Surrounded.. I look around me and I'm surrounded by an ample amount of cars. It looks like a scene in an apocolypse movie.. where the locals try to escape the city's disaster.. but then you realize that this isn't a movie. This is Los Angeles traffic.. rated as the 2nd worst traffic in the United states (2nd to Honolulu Hawaii). Bumper to bumper as far as you can see in front of you and behind you, you want to go faster, you dont want to wait but you can't.. you can't.. you just sit there and go at cruising speed of under ten miles.. dreading every minute of this commute.. thinking of what you can do with all this time spent in traffic.
All this traffic gets you to think why it is like this. Why are the streets so congested as opposed to city. The answer may be as easy as saying its the 2nd most populated city in the United state. But it can also be as complicated as saying that it is due to high business numbers and similar interests in the city. With people constantly driving to get from place to place.. it would make sense why it is so packed.
I traveled from UCLA to downtown during the heavily congested traffic to spend time with my cousin for the first time ever and explore Downtown Los Angeles but more specifically the LA live center.
Here is a picture from his apartment that shows the downtown area (I don't remember that building's name)
*EDIT 12/4/12*
After learning about neo-liberalism, and the Axis of Difference of class. The downtown area can be seen as a place to reproduce labor because as Marxian said: entertainment is needed for labor reproduction. Even if people work over 40 hours a week, its all okay as long as they get to go play at Disneyland or in this case at the staples center and watch the Lakers play their heart out!
I really enjoyed your post because I understand your frustration with LA traffic especially on the 405. As for your reasons why it is so congested, I agree that it is due to a high population size and infrastructure, but I would also add that it is also due to the enormous size of California. Compared to other cities like New York or London, LA has wider streets and is more spaced out therefore making the use of the auto mobile the easiest way to get around the city. Because of a lack of other really good transportation services, driving a car is the best option but due to the high number of drivers, traffic is always bound to be a problem. Also, because most people live in the suburbs and most jobs are located in the city, rush hour is terrible.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog seeing as, as a Los Angeles area native, I am all too familiar with the frustrating monotony of LA traffic. I especially liked your use of metaphors and colorful language to illustrate this concept, as well as the identification of the freeways you took, which allows LA residents to truly empathize with your situation. As for your observations around the LA Live area, I again found your colorful descriptions of how the area “becomes alive during the night” to be both illustrative and indicative of the area for those who have never explored it and, in a sense, nostalgic for those that grew up amongst it.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the blog’s relationship to themes and ideas covered in class and in the readings, I think you did a great job relating the LA Live portion of your trip to class concepts, but I would have liked to see you analyze how your trip down the 10 and 405 freeways embodied, or failed to embody, other class-related ideas. Specifically, while I thought it was clever that you related the sense of anonymity and, as you put it, “dog eat dog” mentality you saw in the LA Live area to the post-metropolis theme of individualism that we covered in class, I would have liked to see you incorporate other ideas of the post-metropolis into the freeway portion of your trip. For example, considering how Los Angeles is a proverbial poster child of the post-metropolis, I find the sheer fact that such horrendous traffic exists in Los Angeles rather contradictory. Seeing as the post-metropolis is characterized by several specialized hubs that are all connected by automobile, it is not surprising that an area as dense as the Los Angeles Metropolitan area would have a few congested freeways. The interesting aspect of this gridlock is that it seems to revolve around a common center, downtown LA, a concept represented very well in your blog. Seeing as the post-metropolis is characterized primarily by a secular trend of decentralization, it is very curious that Los Angeles would display such blatant centralization as it pertains to traffic trends. One final point, I feel that your blog would benefit by comparing the individualism you saw at LA Live with Robert E Park’s quote that, “The City is a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate.”
Overall, I really enjoyed your blog and I hope these few suggestions both inspire and assist in writing your future blog posts.