MIES - The Divisions in Our Backyards

The Divisions in Our Backyards (Boroughs and Suburbs)

Dorothy Parker once described Los Angeles as "72 suburbs in search of a city." She could have been describing the mix of cultures as well. From the wealthier Hancock Park to the dirt-poor Mid-City area, from the east coast influx to the Pacific Rim influx, Los Angeles, as Parker put it, has “always been and will remain very much the sum of all parts and never parts of a whole.” The divisions for these suburbs, it seems, were predominantly created by two sets of cultures that drove the interstate and fell sideways under the San Fernando Valley shadows near the beginning of the twentieth century. And inequality in equality has never been as pronounced over a century as it eventually became in L.A. Less than one percent of the makeup in the City of Angels is all the difference that separates Hispanics from Caucasians today, and with the ever-increasing influence of Latinos willingly taking more minimum wage jobs, it’s very foreseeable that within the next five years Caucasians could effectively become a minority in this dichotomy of cultures.

But this isn’t an argument about groups of people or what food is served where. This is about the greater divisions of our backyards, or how our backyards build an urban landscape that extends far beyond our daily lives. And two of the great American cities – Los Angeles and New York – present two striking contrasts to what those divisions can be.

In my own travels, I’ve found that Los Angeles and New York both speak for one land but utilize vastly different languages. Walking through downtown Los Angeles, under the haze of a summer day, one sees perhaps two or three people on the street at a time. The openness of a Martian, otherworldly realm of sun radiates all around, only to be cut off visually by the San Gabriel Mountains. Outside of the initial development built atop what was once a Spanish pueblo, Los Angeles remains very flat and wide, which can, at times, be simply overwhelming in it’s horizontality.

Conversely, New York is a checkerboard collection of arterials, some conforming to the more modern pattern, some willingly angling against the grain. Robert Moses, one of the more famous urban developers in New York, played God with the city’s fabric, and because of his efforts, New York seems more the creation of one man than a group of men. The boroughs, as a result, seem designed like the Indian caste system; Manhattan is the exalted land, Brooklyn and the Bronx are next in line, and Queens and Staten Island, fairly or unfairly, act as refuges considered undesirable (although progress appears imminent in both boroughs). Even from afar, one sees Manhattan “rise,” which gives the perception of a more linear vertical development. Quite literally, where the World Trade Center buildings once stood, is the top of a mountain. Just connect the topmost edges of the buildings, and you know exactly where the summit is. Not so surprisingly, it’s near the Empire State Building (which stood as the world’s tallest building for the majority of the twentieth century).

Still, the difference between a borough and a suburb is more than sheer geometric form. Typology, the study of urban types, also plays a very particular role in this distinction for both cities. Urban and rural development, road infrastructures, and growth boundaries are three of the more basic forms of communal organization, but there are other, more historical, forms of organization. In New York, for instance, toward the start of the seventeenth century, a system of barricades (which is how “Wall” Street gets its name, coincidentally) running perpendicularly began a pattern of 250-yard long blocks. “Blocks” were literally just the squares formed by the figure-ground diagram of the resultant city.

It should be noted that the word “borough” is very close to the words “bury” (English), “burgh” (Scottish), and “burg” (German). The word, at its roots, indicates the fortified settlements in their primal form, which is what New York was at the turn of the 1700s. Although in New York the word became synonymous with “subdivision,” the first modelers of New York (well before Robert Moses’ influence) saw this as a potential attacking point for the British in the Revolutionary War. So there was a unified effort to turn this form of defense into the form of the city.

Because of this strict adherence to this initial urban plan, buildings were compromised for any potential future growth, and therefore, New York became a sky-obsessed construction culture. Without any zoning codes intact (which came into existence toward the start of the twentieth century) the mantra of contractors and architects alike was to “build toward the heavens” and unfortunately, many construction workers sacrificed their respective lives for this dream to be true.

Although it too saw the gunfire of many fights in the Mexican-American War, Los Angeles is now considered more the result of a collective effort of pueblo settlers to build a new home. After Mexico had gained its independence from Spain in 1821, Governor Pio Pico made Los Angeles Alta California’s regional capital. Through a series of battles, the Americans eventually overcame the Mexicans and forced them into signing the Treaty of Cahuenga in 1847, which annexed the city and upper portion of the Baja region for the United States. But, in contrast to what is now the Mexican-American border, Los Angeles didn’t exactly cast Mexicans out after the conquest. Instead, there were too many jobs to be had – from railroad building to oil – which required tireless slave labor in life-threatening conditions. A fair number of Mexicans stayed behind to work, and this is one reason as to why the city’s graphical divisions began with a division in people.

Los Angeles boomed. By 1900, the population grew to more than 100,000, which caused subsequent problems with the city’s water supply. William Mulholland, another influential urban planner, planned the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which again, caused many Mexican citizens to come forth and offer their services. In the more affluent sectors, the motion picture and aviation industries literally flew to new heights, ensuring that the city would survive the Great Depression intact (no other city could ensure a surplus in the United States at the time). Millions of farmers in the Midwest, struggling to produce a dime with their harvests, headed west in search of riches. Few found it.

Stepping back for a bit, away from the history, one should keep in mind that cities (and particularly great cities) rise and fall. Rome definitely did, so did Paris and New York certainly did during the Revolutionary War. Wall Street’s famous bear and bull markets also remain very cyclical, ensuring that the timeless clichéd saying of “history repeats itself” never truly dies.

Ironically, that truth sort of died in Los Angeles, which arguably amounted to a new paradigm in urban design. There was no bust, only boom. After the Second World War, the city began to sprawl, for better or worse, into the reaches of the San Fernando Valley. New plots for development, neither urban nor rural in their entireties, blossomed from under the highways, and cultures tugged at what land wasn’t utilized for commercial development. In many ways, iron mills, steel mills, and other industrial businesses made their money from company profits and by acting as landlords. In doing so, the outer realms of Los Angeles became poorly zoned half-urbanism, half-rental housing districts. Thus the term, “suburb.”

“Suburb” remains a tricky description for what Los Angeles’ development was. What Dorothy Parker had in mind might differ from what William Levitt had in mind when he built Levittown as a prototypical suburb in the 1950s. What Levitt did was propose “new towns” in the green belts that encompassed major cities like Philadelphia and New York. Accompanied by the garden city movement toward the middle of the twentieth century, Levitt set the standard for small-scale, reproducible construction that veterans from the war could purchase at an affordable price. These “suburbs” would still utilize city services, such as electricity and water, but remained independent from the city, which the inhabitants saw as an asset.

In Los Angeles, that independence never existed. And instead of the city coming out to meet the communities, it was always the other way around, as Dorothy Parker so eloquently put it. Suburbs, in Los Angeles, were almost the equivalent of social discrimination in context. It almost meant “less than urban,” which could easily be construed to mean “less than affluent.” Over a larger period of time, this would lead to cultural conflicts and racially oriented gangs, a problem in such places as Compton, which has never been truly solved.

In New York, the issue was a lack of real estate. In Los Angeles, the issue was a glut of real estate, and a significant drop-off in home value depending on where you lived. Although Rodeo Drive and Park Place remain some of the highest-end streets one can drive on, the roads themselves, in context with the cities they helped build, remain the one constant in both boroughs and suburbs. A division is present, and depending on who plans the city, whether it is a group of designers or a clash of cultures, a direction will be given.

In New York, that direction was up. In Los Angeles, it was outward. Whether it is to the heavens we build or to the horizons, our fences remain at the wiles of our initial ambitions. The 7-11 on a corner street with an abundance of unnecessary parking space is one result; a tight shotgun rundown tenement building is the other. In cities like Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis, Minnesota, this growth curve can be checked, and zoning and growth boundaries can be better defined. Indeed, the answers to modern city life will emerge from the smallest urban sectors and not the largest. But our greatest problems lead to our greatest answers, and for this, one can only thank New York and L.A.