Where Do You Belong?

by Tony Chavira

This is going to sound sort of weird, but growing up in Monterey Park meant that I had literally zero black or white friends until I went to an east coast college. In a nutshell, everyone I knew was either Asian-American or Mexican-American. In fact, other than the occasional visit here or there, my parents didn't really introduce me to their white or black friends largely because they grew up in East L.A. and thereby knew mostly Asian- and Mexican-American people themselves.

Did that mean that white and black people didn't live in East L.A.? Were we living in some other county or something? Did they hate us? Who doesn't enjoy enchiladas and chow fun (although maybe not together)? Leaving the area and discovering that black and white people lived in L.A. too was a foreign concept to me.

Time passes and you start picking up on the whole "socio-economic" thing. You learn about your social class and what it means to be in it. This doesn't mean anything is set in stone; it just gives you a starting point from which you work forward.

I'll cut to the chase: the other day I was talking to some guys about the historical development of Los Angeles, and the term white flight came up. The term has to do with the idea that white people of a certain socio-economic standing move away from areas full of Asians, Latinos, blacks, Indians, etc. But I was convinced that my transplant friend was too busy watching Crash on loop to really understand the dynamics of Los Angeles. In fact, we pointed out that the Downtown News was quick to slap up an article on how downtown L.A. was a hub for inter-class interaction.

But before I ran to my computer and started ranting mindlessly on FourStory.org about the stupidity of "white flight" in a modern context, I wanted to make sure that I only slapped up facts. Admittedly, the early 1900s in Los Angeles were just about as racist as you could expect anywhere in America. California never had a great history in terms of treating the Asian immigrant population well; the American government went all Manifest Destiny with Mexico's California Province; the black population that moved from Texas and the South didn't receive the warmest welcome ... but things are different now, right? I mean, we're living in the future and a segregationist class system is a thing of the past!

USC's Metamorphosis Project has this awesome way of understanding the context of "belonging" to your community in L.A., and they call it "Communication Environment." Shortly and sweetly, a communication environment is the context in which community-building communication takes place. It can involve socio-cultural inclination to talk to your neighbors, technologies that certain communities might use to coordinate community activities, or (get this) the physical makeup of the space itself. "But Tony," you ask, "Are they saying that the placement of streets, freeways, parks and schools could affect how much you feel like you belong in a community?" Yes, my friends. An interesting idea, I know.

photo: Allen Conant

I'm not saying that races and cultures don't have a strong impact on your feeling of "involvedness" in your community; I'm just saying that you should think a little harder about what the Downtown News wrote. Maybe there's such a buzz to live in Downtown for people of various socio-economic classes because the urban layout make people feel like they belong there, regardless of how much money they make or what their race is.

Another interesting idea that the Metamorphosis Project brings up is the concept of "Incipient Communication Places." In non-academic terms, it only means "places that naturally make people want to hang out with each other." These places can be designed that way (like Universal CityWalk or the California Plaza) or have a natural set-up to make people want to hang out together (like Old Town Pasadena or Hermosa Beach). White, black, Latino, Asian ... just take a seat at any of the cafes in these areas and you'll see beautiful people of all races pass you by (I mean, we are in L.A.).

My point is this: socio-cultural integration might look like some behemoth problem that goes back to the dawn of American history, but there's a pretty good chance that smart city and building planning could make anyone feel like they belong, whether they're a low-income family from Omaha looking for a new life in Reseda, a young couple who grew up in Lake Forest moving to Chino Hills, or retirees from the Hollywood Hills looking for a home in San Juan Capistrano.