This week I had plans to go to Santa Monica, but I got super sick and so I am postponing my next excursion for next week! In the meantime, I have perused some blogs and stumbled upon Ellen's blog, Lovely Los Angeles.
Her Week 4 post explored the city of Glendale and how the city excludes certain people through limiting the people who can afford to live in the city. She also mentioned a very overt lack of certain ethnicities and demographics. I thought the post was very interesting because it reminded me of Irvine, a city I lived in for a few years. I compared what I knew of Irvine to what she mentioned about Glendale. Here's my comment!
Hi Ellen!
Great post on Glendale! I’ve never been to Glendale before, but your description of the town reminded me of Irvine (a city I’ve lived in for a few years before moving to Westwood). Irvine, like Glendale is very suburban, an expensive area to rent/own a house and also lacks a homeless population. However, it is different in that much of Irvine is full of gated communities. There are non-gated housing communities, but the vast majority are gated. I think there are many parallels between both Glendale and Irvine, but it’s interesting that they have both achieved the same type of exclusions and exclusivity even though they are both not gated communities.I think your post was particularly insightful because of your use of the simply maps and your connection between the income level and their prevalence in Glendale. Based on your maps, I agree that Glendale definitely excludes families and individuals of different income levels because there is no place for those individuals to rent or buy! This is definitely the case in Irvine, as all renting places are extremely expensive. There is only one area in Irvine I can think of that has lower rents and that would be a tiny little mobile home community that is completely hidden from the public view and it’s also a gated community! Were you able to come to any conclusion on why Glendale is mainly populated by a large population of Caucasian and Asian residents? Irvine is similar in that there is a large Asian, Indian, Persian and White population. I think perhaps this happens because there are so many choices of public schools in the area that many immigrant families might want their kids to go there, where it’s safe and the education is good. However, it could be that there was a smaller population of these individuals and their families, friends and acquaintances heard good things about the city and decided to move there.Irvine also seems to keep out homeless people quite well. I have heard that police takes any homeless people in the area away and drives them to Santa Ana because there are no homeless shelters in Irvine. Although this logic makes sense, I think it is intentional carceral archipelago, because Irvine has the funds to create a homeless shelter(s). Yet, I think the resident population is concerned with increased crime rates and making the area less safe, so they do not push or encourage a homeless shelter in the city. Does the city of Glendale do anything similar? I would imagine a city like Glendale, which is heavily populated by people with higher income levels, would want to discourage a homeless population as much as possible.Great post! I really enjoyed learning about Glendale! It was so interesting to see so many parallels between Glendale and Irvine and think about how these cities can be socially exclusionary! Can’t wait to see where you go next! Feel free to check out my blog http://metromotleyla.blogspot.com.Have a great weekend!
Anyways, I can't wait to recover from my nasty cold and start running around L.A. again! Stay warm and healthy everyone! See you next week!
Breeanna Bergeron-Matsumoto
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