Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 3

     Inspired by the lecture detailing the drastic change between the third and fourth urban revolutions, I decided to drive around Chino and Chino Hills, two small, at least originally, agricultural cities on the periphery of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. I chose this location because I felt that it embodied the relatively recent emergence of the post-metropolis city. Where cities founded during the third urban revolution were heavily centralized and had a common and uniform level of organization, these post-metropolis cities were characterized by decentralization, Post-Fordism and, most importantly in the context of this blog, fragmented inequality. Early urbanized metropolises, such as Chicago and Manchester, were centered around manufacturing centers that arose from an earlier division of labor. These metropolises were also rigidly organized by class, a theme that was seen universally throughout each individual city. This concept was represented in the Chicago School Model, a model that detailed the socio-economic layout of 1920’s Chicago. According to the Chicago School Model, the city was centered around a manufacturing center which was immediately surrounded by the slums that this manufacturing center produced. These slums, which housed the poorest individuals in the city were poorly maintained and unsanitary. Beyond the slums, were the modest homes of the working class, who tended to live closer to the city center where they worked. Finally, beyond the homes of the working class were the suburban homes of the upper class, who lived on the cities periphery far from the poor conditions in the city’s center. While this model holds true for many cities across the US, it is neither true of Los Angeles, nor any city within the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, including Chino and Chino Hills. Los Angeles and countless other contemporary cities instead reflect the idea of the post-metropolis. The post-metropolis is characterized by a shift toward decentralization fueled by a shift from public transportation networks to individualistic automobility. Rather than a large center controlling the periphery in a predictable and uniform way, the post-metropolis is defined by multiple differentiated centers that are united by automobiles. These differentiated centers can range from industrial regions to theme parks to, in the case of Chino and Chino Hills, shopping centers.

     Anyways, on to the trip itself, I had been to Chino and Chino Hills a few times before, but had never really explored the area. Of course, I started with the places I knew, the shopping centers off of highway 71 at Grand/Edison, the areas around Chino, Chino Hills and Ayala High Schools and a developing shopping center off highway 60 on the periphery of Chino Hills. In addition, I explored the surrounding area of each destination and made a point to visit a variety of residential and commercial areas within each municipality.

     Let me start with Chino, an agricultural city that has long been a major producer of California milk. The most striking observation I made while driving around Chino was how agriculturally based it was, a rarity in the Los Angeles area. The first thing I noticed was the sights, sounds and smells of what Chino was known for, cows. After further exploration, I found that Chino is more than just agriculture, as it also boasts a small airport, museums, numerous parks a prison and several large manufacturing centers. 

Turning to the residential aspect, the streets were grid-like, the communities seemed tightly knit and socio-economically consistent and the schools seemed well funded and safe. Although Chino has an atypical economic foundation when compared to other cities in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, its residents, residential life and residential layout are anything but atypical.

  On to Chino Hills, a once agriculturally based community and economy that was hardly distinguishable from Chino that has become a major shopping hub of suburban Los Angeles. The large open fields and manufacturing centers that once characterized the city have nearly all been replaced by shopping centers, movie theaters and restaurants.

Residentially, the layout of the more modern housing development is highly atypical, consisting of long, winding roads in lieu of the previous grid-like pattern, the schools at least appear to be better funded than the schools in the Chino school district and there is a greater discrepancy in the quality of housing, where the older houses match the quality of the houses seen in Chino, the more contemporary developments are characterized by larger and more expensive housing.

     This comparison between Chino and Chino Hills highlights the idea of the post-metropolis, as two once similar municipalities have differentiated economically, which has consequently led to a class and cultural differentiation. While it is clear that the two cities chose to define themselves by their different specializations, it is the result of these choices that most pertains to the ideas in this blog. Somewhat obviously, Chino Hills, which chose to characterize itself around the emerging concept of consumerism, creating numerous shopping centers along every exit of highway 71, became the more affluent town, an idea reflected in their seemingly superior residential and school systems. While this economic discrepancy between the two cities certainly produced class differences, where the more affluent move into the area with better housing and school systems, it also seemed, at least to me, to produce a sense of ethnic difference, which does not follow logically from an economic discrepancy between two cities. The people I met or saw in Chino were primarily ethnic minorities, primarily Mexican-Americans and African-Americans, while the residents of Chino Hills were primarily Caucasian. Furthermore, the few shopping centers in Chino consisted of primarily low-end stores and nearly every gas station had signs acknowledging that they took EBT payments, while Chino Hills had no such signs on their gas station windows and had more high-end stores, typically frequented by affluent Caucasian customers.

While it is not clear if this differentiation of economic principles caused this alleged ethnic difference or if it is merely an effect of correlation or limited sample size, it is clear that the post-metropolis trend of automobility has produced a profound sense of individuality which has further strengthened Robert Park’s idea that the city is composed of little worlds that touch but do not interpenetrate.