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Title: Decoding the 'Metrosea': Geographies of Incorporation in Los Angeles

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2009

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Abstract: "The emergence of Southern California as a 'metrosea' of fragmented and insular local sovereignties often depicted in urbanist literature as an 'accident' of unplanned growth was in fact the result of deliberate shaping" (Davis 1990, 164)."In the suburb one might live and die without marring the image of an innocent world, except when some shadow of its evil fell over a column in the newspaper... This was not merely a child-centered environment; it was based on a childish view of the world, in which reality was sacrificed to the pleasure principle." (Lewis Mumford quoted in Jackson 1985, 155-156).To best attempt this goal, I chose to use municipal incorporation as my primary metric, due in part to data acquisition issues. For the purposes of this paper, I define in-corporation as the creation of a self-governing municipality from either unincorporated county lands (i.e. Los Angeles County), or another municipality through secession (in this case, the City of Los Angeles). As a first step in evaluating the relationship between incorporation and residential segregation, I will use the following as a guiding research question: is there a spatial correlation between regional changes in black population and incor-poration in Los Angeles?

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Authors: Yule, Alex

Publisher: Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Housing and Segregation, Other, Race and Ethnicity

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