Every day, when I board the 14 bus at Doheny, I take the seat, spread my legs out and lean back.
I've got lots of space..too much
Not until I get to Normandie do I feel a need to scootch over towards the window to make room.
That ridership should be so low on the 14 west of Koreatown, may surprise the conventional student of planning. Not only does the bus pass through West Hollywood and Beverly Grove-two of the densest neighborhoods in the Greater LA area (Don't take my word. Take the LA Times: http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/population/density/neighborhood/list/)- but the route skirts regional retail and dining destinations such as the Grove, Farmer's Market and Beverly Center, connecting these with Downtown LA (on one end) and Downtown Beverly Hills (and the Wilshire Rapid Bus) on the other end.
Moreover, driving in the Beverly Grove neighborhood and other westerly neighborhoods serviced by the 14 is extremely difficult. The arterials and side streets in these neighborhoods are heavily congested for much of the day, owing to narrow streets (no east-west thoroughfares from the Hollywood Hills are wider than Avenue I), the lack of freeways (traffic heading west from the 101 gets diverted onto Melrose or Santa Monica) and the high-density of jobs and housing not only along the bus's route but in the area nearby. Draconian parking restrictions on side streets, particularly in the Beverly Grove area, make parking (that is not pricy) hard to come by.
The buses themselves are relatively clean and very efficient. What could be going wrong??
I think that one of the most difficult challenges for ridership on the 14 bus, as for bus ridership in the affluent "westside" of the city in general, is the perception that the bus is a mode of travel designed exclusively for people of a lower social strata.
Having grown up in this milieu, I myself never conceived of the bus as a viable form of transit until I went off to college.
Even though I was raised in the dense and congested neighborhoods of Miracle Mile, Pico-Robertson and Beverly Grove, neighborhoods where driving is difficult and bus service is frequent, my mother only spoke of the bus in occasional reference to the cleaning lady ("she was delayed because of her bus"). Remarks about the bus being "dirty" or "dangerous" could also be heard.
If Metro wants to get more Angelenos in Western and Central LA to ride its buses, it will need to make advertise them as much as it does walking or biking or rail. (and in a matter that is classy rather than cheesy)
Another issue with ridership may have to do with the direction I travel in. I have noticed that buses traveling in the opposite direction (i.e. west towards Beverly Hills in the morning and east towards downtown in the evening) tend to be more crowded.
This is ironic, considering that my commute follows the traditional commute pattern. But it makes sense in light of the fact that though Downtown may be a prominent jobs center, it is still one of many in Los Angeles.
The most prominent and significant jobs centers, indeed, extend to the west of Downtown along the Wilshire Corridor. In the Beverly Grove area, CBS Studios, the Grove and Beverly Center and the West Hollywood design districts are major hubs.
Despite the fact that commuting is as common (if not more so) away from the downtown as it is going to downtown, Los Angeles' Metro Bus system continues to be most directly centered around downtown.
The situation on the Beverly Bus reveals that Metro may be smartest tailoring bus frequency and service not based on the direction from downtown so much as the direction in which ridership flows. A system that is more polycentric, integrating the many job centers along the wilshire corridor and in the rest of the LA area with one another as tightly with downtown is needed more than anything.
And that means not cutting, for instance, the only direct north-south link between the Wilshire Corridor and Culver City.
Poorly-maintained sidewalks and free parking in most apartment complexes may also be issues as well. Nevertheless, I still see many people in my area walk to destinations nearby (or to get to their cars). In Beverly Grove and Fairfax, the sparse parking alloted by many duplexes already incentivizes residents to park their cars on the streeet.
In the case of the 14 bus (and the numerous routes like it), transit planners seeking to increase ridership need to go beyond the typical analyses of density, design and parking and examine the broader social and geographical structures.
Friday, July 24, 2015
Friday, July 17, 2015
Frequent service expansion: a victory for bus transit??
In a blog posting from last week, Jarret Walker drops the bomb on Metro's drafting of a new "Transit Service Policy," which seeks to streamline its operations by increasing the number of bus routes with frequent service while cutting off poorly performing routes.
In addition (to Walker's apparent delight), the new program will seek to raise the peak hour loading limit, allowing for fewer buses to serve more people.
Being as concerned as ever with the state of bus use in Los Angeles, I took a look at the maps Jarret had attached.
In the "core" of the city (i.e. the "Wilshire/Santa Monica Corridor"), where I live, almost all the transit service frequency will largely reflect the status quo, with frequent transit service being added on only one corridor San Vicente Blvd. (a much needed development, I should add).
Most of the "new" frequent service lines will be on corridors in more peripheral regions of the city such as along Laurel Canyon Blvd in the San Fernando Valley, Rosemead/Lakewood Blvd from Pasadena to around Lakewood (it was hard to tell from the map), Sepulveda/Pacific Coast Highway ( and Rosecrans Avenue from the South Bay to Norwalk.
It is understandable why the aforementioned arterials should obtain frequent service as they are major corridors that provide important links (e.g. Gateway Cities to Pasadena, Norwalk to the South Bay) and also serve large transit-dependent populations.
But it strikes me as surprising that the city, in seeking to eliminate gaps in high-frequency service, will continue to truncate the Santa Monica Rapid Bus 4 miles from Downtown Santa Monica (and at a corner that offers few amenities ).
The 704 runs along one of LA's densest transportation corridors (in both jobs and residency) and serves many of the city's busiest neighborhoods, including West Hollywood, Century City and Downtown. The connection to Santa Monica is key because it provides both tourists and locals a straight shot to the beach and job-seekers with access to a burgeoning jobs center (bolstered further by the recent growth of Silicon Beach). Moreover, terminating the line at Sepulveda Blvd (as Metro currently does) leaves passengers at a humdrum street corner marked by a few office buildings and an aged strip mall.
As Streetsblog's Alexander Friedman pointed out almost two years ago, the main destination for passengers on the route west of Century City is Santa Monica. By forcing passengers to transfer to a Big Blue Bus or wait for the more infrequent (every 40 mins on weekdays, every 20-25 minutes on weekends) buses continuing to the shoreline, Metro's cut not only made for more crowding on buses (BBB and Metro) coming from Santa Monica but encouraged those passengers who could to switch back to their cars.
This goes to show that "low demand" for a route may be as much a function of Metro providing poor service (e.g. low frequencies or dirty, crowded buses) as of some fixed, pre-existing demand.
This brings me to my second problem wiht the new service agenda, namely its inclusion of the 220 line along Robertson Blvd., from Beverly Hills south to Culver City, in the list of lines recommended to be cut.
With the Big Blue Bus also slated to cut its route along Robertson as part of its "Expo Integration Plan," Angelenos could be faced off the possibility of no (or very limited) bus service along Robertson Blvd.
At a time when the Expo Line is about to complete its course to Santa Monica, cutting off the only direct transit link between Beverly Hills (a major employment and entertainment hub) and the light-rail line does not seem like a smart move. Culver City boasts its own significant share of jobs (e.g. Sony) and downtown Culver City has become a dining destination as well. Eliminating service on Robertson Blvd. (as if it's not limited enough) would compel those desiring to take transit in this direction go a mile or more out of their way to transfer the La Cienaga Bus and then transfer to the Expo Line to head another mile back (in the same direction) to Culver City.
I'm sure Metro (and possibly Walker) would justify the move by pointing to hard low ridership figures and noting the mostly low-density residential composition of the street south of Pico Blvd. Yet, though bordering the suburban single family-house mecca of Beverlywood on the western side, the tracts adjacent to Robertson Blvd. (from Pico to the freeway) are almost wholly multi-family units. To the east, lies a dense offshoot of Mid-City.
My past experiences riding the 14 bus on west Beverly Blvd suggest that the 220's low ridership (both its northern and southern ends) stems not from the neighborhood design but from negative attitudes towards the bus.
Middle-class Angelenos on the westside still tend to perceive buses as being dirty, dangerous and designed for people of a "different" social strata (and therefore "uncool").
Any person with a modicum of business sense knows that you do not sell a negatively-perceived product by making it more deficient.
By cutting services on arterials like Robertson Blvd.., Metro may save on costs in the short term but lose out on ridership in the long-run from the demographic that it needs to acquire.
By making the bus service even more unattractive to a skeptical middle class, Metro will encourage sustained growth in smog and congestion while perpetually limiting its share of revenues (given that the subway system will not reach a critical threshold in coverage outside of downtown any time soon).
Jarret Walker talks a good line when it comes to streamlining LA's bus system. But he and the folks at Metro should understand that Metro (which, along with other SoCal transit agencies, boasts a paltry 5.8 percent share of Commuter ridership in the LA area) needs growing rather than cutting.
Low-performing lines that serve dense areas should be targeted for promotion and improvement (e.g. through better cleaning and use of plastic rather than fabric seating) not for scrapping.
In addition (to Walker's apparent delight), the new program will seek to raise the peak hour loading limit, allowing for fewer buses to serve more people.
Being as concerned as ever with the state of bus use in Los Angeles, I took a look at the maps Jarret had attached.
In the "core" of the city (i.e. the "Wilshire/Santa Monica Corridor"), where I live, almost all the transit service frequency will largely reflect the status quo, with frequent transit service being added on only one corridor San Vicente Blvd. (a much needed development, I should add).
Most of the "new" frequent service lines will be on corridors in more peripheral regions of the city such as along Laurel Canyon Blvd in the San Fernando Valley, Rosemead/Lakewood Blvd from Pasadena to around Lakewood (it was hard to tell from the map), Sepulveda/Pacific Coast Highway ( and Rosecrans Avenue from the South Bay to Norwalk.
It is understandable why the aforementioned arterials should obtain frequent service as they are major corridors that provide important links (e.g. Gateway Cities to Pasadena, Norwalk to the South Bay) and also serve large transit-dependent populations.
But it strikes me as surprising that the city, in seeking to eliminate gaps in high-frequency service, will continue to truncate the Santa Monica Rapid Bus 4 miles from Downtown Santa Monica (and at a corner that offers few amenities ).
The 704 runs along one of LA's densest transportation corridors (in both jobs and residency) and serves many of the city's busiest neighborhoods, including West Hollywood, Century City and Downtown. The connection to Santa Monica is key because it provides both tourists and locals a straight shot to the beach and job-seekers with access to a burgeoning jobs center (bolstered further by the recent growth of Silicon Beach). Moreover, terminating the line at Sepulveda Blvd (as Metro currently does) leaves passengers at a humdrum street corner marked by a few office buildings and an aged strip mall.
As Streetsblog's Alexander Friedman pointed out almost two years ago, the main destination for passengers on the route west of Century City is Santa Monica. By forcing passengers to transfer to a Big Blue Bus or wait for the more infrequent (every 40 mins on weekdays, every 20-25 minutes on weekends) buses continuing to the shoreline, Metro's cut not only made for more crowding on buses (BBB and Metro) coming from Santa Monica but encouraged those passengers who could to switch back to their cars.
This goes to show that "low demand" for a route may be as much a function of Metro providing poor service (e.g. low frequencies or dirty, crowded buses) as of some fixed, pre-existing demand.
This brings me to my second problem wiht the new service agenda, namely its inclusion of the 220 line along Robertson Blvd., from Beverly Hills south to Culver City, in the list of lines recommended to be cut.
With the Big Blue Bus also slated to cut its route along Robertson as part of its "Expo Integration Plan," Angelenos could be faced off the possibility of no (or very limited) bus service along Robertson Blvd.
At a time when the Expo Line is about to complete its course to Santa Monica, cutting off the only direct transit link between Beverly Hills (a major employment and entertainment hub) and the light-rail line does not seem like a smart move. Culver City boasts its own significant share of jobs (e.g. Sony) and downtown Culver City has become a dining destination as well. Eliminating service on Robertson Blvd. (as if it's not limited enough) would compel those desiring to take transit in this direction go a mile or more out of their way to transfer the La Cienaga Bus and then transfer to the Expo Line to head another mile back (in the same direction) to Culver City.
I'm sure Metro (and possibly Walker) would justify the move by pointing to hard low ridership figures and noting the mostly low-density residential composition of the street south of Pico Blvd. Yet, though bordering the suburban single family-house mecca of Beverlywood on the western side, the tracts adjacent to Robertson Blvd. (from Pico to the freeway) are almost wholly multi-family units. To the east, lies a dense offshoot of Mid-City.
My past experiences riding the 14 bus on west Beverly Blvd suggest that the 220's low ridership (both its northern and southern ends) stems not from the neighborhood design but from negative attitudes towards the bus.
Middle-class Angelenos on the westside still tend to perceive buses as being dirty, dangerous and designed for people of a "different" social strata (and therefore "uncool").
Any person with a modicum of business sense knows that you do not sell a negatively-perceived product by making it more deficient.
By cutting services on arterials like Robertson Blvd.., Metro may save on costs in the short term but lose out on ridership in the long-run from the demographic that it needs to acquire.
By making the bus service even more unattractive to a skeptical middle class, Metro will encourage sustained growth in smog and congestion while perpetually limiting its share of revenues (given that the subway system will not reach a critical threshold in coverage outside of downtown any time soon).
Jarret Walker talks a good line when it comes to streamlining LA's bus system. But he and the folks at Metro should understand that Metro (which, along with other SoCal transit agencies, boasts a paltry 5.8 percent share of Commuter ridership in the LA area) needs growing rather than cutting.
Low-performing lines that serve dense areas should be targeted for promotion and improvement (e.g. through better cleaning and use of plastic rather than fabric seating) not for scrapping.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Why Uber and Lyft are so big in Los Angeles
According to several articles, Los Angeles is one of the most profitable cities for the rideshare companies uber (and lyft).
That's right, not just New York Chicago and San Fran, but also. Los Angeles.
It is a fact that counters stereotypes that Angelenos are wedded to the automobiles that they own, and that Los Angeles is too sprawling to support transportation alternatives to the single-occupant vehicle.
Of course, that Los Angeles (quite notoriously) boasts the most congested freeway system in the nation may make this rideshare shift less surprising. Why make risky lane manuvers to avoid gridlock on the 10 westbound when you can ride with a guy who knows a short cut?
In addition, Los Angeles (despite Metro Rail's expansion in recent years) still lacks a transit system that is comprehensible or reliable enough to provide a viable alternative to commuters in all areas of the city (and at all hours of the day). Moreover, taxis have traditionally been harder to find in Los Angeles (and have cost more) than in other metropolises.
Surprisingly (though gridlock affects Los Angeles' freeways as much if not more than Los Angeles' streets), most Lyft trips in Los Angeles (according to both the company website and personal experience as a driver) are under ten miles
This means that for Lyft (and Uber), the origin and destinations of the vast majority of rides have to be geographically concentrated in certain areas of the vast Southland metropolis: but where you may ask?
The answer can be discerned in the following "heat maps" produced by Lyft, whose pink shading shows where the "highest" demand for rides is.
Weekday morning "heat map"
Weekday evening (i.e. "rush hour") heat map
Weekend evening (i.e. "rush hour") heat map
Heat maps for all three main "peak" periods show that the area of high demand for Lyft rides primarily takes the form of an arc, starting in Downtown, extending up through Koreatown towards Hollywood and then curving back down through Westwood to reach Santa Monica.
Outside of this area, demand only clusters in much smaller "dots" or "patches", around some of the movie studios and business districts in the southeast Valley and Burbank and in entertainment districts in Pasadena or Manhattan Beach. Large swaths of areas like the South Bay, Harbor and San Gabriel Valley have no high-demand shading whatsoever.
Indeed, as a Lyft driver, I have mostly kept within confines of the Santa Monica to Downtown "corridor", leaving only a handful of times.
A few years ago, USC graduate student Samuel Krueger used a GIS modeling system to deduce whether the Los Angeles region has a "central" core.
Krueger, who conducted his analysis with a scale measuring the number of urban amenities (the so-called "centrality index"), found that Los Angeles indeed does have a large regional "core" that roughly follows the course of Wilshire and Santa Monica Blvds in a linear fashion from the LA River to the Santa Monica Bay.
This crescent-shaped "Wilshire-Santa Monica corridor" almost perfectly maps onto the main arc of high-demand Lyft activity in Los Angeles.
For day travelers, this area boasts most of the Los Angeles region's main business centers (Downtown, Koreatown, Miracle Mile, etc.). For the late night, this area boasts the Southland's largest and busiest entertainment centers of the region. (Hollywood, WeHo, Downtown)
Because this region (particularly east of La Cienaga Blvd.) has a compact grid street system, mostly developed before World War II, and lacks a central freeway, its major arterials suffer heavy traffic at all hours of the day (and many at night).
Finally public transport is sparse outside of Downtown and Koreatown, with the Purple Line to Westwood not slated for completion until 2040. The Expo Line, which will start service to Santa Monica in the middle of next year, only skirts the fringes of the "core".
In other words, the profitability of Lyft (and, most likely, other rideshare companies) in Los Angeles stems in large part from its ability to exploit a previously underserved demand for alternative forms of transport to the single-occupancy automobile in this "linear downtown."
That in and of itself, breaks another stereotype of the city of Los Angeles: that it lacks a dense, transit-friendly urban "center".
The private sector has responded. Will LA County Metro ever catch on?
That's right, not just New York Chicago and San Fran, but also. Los Angeles.
It is a fact that counters stereotypes that Angelenos are wedded to the automobiles that they own, and that Los Angeles is too sprawling to support transportation alternatives to the single-occupant vehicle.
Of course, that Los Angeles (quite notoriously) boasts the most congested freeway system in the nation may make this rideshare shift less surprising. Why make risky lane manuvers to avoid gridlock on the 10 westbound when you can ride with a guy who knows a short cut?
In addition, Los Angeles (despite Metro Rail's expansion in recent years) still lacks a transit system that is comprehensible or reliable enough to provide a viable alternative to commuters in all areas of the city (and at all hours of the day). Moreover, taxis have traditionally been harder to find in Los Angeles (and have cost more) than in other metropolises.
Surprisingly (though gridlock affects Los Angeles' freeways as much if not more than Los Angeles' streets), most Lyft trips in Los Angeles (according to both the company website and personal experience as a driver) are under ten miles
This means that for Lyft (and Uber), the origin and destinations of the vast majority of rides have to be geographically concentrated in certain areas of the vast Southland metropolis: but where you may ask?
The answer can be discerned in the following "heat maps" produced by Lyft, whose pink shading shows where the "highest" demand for rides is.
Weekday morning "heat map"
Weekday evening (i.e. "rush hour") heat map
Weekend evening (i.e. "rush hour") heat map
Heat maps for all three main "peak" periods show that the area of high demand for Lyft rides primarily takes the form of an arc, starting in Downtown, extending up through Koreatown towards Hollywood and then curving back down through Westwood to reach Santa Monica.
Outside of this area, demand only clusters in much smaller "dots" or "patches", around some of the movie studios and business districts in the southeast Valley and Burbank and in entertainment districts in Pasadena or Manhattan Beach. Large swaths of areas like the South Bay, Harbor and San Gabriel Valley have no high-demand shading whatsoever.
Indeed, as a Lyft driver, I have mostly kept within confines of the Santa Monica to Downtown "corridor", leaving only a handful of times.
A few years ago, USC graduate student Samuel Krueger used a GIS modeling system to deduce whether the Los Angeles region has a "central" core.
Krueger, who conducted his analysis with a scale measuring the number of urban amenities (the so-called "centrality index"), found that Los Angeles indeed does have a large regional "core" that roughly follows the course of Wilshire and Santa Monica Blvds in a linear fashion from the LA River to the Santa Monica Bay.
This crescent-shaped "Wilshire-Santa Monica corridor" almost perfectly maps onto the main arc of high-demand Lyft activity in Los Angeles.
For day travelers, this area boasts most of the Los Angeles region's main business centers (Downtown, Koreatown, Miracle Mile, etc.). For the late night, this area boasts the Southland's largest and busiest entertainment centers of the region. (Hollywood, WeHo, Downtown)
Because this region (particularly east of La Cienaga Blvd.) has a compact grid street system, mostly developed before World War II, and lacks a central freeway, its major arterials suffer heavy traffic at all hours of the day (and many at night).
Finally public transport is sparse outside of Downtown and Koreatown, with the Purple Line to Westwood not slated for completion until 2040. The Expo Line, which will start service to Santa Monica in the middle of next year, only skirts the fringes of the "core".
In other words, the profitability of Lyft (and, most likely, other rideshare companies) in Los Angeles stems in large part from its ability to exploit a previously underserved demand for alternative forms of transport to the single-occupancy automobile in this "linear downtown."
That in and of itself, breaks another stereotype of the city of Los Angeles: that it lacks a dense, transit-friendly urban "center".
The private sector has responded. Will LA County Metro ever catch on?
Monday, June 8, 2015
Why Angelenos should ride the bus or train to the bar
As I rode the 704 Rapid bus to get to the Virgil Saturday night, I couldn't help but notice, with regret, that I was the only passenger dressed up for a night out.
That's not to say that the bus wasn't crowded (it was packed), but most of the people on board carried backpacks or briefcases, or were dressed in tennis shoes, suggesting that they were coming back from the night shift rather than heading to the bar.
Sadly to say, I was not surprised in the least (and have had other such contemplative moments on past bus trips eastward).
Just saying that you ride the bus in LA, is enough to get questions and glances (especially in middle-class, Westside social circles). Saying that you ride the bus at night, on the other hand, can elicit odd stares and concerns about "safety."
The friend who I met the Virgil put it succinctly when he remarked, with stupefication: "you took the bus?"
And yet, if you are looking to drink or party outside of your neighborhood in a city as large as Los Angeles (the alternative is only available if your neighborhood has bars or nightclubs within walking distance), there is perhaps no more logical way for you to reach an abode of hedonism than by Bus or Metro Rail.
Driving while intoxicated is just downright dangerous (and risks a hefty fine). Moreover, the primetime surge pricing for apps like Lyft and Uber makes these quite pricey on weekend and holiday evenings (with fares as much as eight to nine times above average), especially if you are traveling more than a mile or two from your home. And ditto for Taxi service.
Whereas, I would have paid 19 dollars to get from my house to the Virgil traveling with Lyft, I paid only one dollar and seventy-five cents to ride there on the 704. Since the bus was a "rapid" service, traveling at a time with little traffic, it took only thirty-five minutes to get to the Virgil, slightly longer than it would have taken by a rideshare car.
Contrary to popular stereotype, I have not once felt my personal safety threatened when riding the bus late at night. You do see homeless people sleeping on some of the bus seats (in the same way you see homeless in any public space in this city) but the buses (in my experience) are generally clean and comfortable (they even have seat padding) and are very well air-conditioned. The fact that the buses tend to get more crowded at night (ironically due to the reduced service) means that more eyes and ears are watching whatever happens.
And, contrary to another popular stereotype, most of LA's popular nightlife areas (with some exceptions) are in places that are walkable and easily accessible by transit: Hollywood (buses and the Red Line), Downtown Los Angeles, West Hollywood (the 704/4).
That's not to say that I expect denizens of Whittier or Chatsworth, peripheral, suburban areas with limited to no bus service at night, to try undertaking a two-hour commute by public transit to a Hollywood club.
But in regards to the Santa Monica corridor (Bus #s 704/4), where buses run for twenty-four hours and pass through the heart of such nightlife hubs as West Hollywood, Silver Lake, Echo Park and Downtown Santa Monica, its frustrating that not even a sizable minority of nearby residents use the bus to get to the bar.
Of course, even on the Santa Monica corridor, frequency is significantly curtailed after the evening rush hours, with headways between buses as much as 30 to 40 minutes.On more secondary corridors (like Sunset Blvd.) service often reduces to once an hour in the later evenings before stopping completely after midnight.
In general, in order for public transportation to become a popular means of accessing nightlife in Los Angeles, LA County Metro and other transit agencies are going to have to adjust their bus (and train) schedules to better accomodate late night traffic.
Personal experience additionally suggests, furthermore, that advertising will be necessary in order to convince Angelenos that the bus (and train) is a cheap, safe and (not un-)cool way to get around our city, nonetheless to go out on the town.
The task at hand for Metro and other LA area transit agencies (in nightlife) is not daunting.
The likely benefits, including decreases in DUIs (Los Angeles, not surprisingly, has one of the highest numbers of DUI citations among American cities), lower rates of nighttime crime (increased late night activity at bus stops has been claimed to reduce the amount of street crime) and improved air quality would be extraordinary.
For the sake of our wallets and for LA's social and physical environment, it is time for all of us, and our transit agencies, to stop neglecting public transit as a means for going out at night.
That's not to say that the bus wasn't crowded (it was packed), but most of the people on board carried backpacks or briefcases, or were dressed in tennis shoes, suggesting that they were coming back from the night shift rather than heading to the bar.
Sadly to say, I was not surprised in the least (and have had other such contemplative moments on past bus trips eastward).
Just saying that you ride the bus in LA, is enough to get questions and glances (especially in middle-class, Westside social circles). Saying that you ride the bus at night, on the other hand, can elicit odd stares and concerns about "safety."
The friend who I met the Virgil put it succinctly when he remarked, with stupefication: "you took the bus?"
And yet, if you are looking to drink or party outside of your neighborhood in a city as large as Los Angeles (the alternative is only available if your neighborhood has bars or nightclubs within walking distance), there is perhaps no more logical way for you to reach an abode of hedonism than by Bus or Metro Rail.
Driving while intoxicated is just downright dangerous (and risks a hefty fine). Moreover, the primetime surge pricing for apps like Lyft and Uber makes these quite pricey on weekend and holiday evenings (with fares as much as eight to nine times above average), especially if you are traveling more than a mile or two from your home. And ditto for Taxi service.
Whereas, I would have paid 19 dollars to get from my house to the Virgil traveling with Lyft, I paid only one dollar and seventy-five cents to ride there on the 704. Since the bus was a "rapid" service, traveling at a time with little traffic, it took only thirty-five minutes to get to the Virgil, slightly longer than it would have taken by a rideshare car.
Contrary to popular stereotype, I have not once felt my personal safety threatened when riding the bus late at night. You do see homeless people sleeping on some of the bus seats (in the same way you see homeless in any public space in this city) but the buses (in my experience) are generally clean and comfortable (they even have seat padding) and are very well air-conditioned. The fact that the buses tend to get more crowded at night (ironically due to the reduced service) means that more eyes and ears are watching whatever happens.
And, contrary to another popular stereotype, most of LA's popular nightlife areas (with some exceptions) are in places that are walkable and easily accessible by transit: Hollywood (buses and the Red Line), Downtown Los Angeles, West Hollywood (the 704/4).
That's not to say that I expect denizens of Whittier or Chatsworth, peripheral, suburban areas with limited to no bus service at night, to try undertaking a two-hour commute by public transit to a Hollywood club.
But in regards to the Santa Monica corridor (Bus #s 704/4), where buses run for twenty-four hours and pass through the heart of such nightlife hubs as West Hollywood, Silver Lake, Echo Park and Downtown Santa Monica, its frustrating that not even a sizable minority of nearby residents use the bus to get to the bar.
Of course, even on the Santa Monica corridor, frequency is significantly curtailed after the evening rush hours, with headways between buses as much as 30 to 40 minutes.On more secondary corridors (like Sunset Blvd.) service often reduces to once an hour in the later evenings before stopping completely after midnight.
In general, in order for public transportation to become a popular means of accessing nightlife in Los Angeles, LA County Metro and other transit agencies are going to have to adjust their bus (and train) schedules to better accomodate late night traffic.
Personal experience additionally suggests, furthermore, that advertising will be necessary in order to convince Angelenos that the bus (and train) is a cheap, safe and (not un-)cool way to get around our city, nonetheless to go out on the town.
The task at hand for Metro and other LA area transit agencies (in nightlife) is not daunting.
The likely benefits, including decreases in DUIs (Los Angeles, not surprisingly, has one of the highest numbers of DUI citations among American cities), lower rates of nighttime crime (increased late night activity at bus stops has been claimed to reduce the amount of street crime) and improved air quality would be extraordinary.
For the sake of our wallets and for LA's social and physical environment, it is time for all of us, and our transit agencies, to stop neglecting public transit as a means for going out at night.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Blame NIMBYs, not Hipsters, for the gentrification of LA
Author's note, since I am interning in the Los Angeles Department of City Planning now, I am going to be writing a lot more on transporation and housing issues. Deal with it.
A few months ago, after the rent on my family's apartment was raised, I did some research to assess whether we could afford to "move."
A quick search of apartments in nearby neighborhoods (on Zillow) revealed an average rent of 1750 dollars a month for one-bedroom apartments, most of which were well under 1000 square feet. The two-bedroom apartments that I sought ranged upward from the mid 2000s in West Hollywood and even in Palms, which made the revised monthly rent of 3300 dollars that we were soon to dish out for our posh (not especially fancy but far from shabby), leafy Beverly Hills street, quiet and yet coveniently located, still seem to be a bargain.
Alright, I then thought, surely I will get a better deal if I turn eastward, to the "up-and-coming" hoods of Silver Lake and Echo Park. Well, I should have known better (given the amount of time they had been talked for): two- bedroom rentals (which started at about 2000 dollars per month) were no longer priced much lower than they were on the Westside.
Only looking further afield, at neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights and Glassell Park/Echo Park, did I finally find two-bedroom apartments going for below two thousand dollars a month, enough of a difference for which to make a move.
Despite popular reputations to the contrary, I knew from Los Angeles Times profiles that these neighborhoods were no longer meccas of petty crime and gang vuikebce.
Indeed, on previous drives through both of these neighborhoods, I had been impressed by the charming architecture, (sense of community) and walkability. The proliferation of cheap and delicious Taquerias and Birrerias was an additional positive for this lover of Mexican food.
But within a minute, it dawned on me that I, in the course of my search, had embraced the process of "gentrification"! Excitement gave away to moral reflection as I realized the social implications of my quest for a better deal.
My problem with the "g-word" has nothing to do with the racial aspect of a light-skinned Eurasian moving into a brown neighborhood (though many commentators on both sides of the issue simplistically reduce gentrification to an ethnic conflict) so much as with the economic effects that a (whiter) middle-class presence in the neighborhoods has of jacking up rents in a neighborhood, incentivizing the displacement of the working-class.
I ended up not pursuing the deals on the eastside after some discussions with my mother. And yet, I know now that if I had not had my parent's financial support on rent (and relied solely on my own earnings), I would have seized on the properties in a heartbeat.
What drives an educated progressive like myself (and others who I know), who is perfectly aware of the ills of gentrification, to partake in gentrifying the Eastside of Los Angeles is the simple fact that Los Angeles has the least affordable rental market in the country. (LA's rents are not the most expensive in terms of price but they are the highest relative to the average per capita income) Therefore, whatever housing is still affordable, decent and in a (relatively safe) location will be snapped up by those of us who are not (financially)"loaded."
A steep rise in rent as a percentage of income over the last decade can be observed in cities across the country and yet what makes Los Angeles' situation particularly frustrating (though not entirely unique) is the fact that the crisis stems less from physical constraints than from political ones.
Los Angeles has far more room to grow than cities like New York and San Francisco (bearing only half the density of the former and one-third the amount of density of the latter two cities), and yet Los Angeles officials zone far less land for new housing than these cities (with fewer units being built in Los Angeles in 2014 than in spread-out Houston).
The root cause of this paucity of zoning, in turn, has been the disproportionate power afforded to LA's affluent single-family homeowners by participatory planning policies to halt multi-family housing development that is perceived to threaten their neighborhoods.
As UCLA Doctoral candidate, Greg Morrow, explains, a 1968 law that switched Los Angeles' planning regime away from the singular control of the City planning department to (what was supposed to be) joint decision-making (Morrow, page 54) between planners and community-based "Citizens Advisory Committees." (chosen on the basis of dividing into thirty-five "communities") gave growth-adverse homeowners groups the power to prevent zoning for development of large-scale multi-family housing in large swaths of the city.
This switch to a "bottom-up" approach to planning was supposed to empower ordinary citizens to have a say in planning issues: many progressives, indeed, hoped that a democratic planning regime would prevent the massive uprooting of poor neighborhoods carried out by city planners in the name of the city. (e.g. Chavez Ravine) (Morrow 71)
In actuality, however, as Morrow notes, community participation in the planning process gave disproportionate weight to wealthier and whiter single-family homeowners residing in the city's western and hilltop neighborhoods, who had the time and expendable income to closely follow and act upon city planner's proposals.
Motivated by (mainly aesthetic) concerns about the environment and a desire to maintain their neighborhoods' secluded low-density character, wealthy Angelenos have utilized community-planning to fight any housing or transportation development that they perceive will bring even a modicum of congestion or density to their neighborhoods.
To give a example from my own career, just last week I overheard my colleague in the City Planning office inform her superior that she would take a major arterial street in Hollywood off a proposed "Transit-Enhanced Network" (meaning that it would be slated to receive increased or upgraded public transit service) because of staunch opposition from neighborhood councils in the Hollywood Hills.
Never mind that this arterial street was located a mile away from the hills or that a transit network (especially should it lead to rail development) could do much to alleviate the bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic on the street. The neighborhod groups feared that the "corridor" would lead to an increase density that would eventually make its way up the hilltops... So they fought tooth-and-nail and won.
Though such stubborn opposition has repeatedly stymied development in the Westside, Hollywood, and southern San Fernando Valley, however, it has done little to discourage Los Angeles' continued population growth, not only through immigration but through natural increases in the existing few million inhabitants.
With more people (primarily earning lower or moderate incomes) to house but little new multi-family housing being constructed in or near affluent single-family neighborhoods, middle-class Los Angeles residents entering the rental market today face a difficult choice. They can relocate to far-flung suburbs, which provide low-cost housing (primarily in single-family units) at the cost of an inconvenient commute (while additionally contributing to heavier traffic and environmental devestation).
Or they can enter into traditionally poorer, working-class communities on Los Angeles' Eastside (many having reduced crime by gang injunctions in recent years), which initially boast affordable rental properties not only due to their less desirable reputatons but also because the single-family homeowners of these neighborhoods-who are often fewer in number to begin with-have not had the time, money or concern (given the myriad other issues they must deal with on a day-to-day basis) to fight dense multi-family development.
Long before neighborhoods like Boyle Heights and East Hollywood entered the radar of the middle-class, they had become progressively more crowded through population inflows, and/or saw a net increase in the units of multi-family housing . Prior to the age of gentrification, the crowding of low-income immigrants into already-impoverished communities on the east and south sides of Los Angeles fostered a toxic concentration of poverty, urban decay and crime.
(Morrow pps. 166-8)
And yet, in neighborhoods that have to come to be predominantly populated by low-income renters, a subsequent influx of young middle-class professionals (quite ironically in search of bargains), by encouraging landlords to ensuingly jack up the cost of rent (to adjust to demand by a wealthier cohort) or, in some cases, demolish affordable properties to make way for higher-end housing, spells out displacement for the original (and in some cases, deep-rooted) inhabitants and a denial of the latter group's right to live in the city.
The logical conclusion to Morrow's thesis is that the power and intransigence of affluent homeowners is the driving force behind not only Los Angeles' suburban sprawl, but (especially, as the latter becomes less viable) gentrification.
This is not to deny that the gentrifiers themselves often carry problematic attitudes of privilege and saviorism that serve to justify (both to themselves and outsiders) their uprooting of low-income residents of color.
And yet, at the most basic level, gentrification is not driven by personal opinion so much as by economic calculus.
It is the entrenched westside NIMBYs and not the eastside hipsters who bear the blame for LA's rampant gentrification. Let's hope that the advocates for social justice take notice.
Morrow Thesis:
Morrow, Gregory D.(2013). The Homeowner Revolution: Democracy, Land Use and the Los Angeles Slow-Growth Movement, 1965-1992. UCLA: Urban Planning 0911. Retrieved from: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k64g20f
A few months ago, after the rent on my family's apartment was raised, I did some research to assess whether we could afford to "move."
A quick search of apartments in nearby neighborhoods (on Zillow) revealed an average rent of 1750 dollars a month for one-bedroom apartments, most of which were well under 1000 square feet. The two-bedroom apartments that I sought ranged upward from the mid 2000s in West Hollywood and even in Palms, which made the revised monthly rent of 3300 dollars that we were soon to dish out for our posh (not especially fancy but far from shabby), leafy Beverly Hills street, quiet and yet coveniently located, still seem to be a bargain.
Alright, I then thought, surely I will get a better deal if I turn eastward, to the "up-and-coming" hoods of Silver Lake and Echo Park. Well, I should have known better (given the amount of time they had been talked for): two- bedroom rentals (which started at about 2000 dollars per month) were no longer priced much lower than they were on the Westside.
Only looking further afield, at neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights and Glassell Park/Echo Park, did I finally find two-bedroom apartments going for below two thousand dollars a month, enough of a difference for which to make a move.
Despite popular reputations to the contrary, I knew from Los Angeles Times profiles that these neighborhoods were no longer meccas of petty crime and gang vuikebce.
Indeed, on previous drives through both of these neighborhoods, I had been impressed by the charming architecture, (sense of community) and walkability. The proliferation of cheap and delicious Taquerias and Birrerias was an additional positive for this lover of Mexican food.
But within a minute, it dawned on me that I, in the course of my search, had embraced the process of "gentrification"! Excitement gave away to moral reflection as I realized the social implications of my quest for a better deal.
My problem with the "g-word" has nothing to do with the racial aspect of a light-skinned Eurasian moving into a brown neighborhood (though many commentators on both sides of the issue simplistically reduce gentrification to an ethnic conflict) so much as with the economic effects that a (whiter) middle-class presence in the neighborhoods has of jacking up rents in a neighborhood, incentivizing the displacement of the working-class.
I ended up not pursuing the deals on the eastside after some discussions with my mother. And yet, I know now that if I had not had my parent's financial support on rent (and relied solely on my own earnings), I would have seized on the properties in a heartbeat.
What drives an educated progressive like myself (and others who I know), who is perfectly aware of the ills of gentrification, to partake in gentrifying the Eastside of Los Angeles is the simple fact that Los Angeles has the least affordable rental market in the country. (LA's rents are not the most expensive in terms of price but they are the highest relative to the average per capita income) Therefore, whatever housing is still affordable, decent and in a (relatively safe) location will be snapped up by those of us who are not (financially)"loaded."
A steep rise in rent as a percentage of income over the last decade can be observed in cities across the country and yet what makes Los Angeles' situation particularly frustrating (though not entirely unique) is the fact that the crisis stems less from physical constraints than from political ones.
Los Angeles has far more room to grow than cities like New York and San Francisco (bearing only half the density of the former and one-third the amount of density of the latter two cities), and yet Los Angeles officials zone far less land for new housing than these cities (with fewer units being built in Los Angeles in 2014 than in spread-out Houston).
The root cause of this paucity of zoning, in turn, has been the disproportionate power afforded to LA's affluent single-family homeowners by participatory planning policies to halt multi-family housing development that is perceived to threaten their neighborhoods.
As UCLA Doctoral candidate, Greg Morrow, explains, a 1968 law that switched Los Angeles' planning regime away from the singular control of the City planning department to (what was supposed to be) joint decision-making (Morrow, page 54) between planners and community-based "Citizens Advisory Committees." (chosen on the basis of dividing into thirty-five "communities") gave growth-adverse homeowners groups the power to prevent zoning for development of large-scale multi-family housing in large swaths of the city.
This switch to a "bottom-up" approach to planning was supposed to empower ordinary citizens to have a say in planning issues: many progressives, indeed, hoped that a democratic planning regime would prevent the massive uprooting of poor neighborhoods carried out by city planners in the name of the city. (e.g. Chavez Ravine) (Morrow 71)
In actuality, however, as Morrow notes, community participation in the planning process gave disproportionate weight to wealthier and whiter single-family homeowners residing in the city's western and hilltop neighborhoods, who had the time and expendable income to closely follow and act upon city planner's proposals.
Motivated by (mainly aesthetic) concerns about the environment and a desire to maintain their neighborhoods' secluded low-density character, wealthy Angelenos have utilized community-planning to fight any housing or transportation development that they perceive will bring even a modicum of congestion or density to their neighborhoods.
To give a example from my own career, just last week I overheard my colleague in the City Planning office inform her superior that she would take a major arterial street in Hollywood off a proposed "Transit-Enhanced Network" (meaning that it would be slated to receive increased or upgraded public transit service) because of staunch opposition from neighborhood councils in the Hollywood Hills.
Never mind that this arterial street was located a mile away from the hills or that a transit network (especially should it lead to rail development) could do much to alleviate the bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic on the street. The neighborhod groups feared that the "corridor" would lead to an increase density that would eventually make its way up the hilltops... So they fought tooth-and-nail and won.
Though such stubborn opposition has repeatedly stymied development in the Westside, Hollywood, and southern San Fernando Valley, however, it has done little to discourage Los Angeles' continued population growth, not only through immigration but through natural increases in the existing few million inhabitants.
With more people (primarily earning lower or moderate incomes) to house but little new multi-family housing being constructed in or near affluent single-family neighborhoods, middle-class Los Angeles residents entering the rental market today face a difficult choice. They can relocate to far-flung suburbs, which provide low-cost housing (primarily in single-family units) at the cost of an inconvenient commute (while additionally contributing to heavier traffic and environmental devestation).
Or they can enter into traditionally poorer, working-class communities on Los Angeles' Eastside (many having reduced crime by gang injunctions in recent years), which initially boast affordable rental properties not only due to their less desirable reputatons but also because the single-family homeowners of these neighborhoods-who are often fewer in number to begin with-have not had the time, money or concern (given the myriad other issues they must deal with on a day-to-day basis) to fight dense multi-family development.
Long before neighborhoods like Boyle Heights and East Hollywood entered the radar of the middle-class, they had become progressively more crowded through population inflows, and/or saw a net increase in the units of multi-family housing . Prior to the age of gentrification, the crowding of low-income immigrants into already-impoverished communities on the east and south sides of Los Angeles fostered a toxic concentration of poverty, urban decay and crime.
(Morrow pps. 166-8)
And yet, in neighborhoods that have to come to be predominantly populated by low-income renters, a subsequent influx of young middle-class professionals (quite ironically in search of bargains), by encouraging landlords to ensuingly jack up the cost of rent (to adjust to demand by a wealthier cohort) or, in some cases, demolish affordable properties to make way for higher-end housing, spells out displacement for the original (and in some cases, deep-rooted) inhabitants and a denial of the latter group's right to live in the city.
The logical conclusion to Morrow's thesis is that the power and intransigence of affluent homeowners is the driving force behind not only Los Angeles' suburban sprawl, but (especially, as the latter becomes less viable) gentrification.
This is not to deny that the gentrifiers themselves often carry problematic attitudes of privilege and saviorism that serve to justify (both to themselves and outsiders) their uprooting of low-income residents of color.
And yet, at the most basic level, gentrification is not driven by personal opinion so much as by economic calculus.
It is the entrenched westside NIMBYs and not the eastside hipsters who bear the blame for LA's rampant gentrification. Let's hope that the advocates for social justice take notice.
Morrow Thesis:
Morrow, Gregory D.(2013). The Homeowner Revolution: Democracy, Land Use and the Los Angeles Slow-Growth Movement, 1965-1992. UCLA: Urban Planning 0911. Retrieved from: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k64g20f
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
West Hollywood: A Plea for mass transit
For many City Planners in Los Angeles, "new urbanism" trends in transportation planning have focused on the city center, Downtown LA, which currently anchors the majority of lines of the expanding metro rail system. When people talk about a "third-wave" Los Angeles characterized by density, compactness and extensive public transit and walking options, they usually point to the revival of Downtown as the sign of the future. However, transit planners such as Michael Rhodes and Samuel Krueger have pointed out that Downtown is not Los Angeles' singular focal point of urban density (in the way that, say, Manhattan is to New York) but rather comprises one of a series of "dense" core-like areas, most concentrated in a line extending from Fairfax to the ocean. Of these core areas, the congested, centrally-located and compact entertainment West Hollywood provides even greater prospects for rapid transit development than downtown.
For one thing, West Hollywood's central location (conveniently surrounded by the commercial hubs of Beverly Hills and Century City (to the West), Hollywood (to the northeast) and Mid-Wilshire (to the east)), along with its legendary nightlife and dining destinations draw cars from across Greater Los Angeles onto its streets. With no freeway in the immediate vicinity and few wide streets running through the neighborhood, congestion constantly plagues West Hollywood even late at night.
Compounding West Hollywood traffic woes is the city's high commercial and residential density. West Hollywood is not only a nightlife hub (containing both the LGBT Boys Town" and the "Sunset Strip") and commercial center (with major design and entertainment industries centered in the city) but the most densely-populated independent city in Los Angeles County. Not only are all the major thoroughfares filled with cars in transit, but swamped along the curbsides. In the "Boys Town" district (near where I live), pedestrians not only crowd the sidewalks at night but, per East Coast mores, frequently wander into the street itself (especially as the night drags on). Indeed, so many pedestrian fatalities have occured on the stretch of Santa Monica in Boys Town, that the City of West Hollywood has gone out of its way to install signs and flashing signals warning cars to yield to pedestrians by crosswalks not located by traffic lights. This goes to show how West Hollywood has long been a leader in efforts at making things easier for non-automative forms of transport and has result, been ranked as one of the most walkable cities in California. (Yes, above San Francisco)
Unfortunately, despite the congestion and pedestrian fatalities, a proposed line to West Hollywood remains off Metro's list of short-term expansion projects. This despite the city's proposal to plunk down money and even lobbyists to get a line through the city. If Metro were serious about expanding rail rather than winning votes from the San Gabriel Valley, they would construct a line towards West Hollywood as part of the short-term, rather than the contingent plan.
For one thing, West Hollywood's central location (conveniently surrounded by the commercial hubs of Beverly Hills and Century City (to the West), Hollywood (to the northeast) and Mid-Wilshire (to the east)), along with its legendary nightlife and dining destinations draw cars from across Greater Los Angeles onto its streets. With no freeway in the immediate vicinity and few wide streets running through the neighborhood, congestion constantly plagues West Hollywood even late at night.
Compounding West Hollywood traffic woes is the city's high commercial and residential density. West Hollywood is not only a nightlife hub (containing both the LGBT Boys Town" and the "Sunset Strip") and commercial center (with major design and entertainment industries centered in the city) but the most densely-populated independent city in Los Angeles County. Not only are all the major thoroughfares filled with cars in transit, but swamped along the curbsides. In the "Boys Town" district (near where I live), pedestrians not only crowd the sidewalks at night but, per East Coast mores, frequently wander into the street itself (especially as the night drags on). Indeed, so many pedestrian fatalities have occured on the stretch of Santa Monica in Boys Town, that the City of West Hollywood has gone out of its way to install signs and flashing signals warning cars to yield to pedestrians by crosswalks not located by traffic lights. This goes to show how West Hollywood has long been a leader in efforts at making things easier for non-automative forms of transport and has result, been ranked as one of the most walkable cities in California. (Yes, above San Francisco)
Unfortunately, despite the congestion and pedestrian fatalities, a proposed line to West Hollywood remains off Metro's list of short-term expansion projects. This despite the city's proposal to plunk down money and even lobbyists to get a line through the city. If Metro were serious about expanding rail rather than winning votes from the San Gabriel Valley, they would construct a line towards West Hollywood as part of the short-term, rather than the contingent plan.
Sunday, March 1, 2015
The Olive Tree Initiative, Israel-Palestine and the Conflict of Nationalisms
So at last, I get around to my grand "reflection" on the trip I took with the Olive Tree Initiative (no, the last article does not count).
When in the process of going through my notes from the trip, my thoughts kept drifting back to the Spring Quarter of my Freshman year of college, when I took a course on the Israel-Palestine conflict with Professor James Gelvin. Gelvin is a truly incredible teacher, delivering presentations with the perfect mixture of clarity and wit. What brings me to remember his course, in recent days, however, is Gelvin's theoretical characterization of the conflcit as a "conflict of nationalisms."
In the course of my travels throughout Israel-Palestine, I could not help be struck by the prominence of historical narratives in determining present political actions.
By history, I do not refer to the past as objective actuality, but rather as perceived narrative, that varies according to one's personal/life experiences. constructed as so much as the conceptualization .
When our group visited the infamous Hebron settlement, the settlement's spokesperson, David Wilder, justified the imposition of the settlement, as well as the accompanying military regime, on the city on the basis that Jews "had lived there continuously" from Biblical times prior to the founding of the state of Israel (and because Judaism's third holiest site, the Cave of the Patriarchs, lay in the city).
Palestinian entreprenuer Mubib al-Masri, as if to counter Wilder's logic of causation, off-handedly remarked (when showing , when showing off the ruins of a Byzantine church that archaeologists had excavated beneath his house) that "it was lucky that we didn't find any synagogue...for then the settlers would come..." A full-fledged Palestinian national "counter-narrative" could be witnessed (amongst other places) on a historical timeline at the Jenin Municipal museum, which omitted any mention of Hebrew or Jewish events occurring in the region. the local museum at Jenin, history al-Masri declared that he's "glad a synagogue was not discovered on the site, for it would lend legitimacy to Jewish nationalists (who would perceivedly try to displace him).
In a world of nation-states, national identities and narratives (such as the Zionist and the Palestinians) can seem to be primordial (especially when they draw legitimacy from a text as ancient as the Bible). To the contrary, however, most historians and social scientists concur that nationalism can be traced no further back than the early 19th-century, when the societal changes induced by the industrial revolution and the rise of constitutional democracy prompted a transition from older, feudal-based forms of identity. In the case of Israel-Palestine, Zionist and Palestinian identities are especially the first arising in late-19th-century Eastern Europe (in response to problem of Jewish emancipation) and the latter around the same time in Palestine due to economic industrialization. As Mazin Qomsiyeh reminded us, Palestine's Jews and Christian lived and died not as different peoples but as locals until recently.
Statesmen, accustomed to nation-state as predominant form of political arrangement, commonly pitch a two-state solution to the conflict, which would allow both nationalisms achieve "realization" through territorial compromise. For similar reasons, I too have traditionally believed that this would be the only endgame.
And yet, in Israel-Palestine, where the competing nationalisms not only covet the same territory but are premised-at least in recent times- so strongly on the denial of the legitimacy other (nationalism), fulfilling both nationalisms in tandem may add fuel to the conflict rather than manage it.
As Jerusalem lawyer, Daniel Seidemann noted, this division will not result in hunky-dory coexistence but rather a "bitter divorce," that would require a considerable security guarantee by America and its allies to implement. Ironically, Seidemann made this comment as the bus wound its way through the Arab neighborhood (slated as belonging to a future Palestinian state) of Sheikh Jarrah, situated a mere 600 meters away from the future border (the Green Line) and the Jewish neighborhood of Mea Shearim. Should the future independent states of Israel and Palestine remain beset by opposing claims and grievances, the geopolitical situation in Jerusalem would ensure for a Cold War-like hostility at best (if not fractious bloodshed).
Compounding the problematic nature of the nationalisms is the degree to which religious belief (something that is far more difficult to "assimilate" to than a language or even culture) permeates the political and societal structures of the land. At the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a strict religious (and ethnic) segregation between Jewish (Israeli) and Muslim (Palestinian) worshippers is maintained by the Israeli security forces,. Entering the country through the security checkpoints at Ben Gurion airport, my party was confronted with questions not about our citizenship but about our religion ("Are your parents Jewish?" I was asked): wrong answers could get students pulled aside for extended questioning. In East Jerusalem, on the other hand, a member of our group who looked and inform politics on both sides.
Though religion and ethnicity have played a significant social role in the Middle East since the days of the Ottoman Millet System, the construction of national (Jewish-Zionist and Palestinian) identities political systems exclusively around religion is a relatively recent phenomenon.The first Zionist Congress, which laid out for the first time, an explicit goal of a homeland for members of the Jewish faith in Eretz Yisrael, convened only in 1896 . Palestinian nationalism, whose roots lay in the wholly secular process of industrial modernization (in nineteenth century Palestine), only became gradually (and partially) tied to the Islamic religion in light of the conflict with Zionism (e.g. the language of Islamic Martyrdom first entered Palestinian revolutionary rhetoric during the anti-zionist rebellions of the 1920s and 1930s), the flight of Palestinian Christian populations and political changes in the region (e.g. the Islamic Revolution and Hamas).
In theory, one could easily become a "Palestinian Jew" simply by embracing one's regional origins (and perhaps Arabic culture) and proclaiming solidarity with the Palestinian national cause: Uri Davis provides a case in point. Becoming a "Jewish Palestinian," would , on the other hand, be an extremely difficult and painful process: it is for this reason that the Arabic-speaking (many self-identifying as "Palestinian") citizens of Israel suffer such institutional discrimination within the Jewish state.
My point is not to blame Zionism but to argue that a long-term, equitable solution to the conflict will require people on all sides and their supporters (particularly Zionist American Jews) to identify with their neighbors as much as they do with their coreligionists.
In other conflict zones such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, where religious-based national divisions once fueled bitterness and strife, a peaceful resolution resulted in a single political entity (backed up by security guarantees), in which people on both sides of the divide were compelled to live side-by-side, preserving their communal identities without negating the presence of the other.
The question, then, is why (rather than another "two-state proposal") can't the same feat be achieved in Israel-Palestine?
When in the process of going through my notes from the trip, my thoughts kept drifting back to the Spring Quarter of my Freshman year of college, when I took a course on the Israel-Palestine conflict with Professor James Gelvin. Gelvin is a truly incredible teacher, delivering presentations with the perfect mixture of clarity and wit. What brings me to remember his course, in recent days, however, is Gelvin's theoretical characterization of the conflcit as a "conflict of nationalisms."
In the course of my travels throughout Israel-Palestine, I could not help be struck by the prominence of historical narratives in determining present political actions.
By history, I do not refer to the past as objective actuality, but rather as perceived narrative, that varies according to one's personal/life experiences. constructed as so much as the conceptualization .
When our group visited the infamous Hebron settlement, the settlement's spokesperson, David Wilder, justified the imposition of the settlement, as well as the accompanying military regime, on the city on the basis that Jews "had lived there continuously" from Biblical times prior to the founding of the state of Israel (and because Judaism's third holiest site, the Cave of the Patriarchs, lay in the city).
Palestinian entreprenuer Mubib al-Masri, as if to counter Wilder's logic of causation, off-handedly remarked (when showing , when showing off the ruins of a Byzantine church that archaeologists had excavated beneath his house) that "it was lucky that we didn't find any synagogue...for then the settlers would come..." A full-fledged Palestinian national "counter-narrative" could be witnessed (amongst other places) on a historical timeline at the Jenin Municipal museum, which omitted any mention of Hebrew or Jewish events occurring in the region. the local museum at Jenin, history al-Masri declared that he's "glad a synagogue was not discovered on the site, for it would lend legitimacy to Jewish nationalists (who would perceivedly try to displace him).
In a world of nation-states, national identities and narratives (such as the Zionist and the Palestinians) can seem to be primordial (especially when they draw legitimacy from a text as ancient as the Bible). To the contrary, however, most historians and social scientists concur that nationalism can be traced no further back than the early 19th-century, when the societal changes induced by the industrial revolution and the rise of constitutional democracy prompted a transition from older, feudal-based forms of identity. In the case of Israel-Palestine, Zionist and Palestinian identities are especially the first arising in late-19th-century Eastern Europe (in response to problem of Jewish emancipation) and the latter around the same time in Palestine due to economic industrialization. As Mazin Qomsiyeh reminded us, Palestine's Jews and Christian lived and died not as different peoples but as locals until recently.
Statesmen, accustomed to nation-state as predominant form of political arrangement, commonly pitch a two-state solution to the conflict, which would allow both nationalisms achieve "realization" through territorial compromise. For similar reasons, I too have traditionally believed that this would be the only endgame.
And yet, in Israel-Palestine, where the competing nationalisms not only covet the same territory but are premised-at least in recent times- so strongly on the denial of the legitimacy other (nationalism), fulfilling both nationalisms in tandem may add fuel to the conflict rather than manage it.
As Jerusalem lawyer, Daniel Seidemann noted, this division will not result in hunky-dory coexistence but rather a "bitter divorce," that would require a considerable security guarantee by America and its allies to implement. Ironically, Seidemann made this comment as the bus wound its way through the Arab neighborhood (slated as belonging to a future Palestinian state) of Sheikh Jarrah, situated a mere 600 meters away from the future border (the Green Line) and the Jewish neighborhood of Mea Shearim. Should the future independent states of Israel and Palestine remain beset by opposing claims and grievances, the geopolitical situation in Jerusalem would ensure for a Cold War-like hostility at best (if not fractious bloodshed).
Compounding the problematic nature of the nationalisms is the degree to which religious belief (something that is far more difficult to "assimilate" to than a language or even culture) permeates the political and societal structures of the land. At the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a strict religious (and ethnic) segregation between Jewish (Israeli) and Muslim (Palestinian) worshippers is maintained by the Israeli security forces,. Entering the country through the security checkpoints at Ben Gurion airport, my party was confronted with questions not about our citizenship but about our religion ("Are your parents Jewish?" I was asked): wrong answers could get students pulled aside for extended questioning. In East Jerusalem, on the other hand, a member of our group who looked and inform politics on both sides.
Though religion and ethnicity have played a significant social role in the Middle East since the days of the Ottoman Millet System, the construction of national (Jewish-Zionist and Palestinian) identities political systems exclusively around religion is a relatively recent phenomenon.The first Zionist Congress, which laid out for the first time, an explicit goal of a homeland for members of the Jewish faith in Eretz Yisrael, convened only in 1896 . Palestinian nationalism, whose roots lay in the wholly secular process of industrial modernization (in nineteenth century Palestine), only became gradually (and partially) tied to the Islamic religion in light of the conflict with Zionism (e.g. the language of Islamic Martyrdom first entered Palestinian revolutionary rhetoric during the anti-zionist rebellions of the 1920s and 1930s), the flight of Palestinian Christian populations and political changes in the region (e.g. the Islamic Revolution and Hamas).
In theory, one could easily become a "Palestinian Jew" simply by embracing one's regional origins (and perhaps Arabic culture) and proclaiming solidarity with the Palestinian national cause: Uri Davis provides a case in point. Becoming a "Jewish Palestinian," would , on the other hand, be an extremely difficult and painful process: it is for this reason that the Arabic-speaking (many self-identifying as "Palestinian") citizens of Israel suffer such institutional discrimination within the Jewish state.
My point is not to blame Zionism but to argue that a long-term, equitable solution to the conflict will require people on all sides and their supporters (particularly Zionist American Jews) to identify with their neighbors as much as they do with their coreligionists.
In other conflict zones such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, where religious-based national divisions once fueled bitterness and strife, a peaceful resolution resulted in a single political entity (backed up by security guarantees), in which people on both sides of the divide were compelled to live side-by-side, preserving their communal identities without negating the presence of the other.
The question, then, is why (rather than another "two-state proposal") can't the same feat be achieved in Israel-Palestine?
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