Reflection

The interdisciplinary project was overall a good project.  It definitely helped me to think about writing as a process and the steps I use when writing a paper and how they could be better.  Even though I personally felt the paper to be somewhat of a personal failure, It helped me to think critically about the way I approach larger projects and writing in general. 

I wish had committed myself to the endeavor sooner because after getting over the dread of blogging, I found that I rather enjoyed researching and posting my findings or thoughts.  Putting together a blog is like showing the steps involved in coming to a conclusion.  Some steps are serious, while others can be quite entertaining.  The trick is not to get hung up on any one step and let the research guide the questions that are asked.  Sometimes my thoughts were guiding my research rather than my research guiding my thoughts.  

I also wish I could have pinned down my topic sooner.  I had personally been thinking about a number of issues... driving, social control, perception, but even after writing the paper, I never felt like a found the through thread I was looking for.  I should have focused on one of these topics more thoroughly and looked into only one aspect.  While freeways is a specific topic, it opens itself to a number of other issues that are related, but somewhat not clearly.  Just because automobiles and cars are the whole reason for the existence of freeways, does not mean they are inseparable.

Despite the stress I put myself through in the class, I do feel like a came out understanding process in writing and life better.  Have a good rest of the summer, Thanks!

p.s. cute kids  

Freedom and the Auto

"The auto and all that it represents is an integral part of North American and European culture.  Individualism and mobility are important values that buttress automobility.  The auto is the principal instrument of geographic mobility and it secures a high degree of privatism and freedom of choice for the individual.  He or she can travel alone in an environment that reflects his or her personal taste."

Freund, Peter and George Martin.  The Ecology of the Automobile. Montreal, Quebec: Black Rose Books, 1993. p 82

The car has provided a new means for geographic mobility.  The authors claim this to be the prevailing ideology behind democracy and freedom: freedom to escape, select routes, select destinations, and create opportunities.  Nonetheless, the "freedom" of driving mandates a high degree of social control.  Lane lines, traffic lights, speed limits, parking restrictions, etc.  Despite the increasing volume of controls, the automobile remains a symbol of freedom in the eyes of the motorist.  As technology for enforcing regulations becomes more complex, the freedom of the motorist declines further.  One example of this is the introduction of automated cameras at intersections to catch people running red lights.  Its bad enough that 70% of state and local law enforcement activities are focused on monitoring traffic violations, but now a real person doesn't even have to be present for one to caught in the act.  This is not to say that people should have a right to run signals, but it happens sometimes.  No more looking around and counting your blessings that no police officer witnessed the event, only a series of flashes that let the perpetrator know they are caught.  We have now lost the freedom to make a mistake without being penalized for it.  Regardless of whether or not the intention was to run the red light, prepare for a fine.  It seems kind of dehumanizing.  Imagine if they started setting up sensors and cameras on the freeway that took a picture and ticketed drivers for exceeding the speed limit. Terrifying. 

Nobody will EVER abuse this technology.

1500 plates per minute! What happened to calling it in?

Genius.

I couldn't resist...

When blogging about driving in Los Angeles, how could 

one neglect to post a timelapse video with an epic score?

That's right, its not possible.

Then and Now, 5 and 110 Fwy

Eric Richardson from Los Angeles per Wikipedia

A la Wikipedia

LA and the Rise of the Automobile

Los Angeles began making the shift from interurban streetcars to an automobile dominated society as early as 1920.  With the introduction of Ford's new assembly line, cars became cheaper and easier to produce causing ownership to skyrocket.  As congestion built from the increasing number of transportation devices on the road, a battle began for the streets of LA.  Initially, the streetcars had the upper hand, passing a bill that limited the hours in which automobiles could park in the downtown area.  However, this arrangement only lasted for two years before the voice of the automobile repealed the bill.  Throughout a period of utility monopoly scandals, the public lost faith in the interurban system.  The Pacific Electric Railway changed its focus from passenger cars to freight  cars and ultimately sold a large portion of its lines in 1945 to a public transit company known as National City Lines.  However NCL was financially backed by Standard Oil and General Motors who favored new direction for the company, buses.  Ultimately car and bus culture usurped the interurban system Los Angeles' favorite mode of transportation.  The "multi-centered" nature of the city favored such a transition.

Gottlieb, Robert. Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007.

Speaking with a longtime resident of the Glassell Park/Eagle Rock community, I could not help but ask how people got to downtown before the existence of the 2 freeway.  The man remarked that people used to take Verdugo all the way to downtown.  He nostalgically remembered the existence a streetcar running up Eagle Rock Blvd. in his youth (1950s).  The 2 Freeway opened in 1962.  I didn't have the chance to ask how he felt the freeway had impacted the community, but it has undoubtedly changed the nature of the trip for suburban commuters from North/East Los Angeles.

For More info and pics check out Semi-Tropic Spiritualists' Tract

The New River

“As I tell my fellow commuters, driving a freeway is like running a river; you learn where the rapids are and where you are likely to get caught in an eddy. After seeing dozens of three-car pileups in the same sharp curve, I have learned to slow down and say a little prayer for people who speed on by.”      

              - Larry Harnisch, Los Angeles Times                         Blog, 2007

               (Read the full post if you like)

The 110 Freeway, also known as the Pasadena Freeway, is the first and oldest freeway in existence.  The project was completed in 1940, although it was first conceived in 1907.  Before it, cross-city travelers relied on a vast network of streets to trek across the Los Angeles landscape.  Ironically, the 110 freeway was created to relieve congestion and traffic.  

What has the introduction of such a transportation system done to the psychology of people in Los Angeles? Edward T. Hall claims that advances in technology and urban development are, what he refers to as, "extensions".  Extensions are human creations that push our abilities beyond the confines of nature.  In the case of the Los Angeles Freeway system, we are molding the environment to improve the efficiency with which we can traverse the landscape.  Nonetheless, the implications of such a system on the way in which the people of Los Angeles live were never fully thought out.  Freeways create borders, they are the new railway tracks that divide and stratify the races and classes of Los Angeles.  They limit the contact of people within the city by creating a means to speed by the "other" without ever seeing them.  

People are working further and further away from home as job opportunities are more abundant in areas with the highest population densities, whereas rents and homes are least expensive in areas on the outskirts.  People spend several hours daily isolated in the cell of their car.  

What are the implications of the increased mobility and isolation created by the car on the psychology of people living in a freeway paradise?

The Biotope of Homo Sapien

Edward T. Hall

From The Hidden Dimension (Anchor Books, 1966)

Believing humans to be first and foremost a biological organism...

 

"... man has created a new dimension, the cultural dimension.  The relationship between man and the cultural dimension is one in which both man and his environment participate in molding each other.  Man is now in the position of actually creating the total world in which he lives, what the ethologists (scientists who study animal behavior and the relation of organisms to their environment) refer to as his biotope.  In creating this world he is actually determining what kind of an organism he will be."

What kind of biotope are we, as organisms, creating for ourselves? And what kinds of people are produced through our modifications to the natural world?  As we become increasingly dependent on the institutions we ourselves have created to inhabit and structure our lives, how free are we to act naturally?  Stay in the lane, cross with the signal, stay off my property; why do we honor these rules when we never asked for them in the first place?