Water Use, Ethnic Conflict, and Infrastructure in Nineteenth-Century Los Angeles

2006 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID S. TORRES-ROUFF
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Open Access ◽  
Water Use ◽  
City Government ◽  
European American ◽  
Waste Waters ◽  
Public Philosophy ◽  
Environmental Inequality ◽  
Los Angeles River ◽  
The City

Beginning in 1873, Los Angeles replaced zanjas, or open canals, with pipes for irrigation and sewage. From the city's founding, the zanjas had carried irrigation and waste waters between the Los Angeles River and the citizens. Whereas Mexican public philosophy supported maintaining the zanjas for open access and maximal use, European American newcomers championed enclosed pipes as a means to improve sanitation and enhance opportunities for revenue. Yet city governors did not distribute sewer services equally, denying sewerage to Mexican and Chinese Angelenos. In doing so, they established new relationships of institutional,infrastructural, and environmental inequality between brown residents and the city government.

Water quality improvement by implementation of Proposition O in the Los Angeles river watershed, California

2008 ◽  
Vol 58 (12) ◽  
pp. 2271-2278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mi-Hyun Park ◽  
Stephanie Pincetl ◽  
Michael K. Stenstrom
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Total Maximum Daily Load ◽  
Water Quality Standards ◽  
River Watershed ◽  
Los Angeles River ◽  
The City ◽  
Total Maximum ◽  
Daily Load

Proposition O was created to help the City of Los Angeles comply with the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) requirements under the Clean Water Act. In this study, the effectiveness of the Proposition O projects in Los Angeles River watershed was examined to show whether it achieves the goal of meeting water quality standards. Our analysis shows the most effective single project will remove at most 2% of pollutant loads from Los Angeles River Watershed and will not achieve TMDL compliance, although several projects can make important contributions to achieve compliance. The ranking results show that the projects that treat the runoff from the largest drainage area have the greatest impact on the water quality of Los Angeles river.

scholarly journals The Boom Interview

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-44
Author(s):  
Christopher Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Private Space ◽  
Los Angeles Times ◽  
Los Angeles River ◽  
The City ◽  
New Buildings

This interview with Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne was conducted by Boom editor Jon Christensen and Dana Cuff, a professor of architecture, urban design, and urban planning, and director of cityLAB at UCLA. Hawthrone is charged with covering new developments in architecture and urban design in Los Angeles and the United States, and thinking and writing about new buildings and how they might-or might not-change the way we live. More broadly, his subject is not just buildings, but the city itself, and how we understand it and ourselves. Hawthorne calls his big project “The Third Los Angeles.” Like no other critic in the land, Hawthorne has grasped the challenge of telling the story of a great city-its past, present, and future-while playing a prominent role in shaping the city's vision of itself, intellectually, creatively, and pragmatically. Hawthorne discusses the evolution of public and private space in Los Angeles, competing plans for the future of the Los Angeles River, freeways, housing, climate, and much more.

The Unequal Spatial Distribution of City Government Fines: The Case of Parking Tickets in Los Angeles

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 823-856 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noli Brazil
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
City Council ◽  
City Government ◽  
Black Representation ◽  
Black Neighborhoods ◽  
Black Residents ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Parking Ticket

This study investigates the relationship between government fines and neighborhood composition using data on parking citations in Los Angeles. Parking ticket fines have received significant attention in public debates concerning bias in government and law enforcement practices. In these debates, community advocates claim that parking citations are spatially concentrated in neighborhoods of predominantly economically vulnerable populations. Using parking ticket data in 2016 from the City of Los Angeles, this study shows that the number of parking tickets is higher in neighborhoods with a larger presence of renters, young adults, and Black residents. The study also finds that the burden on Black neighborhoods is not alleviated by Black representation in city council. However, Hispanic neighborhoods with a Hispanic council representative experienced higher parking ticket rates for regulations that are more likely to be violated by visitors, specifically, violations occurring during the evening and overnight hours, and specific to time-limit and permit-related regulations.

Citizen Surveillance

2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-91
Author(s):  
Simon J. Judkins
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
City Government ◽  
Campaign Contributions ◽  
Political Status ◽  
The People ◽  
Police Protection ◽  
The City

During the late 1930s Los Angeles' public sphere was radically transformed through the actions of a little known citizens' organization which created and deployed a sophisticated surveillance apparatus to pursue reform of the city government. That group—CIVIC—labored to convince the voting public that municipal officials had provided police protection to organized gambling and prostitution operations in exchange for campaign contributions. In their efforts to dismantle an economic and political status quo, CIVIC operated both surreptitiously and in plain sight, all the while seeking the participation of the people of Los Angeles in what was publicized as a citizens' crusade to purge the city of its corrupt political and criminal leadership.

The Boom Interview

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Bon
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
American West ◽  
Political Relationships ◽  
Los Angeles River ◽  
Moral Economic ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

Lauren Bon is a transformative figure. Through her work with the Metabolic Studio and as a trustee of the Annenberg Foundation, she examines a handful of enormous and intersecting questions about Los Angeles, the American West, the way we think about landscapes, our water and where it comes from, what we owe the land and communities, and our moral, economic, and political relationships. In this interview she discusses her work, including recent and forthcoming projects such as Not A Cornfield, 100 Mules Walking the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and Bending the River Back into the City—the waterwheel she plans to build for a spur of the Los Angeles River that will sit adjacent to her studio on the edge of Los Angeles’s Chinatown.

Map Room

2014 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 4-5
Author(s):  
Natale Zappia
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Complex Series ◽  
Santa Monica ◽  
Los Angeles River ◽  
Before And After ◽  
West Los Angeles ◽  
The City

In the minds of Californians, then, Mulholland’s aqueduct represents a historical pivot; a before-and-after event when farmers lost and the city won; a moment when Los Angeles began to soak the desert with water and populate it with people. The idea that the city is an actual desert disguised by uninhibited water theft has permeated the minds of policy makers and popular culture (i.e. “Chinatown”) for so long that it is hard to rectify the map above with the “genesis myth” of the Owens River Aqueduct. Yet, in the minds of engineers in 1888 (when the population of Los Angeles stood at around 50,000—roughly half the size of Santa Monica today), Los Angeles—particularly West Los Angeles, was anything but a parched landscape. This map, in fact, reveals an incredibly complex series of patchworks containing irrigation lines (both newly constructed and older Rancho era Zanjas), “moist areas,” pipelines, washes, creeks, streams, swamps, rivers, canals, wells, and of course, the large and still wild Los Angeles River.

Mexican Americans and Cities: A Study in Migration and the Use of Formal Resources

1971 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 292-308
Author(s):  
Joan W. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
City Government ◽  
Primary Group ◽  
Length Of Residence ◽  
Personal Problems ◽  
The City

The paper explores the circumstances under which Los Angeles Mexican American men turn to formal or informal, Mexican or non-Mexican resources. Formal sources are most likely to be utilized for advice or help in dealing with the city government, second with regard to money problems, third with regard to politics, and least likely for personal problems. Formalization of resources is associated with length of residence in the city, but birthplace shows a different pattern. The data do not support the theoretical notion that urbanization is associated with abandonment of primary-group resources for this population. In fact, native Angelenos, with greater access to “cheaper” gemeinschaft resources, tend to adhere to them. The findings have implications for theories of urbanism as well as understanding of Mexican Americans.

Wenn stadtpolitische Bewegungen das Terrain des Staats betreten

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (191) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Diesselhorst
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
City Government ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
Hierarchical Decision Making ◽  
Urban Social Movements ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Hierarchical Decision ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This article discusses the struggles of urban social movements for a de-neoliberalisation of housing policies in Poulantzian terms as a “condensation of the relationship of forces”. Drawing on an empirical analysis of the “Berliner Mietenvolksentscheid” (Berlin rent referendum), which was partially successful in forcing the city government of Berlin to adopt a more progressive housing policy, the article argues that urban social movements have the capacity to challenge neoliberal housing regimes. However, the specific materiality of the state apparatus and its strategic selectivity both limit the scope of intervention for social movements aiming at empowerment and non-hierarchical decision-making.

Utopian Visions in United States Urbanism

Moreana ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 42 (Number 164) (4) ◽  
pp. 157-186
Author(s):  
James M. McCutcheon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
New World ◽  
New Technology ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
Central Park ◽  
Garden Cities ◽  
Oneida Community ◽  
The City

America’s appeal to Utopian visionaries is best illustrated by the Oneida Community, and by Etienne Cabet’s experiment (Moreana 31/215 f and 43/71 f). A Messianic spirit was a determinant in the Puritans’ crossing the Atlantic. The Edenic appeal of the vast lands in a New World to migrants in a crowded Europe is obvious. This article documents the ambition of urbanists to preserve that rural quality after the mushrooming of towns: the largest proved exemplary in bringing the country into the city. New York’s Central Park was emulated by the open spaces on the grounds of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. The garden-cities surrounding London also provided inspiration, as did the avenues by which Georges Haussmann made Paris into a tourist mecca, and Pierre L’Enfant’s designs for the nation’s capital. The author concentrates on two growing cities of the twentieth century, Los Angeles and Honolulu. His detailed analysis shows politicians often slow to implement the bold and costly plans of designers whose ambition was to use the new technology in order to vie with the splendor of the natural sites and create the “City Beautiful.” Some titles in the bibliography show the hopes of those dreamers to have been tempered by fears of “supersize” or similar drawbacks.

Los Angeles in the 1930sThe WPA Guide to the City of Angels

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federal Writers Project of the Works ◽  
David Kipen
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
The City
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document