Week 8

Week 8: Pacific Palisades

This week I decided to head to the coast. I took Sunset Blvd once more, but this time I took it going west. We wound through the curvy tree lined road up and down the hills through several affluent areas. The first being Brentwood, which I only saw briefly. A large portion of the street was lined with oversized homes, looking like they belonged to people whose definition of success was represented with dollar signs. As we wound around, creeping closer to the coast, we passed the beautiful and awe inspiring self-realization temple Lake Shrine, pictured below.

We then drove through the heart of the town Pacific Palisades. It is cute, and village like. There were many shops mom and pop shops and the landscape was not dominated by chain stores as is typically seen. The area didn't strike me as particularly racially diverse and I predicted a high population of white people. So upon returning I decided to investigate. I found all the demographic information I could need at the LA Times website here:http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-la/neighborhoods/neighborhood/pacific-palisades/. This source states that the area has a particularly high population of white people for the country at almost 89%. The average median income per household is

$168,000, which is also high for the city and county of Los Angeles. It is my analysis that due to the somewhat hard to reach location of Pacific Palisades, it doesn't get a lot of outside traffic from people who are more ethnically diverse or in lower classes. Since the area is set apart from the city, there is little reason one would need to go there, unless they were in the area or trying to get to the beach, in which case going through Pacific Palisades would not be the most direct route.

I also noticed that this stretch of sunset restricts urban mobility by not encouraging public access. The curvy and steep road and lack of side walks makes the area uninviting for pedestrians. This, coupled with the speeding cars, makes the area not only uninviting but down right dangerous for any users aside from those in automobiles.