Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 4 - An Interpretation on Nicholas Roja's Week 2 Post

In this week's post, I'm going to comment on a post I read by one of my classmates, which I find very intriguing. I find Nicholas's interpretation of Pasadena (and simultaneously Los Angeles) in reference to the works of Burgess and Kling, Olin, and Poster rather interesting. By referencing Burgess, Nicholas refers to the Chicago School's belief in the concentric ring model, where the city was centered around one area- the point of economic concentration. I highly appreciate Nicholas's interpretation of the Rose Bowl as one such "economic center," as it certainly draws in people from all surrounding areas on a regular basis to partake in economic activity (yay for Football!). This center is then surrounded by residential areas, similar in process to the concept presented in Burgess's model. Thus, the Rose Bowl could potentially partially serve as one such focal point in a set of concentric rings for Pasadena. Yet, I would like, however, to disagree with Nicholas's suggestion that the Burgess model is fully and currently still applicable to Los Angeles, and simultaneously, Pasadena. I am a believer in the post-modern/post-fordist model in which the city rather follows a model of poly-centricity, having many focal points that comprise the geographic makeup of the city. Nicholas suggests that downtown is the central point for Los Angeles, and then the city subsequently goes out in concentric circles from this point. And yet, we have discussed in class that Los Angeles is one of those cities that does not follow the Burgess Concentric Model well, as its layout is far from the traditional concentric theory. Instead, I believe that Los Angeles has no real center, and that the "center" of the city is contingent on the cultural and social makeup of the group(s) who live in the city, and thus have to choose their own "center". Koreatown, then, becomes a center of economic and social importance to those who work and live within that area. Similarly, downtown is only a center to those who particularly identify with that area, travel into it, and work within it. Thus, there are many centers that exist simultaneously in the city, and which collaborate to make up the entirety of Los Angeles. To classify Los Angeles according to the Chicago School Model, in my opinion, attempts to constrain Los Angeles to a set of ill-fitting classifications and borders, and truly does not exemplify the non-traditional layout and infrastructure of the city. While I may not entirely agree with Nicholas's use of the Chicago School to interpret Los Angeles, I highly commend the interpretation of the Rose Bowl in terms of the mobility of the city of Pasadena (and in the area of Los Angeles). Mobility, as we learned through our class discussions, is so crucial to success in Los Angeles. This city, which grew around the use of the automobile, is structured so that those without access to a vehicle are unable to reach most amenities and opportunities. Pasadena, it seems, is similar in that the city becomes "difficult to navigate" for residents when its mobility is constricted by the congestion caused by cars who come to the "city center" --the Rose Bowl. Thus, the city of Pasadena serves as an excellent example of the non-traditional layout of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area as it revolves around the car, and not the concentric ring. Overall, I very much enjoyed Nicholas's post about Pasadena and the Rose Bowl. It provided much food for though, as truly few UCLA students seem to realize the overall complexity of the Rose Bowl as an organism whose organs (cars, football, residents) all must come together to create a fully functionally organism. In reference to this structural functionalism theory, we can see how understanding the workings of a place in relationship to its organs allows us to better understand the functioning of a city in terms of its parts, and subsequently the functioning of residents of the city in terms of their residence.