ABOUT ME
I am a fourth-generation Angeleno and I grew up in Northeast LA. I've seen this city (and the county) change a whole lot just in my young life for precise words. My formal education is in political science (B.A.) and urban planning (M.A.) but most of my learning comes from traveling, wandering, and through independent research. My current urban planning-related research interests include but are not limited to: historic preservation, land use, development, neighborhood dynamics, urban geography, and space.
I find cities interesting because ...
1. Cities are at once places of anonymity and places of proximity. A socialized urbanite will come into contact with hundreds, perhaps thousands of people per week. Still, most of us will never personally know even one percent of our fellow urbanites.
2. Cities-- and civilizations broadly--are a rearrangement of the natural environment, a sort of nature-within-nature. Humans and other living things adapt our environments to fit our needs, and cities are a very large-scale example of this reality.
3. The built environment distorts spatial awareness, such as the perception of changes in elevation and different types of topography.
I am a fourth-generation Angeleno and I grew up in Northeast LA. I've seen this city (and the county) change a whole lot just in my young life for precise words. My formal education is in political science (B.A.) and urban planning (M.A.) but most of my learning comes from traveling, wandering, and through independent research. My current urban planning-related research interests include but are not limited to: historic preservation, land use, development, neighborhood dynamics, urban geography, and space.
I find cities interesting because ...
1. Cities are at once places of anonymity and places of proximity. A socialized urbanite will come into contact with hundreds, perhaps thousands of people per week. Still, most of us will never personally know even one percent of our fellow urbanites.
2. Cities-- and civilizations broadly--are a rearrangement of the natural environment, a sort of nature-within-nature. Humans and other living things adapt our environments to fit our needs, and cities are a very large-scale example of this reality.
3. The built environment distorts spatial awareness, such as the perception of changes in elevation and different types of topography.
FAQ: Is "asphalt island" a dystopian, reductionist, post-modernist, or otherwise demeaning way of characterizing cities, or Los Angeles in particular?
A: No to all of the above. It is a reference to the prevailing (and false) conception of Los Angeles County and the Southland as overbuilt and completely devoid of nature.
A: No to all of the above. It is a reference to the prevailing (and false) conception of Los Angeles County and the Southland as overbuilt and completely devoid of nature.