Chavez Ravine

1351 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: African Americans living conditions before, during, and post urban renewal projects

October 15th, 1988, at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California. Kirk Gibson of the Los Angeles Dodgers limps to the plate, walking on two severely injured legs, Gibson sets in as a pinch hitter in the bottom of the ninth inning in game one of the 1988 World Series. The home team Dodgers trailing 4-3 to the Oakland Athletics, with two outs and Gibson the final hope for the Dodgers. The pitcher for the Athletics, Dennis Eckersley throws Gibson a Slider, Gibson swings and hits the game wining two run home run. The legendary Hall of Fame announcer Vin Scully poetically states, "In a year of the improbable, the impossible has happened." The Dodgers win and the stadium, as well as most of Los Angeles, is raucous and wild with excitement. Some residents of Los Angeles did not celebrate with the city, they do not ever cheer for the Dodgers, nor will they ever go back to Dodger Stadium. To these residents Dodger Stadium will always be Chavez Ravine, and to them the improbable an impossible has already happen decades earlier.
Most Angelinos know that Dodger Stadium was once Chavez Ravine, a quiet and independent hillside neighborhood. Most would also agree that Dodger Stadium is an appropriate progression for an area known and designated as a slum. However, what most citizens do not realize is the designation of Chavez Ravine as a slum served merely as a cover-up for the city's own agenda of modernization through the vehicle of politics. The Community's identity as a quiet hillside neighborhood was ultimately shattered in the wake of the 1949 Housing Act under modern urban planning and the larger realm of politics during an era of intense anti-communist sentiment. This paper will argue that those aforementioned themes as the reason f...

... middle of paper ...

...n, assistant director of the City of Los Angeles Housing Authority, was put in charge of the redevelopment of Chavez Ravine. He envisioned a public housing space for thousands of low rent housing units. The site of the redeveloped land was to be called Elysian Park Heights Public Housing(Fig. 1), here the fist inhabitants would be from the few hundred people evicted from their homes to make way for the public housing project. Frank Wilkinson states himself in The Documentary film Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles story, He affirms, "We prepared certificates to every family (the certificate said) when the certificate was built you, and your family would be the first priority to get there, you can pick the part of the project you wanted to live in." This would prove to be the start of the lies and broken promises handed to the residents of the Chavez Ravine communities .

Show More
Related

  • Whitewashed Adobe Chapter Summary

    635 Words  | 2 Pages

    The tone of Whitewashed Adobe delivers an ethnic and cultural history of Los Angeles. The author, William Deverell, indicates “Los Angeles has been the city of the future for a long time.” The book takes a revealing and harsh look at prejudice, political power and control in the early vision of 19th century Los Angeles and its surrounding communities. Deverell’s main interest is the economically, culturally and politically powerful Anglos and their view of ethnicity and race that enabled them to distance themselves from the Mexican people. Whitewashed Adobe’s six chapters illuminate how these men “appropriated, absorbed, and occasionally obliterated” Mexican sites and history in going forth with their vision for Los Angeles.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of 'Guerilla Gardener In A Food Desert'

    1803 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA is the TED Talk video selected for this reaction paper and the talk tells us how one man was resourceful enough to take what he called "home of the drive-thru and the drive-by" and a "food desert" and build food gardens for all to share and be changed by. On stage, Ron Finley is clearly a man with a sense of humor and knack for keeping his message real. For example, when city planners attempted to rebrand South Central Los Angeles to South Los Angeles, he simply went through his slides with photos of the neighborhood again, calling it South Los Angeles with liquor stores, fast food, and vacant lots. A great ice breaker for the audience that let us know that he knew that more than a simple name change was needed to fix what’s wrong with his food desert.

    Read More

  • Row Houses in Boston's South End

    1411 Words  | 3 Pages

    To appreciate a row house neighborhood, one must first look at the plan as a whole before looking at the individual blocks and houses. The city’s goal to build a neighborhood that can be seen as a singular unit is made clear in plan, at both a larger scale (the entire urban plan) and a smaller scale (the scheme of the individual houses). Around 1850, the city began to carve out blocks and streets, with the idea of orienting them around squares and small residential parks. This Victorian style plan organized rectangular blocks around rounded gardens and squares that separated the row houses from major streets. The emphasis on public spaces and gardens to provide relief from the ene...

    Read More

  • La Plaza De Cultura Artes

    1552 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...rises me that little to few people know the true past of California and I believe that it should be taught in high school. I also never knew about the unfortunate circumstances of all the Chicanos that were relocated and lied to in order to build the Dodgers Stadium. Being relocated by force essentially and promised a better living condition where they have priorities that was never built. I have been a Dodger fan my whole life and never thought about the location of the stadium and how they obtained it. The worst part is I see so many Chicanos at the games and are die hard Dodger fans that don 't know the complete story.

    Read More

  • Hines’ Article Triggers Response

    1242 Words  | 3 Pages

    Hines’ article, though not possessing a clear purpose, provides a thorough history of the entire Elysian Park Heights project. He summarizes Chavez Ravine, the architects and their vision, and the downfall of the project due to fears of socialism and a desire for baseball. Hines’ writing effectively triggers a number of emotions, mainly anger and shock that the situation took place. While he provides no introduction to the reader, by the conclusion, Hines definitely provides reason for response.

    Read More

  • Chicago’s Cabrini-Green Housing Project

    1551 Words  | 4 Pages

    Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing project is notorious in the United States for being the most impoverished and crime-ridden public housing development ever established. Originally established as inexpensive housing in the 1940’s, it soon became a vast complex of unsightly concrete low and high-rise apartment structures. Originally touted as a giant step forward in the development of public housing, it quickly changed from a racially and economically diverse housing complex to a predominantly black, extremely poor ghetto. As it was left to rot, so to speak, Cabrini-Green harbored drug dealers, gangs and prostitution. It continued its downward spiral of despair until the mid 1990’s when the Federal Government assumed control the Chicago Housing Authority, the organization responsible for this abomination. Cabrini-Green has slowly been recovering from its dismal state of affairs recently, with developers building mixed-income and subsidized housing. The Chicago Housing Authority has also been demolishing the monolithic concrete high-rise slums, replacing them with public housing aimed at not repeating the mistakes of the past. Fortunately, a new era of public housing has dawned from the mistakes that were made, and the lessons that were learned from the things that went on for half a century in Cabrini-Green.

    Read More

  • Chavez Ravine

    1879 Words  | 4 Pages

    Years ago, there was once a small town called Chaves Ravine within Los Angeles, California and this town was a poor rural community that was always full of life. Two hundred families, mostly Chicano families, were living here quite peacefully until the Housing Act of 1949 was passed. The Federal Housing Act of 1949 granted money to cities from the federal government to build public housing projects for the low income. Los Angeles was one of the first cities to receive the funds for project. Unfortunately, Chavez Ravine was one of the sites chosen for the housing project, so, to prepare for the construction work of the low-income apartments, the Housing Authority of Los Angeles had to convince the people of the ravine to leave, or forcibly oust them from their property. Since Chavez Ravine was to be used for public use, the Housing Authority of Los Angeles was able seize and buy Chavez Ravine from the property owners and evict whoever stayed behind with the help of Eminent Domain. The LA Housing Authority had told the inhabitants that low-income housing was to be built on the land, but, because of a sequence of events, the public housing project was never built there and instead Dodgers Stadium was built on Chavez Ravine. Although Chavez Ravine public housing project was the result of the goodwill and intent of the government, rather than helping the people Chavez Ravine with their promise of low-income housing, the project ended up destroying many of their lives because of those in opposition of the public housing project and government mismanagement.

    Read More

  • Race And Race In Southland, By Nina Revoyr

    853 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ewish enclave to a predominantly Mexican community” (Sanchez, 2004, p. 640) due to the fact that the “Jewish community of Los Angeles as a whole was transformed by the demographic changes, clearly becoming “white” in the racial hierarchy of the region both geographically and politically” (Sanchez, 2004, p. 640). The place of the Jewish community changed along with their identity. Once they became “white” they no longer were restricted to living in Boyle Heights. In Los Angeles, it is clear through what happened to this one group of people that one’s metaphorical place in society, meant to be one’s racial and class status in what Sanchez refers to as a hierarchy, has a direct link to one’s literal or geographical place in the city. The ongoing divisions within society caused by stratification have become the basis of the meaning of place in contemporary Los Angeles.

    Read More

  • The Young Lords of New York

    4017 Words  | 9 Pages

    The events of 7 June 1969 were but one of many moments in the history of New York City's Puerto Rican community that gave rise to and lent support for the Young Lords Party.[4] Indeed over the course of the next five years this ethnic group of radical intellectuals would help bring attention to the plight of the Puerto Rican community in New York City. This essay explores the history of the late twentieth century Puerto Rican migrants in New York City through an examination of the Young Lords Party (1969 to 1974). In doing so, it examines several significant topics, including the growth of the Puerto Rican population in New York City; the unique challenges this ethnic group faced, and the origins, growth and decline of the Young Lords Party.

    Read More

  • Iks by Lewis Thomas

    851 Words  | 2 Pages

    California water war has been an great example of different cities fighting against each other since they all share the common characteristics of greed, and selfish. Back in the 1800’s, Los Angeles grew largely in populations when finally it outgr...

    Read More

  • The Little Rock Nine

    1547 Words  | 4 Pages

    Chalmers, David. And the Crooked Places Made Straight: The Struggle for Social Change in the 1960s. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.

    Read More

  • Historic Preservation: Gentrification or Economic Development

    4632 Words  | 10 Pages

    Recently the use of historic preservation has also begun to be viewed by cities and towns as a means to economic development and urban renewal. According to advocates, historic preservation has aided in local economic and community revitalization, increased tourism and employment, and preserved regional history, culture, and pride. However, historic preservation has often lacked public support due to a negative reputation. Some see it, not as a means to revitalizing local communities, but rather, as simply driving the problems further under the surface or into other areas, namely, as a means to gentrification. This reputation is not entirely unfounded, as there have been instances when gentrification was exactly the intended goal.

    Read More

  • Housing Act 1950

    551 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Housing Act of 1954, like its earlier predecessor sought to end urban blight; however, where past legislation left off, this new amendment provided an opportunity to clear areas that could be considered slums in the future. As before, this bill sought to help minority groups who, according to Dwight D. Eisenhower, “had the least opportunity of all our citizens to live in good homes.” Unfortunately, it fell short. Davis McGuire cites the legislation’s shortsightedness to involve the federal government, distributing much of the power on a state and local

    Read More

  • Territorial Stigmatization Case Study

    840 Words  | 2 Pages

    Territorial stigmatization had a big a role to play in our community at large. Regent park in Toronto is being demolished to pave way for mixed use by coming up with anew urban design introducing 5400 new markets which will influence increase in density and rent geared towards income subsidized from 100% to 26%. This clearly shows the many advantages of residing in areas with concentrated poverty. Despite the many challenges they face social developments remains a questionable issue out of the many promises they get. Tenants also have a close relationship to the Regent park citizens who have a limited network in support and friendship.

    Read More

  • Los Angeles; A Diverse Metropolis

    2041 Words  | 5 Pages

    Los Angeles is unique in that it captures the essence of a multi-ecological setting bringing the ocean, the skyscraper, and the happiest place on earth under one rooftop. Its deep-rooted culture engulfs the city’s character and overwhelms the spirit of L.A. Los Angeles has encompassed the circle of the Mexican pueblo that began in 1848 and has returned over two hundred fifty years later. Hordes of “land hungry Anglo-Europeans” began to migrate to Los Angeles from various parts of Europe. They viciously took land from the inhabited Mexicans by fraud, force, and imposing ridiculous property taxes. Although Mexican rancheros fought gallantly for their land, they could not afford to pay the property taxes and as a result lost a vast part of their holdings. The Mexican ranchero lifestyle gradually vanished as new settlers took over. As the Anglo-whites became the majority in Los Angeles, they also became the major influence on the development of the city and its capitalist structure.

    Read More

More about Chavez Ravine

Open Document