Analysing Social Difference- Irvine

This week I decided to comment on Kei Komuro's Week 8 Blog on Social difference in Irvine:



http://kkomuro1005.blogspot.com

Hi Kei

I was very impressed with your blog-post and it has really encouraged me to go and visit Irvine. I have been to Santa Monica beach so I can understand where you are coming from.

There are several reasons why there is such a large difference between both the urban and social make-up of the to beachside locations. Firstly, as a foreigner in the US, I believe that most of the difference is a result of the historic landmarks and tourist attractions in Santa Monica and the neighbouring town of Venice.  This has created a seafront of hotels and tourist shops, which also puts many locals off living here. Secondly, Many people travel to LA in search of the dream lifestyle, and in many case, they soon realise the stark reality of living in such a large city and find those high-paid, illustrious jobs, very hard to come by.  This results in many people having to fight for jobs and some are left homeless.

Finally, Irvine is a planned city, (from what I have read) which involved the building of a number of villages around Irvine and was aimed at creating a highly commercial business area. The city of Irvine is home to several noticeable business headquarters including: LA fitness, In-N-Out burger and Taco Bells. As the area was planned, this allowed them to position many of the high-quality business headquarters near the waterfront where the land prices are much more expensive.  The large number of households on the beachfront does suggest an area of high-class citizens and there is “a concentration of the rich” in David Harvey’s Neo-liberal View.

Irvine Beach Park

 I want to address the viewpoint of Kling, Olin and Poster (1995) in their piece ‘the emergence of Post Suburbia: An introduction and in particular their view on the emerging Utopia. Utopia is an ideal community, which possess highly desirable of perfect qualities they believe that the Irvine Company “has explicitly marketed Irvine as a carefully planned, middle-class, suburban utopia, “ and is often used as a model example to aspire too. The neatly landscaped communities, freedom from crime along with many other positive traits helps suggest why the city of Irvine comes across as a more affluent area than Santa Monica.

In response to your point raised about social difference in response to a disaster. I agree with you completely that there is a lack of places to evade the disaster being so close to the seafront and class does matter here; because the higher class are located near the point of impact so therefore will be more greatly effected. However you suggest that race is a more prominent factor in Irvine. I want to draw upon the “race–class” debate presented by Wilson’s (1978) in ‘The Declining Significance of Race.’ He believes that race is no longer an indicator and the position of Blacks in the US society by the 1970’s had largely become part of the economy. It was also proved that after Miami’s 1992 Hurricane Andrew that in fact “class-trumped race”.

When it comes to evacuation from a natural disaster, I just feel that the subject of class relates to the availability of resources and quickness of warning, which is more important in the case of a natural disaster than race. There may be communities dominated by a certain race however, it is their proximity to safety and methods of warning that help in their process of evacuation.

Kling, Rob, Spencer Olin, and Mark Poster. Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County since World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press, (1995)