City of Quartz, Davis, M Flashcards
(112 cards)
1
Q
What is the architectural glacis that separates downtown corporate buildings from the surrounding poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles?
A
It is a monumental structure that segregates the buildings from the surrounding neighborhoods.
2
Q
Who designed a library in Hollywood that resembles a foreign-legion fort?
A
Frank Gehry, a famous architect.
3
Q
Why does the LAPD barricade streets and seal off poor neighborhoods in the Westlake district and the San Fernando Valley?
A
As part of their “war on drugs”.
4
Q
How did developer Alexander Haagen design his shopping mall in Watts?
A
He designed a panopticon shopping mall surrounded by staked metal fences and a substation of the LAPD in a central surveillance tower.
5
Q
What is the “giant eye” that an ex-chief of police is advocating for, and what is “Garden Plot”?
A
The “giant eye” is a geo-synchronous law enforcement satellite, and “Garden Plot” is a 1960s plan for a law-and-order armageddon that some law enforcement officials are still implementing.
6
Q
What is the “ubiquitous ‘armed response’” in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
It is a proliferation of new repressions in space and movement that undergirds the defense of luxury lifestyles.
7
Q
What has become a master narrative in the emerging built environment of the 1990s in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
The obsession with physical security systems and the architectural policing of social boundaries.
8
Q
What has contemporary urban theory been silent about in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
The militarization of city life, despite its grimly visible effects at the street level.
9
Q
What dire predictions made in 1969 have been tragically fulfilled in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
The predictions of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence that we live in “fortress cities” brutally divided between fortified cells of affluent society and places of terror where the police battle the criminalized poor.
10
Q
What paradigm of social control has long been superseded in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
The old liberal paradigm that attempted to balance repression with reform.
11
Q
Zero-sum game
A
Zero-sum game is a mathematical representation in game theory and economic theory of a situation which involves two sides, where the result is an advantage for one side and an equivalent loss for the other.
12
Q
How is the rhetoric of social warfare different from the old liberal paradigm of social control in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
It calculates the interests of the urban poor and the middle classes as a zero-sum game, rather than attempting to balance repression with reform.
13
Q
What is the consequence of the market provision of “security” in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
It generates its own paranoid demand and becomes a positional good defined by income access to private “protective services” and membership in hardened residential enclaves or restricted suburbs.
14
Q
What does “security” mean as a prestige symbol in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
It has less to do with personal safety than with the degree of personal insulation from “unsavory” groups and individuals, even crowds in general, in residential, work, consumption, and travel environments.
15
Q
What did William Whyte observe about social intercourse in New York in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
He observed that “fear proves itself” and that the social perception of threat becomes a function of the security mobilization itself, not crime rates.
16
Q
What do surveys show about suburbanites in Milwaukee and inner-city Washingtonians’ concerns about violent crime in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
They show that Milwaukee suburbanites are just as worried about violent crime as inner-city Washingtonians, despite a twenty-fold difference in relative levels of mayhem.
17
Q
What is the function of the media in post-liberal Los Angeles, according to the excerpt?
A
The media’s function is to bury and obscure the daily economic and political violence of the ruling class while magnifying the perceived threat of violence from poor and marginalized communities.
18
Q
What do sensationalized accounts of killer youth gangs high on crack and racist evocations of marauding Willie Hortons do in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
They foment moral panics that reinforce and justify urban apartheid, and throw up specters of criminal underclasses and psychotic stalkers.
19
Q
What is the effect of the neo-military syntax of contemporary architecture in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
It insinuates violence and conjures imaginary dangers.
20
Q
What are the invisible signs warning off the underclass “Other” in today’s upscale, pseudo-public spaces in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
They are full of invisible signs warning off the underclass “Other,” such as sumptuary malls, office centers, culture acropolises, and so on.
21
Q
What do pariah groups such as poor Latino families, young Black men, or elderly homeless white females immediately read in the built environment of post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
They immediately read the meaning of how the built environment contributes to segregation, even though architectural critics are usually oblivious to this fact.
22
Q
What is the consequence of the crusade to secure the city in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
The destruction of accessible public space.
23
Q
What does the opprobrium attached to the term “street person” indicate in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
It is a harrowing index of the devaluation of public spaces.
24
Q
What has urban redevelopment done to once vital pedestrian streets and public parks in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A
It has converted them into traffic sewers and temporary receptacles for the homeless and wretched, in order to reduce contact with untouchables.
25
What is happening to the American city in post-liberal Los Angeles, according to many critics?
It is being systematically turned inside out, with street frontage denuded, public activity sorted into strictly functional compartments, and circulation internalized in corridors under the gaze of private police.
26
How is the privatization of the architectural public realm shadowed by parallel restructurings of electronic space in post-liberal Los Angeles?
They are shadowed by heavily policed, pay-access "information orders," elite databases, and subscription cable services that appropriate parts of the invisible agora.
27
What has declined in post-liberal Los Angeles along with urban liberalism?
The Olmstedian vision of public space has also declined.
28
What is The Olmstedian vision of public space
The Olmstedian vision of public space refers to the philosophy and design principles of Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who is best known for designing New York City's Central Park.
The vision emphasizes the importance of accessible and well-designed public spaces as essential components of a healthy and vibrant urban environment.
Olmsted believed that public spaces should be open to all members of society, regardless of class or status, and that they should provide a respite from the stresses of city life.
The Olmstedian vision also emphasized the importance of natural beauty and the use of green spaces to promote physical and mental health.
29
Who was Frederick Law Olmsted in post-liberal Los Angeles?
He was North America's Haussmann and the Father of Central Park, and he conceived public landscapes and parks as social safety-valves, mixing classes and ethnicities in common (bourgeois) recreations and enjoyments.
30
What animated the construction of the canonical urban spaces of the La Guardia-Roosevelt era, according to Manfredo Tafuri in post-liberal Los Angeles?
The same principle that animated the construction of public spaces under Olmsted's vision - as the emollient of class struggle, if not the bedrock of the American polis.
31
What has happened to the reformist vision of public space in contemporary urban America, according to the excerpt in post-liberal Los Angeles?
It is now obsolete, as public space no longer functions as a means of class mixing. Contemporary urban America is more like Victorian England than the New York of Walt Whitman or La Guardia.
32
What has happened to public amenities in post-liberal Los Angeles?
They are radically shrinking, parks are becoming derelict and beaches more segregated, libraries and playgrounds are closing, youth congregations of ordinary kinds are banned, and the streets are becoming more desolate and dangerous.
33
How are the Oz-like archipelago of Westside pleasure domes in post-liberal Los Angeles reciprocally dependent upon the social imprisonment of the third-world service proletariat?
They are dependent upon their social imprisonment in increasingly repressive ghettoes and barrios.
34
What has municipal policy in post-liberal Los Angeles taken its lead from?
The security offensive and the middle-class demand for increased spatial and social insulation.
35
What has supported the shift of fiscal resources to corporate-defined redevelopment priorities in post-liberal Los Angeles?
De facto disinvestment in traditional public space and recreation.
36
What has the pliant city government in post-liberal Los Angeles collaborated in?
The massive privatization of public space and the subsidization of new, racist enclaves (benignly described as "urban villages").
37
What is neglected in current discussions of the postmodern scene in Los Angeles?
The overbearing aspects of counter-urbanization and counter-insurgency, including the brutalization of inner-city neighborhoods and the increasing South Africanization of its spatial relations.
38
What is laid over the brutalization of inner-city neighborhoods in post-liberal Los Angeles?
A triumphal gloss, including terms like "urban renaissance" and "city of the future," that obscures the reality of the city's spatial relations.
39
What is the thesis of the observations in post-liberal Los Angeles?
The existence of a new class war (sometimes a continuation of the race war of the 1960s) at the level of the built environment.
39
What is the thesis of the observations in post-liberal Los Angeles?
The existence of a new class war (sometimes a continuation of the race war of the 1960s) at the level of the built environment.
40
Are the observations in post-liberal Los Angeles a comprehensive account of the city's economic and political dynamics?
No, they are not a comprehensive account, as that would require a thorough analysis of economic and political dynamics.
41
What does Los Angeles offer in its usual prefigurative mode, according to the excerpt in post-liberal Los Angeles?
An especially disquieting catalogue of the emergent liaisons between architecture and the American police state.
42
Who was the first militarist of space in Los Angeles?
General Otis of the Times.
43
What was the name of General Otis's home in Los Angeles?
The Bivouac.
44
What was the name of Otis's newspaper?
The Times.
45
What happened to the heavily fortified Times headquarters on October 1, 1910?
It was destroyed in a catastrophic explosion blamed on union saboteurs.
46
What is the name of the large postwar urban design in North America, developed with public tax increments under the aegis of the Community Redevelopment Agency in Los Angeles?
The Downtown project.
47
What are some of the billion-dollar mega-structures in the new financial district in Los Angeles?
Crocker Center, the Bonaventure Hotel and Shopping Mall, the World Trade Center, the Broadway Plaza, Arco Center, CitiCorp Plaza, California Plaza, and so on.
48
What are some objections to the megalomaniac complexes in Los Angeles, such as Bunker Hill and the Figueroa corridor?
They have been criticized for their abuse of scale and composition, denigration of street landscape, and confiscation of vital life activity of the Center, now sequestered within subterranean concourses or privatized malls.
49
Who is Sam Hall Kaplan and what has he criticized about the new corporate citadel in Los Angeles?
Sam Hall Kaplan is an urban critic for the Times who has been indefatigable in denouncing the anti-pedestrian bias of the new corporate citadel, with its fascist obliteration of street frontage.
He argues that the superimposition of 'hermetically sealed fortresses' and air-dropped 'pieces of suburbia' has 'dammed the rivers of life' Downtown.
50
What is the criticism of Kaplan's defense of pedestrian democracy?
Kaplan's defense of pedestrian democracy is grounded in hackneyed liberal complaints about 'bland design' and 'elitist planning practices', without recognizing the dimension of foresight, of explicit repressive intention, which has its roots in Los Angeles's ancient history of class and race warfare.
51
What is the "fortress effect" in the new corporate citadel of Los Angeles when viewed en bloc from the standpoint of its interactions with other social areas and landscapes in the central city?
The "fortress effect" emerges, not as an inadvertent failure of design, but as deliberate socio-spatial strategy, rooted in Los Angeles's ancient history of class and race warfare.
52
What is the main goal of the socio-spatial strategy implemented in Downtown Los Angeles?
The main goal of the socio-spatial strategy implemented in Downtown Los Angeles is a double repression: to raze all association with Downtown's past and to prevent any articulation with the non-Anglo urbanity of its future.
On the perimeter of redevelopment, the strategy takes the form of a brutal architectural edge or glacis that defines the new Downtown as a citadel vis-à-vis the rest of the central city.
53
What traditional pedestrian links to the old center were removed to emphasize the "security" of the new Downtown?
Virtually all the traditional pedestrian links to the old center, including the famous Angels' Flight funicular railroad, were removed to emphasize the "security" of the new Downtown.
54
What is the logic behind the redevelopment of Downtown Los Angeles?
The logic behind the redevelopment of Downtown Los Angeles is to create a new skyscape that is a citadel vis-à-vis the rest of the central city, while erasing all association with Downtown's past and preventing any articulation with the non-Anglo urbanity of its future.
55
Why did the developers in Los Angeles not attempt to exploit the historic buildings in the old Broadway core?
The developers in Los Angeles did not attempt to exploit the historic buildings in the old Broadway core because they viewed property values in the area as irreversibly eroded by the area's centrality to public transport, and especially by its heavy use by Black and Mexican poor.
56
What was the paramount concern of resegregated spatial security in Los Angeles?
The paramount concern of resegregated spatial security in Los Angeles was to protect crucial nodes of white power from the perceived Black threat, which was spelled out in lurid detail in the McCone Commission Report.
57
How did the Harbor Freeway and Bunker Hill impact the new financial core?
They cut it off from the poor immigrant neighborhoods that surround it.
58
What did Hill Street become in the wake of redevelopment?
A local Berlin Wall separating the luxury of Bunker Hill from the lifeworld of Broadway.
59
What was the response to the appearance of destitute street nomads in certain areas?
A quiet panic, with video cameras turning on and security guards adjusting their belts.
60
Who reclaims Broadway as their primary shopping and entertainment street?
Latino immigrants.
61
What is the point that William Whyte makes about the quality of urban environments?
William Whyte makes the point that the quality of any urban environment can be measured, first of all, by whether there are convenient, comfortable places for pedestrians to sit.
62
What is the city's policy regarding white-collar residential colonization in Downtown?
The city's policy is to subsidize white-collar residential colonization in Downtown by spending tens of millions of dollars of diverted tax revenue on enticing, 'soft' environments in these areas.
63
What is the city's strategy/policy towards the poor in Downtown LA?
The city is engaged in a merciless struggle to make public facilities and spaces as 'unliveable' as possible for the homeless and the poor.
The city promotes the 'containment' of the homeless in Skid Row along Fifth Street east of the Broadway, systematically transforming the neighborhood into an outdoor poorhouse.
64
What is the result of the city's containment strategy?
The containment strategy breeds its own vicious circle of contradiction. By condensing the mass of the desperate and helpless together in such a small space, and denying adequate housing, official policy has transformed Skid Row into probably the most dangerous ten square blocks in the world.
65
What is the purpose of the "bumproof" benches introduced on the periphery of Skid Row?
To offer minimal surface for uncomfortable sitting, while making sleeping impossible.
66
What is the public toilet situation in Downtown Los Angeles?
Los Angeles has fewer available public lavatories than any major North American city due to a policy decision.
The remaining public toilet in Skid Row was bulldozed, and the Downtown area prefers the solution of 'quasi-public restrooms' that can be made available to tourists and office workers but denied to vagrants and other unsuitables.
67
What are some examples of aggressive design deterrents used against the homeless in Downtown Los Angeles?
"Bumproof" benches, outdoor sprinklers programmed to drench unsuspecting sleepers, and ornate enclosures built by restaurants and markets to protect their refuse.
68
What design precautions are being taken in areas where powerbrokers and the homeless intersect in Downtown?
Extraordinary design precautions are being taken to ensure the physical separation of the different humanities.
69
What is the purpose of the "24-hour, state-of-the-art security" designed by the LAPD for parking structures serving the Los Angeles Times and Ronald Reagan State Office buildings?
The purpose is to provide confidence-building circulation systems that allow white-collar workers to walk from car to office or boutique with minimum exposure to the public street.
70
What does the Broadway Spring Center add to scare away the homeless and poor?
The Broadway Spring Center adds a huge dose of menace, including armed guards, locked gates, and security cameras, to scare away the homeless and poor.
71
What is Skid Row?
A containment area for the homeless in Downtown Los Angeles, characterized by poor living conditions and high levels of danger.
72
Who founded 'Justiceville'?
Homeless activist Ted Hayes.
73
What is the city's policy towards homeless people in Downtown?
The city's policy towards homeless people in Downtown is to contain them in Skid Row along Fifth Street east of Broadway, and to discourage them from sleeping in public by confiscating shelters and possessions.
74
What was the city's brief experiment with legalized camping?
The city's brief experiment with legalized camping was a response to a series of exposure deaths in the cold winter of 1987, but it was ended after only four months to make way for construction of a transit repair yard.
75
What is the LAPD's policy towards homeless shelters in Downtown?
The LAPD periodically sweep the area, confiscating shelters and possessions and arresting resisters.
76
Who is Frank Gehry?
Frank Gehry is a Pritzker Prize-winning architect known for his elaborate and innovative designs.
77
How has Gehry been involved in the neo-boosterism of the 1990s?
Gehry has become one of the principal "imagineers" of the neo-boosterism movement, which focuses on revitalizing urban areas through large-scale architectural projects and urban planning initiatives.
78
What is Neo-boosterism?
Neo-boosterism refers to the renewed promotion of boosterism, which is the practice of promoting or supporting a city, region, or country in order to boost its economy or reputation, particularly through the development of large-scale projects and urban regeneration.
79
What does Gehry's work clarify about Los Angeles?
Gehry's work clarifies the underlying relations of repression, surveillance, and exclusion that characterize the fragmented, paranoid spatiality towards which Los Angeles seems to aspire.
80
What was the solution Gehry provided for the problem of inserting high property values and sumptuary spaces into decaying neighborhoods?
Gehry's solution was his 1964 Danziger Studio in Hollywood, which became the pioneer instance of what has become an entire species of Los Angeles "stealth houses" that dissimulate their luxurious qualities with proletarian or gangster facades.
81
Who is Alexander Haagen?
Alexander Haagen is a developer who controls the largest retail development empire in Southern California, responsible for more than forty shopping centers.
Alexander Haagen is a past master at exploiting public-sector redevelopment for private gain, which has earned him the nickname 'the father of the inner city's rebirth'
82
How is the 'fortress' being used in local instances?
The 'fortress' is being used to recapture the poor as consumers, as seen in Alexander Haagen's inner-city malls.
83
Who was the first major developer in the nation to recognize the profit potential of abandoned inner-city retail markets?
Alexander Haagen.
84
Why were half a million Black and Latino shoppers forced to commute to distant regional malls or bordering white areas for grocery and prescription shopping?
Large retailers in Southcentral Los Angeles took flight after the 1965 Watts Rebellion, and viable small businesses were asphyxiated by discriminatory bank 'redlining' practices.
85
What was Haagen's solution to inducing the city to subsidize commercial recolonization of the inner city?
He recognized the accumulating anger of the Black community against decades of benign neglect by redevelopment authorities and proposed a comprehensive 'security-oriented design and management strategy' that would guarantee fail-safe physical security as a sine qua non in persuading retailers and franchises to take up leases.
86
What is the prototype plan shared by Haagen's shopping centers?
It plagiarizes brazenly from Jeremy Bentham's renowned nineteenth-century design for the 'panopticon prison' with its economical central surveillance.
87
What is the panopticon observatory in the shopping center?
It is the headquarters of the shopping center manager, a substation of the LAPD, and a dispatch operator who monitors the video and audio systems as well as maintaining communication with other secure shopping centers tied into the system, and with the police and fire departments.
88
How many security guards are on duty at any time in the shopping center?
At any time of the week, day or night, there are at least four center security guards on duty: one at the observatory and three on foot patrol.
89
Why have shopping center security issues become a concern for management?
With insurance carriers reviewing the security operations of shopping centers before writing new policies or even renewing existing ones, and, in some cases, insisting on upgraded security programs as a condition of insurance, centers in locations other than inner-city neighborhoods have started to focus on security operations as an integral part of their design and management strategy.
Protecting shopping center owners and managers from lawsuits can make a strong security program extremely profitable over the long run.
90
What are the average annual sales of Haagen's inner-city malls compared to their suburban equivalents?
Haagen's inner-city malls have average annual sales of more than $350 per leasable square foot, compared to about $200 for their suburban equivalents.
91
How has Haagen benefited from developing inner-city malls?
Haagen has reaped multiple windfalls including tax breaks, federal and city grants, massive free publicity, subsidized tenants, and sixty- to ninety-year ground leases.
92
What is the logic of "Haagenization"?
The logic of "Haagenization" extends to both the housing and shopping areas of the ghetto. The counterpart of the mall-as-panopticon-prison is the housing-project-as-strategic-hamlet.
93
How has the Imperial Courts Housing Project been fortified?
The Imperial Courts Housing Project has recently been fortified with fencing, obligatory identity passes, and a substation of the LAPD. Visitors are stopped and frisked, while the police routinely order residents back into their apartments at night.
94
What do public housing tenants have to endure as the price of "security"?
Public housing tenants have to endure a loss of freedom as the price of "security".
95
What are some features of fortress cities?
Fortress cities often have encompassing walls, restricted entry points with guard posts, overlapping private and public police services, and even privatized roadways.
96
What is the concept of "gatehood" in affluent neighborhoods in Los Angeles?
The concept of "gatehood" refers to the frenetic efforts of affluent neighborhoods in Los Angeles to insulate home values and lifestyles through the use of encompassing walls, restricted entry points with guard posts, overlapping private and public police services, and privatized roadways.
97
What has been the trend in the security services industry within Los Angeles County over the past decade?
The security services industry within Los Angeles County has tripled its sales and workforce over the last decade, from 24,000 to 75,000.
98
What is the licensing law like for armed guards in California?
Under California's licensing law, it is easier to become an armed guard than to become a barber, hairdresser, or journeyman carpenter. Even a convicted murderer is not automatically excluded from eligibility.
99
What type of companies are often employers of security patrolmen?
Multinational conglomerates that offer a range of security products and services are often employers of security patrolmen, despite the majority of patrolmen being minority males earning near minimum wage.
100
What role does the public sector play in the comprehensive urban security mobilization?
The public sector acts as the necessary support for the private sector in the comprehensive urban security mobilization.
101
What is the private sector's strategy for labor-intensive roles in urban security?
The private sector exploits an army of non-union, low-wage employees to capture labor-intensive roles such as guard duty, residential patrol, apprehension of retail crime, and maintenance of security passages.
102
How did technology contribute to the LAPD's policing strategy?
Technology helped insulate the LAPD's paranoid esprit de corps and established a new epistemology of policing where technologized surveillance and response supplanted the traditional patrolman's intimate 'folk' knowledge of specific communities.
103
What was the LAPD's first major introduction of technology for policing?
In the 1920s, the LAPD introduced the radio patrol car, which replaced the flatfoot or mounted officer and marked the beginning of dispersed, mechanized policing.
104
What is the Astro program of the LAPD?
The Astro program of the LAPD involves helicopters maintaining an average 19-hour-per-day vigil over 'high crime areas', tactically coordinated with patrol car forces, and exceeding even the British Army's aerial surveillance of Belfast.
105
How did the LAPD transform the aerial view of the city?
To facilitate ground-air synchronization, thousands of residential rooftops have been painted with identifying street numbers, transforming the aerial view of the city into a huge police grid.
106
What has been the most decisive element in the LAPD's transformation into a technopolice?
The LAPD's long and successful relationship with the military aerospace industry.
107
What is ECCCS?
ECCCS stands for Emergency Command Control Communications Systems, which is the most powerful and state-of-the-art police communications system in the world.
ECCCS was first conceptualized by Hughes Aerospace between 1969 and 1971.
108
What was the role of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the development of ECCCS?
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory refined and updated the design of ECCCS, incorporating elements of space technology and mission control communications.
109
What has gang hysteria and the war on crack opened up for police funding requests?
The possibility of ambitious capital investment programs in new technology.
110
What is the ultimate police sensorium?
The universal electronic tagging of property and people monitored by both cellular and centralized surveillances.
111
What is the "Haussmannization" of Los Angeles and how is it achieved?
The "Haussmannization" of Los Angeles refers to the invisible reorganization of the city by the police through surveillance and data-gathering. It is achieved through airborne surveillance, engridding, and centralization of communications, as well as lobbying to enlarge law-and-order land use. The police agencies have operated a de facto urban renewal program that threatens to convert the city into a fortress-like environment.
