America's Search for a Cultural Center Essays

The documentary San Francisco 2.0 examines how San Francisco city officials have given tax breaks to the Silicon Valley tech industry to move to San Francisco. These new techs companies have brought in a lot of wealth to the city, but at a cost. The majority of the low-income natives are being evicted or having their rents raised so high that they can't afford them. The gentrification of the city has impacted low-income districts (for example, the mission district known for its Latin immigrants) that the residents and the culture are being displaced. I believe the documentary is important for the study of the issue of gentrification because San Fransisco was known for being-counter culture, caring for the arts and for civil progress. The housing

Having posted this on World-Post, which is a news and blog website created through a partnership between Liberal news aggregator Huffington Post and a nonpartisan powerhouse, the Berggruen Institute on Governance, allows for this essay to not get exposed to the pro STEM or anti-arts parties. Sparking up the discussion of reintroducing the arts back into everyday society’s curriculum, you need to direct this essay towards both the audience, and the individuals who have the power to make this change. If Ma bring up a primarily pro-art focused paper, and only shares this piece of writing with mostly fellow supports of the arts, Ma misses the “equilibrium” that he spoke so highly about. If we can’t have both sides of the spectrum be able to analyze and discuss the ideas presented in this paper, then it’s going to be close to impossible to enact any change within society to reintroduce more of the arts back into

Contextualizing history is heavily intertwined with the development and shaping of Los Angeles as a whole. Los Angeles has always been deemed to be one of the hardest cities to develop in being one of the greatest cities in the world. This comes as a result of all of the history behind the buildings in the city. In addition, many of the buildings in the great city (both historical structures and regular buildings) are being renovated and reshaped to keep up with modern trends. Throughout the course of the growth of the city of Los Angeles, the city has seen a lot of growth in terms of infrastructure and population. There has been a recent growth in the popularity and demand for mixed use development. Mixed use development is a very hot

The rhetorical significance of the documentary San Francisco 2.0. shows that the tech gold rush in San Francisco is bringing wealth to the city so it’s seen as a positive contribution, but at the cost of the city losing its soul. Many residents of diverse backgrounds that made the city’s culture are being evicted due to landlords’ greed to capitalize on the new tech bros that are flocking to the city to make money. Many business and artists are affected due to rent being tripled to accommodate the new residents. Technology brings progress, but it also increases class segregation because the wage gage increases. The rich are getting richer, while the poor stay the same. The city officials say the city of San Francisco benefit from the tech gold

Over the past twenty years, San Francisco’s Mission District has experienced a tremendous amount of change. Similar to many neighborhoods across the United States, it has been undergoing a gentrification process in which increases in housing prices, redevelopment in buildings, and a shortage of rental units have left many of its low-income population homeless or on the verge of becoming homeless. In order to understand the controversial issue revolving around the gentrification process taking place the Mission District, it is essential to know the history of the Mission District, San Francisco’s geography and housing laws, and the socioeconomic impacts of gentrification.

Gentrification is an existential threat in the Bay Area due to urban renewal, spatial capital, and inequity. This threat can best be described as the process of residential or commercial use of an urban area shifting towards higher economic classes (Center, 199). The process of gentrification has caused many native residents to be displaced from their homes, as well as being forced to move further out of the area or become homeless. Neighborhoods that were once oasis’ for the working class are shifting and becoming too expensive for the people who live there. Food and job insecurity are two forms of inequity that contribute to gentrification practices. These three factors are key in the gentrification that is threatening Bay Area residents.

The San Francisco, California, Bayview-Hunters Point district carries the stigma of being a ghetto because of issues such as a lack of education, poverty, crime, and disease, which push financial investors away and lowers the number of homeowners willing to occupy the area. Today, the district is faced with the task of redeveloping its housing, economy, parks, and streets after decades of strife. This report is written in the context of urbanization of Bayview-Hunters Point that began during 19th-century livestock slaughter housing and carried on through 20th-century industrialism. The San Francisco Naval Shipyard project was an initiative made by the United States Navy during World War II in a bid to house thousands of new employees and their

Hayes Valley is currently known for having tons of new and hip boutiques, restaurants, bars and has been recently one of San Francisco’s hotspots for art installations. Situated about three blocks away from Civic Center and about four blocks from Market, Hayes Valley offers a quiet escape for local San Franciscans who want to splurge on fine dining and clothing in contrast to other commercial parts of San Francisco filled with tourist. By no means is Hayes Valley’s commercial neighborhood only for locals, it attracts tons of tourist day by day, but in comparison to most of the other neighborhoods in the city, Hayes Valley is a modest destination t that has gone through a drastic change in the last two decades.

“With competition for tourist dollars increasingly fierce, and with urban developers and planners increasingly aware of the need to woo the “creative class” by investing in amenities that improve the quality of life, what goes in music clubs, ballrooms, large auditoriums, festivals and even basements and garages is important to the future of cities.”

As one drives up the California coast, they will begin to notice several things. First, the general atmosphere shifts. The further north they travel from Los Angeles palms and golden beaches, the cities begin to lose their positive, sunny vibes. They go from beach villas to industrial apartments to suburban neighborhoods to run down harbor towns. The positive emotional vibrations emitted from such architecture slowly surrenders its grip on its surroundings to a grim, hopeless one. As new, booming cities fade into sleepy and ancient villages only occupied by drunken sailors and lost tourists, the traveler will soon realize they are in a much less pleasant place as where they originated their journey.

Cate Thurston’s paper, “Bringing Back Broadway,” was a study of urban redevelopment in Los Angeles’ Broadway Corridor. Cate shared her research and analysis on why redevelopment was an important factor for various people, such as Ira Yellin, the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles, and Councilmember Jose Huizar. The reason why redevelopment was important for many people was because the city was changing and there was a need to drive tourists into the city. As more tourists visit Los Angeles, spending increases, thus, generating more prosperity and wealth. This paper also discussed why this particular neighborhood changed and why space changes over time in Los Angeles. Cate shared how the Broadway Corridor in the 19th and 20th

Revitalization efforts in downtown areas have gained momentum over the past few decades, this paper is focused on revitalization strategies, recognizing the process of decline, while identifying key strategies used in downtown revitalization efforts over the past fifty years (Faulk 2006). Downtowns, unlike suburban shopping malls or office complexes, evolved slowly over time, responding to changing technologies, social and economic patterns. A city’s identity relies heavily on the image of its downtown, so inevitably cities of all sizes commit themselves to achieving successful downtown redevelopment (Robertson 1995). As I have been reading literature on downtown revitalization a number of strategies and principles have surfaced. Many of

Pierre Bourdieu developed the concept of cultural capital in order to attempt to explain the differences in educational outcomes in France during the 1960’s. Cultural capital is theorised as the forms of knowledge, skill, education; any advantages a person has which, give them a higher status in society, including high expectations (Nick Stevenson, 1995.pp.46-48). This differentiates economic and social status from the class agenda which, is rigidly sustained through an exclusive cycle. Cultural capital itself can be used in analysis of the class system, and how the dominant aesthetic and ideology is sustained from generation to generation.

Los Angeles was the first product off the assembly line of American urban planning. Turned on in the late 19th century, the city-making machine was fueled by an immense immigration of people who sought to create a new type of city out of the previously quaint pueblo. They also strove to craft the first major city developed primarily by Americans and outside of European archetypes. As a result, Los Angles is not only incredibly diverse, but also nearly impossible to define. Since it is a product of the American machine, understanding the community of Los Angeles becomes vital to understanding the United States. But to fully comprehend the present Los Angeles, one must look at the process that created it. Specifically, Los Angeles was

During the early twentieth century, art education was seen as unproductive and more often not cost effective. However, in the 1950’s opinions about art education made a drastic change as Americans craved more self-expression. Art education began to flourish as the importance of art involvement became known (DeHoyas).