Writing Homework Help

We focus this week on California as an industrial hearth of technological innovation as well as a contemporary site of battles over gentrification and metropolitan change. We read Rebecca Solnit’s article on gentrification in San Francisco and Wendy Cheng’s piece on the cosmopolitan suburbs of Los Angeles. In addition, I provided a rather kaleidoscopic film about the role of Silicon Valley in a much broader global story regarding technocratic ideologies, political power, and economic policy. please draw on these materials and lecture discussions to address the following prompts:

1. California — and especially Silicon Valley — has played an out-sized role in the development of the IT and biotechnology industry in the United States. What historical and institutional factors help explain its importance as a geographical place?  

2. For Solnit, what characterizes “gentrification”? How is it conceptually different than a broader understanding of urban change over time? What are some of the causes and effects of processes of gentrification?

3. What characterizes the relationship between center cities and suburban fringes today (as discussed in different ways by Solnit’s description of San Francisco and Cheng’s discussion of the SGV)? How have the social, political, and cultural conditions of each changed since the postwar years?

Example, 

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A combination of government investment and private investment over time have allowed Silicon Valley and California’s IT and biotech industries to develop to their current, large scale. Investment into research and development in Silicon Valley was originally funded by the Department of Defense and was thus meant for military goals. However, private investment was also present from the beginning. With these original catalysts and with Silicon (St. Clara) Valley—at the time—being a strong domestic manufacturing hub, California’s technological center started growing.

After these initial catalysts, Silicon Valley was not stagnant; production in the valley was eventually phased out for a two-tiered workforce. This system outsourced physical manufacturing to other countries. More space became available for purposes besides manufacturing, and as a result, “urbanization of tech,” in the valley grew. This is our current state with mainly the creative processes of technology continuing to be housed in the Bay Area. There are some benefits to the current urbanization of tech, which aggregates creative interactions and creates space for diversity. Yet, the other side of the coin is that the two-tiered workforce that allowed for this urbanization is also marked by unethical labor practices, like dangerous factory conditions or inhuman working hours.

Multiple factors from initial investment to specific production practices have all contributed to the current state of Silicon Valley.

2.

For Solnit, gentrification differs from a generalized sense of “urban change” because it is marked by displacement and loss rather than an active desire for change. Gentrification does not involve change within urban communities, but a removal and destruction of urban communities by forces outside of a community’s control. In her article, Solnit mentions the growing wealth and power of tech company billionaires and wealthy employees as a contributor to gentrification in San Francisco. Wealth and power mean that those in the tech industry generally hold more privileged positions in society than those in other fields like education. They can afford to pay more for rent and housing, and thus can easily price out and out-buy local and long-time residents in cities like San Francisco. Solnit specifically mentions how teachers are one group of people for which 100% of San Francisco’s homes are unaffordable.

The wealth held by incoming residents to San Francisco who work in the tech industry also does not trickle down to help build up original communities. As a result of rising costs, a homeless center for youth might close down or a local church face eviction, and this leads to conflicts between long-standing communities and the disruptors of those communities. Bitterness rather than openness forms between locals and newcomers. For local people, evictions and loss of homes and neighborhood institutions are not just an issue of losing physical land and property. Rather, what is greater is the loss of connection and community that comes with disruption by gentrification. Urban change does not always signify disruption. People can move to new neighborhoods and meld with and into a community, accepting the community and in turn being accepted by it. Through gentrification, we see a destruction of a community and the human connections that mark that community.

3.

In the postwar years, center cities were increasingly associated with minority populations and accompanying poverty while suburbs were associated with exclusionary white and middle-class populations. Today, we see a growing inversion of this as technology industries become more urbanized. As per Solnit’s description of San Francisco’s gentrification, wealthy individuals in the tech industry are now moving into the city. This leads to a process of gentrification that prices out poorer, and oftentimes diverse ethnic populations, from their long-time urban communities. This not only destroys said communities but begins to erode upon the diversity of urban spaces. The result is the city begins to have an air of exclusion that was once associated with suburbs. As the city becomes increasingly gentrified, what made it such an attractive space is at risk. The creativity, diversity, cosmopolitanism of the city that once made it a space for innovation and interaction becomes lost when gentrification leads to homogeneity.

Alternatively, the emergence of ethnoburbs like those in the San Gabriel Valley demonstrates the growth of cosmopolitanism outside of cities. The stereotypes of white and middle class no longer apply to these suburbs where multiple cultures and ethnicities interact and build communities together. There is a sense of interconnectedness and cultural exchange that allows people to escape the strict hierarchical lens that is now impacting cities. This growing inversion between suburban fringes and center cities shows how cities do not have a monopoly on cosmopolitanism.