L.A.me | You’re driving me crazy
How Cars and Citifying Influenced L.A. and American Mentalities at Large
In 2017, I did a Field Study of L.A. and Vegas for my Final Year Geography Project. I’m still pretty proud of the work 6-ish years on so I’m dusting off my thoughts and uploading them here for those also interested in Urban Geography and American Mentalities. First up, ‘L.A.me: You’re driving me crazy’
L.A. was the first city to break the concentric zone model. Why I hear you ask? Well, you thank good ol’ cars and American manifest destiny.
178 years ago, the first wave of pure-blooded Americans” (a.k.a First generation European Imperialists) settled in the West of the US, and soon after the car was introduced.
Enlightened by automation and driven by “destiny”, this beginning has rung through the decades. The conflation of “the car” and the American mentality as result in LA having a fragmented society with hardlines making the place, at large, unhinged and hotbed for social hierarchies.
This article will share how the car dictated LA’s urban sprawl, why London’s Tube causes peace on earth and how socio-geographic grouping was started by the car and reinforced by citification using Rancho Santa Margarita as an example of this.
Let’s hit the gas…
Cars: LA’s urban planner
Older European and early US cities follow a “Concentric zone model” formation - when an urban area grows from a core outward. In these formations, the centre is often stuffed with high-rise places of work; this is circled by government or housing. Furthest out from the centre is suburbia which continues until amenities start to be too far away (45 min drive?) or something like a green belt halts infrastructure, giving way to the countryside.
LA defied the concentric zone model. There’s no stuffed core, nor the gradual fade out. LA manifests as an even film of urban mass known as Urban Sprawl. Why is this? Well, 47 years after the first Pedigree Americans settled in LA the car was invented.
If you head to LA’s earliest urban area, Downtown, you can see the fetus of a concentric city and the arrival of car-driven urbanism. It boasts a small cluster of tall buildings, vintage theatres, and an art-deco architecture reminiscent of London’s West End and New York. But unlike New York, you don’t have to tilt your head up 180 degrees to see the sky as the buildings that would have scraped it have been driven and dropped across Los Angeles.
Access to automotive mobility fueled horizontal urbanism as it was easier and cheaper to build outwards than up. This snowballed, causing housing and resources to be continually spread, making every place a car ride away instead of a walk, tube ride, or horse-cart away (the latter dictated the size of English towns fyi). Flat urbanism is now expected in car-loving America, and overseas too, thanks to lobbying automotive firms, money-influenced urban planners, and cheap gas - I’m looking at you, Milton Keynes.
The Tube: A Pit Stop in Peacemaking
Cars can’t just be seen as getting people from ‘A to B’. Car travel is antisocial compared to public transit. To riff off what Itabari Njeri reported in 1988, LA isn’t so much a melting pot but a well-organised pantry. But, before we get into division by transit, let’s start with unity by tube.
Think about London’s Tube in terms of installing multiculturalism. The TFL’s speedy underground cylinders get you from Shadwell to Shepherds Bush in under an hour. In that time, you’ll have been joined by Bengali, French, Italian, and Arabic riders upon those fleecy seats - and in that order suggests UCL.
This doesn’t seem special, but it’s actually causing peace on Earth.
The vastness, quality, convenience, speed, and affordability (especially if you jump the gates) of the underground means it’s the rational transport choice for many, thus, aggregating London's hodgepodge of beings. To benefit from the Tube, riders have to be respectful of each other and alight accordingly so it can run effectively. Riders, Tubers, Gate-jumpers - people are forced to be peaceful with other people of different origins and backgrounds stimulating the acceptance of “otherness”.
“Otherness” is anything different to you. So, if you’re an ethnic minority, then it’s the majority. If you a haver, it’s a have-not. If you’re homeless, it’s a resident. If you’re an Islamophobe, it’s the imam on their way to prayer at 2:45pm.
Due to the tube’s universal convenience, societal opposites put their differences aside to get where they need to be. Functionally overrides stigmas and flattens the social hierarchy 4.30am to 12.30am on weekdays, and nearly all the time on weekends.
Moreover, the Tube dispels myths placed on certain “others” by media, friends, and third parties. So, that newspaper article on a ‘young black male’s misdemeanour in Tottenham’ loses its fear-mongering potential as riders witness the same demographic combination mundanely getting on at Finsbury Park Station.
A similar peaceful result goes for pedestrian spaces too. Concentric cities are walkable so pounding the pavement mutually travel and a public parade of civil diversity. Both public transit and pedestrian places invite daily differences affirming an “otherness” as inoffensive.
This is why LA hasn’t become a true melting pot. Yes, they have a variety of ethnicities & cultures, but they are compartmentalised in spaces and bubbled in cars so there’s little direct interaction between “other” people. “Sameness” steps into chassis and transports between destinations of mutual sameness. There’s no opportunity for otherness to enter lives, thus, cars have fueled clusters of sameness and an environment lacking in peace between “others”.
It's almost gutting as peaceful multiculturalism is so close - daily. On the drive down Interstate 10, there will be a Mexican migrant listening to Radio Bronco in a 1991 Honda Accord mere meters away from a California native Soccer Mom in a Tesla hearing the latest Fox News report - and yes, the radio is important too mention since it adds spinning media to car experience (watch video above) rather than first-person interactions provided in public travel. Honestly, if LA’s section of i-10 was a Piazza and not a Highway, it could be the best blending of cultures in the world.
Automations are a nexus of division physically and informationally, which has triggered social divisions across LA and the US.
LA is not a Melting Pot, it’s a Spice Rack
Citifying: Driving Division
Divisions initiated by the car have been put into high gear by domestic fortressing (gated communities anyone?), social legacies and a multitude of economic, social and governmental mechanisms. Each of these vehicles deserves dissection, but one tool of “othering” I find particularly interesting is incorporation and citification - i.e. places being legally turned into cities by the local inhabitants lobbying for it. California’s Rancho Santa Margarita (RSM) was the first city to do this, to “incorporate”, and now Citification is possible nationwide.
Incorporating isn’t just turning a place into a city. In many cases, it’s a specific group of people wanting “their” town a certain “way” and citify grants them new and legal mechanisms to exile otherness (whatever that means to them that week, a ban on pink hair?) and install sameness (*cookie-cutter housing developments intensify*).
This LEGAL Do and Don’t-ing of space led by a few locals erodes multiculturalism and stimulates social expectations. Well, that’s what I gathered when I met the Mayor of RSM during my visit there in 2017.
The Mayor of RSM and three contemporaries are the ‘masterminds’ behind the city’s incorporation. At that time (1995) there was no manual on how to incorporate, so RSM simultaneously followed and authored the City incorporation manual. Evidently, the American manifest destiny remains in their DNA as the citification manual they wrote was extremely controlling and only enriches the USA’s privatisation culture.
Initially, RSM wanted to become a city since people believed “local state services didn’t keep up with their expanding population and economy", and to create a “Middle-Class Utopia”. With incorporation, they’d have the power to organise accordingly. In 1999, a jagged boundary that unnaturally cuts between residential enclaves was drawn - it’s an obvious gerrymandering for a mega lucrative tax basin, or as Mayor Carol Gamble put it so RSM could be “fiscally conservative”. With America being a ‘democracy’ and all, for this kiki-shaped city to be official, all it needed was a yes vote from those in it. Unsurprisingly, 84% wanted city-ship since the Mayor at the time had 200 assistants visit every home in RSM to advocate for it - all 15,000 homes, three times. Some pretty hands-on PR there. Again, with America being a ‘democracy’, there was not just a vote for becoming a city, but who’d run it. “Reluctantly”, to quote Carol Gamble, her team did since no ‘one else wanted to’. Yep, those 45,000 campaign visits are giving reluctance and not an agenda to rule. Anyway, their positions and powers as city leaders have been in place since January 1st 2001.
RSM: The Road to Middle-Class Utopia
With all the new tax money and power, the city council matured their ‘middle-class utopia’. Physically, this was achieved by making it statutory that homes could only be 1 of 4 colours. If you paint your house purple or don’t upkeep the plain paint job, then expect a fine, eviction, and angry neighbours. Socially, ‘middle-classness’ is rendered through “safety” codes and 1⁄4 of RSM’s budget has been spent on this since 2001. They provide a patrol of police cars, have tactile gating, and put cameras all over the place.
These may seem like acceptable bylaws to help keep a safe environment for the people there, but actually, they are implicit anti-otherness strategies. Any friction to the daily dogma will be seen and criminalised. The stats show the laws do work on keeping otherness limited. The Mayor happily reported in 1996 15% of society was non-Caucasian, but when we (my university group of 2017) asked about the current ethnic diversity she had no comment.
In 2018 59.5% of California’s total population was White, 5.8% Black or African American, 39.3% Hispanic-Latino.
In 2022, 68.4% of RSM total population was White, 1.7% Black or African American, 20.4% Hispanic-Latino.
Based on my experience and lightly informed by these quick stats, I have an assumption that RSM uses policing and superficial rules (like what your house looks like) to systematically whiten their society with proof being they’re typically more white than the Californian average - I also could be wrong.
RSM’s ‘conform or leave’ sentiment is incredibly uneasing, but what pushed to me to suggest LA as unhinged was the dynamic between The Mayor and her Canadian helper during their presentation to my University group.
Off the bat, the Mayor of RSM was giving control vibes - while maintaining her well-formatted politician performance. Her articulation was beautiful, she complimented every question to diffuse conflict ("WhAt A gReAt QuEsTiOn.”), was so attentive blinking wasn’t even required, and she even wore a pant-suit like a small-town Hillary Clinton should.
When it comes to the Canadian, she was so obviously gunning for a promotion. Her face must hurt from smiling so much and twice she prematurely said “Shall we start the quiz?” that she made for our visit (I know it’s sweet of her, but excessive and promotion-coded). The quiz needed a look-in so she could show old ‘Mayor-y McMayor-y-son’ the overtime spent on a 5/10 PowerPoint presentation and ‘prizes’ of corporate freebies to give us. However, Canada’s efforts were quickly made futile when the unnecessary ‘pressure’ to impress the Mayor got to her during a playback of a news segment on RSM. She was meant to pause after the idyllic intro, but missed her queue and the video revealed that their ‘perfect city’ apparently has a pretty gnarly pollution problem. So, solid work Canada. But, it’s not her fault.
RSM has a localised and steep social hierarchy so pleasing the elite, in this case, The Mayor, is the way to move up socially. Canada was only scatty due to the immense social pressure she’s put on herself to move up the social ladder. For a flavour of the Canadan helper’s unhigned vibe, watch Falling Down (1993) where an “ordinary man” flips out as he deeps the irrational pressures of the day.
Life: The U-turn from Middle-Class Utopia
RSM’s incorporation rule book set the citification standard and it’s now replicated across the USA. Small-town inhabitants are creating and installing their version of a “utopic middle class” which is mutually enchanting and disenchanting. Personally, I wouldn’t live in RSM but can see why others would. For me, the capping of expression (i.e. sameness in homes or banning graffiti) and criminalising others’ normal (i.e. loitering and different cultures) is grating. This stuff makes life, life and I adore difference. But for so many, there’s a “safety” in micro-level policing, comfort in conforming and ease with pre-decided social constructs.
Removing otherness and crystalising social standards are now an American pastime. Binary differentiators like; race, income, job, and education just get you access to certain spaces, to get your status in them you must perform particular acts. So, you might match the local demographic profile, but your shoes aren’t nice enough to grant friendship. Or, you meet the income bracket, but your house isn’t the right colour so you need to repaint or be exiled from the neighbourhood.
Then if you don’t like what you’re born into, the Middle-Class Utopia your parents liked, it means getting back in the car and going down the road to join a segment of the sprawl that suits you. Or, if you’re really unaccommodating, adding to the sprawl by finding fresh land and starting a new City of your wants and needs and whoever is willing to join your biases’.
However, this urban sprawl and pandemic of greenfield relocation might be taking a u-turn. Urban living is in vogue and the time spent in the car has reached a saturation point. Los Angeles locals are done with the 54 minute commute and are starting to move into places like downtown to be near work, friends, and/or entertainment. We can only hope this new trend of flocking to city centres will help dissolve almost 200 years of car-lead divisions and give LA’s melting pot can get an overdue mix.
That was “L.A.me | You’re driving me crazy”.
In the coming months, I’ll reprise thoughts on LA’s demographic hierarchies, western-washing branding tactics and a“liberally insular” lens i noticed - so stay tuned.
On an inspirational note, I’ve wanted to turn this University work into articles since 2017 - it’s now 2024. These articles haven’t been 7 years in the making (like, it didn’t take 7 years to write the above lol), it’s just that I’m putting back-burner ideas on the front burner in 2024, and I think maybe you should too.
till the next time i start typing…
lol, emily chapps :)
I’ve always wondered what does Emily think about LA’s demographic hierarchies, western-washing branding tactics and a“liberally insular” lens.
lol no but for real this is mega 🌎✨