The City of Los Angeles
Tagged as the world center of business, the city never fails to astonish its constituents with its wide variety of opportunities and great deal of surprises. With the multicultural structure of Los Angeles, it could be noted that a miscellany of issues concerning justice, reinvention and opportunity that underlie in its strategic geographic location.
Hidden in the citys archetypal and postmodern environment are stories of societal oppression and issues concerning race, gender and sexuality. The contemporary society of the city reflects the widely held belief that there is an embedded outcry and rage which lies beneath its flashy, modern and diverse facade. As observed in various literatures, it could be said that the city is an interesting area of study among socio-political scholars it has its own tale of progress and social misdemeanor.
It is in this musing that this paper recounts the consequences incurred by the city as it continues with its pursuit for urban development. This paper provides a vivid exploration of the directions of development that the city has undertake. It aims to render an account of the critical impact and effects which the ever changing social and political trends instigate. The impact and effects of such trends are discussed in this paper using perspectives from academic and scholarly literatures and from the Nina Revoyrs novel Southland.
The Importance of Space
Geographic and architectural details of Los Angeles consider the finite changes in culture, economics, and politics in Los Angeles. The spatial description of the Los Angeles could be neither chaotic in structure, nor haphazard in evolution, the citys spatial structure is the visible record of a plural society.
Quite dissimilar with this notion, the novel Southland tells of the spatial description of Los Angeles based from its mere natural representation that does not aim to go beyond the constituents of its space. Southland describes Los Angeles as a city with greenery scenes, mountains, and huge expanse of clear blue sky. Also, the novel says that the childrens parents are loving the fresh air combined with the scent of jasmine in spring and oleanders in the summer.
While the novel tends to offer artistic spatial definition of the city, scholarly works regarding the importance of space and the relationship between the control of space and the exercise of power view the subject as being related to the failure of in socio-spatial control in the city. The control of space and territoriality is a fundamental element of overall police efforts at social control. This validates the perception that spatial control in the city serves as a response to its radical society that disturbs its territoriality.
The cognitive space occupied in Los Angeles by various neighborhood groups including charitable and publicly funded anti-gang programs is being supervised by law enforcement officers as part of actions to lessen or even to eliminate disorder. Given this notion, it could be said that space has encountered a crucial phase in which there is a clash of power within the authorities and the citys contemporary and radical society.
This kind of scenario necessitates a more effective geopolitical strategies to be able to encourage peace and order in the city. It is written that cultural conceptions of space and place are central components of political struggles, because to dictate the nature of space and the action that occurs there is to exercise tremendous power.
Noveyrs novel Southland reflects the spatial and social uncertainties in Los Angeles. Based from the novel, it could be said that the city is a visual presentation of the dialectical meeting of space and social relation. This is because space in itself may be already given, but the organization and meaning of space is distinctively the product of social translation, transformation and experience.
Opportunity and Justice in the Contemporary Society of Los Angeles
Los Angeles has long been the scholars primary illustration of urban sprawl, environmental degradation and the loss of community. Such loss of community is evident in Southland in which Jackie, the novels main character, discovers that four black teenagers were murdered in the his fathers store during the Watts Riots of 1965.
With the inclusion of this historical event, the novel takes a glimpse on the social breakdown, mob rule, and criminality in the city. Both the Southland and the scholarly works are at one in declaring that such uprising denotes the finite pursuit of the city for justice. The event also instills that Los Angeles is necessitating a reform on its criminal justice system and participation from homeowners.
What lies beneath the inadequacies in the justice system of the city is the opportunity to intermediary actors consisting of the neighborhood and community groups which undertake actions against crime and violence. The citys crime news carves out a crucial role for amateur intermediaries such as community groups, and non-law enforcement professionals.
There is so much more to this city than the violence and injustice that confront the eye. The city hungers for the programs and reformation when it comes to the youth sector who have been socially deprived of chances for complete transformation. The civil unrest and injustice of the city belong to the many setbacks of its struggle for progress and these factors are needing an appropriate landscaping of its political and justice system.
Racial and Personal Identity in Los Angeles
The novel is reflective of the racial tensions in the city. The racial tension in the city is a distinct situation being swept under the rug by legislators, media, and law enforcement groups. In the novel, the incident in which four black teenagers were killed in the store of Jackys father in Crenshaw paints a gloomy picture of Los Angeles as home to racial and identity issues.
According to the novel, Jackie is startled upon seeing that the black mourners were mostly clumped together on the right side of the room. Such scenario validates the notion that it has been hard for the city to eliminate or even lessen the tension among the different racial groups which have been living in turmoil and dealing with identity crisis issues. Race is shaking the the comfortable quietudes of the Los Angeles government to roots. This cemented the city as a racial war zone.
The social unrest in the city might be related to the race and economic issues which continue to expose the negative impact of the citys struggle for power and prominence. The vast urban complexes of Los Angeles is harder to control than those in the Northern part basically because Northern cities are smaller. When it comes to policies regarding desegregation, the Los Angeles has been in s difficult stage in which there seems to be an imbalance pattern of blackwhite residence as viewed by recent demographic trends.
Los Angeles belongs to the cities that has to contend with a far more diversified set of ethnic and religious divisions. As a city of immigrants, Los Angeles finds itself in conflict once again over how its newest immigrants are redefining and recreating new forms of community. With the racial tension, people felt the loss of quality of life and a healthy environment, and recognized that the loss was differentially distributed.
Conclusion
It is already written that there is a miscellany of stories hidden behind the progressive status of the city. This miscellany of stories reflects the cries of hope and justice of the people who have been the center of the social and political unrest in the area. The stories are from people who have been victims of racial and identity crises, injustice, and social misdemeanor caused by the citys contemporary society stigmatized as a radical one.
Whatever else Los Angeles was, good or bad, it is a city that posits the consequences of a strong pursuit of for progress and of an eager strive to maintain its dominant status. Both fiction world and the scholarly realm suggest that the city is having a difficult time in managing the setbacks of its dominant status and in searching for the appropriate solution and reform.
Los Angeles is a reflection of Americas struggle for wealth and perfection and a visible presentation that declares the urgent need for total reform in social and political policies. At the very heart of Los Angeles lies the opportunity for the application of a possible reform in the social and political sectors of the city encompassing multiracial facets and various legislations. For some, the city fails when it comes to certain aspects of the society, but for others, the city is a challenging land wherein only the fittest survives.
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