The Garden
2008, 79 minutes
Directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy
The story of a 14-acre urban farm in South Central Los Angeles, the low-income families who farmed it for 12 years, and the struggle they faced when real estate developers decide to redevelop the land.
On my hometown, El Segundo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Segundo,_California
A refinery is to the south, LAX is to the north, a sewage treatment facility is to the west, and various aerospace factories are to the east. Imagine the pollution..
I grew up within a few blocks of the Chevron El Segundo Refinery; LAX and the Hyperion facility were being built as I finished high school.
The town was named for the refinery, the second on the west coast. The first was in Richmond, just north of Berkeley where I was an undergrad. In spite of the name the El Segundo refinery is larger.
The City of Los Angeles Hyperion sewage treatment plant was built in the dunes between the town of El Segundo and the beach. [It is a few blocks from the house where I was raised.] It was much smaller before the 1980 expansion. As kids we would watch as Hollywood made desert movies in the dunes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_sewage_treatment_plant
LAX was under construction while I was in high school. Because of the noise we had to stop classes briefly whenever the first jets flew overhead. Building LAX required the elimination via eminent domain of a neighborhood where some of my friends lived; 4,400 houses were destroyed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playa_del_Rey,_Los_Angeles#History When flying from LAX look down as the plane rises; the old streets are still there.
Before LAX was built we kids would walk across that land to the amazing Ballona wetlands http://www.ballonafriends.org/history.html
Most of it was drained to build a yacht harbor called Marina del Rey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_del_Rey,_California
FW Viehe (UCSB), Black Gold Suburbs:" The Influence of the Extractive Industry on the Suburbanization of Los Angeles, 1890-1930", Journal of Urban History, 1981. "... The central thesis of this article is that the extractive industry was responsible for both suburban dispersal and metropolitan fragmentation in southern Los Angeles County and northern Orange County. ..." [see attached]. He explicitly challenges several well-known suburbanization theses; it would be interesting to see if his ideas also apply in Houston.
A dissertation on El Segundo by Shauna Mulvihill: A Tale of Two Suburbs, or, The Urban Fortunes of El Segundo and Hawthorne, California, 1905-1960 (University of California, Los Angeles, 2005)
Most of the dissertation compares the political economy of El Segundo and Hawthorne in terms of city council politics, economic forces, etc, via statistical data and minutes of city agencies. [I was the third or fourth member of her diss committee.] I could have added a lot more as a former native informant, of course, but Shauna was not interested in ethnography or oral history.
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/08/the-urban-oil-fields-of-los-angeles/100799/
The Garden
2008, 79 minutes
Directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy
The story of a 14-acre urban farm in South Central Los Angeles, the low-income families who farmed it for 12 years, and the struggle they faced when real estate developers decide to redevelop the land.
From Sharon -- (with attachments LA Oil Fields)
There are several oil fields in the LA area http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/subterranean-l-a-the-urban-oil-fields/
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/08/the-urban-oil-fields-of-los-angeles/100799/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_City_Oil_Field
http://www.inglewoodoilfield.com/history-future-of-inglewood/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Beach_Oil_Field
Mapping All 3,000 of Los Angeles's Active Oil Wells - Cur
"Twenty billion barrels of oil sit beneath Los Angeles. Hidden in plain sight, thousands of wells pump day and night all over the city covered by hollow office ..."
https://www.vice.com/video/oil-of-l-a--3
I am aware of 3 long-term refineries in the LA county area known as the South Bay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Bay,_Los_Angeles
El Segundo, Signal Hill, and Torrance:
Exxon Mobil Refinery Restarts Amid Concern Among Some Torrance Residents
http://www.exxonmobiltorrance.com/go/doc/7154/2455974/
http://www.shpi.net/
http://www.signalhillhistory.org/blog/pages/gallery/
http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/?p=2183
http://www.aqmd.gov/comply/1118/chevron.htm
http://elsegundo.chevron.com/home.aspx
http://elsegundo.chevron.com/home/abouttherefinery.aspx
On my hometown, El Segundo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Segundo,_California
A refinery is to the south, LAX is to the north, a sewage treatment facility is to the west, and various aerospace factories are to the east. Imagine the pollution..
I grew up within a few blocks of the Chevron El Segundo Refinery; LAX and the Hyperion facility were being built as I finished high school.
The town was named for the refinery, the second on the west coast. The first was in Richmond, just north of Berkeley where I was an undergrad. In spite of the name the El Segundo refinery is larger.
The City of Los Angeles Hyperion sewage treatment plant was built in the dunes between the town of El Segundo and the beach. [It is a few blocks from the house where I was raised.] It was much smaller before the 1980 expansion. As kids we would watch as Hollywood made desert movies in the dunes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_sewage_treatment_plant
LAX was under construction while I was in high school. Because of the noise we had to stop classes briefly whenever the first jets flew overhead. Building LAX required the elimination via eminent domain of a neighborhood where some of my friends lived; 4,400 houses were destroyed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playa_del_Rey,_Los_Angeles#History When flying from LAX look down as the plane rises; the old streets are still there.
Before LAX was built we kids would walk across that land to the amazing Ballona wetlands http://www.ballonafriends.org/history.html
Most of it was drained to build a yacht harbor called Marina del Rey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_del_Rey,_California
Kim described the Baytown Texas refineries as supporting science programs at the local schools; the El Segundo Chevron Refinery does the same.
http://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2011/05/27/chevron-donates-2-million-to-schools.html
Here are some links about the El Segundo school system http://www.elsegundousd.net/
http://www.elsegundohigh.org/ http://www.elsegundohigh.org/about_us/history.jsp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Segundo_High_School
Demographics from El Segundo High School, Focus on Learning Self Study
2008-2009 for WASC, pp.6-7.
http://elsegundousd.org/ourpages/auto/2008/4/29/1209503781593/El%20Segundo%20Unified%20-%20El%20Segundo%20High.pdf
Educational Results Partnership http://edresults.org/data/summary.php?cds=19645351932763&year=2010
This is the local newspaper: El Segundo Herald http://www.heraldpublications.com/herald/el-segundo-herald/
1916-2013 database http://www.elsegundo.org/library/databases.asp
held at the El Segundo Library http://www.elsegundo.org/depts/library/public_library_history/default.asp
- FW Viehe (UCSB), Black Gold Suburbs:" The Influence of the Extractive Industry on the Suburbanization of Los Angeles, 1890-1930", Journal of Urban History, 1981. "... The central thesis of this article is that the extractive industry was responsible for both suburban dispersal and metropolitan fragmentation in southern Los Angeles County and northern Orange County. ..." [see attached]. He explicitly challenges several well-known suburbanization theses; it would be interesting to see if his ideas also apply in Houston.
- FW Viehe (UCSB), The social-spatial distribution in the black gold suburbs of Los Angeles, 1900-1930Southern California Quarterly, 1991
- Fred W Viehe (UCSB PhD 1983) is now at Youngstown State Univ, Ohio
http://web.ysu.edu/gen/class/Dr._Fred_Viehe_p747.html https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fred_VieheCV http://web.ysu.edu/gen/class_generated_bin/documents/basic_module/CURRICULUM_VITAE_viehe.pdf
A dissertation on El Segundo by Shauna Mulvihill: A Tale of Two Suburbs, or,
The Urban Fortunes of El Segundo and Hawthorne, California, 1905-1960 (University of California, Los Angeles, 2005)
Most of the dissertation compares the political economy of El Segundo and Hawthorne in terms of city council politics, economic forces, etc, via statistical data and minutes of city agencies. [I was the third or fourth member of her diss committee.] I could have added a lot more as a former native informant, of course, but Shauna was not interested in ethnography or oral history.