Skid Row vs Malibu Colony Beach

 Rylee Johnson 

GEOG 101

2/2/21

Response 3

Skid Row vs Malibu Colony Beach

“Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space” by Mike Davis is an interesting insight into the city of Los Angeles and the classist separation of the city. The author shows us how Los Angeles’ gentrification has poorly impacted the homeless, low-income neighborhoods, and the people of this area. Davis shows us through the city and gives us examples of how the classes are divided through claims, history, and keywords. 

The main claim that Davis argues is that the gentrification of Los Angeles is having a great impact on the neighborhoods and people of these areas causing a division of classes. The developers that move into these places and cause “social warfare and put the interests of the middle class against the welfare of the urban poor” (Davis). Instead of helping the homeless on skid row, they put in high tech security systems, high barriers, and modified park benches in place to push the homeless away. Instead of investing money into helping the homeless population, they are investing money into $12,000 surveillance cameras. The significance behind this is that geography entails the study of human activity and how it is affected by things, these people are being so negatively affected by the gentrification that they are going to be driven to homelessness. 

Davis shows us through history how this gentrification can negatively affect people. In the ’40s Fredrick Law Olmsted stated that he wanted Central Park to be a social safety valve, mixing classes and different ethnicities in the pleasures of life and also in recreational activity. Instead, the city has become a policing of social boundaries through agriculture. The city shouldn't be in ruins on one side of town and hold the rich and famous on the other. There should be helping these areas not doing everything in their power to shut them out. 

The author uses keywords to help his claims about the gentrification of Los Angeles. The book and also the article use the word gentrification; its definition is the displacement of lower-income residents and economic activities by higher-income residents and activities; restoration of buildings in deteriorated areas of the city. The author also uses the keyword urban segregation to define the segregation of the city. The definition is when they put population groups into various neighborhood contexts and shapes the living environment at the neighborhood level. The main keyword is urban which is defined as a characteristic of a town or city. 

In conclusion, the article “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space” by Mike Davis is a fascinating look into the segregation of the classist in Los Angeles in the ’90s and gave solutions on how to fix it.  Davis has shown us through the city and gives us examples of how the classes are divided through claims, history, and keywords.