Hey All,
This week I chose to comment on Laiza's blog post about environmental development and toxicity.
Hey Laiza,
I loved reading your blog post about Montebello and the environmental (and health) hazards that industrialism can impose. I really liked how you related the post to Harvey's commentary on the unfortunate (and often unwanted) placement of these sites. Considering the toxins, chemicals, and other harmful things that are usually bi-products of industrialization in an area, there are considerable dangers posed to those who live in the area. I think you addressed it correctly by supposing that the residents of Montebello probably had no say in the industrialization of their area into an oil field. According to Harvey, the rich would have been able to move away from it, or move it away from them at least, and the poor would have been unable to say no because of their fiscal insecurity. This all reminds me very much of a literary work I read in a social geography class here at UCLA written by Laura Pulido. The piece, titled "Rethinking Environmental Racism:White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California," also commented on the unfortunate pattern of placing environmentally toxic sites in areas of denser minority populations. While many believe that these sites are put in these locations based on race, thus making the issue one of environmental racism, Pulido suggested that it was rather than the sites were placed randomly, and that it just happened to be certain races who lived closer to them because they couldn't afford to live further away. Thus, groups that were affected by these sites were not categorized by race so much as they were categorized and segregated by income. I think that this helps to reinforce Harvey's idea of the poor being unable to avoid the hazards of the sites, and often times indebted to the job opportunity, while the rich can move farther away.
I think, also, that your trip to Montebello also has importance in regards to the readings regarding Geothe's Faust and Karl Marx's Manifesto. In Faust, we can see the inherent need of modernism to develop further and further, attempting to create human enhancement and power. This development is how we modernize ourselves and move away from the old, traditional lifestyle. Yet, wherever there is development, as shown in Faust's case, there is also destruction, pain, and anguish (as shown by the destruction of the old couple who wanted to maintain their simple ways). Marx also comments on this paradox in his Manifesto as he talks of the paradoxical nature in which the bourgeois develop capital and production, and yet the benefits of such production are always accompanied by destruction and pain for others. Thus, we can see that the toxic sites provide both benefit and cost to those who surround them.
I think it is important to see that by living in modern society, we endeavor to partake in all of the benefits of such society, be they medical, technological, or philosophical. And yet, we must remember that rarely, in this world of finite resources and infinite competition, is there ever development without accompanying destruction and desolation. Thus, as we go through our lives, we can examine our efforts and the efforts of others not just in terms of their immediate or personal costs, but in terms of their long-term and overarching costs.
Overall, I very much enjoyed your post. It has given me much food for thought. I would love to see if your trips to other cities and areas echo such patterns of the cost-benefits of development, or if we are, perhaps, making an effort to remove ourselves from such "modern conditions".
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