsible for breeding ignorance through spatial segregation. People can blame the economy, political transformations or other social events all they want. Truth is that at large residents are responsible for the social organization of their city. This research study did not surprise me. Isolation and gentrification doesn’t medicate the problem, just emphasizes it. After the reading on Sao Paulo’s societal concerns, I wanted to deny that an American city was unconstitutionally diverting back to class segregation. My patriotism was trumped by Calderia sound comparisons between Sao Paulo and Los Angeles; both have huge differences in distributions of wealth, vivacious multicultural populations, and hire domestic staff to advertise elite class status. The two cities practice spatial segregation. Both cities perpetuate crime. The major difference is that Paulista elites unapologetically practice spatial segregation and Los Angeles elites use more discretion. In Los Angeles, pop culture derives from the media’s portrayal of everyday events. Violence continues to be a societal norm because L.A. profits from criminal activities. Overall people are practicing residential segregation from fear of public interaction. Fearing the general public undermines what a true metropolitan citizen. Calderia is suggesting that there is an overall lack of trust between cultures. In addition, creating fortified enclaves is not the ideal solution to poverty. Her argument is that socially homogeneous urban residents are fleeing to secured neighborhoods to protect themselves from the poor. In her words, “isolated community, a secure environment, in which one can use various facilities and services and live only among equals” rejects what a metro environment stands for.”(306)
Calderia addresses an excellent point on misuse of class power. Affluent residents of Sao Paulo abuse class power by literally defining their social status. I feel advertising superiority from the less established is wrong on many levels especially in Sao Paulo’s case example. The community tries to practice social order to prevent contact with inferior classes through spatial segregation. However, how is “separation between two entrances” going to prevent contact? Why would these fortified enclaves employ the very population they fear? Alienation of this kind unnecessarily humiliates the working class and Paulista elites look like a fool for hiring people they fear.

The following is irrelevant to Calderia’s writings on fortified enclaves, but this is bog so I’d like to take a moment and vent. After reading Caldeira’s theory on spatial segregation from societal fear and how Sao Paulo has walled neighborhoods…I started thinking of the Iraqi neighborhoods. Talk about neighborhoods living in fear! Here’s a community that even if they wanted to hide from unruly violence and create their own safe neighborhood, they have U.S. soldiers and in the face dictating how a functioning community operates. Meanwhile back home in the US our cities are being socially segregated through class rather then religion. Maybe we should practice what we war.