Cities 07

The notions of the dual city that Castells noted as well as the enclaves of Sao Paulo are paralleled by the urban mutations that have progressively segregated and militarized public space in L.A. Near the beginning of Davis’ work he notes that “ ‘security’ has less to do with personal safety than with the degree of personal insulation, in residential, work, consumption and travel environments, from ‘unsavory’ groups and individuals, even crowds in general”(203). The amount of actual danger the middle and upper class of L.A. face from the racial and class “other” is so remote that what is termed security is in actuality just social insulation management. This need for insulation is only reinforced by the media’s portrayal of dilapidated urban centers overrun with lower class violence committed predominately by non-white youth.

To counter this fear of the urban underclass, the overt restructuring of the L.A.’s financial district in tandem with dwindling public space has led to a disgusting level of social stratification by way of spatial semiotic tactics. The rise of the Pacific Rim financial complex is exemplary of these tactics. Through the privatization of malls and underground concourses, the life of the street in these sectors has been effectively diminished to the point of near extinction. Since these spaces are not openly accessible to all citizens, it allows for the bourgeoisie to traverse in monitored, socially homogenous space without the anxiety of coming into contact with anyone outside of one’s class position, unless it is with someone from the “third-world service proletariat”(Davis 204). This type of segregation allows one to feel sufficiently insulated while hedging the guilt that tangible walls might evoke.

Davis notes that while some critics, such as Sam Hall Kaplan, see these effects as the oversights of bad design, he does not give them the benefit of ignorance. Instead, he does not mince words and outright blames these designers for intentionally creating spaces that will explicitly delineate social stratification. What makes these developments unique from other cites is that, unlike the restoration of historical neighborhoods which bring gentrification but create elite enclaves as Castells espoused, LA is cutting all ties with historical sectors of the city. This has been done by literally removing means of access to these areas by pedestrians as well as scaring business owners to relocate to the redeveloped sectors by the use of racial propaganda distributed by the LAPD (Davis 205). To top it off, the Harbor freeway functions to seal off the new financial district from the surrounding lower class neighborhoods. While in other models proposed thus far we have seen an intermingling of upper and lower class spaces, albeit in elite pockets or cells, this process seems to want to create a center where one does not have to encounter anybody unless by their own choosing, which echoes the Engelsian model of socio-spatial segregation.

Imagining this contemporary metropolis through the impassioned rhetoric of Davis almost makes what he lays before me seem fantastical, but I’m sure this is due to my lack of first-hand experience with cities of this scale. It will be interesting to see how this degree of segregation will affect the urban landscape ten to twenty years from now. Will cities just continue along the trajectory of becoming increasingly Informational/Cultural monoliths that Castells and Zukin posited, with marginalized groups becoming spatially marginalized as well? Conversely, will the marginalized groups gain enough influence to eventually reclaim a meaningful presence in the city? If what Davis has shown in LA becomes further spread, the chances of the latter becoming true are slim to none.