Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 10

           

-The theme for this blog-

    

      For this final week, of my Social Differences blog, I want to examine differences that will hit a little closer to home:  Westwood.  I was inspired by our most recent topic in class of neo-liberalism.  Our society demonstrates neo-liberal characteristics (though the political debate dances back and forth in our bi-partisan system).  Due to this, we came to the conclusion in class that free spaces do not exist in our society.  Spaces are designated as residential or private, commercial, and "public" which means owned and monitored by the government.  I decided to walk around Westwood and see if I could find evidence of this.  I was surprised to find an overwhelming amount of evidence! 

      Cars represent these categories perfectly.  I walked around and paid attention to every sign that provided some information about the spaces cars could occupy, within the limitations of their usual realms of course.  The trend that became apparent was that the space where either private, commercial, or public.  Below are a handful of pictures demonstrating this:

 

 

 

 

      Whole Foods Market is a commercial enterprise seeking profits, thus it provides access for their customers' cars, but it very clear of this parking lot's purpose.  These two signs capture only a faction of what is on display.  Additionally, Whole Foods Market employs a parking attendant to monitor this.   

 

 

    

      These pictures depict public parking areas.  Parking is an overstatement.  Speaking from experience, finding public parking is near impossible and getting a ticket once you do find a spot, is not as rare as the task of finding the spot innitially.  The city it kind enough to denote where parking one's car is acceptable.  However, battling with an overpopulated ratio of cars to parking places in addition to the limitations of categorized parking areas, makes the city's efforts of labeling public parking a wasted effort. 

       There are a number of commercial parking regions.  Addmittedly, one may always find parking here, which proves the neo-liberal point of private businesses functioning better than the government.  However, this also embodies the drawbacks of neo-liberalism.  Neo-liberalism has a widening effect between the wealthy and the poor.  This is because if one cannot pay, one cannot play.  The underprivileged are unable to partake in many opportunities in life because there is a price for the opportunities.  The wealthier may partake and as a result, stride further ahead and continue to widen the gap.
              

        

      The residential or private sphere offers benefits to its individual owners.  It is a relief in Metropolitan L.A. to come home at the end of the day and know that you have your own parking space waiting for you.  However, I find that to be rather wasteful; though that point of protected private property would be highly regarded by neo-liberals.  Another alternative is the Zip-Car, which can be seen all around Westwood.  This is a successful, institutionalized car-sharing system.  

      After seeing how clearly parking spaces fit the mold of private, commercial, and public, I was curious how I could see this relationship throughout the greater L.A. metropolitan region.

        This following image, from Simplymaps shows the proportions of establishments in relation to other zip code regions.  This paints a general spread illustrating that in the L.A. Metropolitan region, the areas nearest the coast are the most business oriented, or comcommercial.  I actually grew up in Rancho Cucamonga.  It is relatively residential, and it becomes more so, the farther from the heart of L.A.  
  
     The metropolitan region of L.A., as this blog has traced, is a highly complex city consisting of an array of differences.  L.A is, as Robert E. Park said, "a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate.”  But it also maintains a stability despite these separations and disorder.