One interesting pattern in large American cities is that the south sides of cities that are located below a city's central core are almost always blue collar, working class areas.
South Boston. South Philly. South Baltimore. Southeast DC. The South Side of Chicago. Southwest Atlanta. South side of Houston. Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. South Central Los Angeles.
Not that is not to say there are no nice southern sections of cities are that sections of cities north of their downtowns may not be as working class as southern sections. But in many cases the south sides of cities are not only infamous in their own right but they can also define the working class character of the entire city. South Boston and Southies have been prominently shown in recent big budget films like The Town and The Departed. Philadelphia is inextricably linked to South Philly because of cheesesteaks and Rocky. The South Side of Chicago, Lower Ninth and South Central dominate the working class images of their respective cities on a national scale.
For port cities, it's easier to connect the dots on why the southern sections of cities became large working class communities. These cities were often located on rivers and waterways that forced cheap working class labor to live on the cheapest land (as well as unwanted ethnic groups as well. You might have heard America was a little racisty back then), which was often swamps and marshy land that were located just below major ports and factories. South Boston, South Philadelphia, Southeast DC and the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans were literally built on swamp land. The cramped conditions of these cities original working class helped foster the image of their city's working class to this day. Chicago's famous south side which is bordered by lake Michigan was also built on swamp land but did not develop around port factories. Chicago's South Side was developed around the Union Stockyards, the city's meat-packing district and the Pullman railroad company.
But for the other major cities in the South and West the connection to why the south side of their major cities are working class are not as clear. Did cities in the South and West which developed into major cities only within the 20th century just repeat the development of older cities because of precedent? I don't know but I find it very peculiar.
No matter the case, here's my shout out to the American city South Side:
Common ft Kanye West - Southside
Showing posts with label Los Angeles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Los Angeles. Show all posts
Monday, May 2, 2011
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Los Angeles
BlackAtlas Travel Expert Nelson George takes you on a trip through Los Angeles. View more of Nelson's videos online at www.blackatlas.com.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Architecture without Rules
Paul Barker from the Times Online wrote an article about Architecture without rules that has criticized the effects oc city planning on cities. He writes:
"Urban planning has led to shoddiness, squalor and ugliness in our cities. Let’s throw away the rulebook and allow people to build where they want..."
Shots fired.
You know the funny thing is, whenever we let architects do their own thing on a mass level in cities, they almost always forget about the human scale. Or they come up with an abstract theory for a new human scale or try to completely revolutionize the parameters human scale. Need I remind the writer that Le Corbusier's influence on the International modernist style of architecture and planning that led to some of the most bland and unimaginative buildings ever built that often lacked context with it's surrounding environment. Le Corbusier's vision of "the city and the park" also helped create isolated office and residential towers that enforced the separation of land uses and limited the connectivity of people and urban places.
In the U.S. (the writer is from England) we have let many cities and architects do what they want. And the cities of Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Atlanta have all perfected Le Corbusier's plan to a tee and all of these five cities lack a central downtown and a sense of place.
Now this is not to knock all architects who which to plan the urban landscape. There have been many architects who have done great jobs in creating buildings to human scale and creating great master planned communities.
But back to the article. Barker's main point is that the conservation of rural land outside of English cities has dramatically risen housing prices in cities. He argues from a conservative standpoint that people should be allowed to build anywhere in the green pastures in suburbia that they like. Again I would like to point to the American cities of Los Angeles, Atlanta and Houston to show him how great that has worked out.
What's your opinion? How do you feel about architecture without planning and development without boundaries?
"Urban planning has led to shoddiness, squalor and ugliness in our cities. Let’s throw away the rulebook and allow people to build where they want..."
Shots fired.
You know the funny thing is, whenever we let architects do their own thing on a mass level in cities, they almost always forget about the human scale. Or they come up with an abstract theory for a new human scale or try to completely revolutionize the parameters human scale. Need I remind the writer that Le Corbusier's influence on the International modernist style of architecture and planning that led to some of the most bland and unimaginative buildings ever built that often lacked context with it's surrounding environment. Le Corbusier's vision of "the city and the park" also helped create isolated office and residential towers that enforced the separation of land uses and limited the connectivity of people and urban places.
In the U.S. (the writer is from England) we have let many cities and architects do what they want. And the cities of Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Atlanta have all perfected Le Corbusier's plan to a tee and all of these five cities lack a central downtown and a sense of place.
Now this is not to knock all architects who which to plan the urban landscape. There have been many architects who have done great jobs in creating buildings to human scale and creating great master planned communities.
But back to the article. Barker's main point is that the conservation of rural land outside of English cities has dramatically risen housing prices in cities. He argues from a conservative standpoint that people should be allowed to build anywhere in the green pastures in suburbia that they like. Again I would like to point to the American cities of Los Angeles, Atlanta and Houston to show him how great that has worked out.
What's your opinion? How do you feel about architecture without planning and development without boundaries?
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
"The Garden" Trailer
The Garden is the unflinching look at the struggle between urban farmers and the City of Los Angeles and a powerful developer who wants to evict them and build warehouses. Mostly immigrants from Latin American countries where they feared for their lives if they were to speak out, we watch them organize, fight back, and demand, "Where is our 'Justice for all'?"
Friday, January 30, 2009
L.A. Sprawl
Years ago, one of my Urban Studies Professors challenged the current notions of sprawl by stating that Philadelphia has more sprawl then L.A. The professor stated that the Philadelphia suburbs consume more square miles of countryside given Philadelphia's size when compared to Los Angeles and it's suburbs.
Could this be true? Do east coast cities actually generate more sprawl then auto-dependent L.A.? Well, it depends on how you calculate density. The popular myth of East Coasters when they think of L.A. is that it is a giant collection of suburbs when in fact it is a densely populated city.
But how dense is dense? While L.A. is undoubtedly urban is it as dense as Philadelphia? The answer to that question is no. Philadelphia is the most compact city in the county, even more so then New York City. So if one city is denser then another but it's suburbs consume more land, how would you calculate which is more sprawled?
Fast forward to a book review I ran across recently in Metropolis Magazine about Robert Bruegmann’s book, Sprawl: A Compact History. The book which advocated that Los Angeles’s urbanized area is more densely populated than New York’s, set off a whirlwind of debate between planners. While most planners believe in traditional regulation of development, found most prominently in the east coast, there is a rising faction of planners that believe in minimal regulation and allowing the market to dictate development. Bruegmann's book about sprawl and density seem to ignite both camps of planners.
The book review was not favorable to Bruegmann's claim that L.A. was statistically more populated then New York and sought to disprove this notion. The review poked a major hole in Bruegmann's theory by detailing that the units of measurements that was used to compare L.A. and New York were not the same. The article quotes:
"The UCLA study, which appears on the Livable Places Web site, concedes that Bruegmann is technically right since he merely claims that Los Angeles’s urbanized area is denser than New York’s urbanized area. As a unit, the greater Los Angeles metro area boasts 7,009 people per square mile, far in excess of the New York metro area’s paltry 5,239, according to the 2000 census. But just what is an urbanized area? And are they really enough alike to bother comparing?
As the UCLA group discovered, the census bureau’s official statistical units vary considerably in size and character. The land mass of New York’s urbanized area—defined as the city and the suburban counties within its gravitational pull—is twice the size of Los Angeles’s. New York’s statistical unit also has a third more people. Thus the two units are the proverbial apples and oranges. 'We believe comparing density by urbanized area is deceptive,' the UCLA group wrote."
That is a major hole to Bruegmann's article. To try to prove that L.A.'s miles of low rise housing is denser then New York's miles of high rises and skyscrapers not only goes against conventional wisdom it goes against common sense by just looking at the two cities. The review later goes onto show that L.A. and the cities that have followed it's growth patterns such as Phoenix and Atlanta have very low urban densities, which further my beliefs that few major cities in the south and west are actually urban. Phoenix and Houston have overtaken Philadelphia as being in the top 5 largest cities despite Philadelphia being in Phoenix case, over 10 times as dense. The article quotes:
"Even a modestly congested place like Philadelphia, where people cherish their single-family row houses and postage-stamp gardens, packs in 11,000 people per square mile, in contrast to L.A.’s 7,828. As for Phoenix and Atlanta, the cities that most closely mimic Los Angeles’s land-use patterns, the density barely hits 1,700 per square mile—hardly an indication of efficient, or environmentally sustainable, land use."
So back to the original question, does Philly have more sprawl then L.A. Technically yes if you just compared the two cities sizes in comparison to the size of their suburbs. However, the lower density of L.A. allows the city to consume more square acreage then Philly. So one can easily make the argument that there is sprawl even inside the city boundaries of L.A. given it's density. On top of that many Philadelphia suburban townships mimic Philadelphia development which would make them denser then the city of Los Angeles. Which means the answer that would be most correct is the Los Angeles Metropolitan region has more sprawl then the Philadelphia region.
Your thoughts?
Could this be true? Do east coast cities actually generate more sprawl then auto-dependent L.A.? Well, it depends on how you calculate density. The popular myth of East Coasters when they think of L.A. is that it is a giant collection of suburbs when in fact it is a densely populated city.
But how dense is dense? While L.A. is undoubtedly urban is it as dense as Philadelphia? The answer to that question is no. Philadelphia is the most compact city in the county, even more so then New York City. So if one city is denser then another but it's suburbs consume more land, how would you calculate which is more sprawled?
Fast forward to a book review I ran across recently in Metropolis Magazine about Robert Bruegmann’s book, Sprawl: A Compact History. The book which advocated that Los Angeles’s urbanized area is more densely populated than New York’s, set off a whirlwind of debate between planners. While most planners believe in traditional regulation of development, found most prominently in the east coast, there is a rising faction of planners that believe in minimal regulation and allowing the market to dictate development. Bruegmann's book about sprawl and density seem to ignite both camps of planners.
The book review was not favorable to Bruegmann's claim that L.A. was statistically more populated then New York and sought to disprove this notion. The review poked a major hole in Bruegmann's theory by detailing that the units of measurements that was used to compare L.A. and New York were not the same. The article quotes:
"The UCLA study, which appears on the Livable Places Web site, concedes that Bruegmann is technically right since he merely claims that Los Angeles’s urbanized area is denser than New York’s urbanized area. As a unit, the greater Los Angeles metro area boasts 7,009 people per square mile, far in excess of the New York metro area’s paltry 5,239, according to the 2000 census. But just what is an urbanized area? And are they really enough alike to bother comparing?
As the UCLA group discovered, the census bureau’s official statistical units vary considerably in size and character. The land mass of New York’s urbanized area—defined as the city and the suburban counties within its gravitational pull—is twice the size of Los Angeles’s. New York’s statistical unit also has a third more people. Thus the two units are the proverbial apples and oranges. 'We believe comparing density by urbanized area is deceptive,' the UCLA group wrote."
That is a major hole to Bruegmann's article. To try to prove that L.A.'s miles of low rise housing is denser then New York's miles of high rises and skyscrapers not only goes against conventional wisdom it goes against common sense by just looking at the two cities. The review later goes onto show that L.A. and the cities that have followed it's growth patterns such as Phoenix and Atlanta have very low urban densities, which further my beliefs that few major cities in the south and west are actually urban. Phoenix and Houston have overtaken Philadelphia as being in the top 5 largest cities despite Philadelphia being in Phoenix case, over 10 times as dense. The article quotes:
"Even a modestly congested place like Philadelphia, where people cherish their single-family row houses and postage-stamp gardens, packs in 11,000 people per square mile, in contrast to L.A.’s 7,828. As for Phoenix and Atlanta, the cities that most closely mimic Los Angeles’s land-use patterns, the density barely hits 1,700 per square mile—hardly an indication of efficient, or environmentally sustainable, land use."
So back to the original question, does Philly have more sprawl then L.A. Technically yes if you just compared the two cities sizes in comparison to the size of their suburbs. However, the lower density of L.A. allows the city to consume more square acreage then Philly. So one can easily make the argument that there is sprawl even inside the city boundaries of L.A. given it's density. On top of that many Philadelphia suburban townships mimic Philadelphia development which would make them denser then the city of Los Angeles. Which means the answer that would be most correct is the Los Angeles Metropolitan region has more sprawl then the Philadelphia region.
Your thoughts?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Secretary of the Arts?
The L.A. Times recently ran a brief article about Quincy Jones lobbying President Obama to create a Secretary of the Arts as a cabinet position. Those familiar with this blog know that I am big proponent of art, which I feel is an essential element to a city's culture.
There is currently a position to create a Secretary of the Arts, I encourage you to sign the petition. From the article:
"Last November, music producer and songwriter Quincy Jones mentioned to John Schaefer during an interview on the New York radio program “Soundcheck” that he thought President-elect Barack Obama should create a Cabinet-level position of secretary of the Arts. “One of the next conversations I have with President Obama is to beg for a secretary of the Arts,” he told the WNYC talk-show host.
Jaime Austria heard about Jones' comments and thought that was a great idea. So Austria launched an online petition. So far, more than 63,000 people have signed, with 'spread the word' e-mails recently making the rounds on the Left Coast."
There is currently a position to create a Secretary of the Arts, I encourage you to sign the petition. From the article:
"Last November, music producer and songwriter Quincy Jones mentioned to John Schaefer during an interview on the New York radio program “Soundcheck” that he thought President-elect Barack Obama should create a Cabinet-level position of secretary of the Arts. “One of the next conversations I have with President Obama is to beg for a secretary of the Arts,” he told the WNYC talk-show host.
Jaime Austria heard about Jones' comments and thought that was a great idea. So Austria launched an online petition. So far, more than 63,000 people have signed, with 'spread the word' e-mails recently making the rounds on the Left Coast."
Monday, December 8, 2008
Creating Public Works Jobs to Rebuild Cities
Today, the mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami spoke at the Conference of Mayors om Washington today to lobby the Federal Government for what they call, "ready-to-go" infrastructure projects that would provide critical city improvements and jobs.
"Over the last eight years, there's been ... an absence of investment in cities, whether it's the infrastructure, public transportation, bridges, highways, schools, hospitals," Los Angeles, California, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. "We are here not for a bailout, but to present a recovery plan."
The news conference coincided with the Conference of Mayors' release of a list of 11,391 "ready-to-go" infrastructure projects that would cost $73.1 billion. The report surveyed 427 cities across the country and includes roads, bridges, schools, city halls and other public works projects. The report says that those projects would create 847,641 jobs.
To read more, click here.
As someone who lives on the east coast of the U.S., I am biased for the Feds to help cities "recover" the infrastructure funding. Anyone who lives in a city on eastern seaboard or in a rustbelt city can tell you that parts of the infrastructure in these cities are old and outdated and would cost billions of dollars to repair. Now I don't need to remind everybody of the calamity that could happen if these repairs don't happen like with the levy walls in New Orleans or the bridge collapse in Minneapolis but fixing these problems now will cost a lot cheap then waiting for the infrastructure to eventually fail.
If the Federal Government were to seriously fund public transportation upgrades and infrastructure it would not only help reduce sprawl and energy but also revitalize cities and create jobs as more people are now more willing to live in cities or closer to cities.
"Over the last eight years, there's been ... an absence of investment in cities, whether it's the infrastructure, public transportation, bridges, highways, schools, hospitals," Los Angeles, California, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. "We are here not for a bailout, but to present a recovery plan."
The news conference coincided with the Conference of Mayors' release of a list of 11,391 "ready-to-go" infrastructure projects that would cost $73.1 billion. The report surveyed 427 cities across the country and includes roads, bridges, schools, city halls and other public works projects. The report says that those projects would create 847,641 jobs.
To read more, click here.
As someone who lives on the east coast of the U.S., I am biased for the Feds to help cities "recover" the infrastructure funding. Anyone who lives in a city on eastern seaboard or in a rustbelt city can tell you that parts of the infrastructure in these cities are old and outdated and would cost billions of dollars to repair. Now I don't need to remind everybody of the calamity that could happen if these repairs don't happen like with the levy walls in New Orleans or the bridge collapse in Minneapolis but fixing these problems now will cost a lot cheap then waiting for the infrastructure to eventually fail.
If the Federal Government were to seriously fund public transportation upgrades and infrastructure it would not only help reduce sprawl and energy but also revitalize cities and create jobs as more people are now more willing to live in cities or closer to cities.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Preserving Historic Black Neighborhoods
The AP has recently written in article about the historic preservation of subdivisions that were built for blacks. This issue has often been somewhat of a touchy issue because the argument is about preserving the cultural heritage of a neighborhood instead of the aesthetic character or the significant age of the site. Factors that work against these sites in historic preservation is that some of the neighborhoods have lost their cultural significance as the black population has dwindled out or was displaced and these neighborhoods are often times not as old as the typical historic neighborhoods already in the inventory of historic places.
Many historic, culturally rich black neighborhoods have already succumbed to development and gentrification while others are still fighting to keep their cultural identity. Examples of historically black neighborhoods that have completely lost their identity can be seen in Philadelphia in the Society Hill neighborhood which was the basis of W.E.B. Dubois's ground breaking anthropology, The Philadelphia Negro. Other neighborhoods that are struggling to maintain their identities include the iconic black neighborhoods of Compton, CA, Harlem in New York City and the Atlanta neighborhood of Dr. King which is already listed in the register of historic places.
Here's an excerpt of the article:
"Some of the early black homeowner neighborhoods around the country are trying to win historic recognition before their place in the history of homeownership fades. The residents want to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which would make them eligible for federal tax credits or grants for historic preservation. ... Persuading black property owners to seek the designation can sometimes be difficult because some equate preservation with gentrification or higher taxes."
For the entire article, click here.
So what are your thoughts on preserving neighborhoods based on their cultural identity and history?
Many historic, culturally rich black neighborhoods have already succumbed to development and gentrification while others are still fighting to keep their cultural identity. Examples of historically black neighborhoods that have completely lost their identity can be seen in Philadelphia in the Society Hill neighborhood which was the basis of W.E.B. Dubois's ground breaking anthropology, The Philadelphia Negro. Other neighborhoods that are struggling to maintain their identities include the iconic black neighborhoods of Compton, CA, Harlem in New York City and the Atlanta neighborhood of Dr. King which is already listed in the register of historic places.
Here's an excerpt of the article:
"Some of the early black homeowner neighborhoods around the country are trying to win historic recognition before their place in the history of homeownership fades. The residents want to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which would make them eligible for federal tax credits or grants for historic preservation. ... Persuading black property owners to seek the designation can sometimes be difficult because some equate preservation with gentrification or higher taxes."
For the entire article, click here.
So what are your thoughts on preserving neighborhoods based on their cultural identity and history?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)