The Byzantine-Latino Quarter: Creating Community in Los Angeles' Inner City

Abstract

Inner city neighborhoods in the U.S. remain poor and neglected. Community initiatives in such neighborhoods have rarely managed to influence planning processes or outcomes. Community mobilization is often in opposition to a proposed action. The intrusion of a freeway, the building of a prison, the proliferation of liquor stores have been issues that have forced neighborhoods to react, resist, oppose. But only in few occasions have poor communities come together proactively, to envision, plan, and implement positive changes. Planning in the U.S. remains guarded in the distant and insular offices of city planning and redevelopment agencies. Of course there are public hearings and Environmental Impact Reports of proposed projects, where the public is allowed to listen, read or comment. But these are venues of participation that are usually utilized by a very limited segment of the public. For the most part, residents of American inner city neighborhoods are unable to control or change the public spaces of their everyday lives. But there are also exceptions. This paper details the experiences of a Los Angeles inner city neighborhood in its attempt for revitalization. It describes a collaborative community process that stands in stark opposition to the hierarchical notion of rational planning. A core community group composed of residents, merchants and representatives of local institutions with the help of a university student team, initiated a revitalization process that was able to engage the larger community. Neighborhood watch groups, church groups, parent-teacher associations, local merchants, and neighborhood children were given the opportunity to voice their concerns, debate the issues and participate in a series of revitalization projects. At the core of the revitalization effort was the reclaiming of the neighborhood's small urban spaces from the condition of neglect, disrepair, and crime, and the forging of a sense of identity. This essay details the victories won and the challenges faced by the group as it attempted to create community in Los Angeles' inner city.