Robert E. Park, an American urban sociologist, once said, "The City is a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate." Growing up in Los Angeles County, I am not under the impression that this statement applies to a city like Los Angeles. The variety of places, people, and modes of transportation cause different parts of the city to interact with each other every single day.
My focal question:
What difference does difference make in the landscapes of the contemporary, metropolitan Los Angeles region?
Throughout this quarter, I plan to explore Los Angeles and find out what difference difference makes in the city of Los Angeles. How do the people from different areas interact, or do they interact at all? What physical differences do all of the neighborhoods and districts hold? As I visit new places, I will take notes and record observations on the physical landscapes of the city, the types of cars, the cleanliness of the neighborhoods, the types of houses, and most importantly, how the inhabitants of Los Angeles relate to one another and make this place their home. I especially plan to study the personalities of the inhabitants and how these personalities change according to which part of the city they are in.
Last quarter, I took a course called Geography 156: Metropolitan Los Angeles, and in this course we aimed to define the borders of Los Angeles County. The borders that I like to use to describe Los Angeles can be further depicted in this map.
I am not yet sure which places I will be visiting, but I want to be sure that I explore a variety of places, and not just Los Angeles tourist attractions. Multimedia on Los Angeles tends to make the city seem like a place only for the rich and famous, or the "glamorous", and tends to hide the fact that a large portion of the people living in Los Angeles are living below the poverty line and are "struggling" to make ends meet and put dinner on the table for their families. I would like to explore both aspects of this city as I explore, and to make sure to pay attention to how these differences are portrayed in the media and the news. After doing some initial research, I found that it is really easy to find YouTube videos on the positive aspects of Los Angeles, and not as easy to find videos that touch on the problems the city is facing.
- "Discover Los Angeles"- a YouTube video on a website designed for tourists of Los Angeles
- "Fighting Poverty in LA: HomeWalkLA.org - an advertisement for a 5K race in Los Angeles with proceeds going towards homeless families in Los Angeles
With more fieldwork and research, I plan on answering the focal question above in enough detail so that I can get a better grasp on how this city with such diversity functions on a daily basis. How can these two YouTube videos be describing the same city? Hopefully, after experiencing Los Angeles county and the people inside the city, I can get a better sense of how to answer these questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment