heavytrash

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April 24, 2005 - For Immediate Release

HEAVY TRASH INSTALLS VIEWING PLATFORMS AT LOS ANGELES GATED COMMUNITIES

"Something there is that does not love a wall…
That wants it down…"
-Robert Frost, Mending Wall

On April 24, 2005, Heavy Trash volunteers deposited bright orange viewing platforms in front of three Los Angeles gated communities; Brentwood Circle, Park La Brea and Laughlin Park. The purpose of these viewing platforms is to draw attention to the phenomenon of gated communities -- the fastest growing form of housing in the United States. "There are now more than 1 million homes behind such walls in the greater Los Angeles area alone," according to Setha Low, a professor at the City University of New York.

WHERE ARE THE HEAVY TRASH VIEWING PLATFORMS?

The viewing platforms have been installed at three locations:

3rd Street and Burnside Avenue, at Park La Brea
West Sunset Boulevard and North Gunston Drive at Brentwood Circle
Los Feliz Boulevard and Cummings Drive at Laughlin Park

WHAT'S HEAVY TRASH?

An anonymous arts organization of architects, designers and urban planners, Heavy Trash creates large, disposable art objects that draw community and media attention to urban issues. By explaining a particular urban problem and suggesting a solution, Heavy Trash seeks to provoke dialogue among the residents of Los Angeles.

HOW CAN HEAVY TRASH BE CONTACTED?

Learn more about Heavy Trash and post comments here at heavytrash.blogspot.com or e-mail Heavy Trash at heavytrash2005@yahoo.com.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH GATED COMMUNITIES?

Most people want to live in communities that are safe for their families and most homeowners want to protect their property values. Although these are fundamentally reasonable goals, walling off one section of the city from another is not a reasonable way to achieve them. In fact, doing so can actually harm the very communities in need of protection. According to USC Lusk Center Director Ed Blakely and UC Berkeley professor Mary Gail Snyder,

"When public services and even local government are privatized, when the community of responsibility stops at the gates, the function and the very idea of democracy are threatened. Gates and barricades that separate people from one another also reduce people's potential to understand one another and commit to any common or collective purpose."

Instead of walling ourselves off in gated communities, alternatives, such as the following, should be explored:

Unrestricted pedestrian access. Since it is difficult to commit a property crime in Los Angeles without a car, unrestricted pedestrian access could be provided to all gated communities. This would return the parks, streets and sidewalks that have been removed from the public realm back to the residents of Los Angeles.

Investment in public infrastructure. Encourage investment in public infrastructure -- like parks, streets, sidewalks and schools -- by restoring local control over property tax revenues, essentially fixing the unintended consequences of Proposition 13.

"More eyes on the street." Amend zoning code to encourage more mixed-use residential neighborhoods with 24-hour activity. Legalize second units ("Granny Flats") in single-family homes. Both of these actions would put more people outside during the normal course of a day, and nothing works quite as well to make neighborhoods safer, friendlier and livelier.

WHY VIEWING PLATFORMS?

Like the historic viewing platforms at the Berlin Wall that allowed Westerners to see into East Berlin, the Heavy Trash viewing platforms call attention to the walls of gated communities and provide visual access to parts of the city that have been cut off from the public domain.

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brentwood_frontfullwithsun

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brentwood_platforminsun

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brentwood_detail

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brentwood_frontview

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brentwood_sideview

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brentwood_acrossstreet

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brentwood_acrossstreetbushes

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parklabrea_platformwithpalmtree

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parklabrea_platformfront

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parklabrea_platformsteps

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parklabrea_platformwithpalazzologo

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parklabreafromdistance

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losfeliz_sideviewwithgate

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losfeliz_stairview

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losfeliz_frontview

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losfeliz_fromcenteracrossdrive

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losfeliz_platformwithsign

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losfeliz_fromleftacrossdrive

What Others Are Saying

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in print

Pool, Bob and Jia-Rui Chong. "Contrarians at the Gates Go to Some Heights to Make a Point." Los Angeles Times. (April 26, 2005).

Breuer, Howard. "Guerrilla Art Group Mocks Exclusive L.A. Enclaves." Reuters. (April 26, 2005).
    on CNN.com
    on Yahoo!
    on AOL News

Lifson, Thomas. "Gated Communities." American Thinker. (April 26, 2005).

"Heavy Trash: вышки партизан борются со стенами и воротами." Membrana. (April 27, 2005)

Alvarez, Gloria. "Urban Art Activists Target Gated Communities." Eastside Sun. (April 28, 2005).

Anonymous. "Art Group Wants More Non-Gated Communities." Planetizen. (April 28, 2005).

Elsworth, Catherine. "Artists put private homes on public show." London Daily Telegraph. (April 29, 2005).

"Spießer gucken: Architekten stellen Aussichtsplattformen vor Gated Communities in L.A. auf". (April 27, 2005).

on radio

New Zealand Radio (forward to 42:48):
http://streamingmedia.xtra.co.nz/live/af222687.wma

Irish Radio:
http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/2041971.smil

on television

KABC, Channel 7 5:30 PM News, Los Angeles. (April 25, 2005).
KNBC, Channel 4 5:30 PM News, Los Angeles. (April 25, 2005).
KCAL, Channel 9 6:00 PM News, Los Angeles. (April 25, 2005).

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z3z4

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z1z2

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viewtower12

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viewtower2

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viewtower1

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sheet5-7

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sheet1-4

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2x63

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2x6

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2x4

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heavy trash headline

Photo Album

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Park La Brea

Brentwood Circle

Laughlin Park

Tell Us What You Think

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LA Times aqualine article

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Aqualine 3

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Aqualine 2

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aqualine

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Stair 3

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Stair 2

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Stair 1

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Brentwood Circle

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title

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Park La Brea

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Park La Brea

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Park La Brea

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Park La Brea

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Beverly Park

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Laughlin Park

Building Communities Without Gates

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How can we build communities without gates?

According to suburban developer's market analysts, people want safety, secure property values, community spirit, services and amenities. Most of these variables fare little better inside gates than outside, even if services and amenities may at times be more generous on the inside.

So the question becomes - how can the City provide the personal and financial security, the sense of community and the services that people seek when they look to gated communities? Following are some ideas, all of which can and should be expanded upon as the dialog continues on how to make our city a better place for all of us:

Fix Proposition 13 - By restoring property taxes to a fair level and increasing local control of the revenues, cities will be able to make more significant investments in public infrastructure. This will reduce the incentive to create self-financed private enclaves simply to achieve a basic level of quality in the public realm. It will also fuel the hope that California can one day become again, as it was evident through the 1960s, the "Golden State."

Require Pedestrian Access for Gated Areas - Opening gated areas to pedestrians will help keep our cities democratic. It is very difficult to commit serious property crimes without a getaway car, so this move would likely create few real security impacts to gated areas. Rather, it would ensure that we can all enjoy our city's lovely promenades, vistas and hillside hikes without a membership card. It would also make it more difficult for those inside the gates and those outside to forget about each other.

More "Eyes on the Street" - We must make it easier to build the sort of mixed-use town and village areas that we love to spend time in across the county and around the world. Three things will help: reform woefully outdated 1950s planning codes that almost require urban sprawl, make more investment in city infrastructure, and allow legal second units ("granny flats") to be added to single family homes. The great urbanist Jane Jacobs wrote about the warming and sanctifying effect of people living, working and shopping on the same block, putting "eyes on the street." This is by far the most effective and least expensive way to make our neighborhoods feel -- not to mention actually become -- safer.

As a final suggestion, we offer this vision: we must Create Communities that Know No Walls. Los Angeles can one day become a strong network of connected urban communities, each taking pride in itself and its place in a broader vibrant region. That can only happen when people connect with each other locally -- across property lines, across community boundaries and, ultimately, across the physical barriers that separate us.

And this is the spirit with which we have installed our viewing platforms; think of it as a call for eye contact between strangers. By affording people outside the gated enclaves the opportunity to see within -- and by helping those inside to know they are seen -- we hope to build bridges, both real and symbolic, between the world within and the world beyond the gates.

Facts & Myths About Gated Communities

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FACT

The phenomenon of gated communities-the fastest growing form of housing in the United States-continues unabated in California and across the nation. There are now more than 1 million homes behind such walls in the Greater Los Angeles area alone. -Setha Low

About 40% of new homes in California are behind walls. –Edward Blakely

In the United States, one in 10 of its population now chooses to live in gated communities. –David Crane

In 1998, it was estimated that more than eight million Americans live in gated communities. –Carol Tucker

This symbolism of wealth and security is so pervasive that there are now even faux gated communities, called 'neighborhood entry identities' in Simi Valley that sport walls and guardhouses but no locked gates or guards. -Setha Low

MYTHS

Statistics on whether gates actually do serve as a deterrent to crime are mixed. In security-zone communities, one study found declines in crime right after closure of the gates, but no decline was sustained for more than a short time. –Carol Tucker

The quality of community is no different in gated communities. Even though residents have moved to gated areas believing that they would find their nostalgic idea of community, they have not. In fact, these communities promote privacy within privacy: residents tend to stay in their own backyard and do not visit on porches or front lawns. –Carol Tucker

Stair to Park

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In June 1997, Heavy Trash installed their first project -- a 2,000-pound stair providing temporary access to Triangle Park at Santa Monica and Bundy. A 7'-high fence had been erected around the park to prevent the homeless from using the grassy enclave. The City solved the "problem" by using $28,000 of tax-payer funds to fence off the park and permanently remove it from the public realm. For three weeks, the stair allowed the local community to use the park again.

Aqua Line

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The Aqua Line is the installation of "Coming Soon" signs that suggest the construction of a subway line that would connect the Westside to downtown and the rest of the Los Angeles metro system. On August 13, 2000, Heavy Trash installed 8 signs along the 15-mile route in an attempt to promote civic dialogue about the need for better transportation in Los Angeles.

The message
Heavy Trash created this project in response to the attitudes taken by many upscale neighborhoods towards the implementation of mass-transit in their area. Homeowner groups often see mass-transit as an encroachment upon their living space by lower income residents. This "not in my backyard" mentality has stopped many plans for the expansion of the metro in its tracks.

If the Aqua Line actually existed, it would not only serve to break down barriers between neighborhoods, but it would also benefit the environment by decreasing automotive pollution. In a city where most people rarely leave a small selection of zip codes, the metro line has the power to increase interaction between Angelenos throughout the area; the Aqua Line takes action where the rhetoric of diversity falls short.

The line
The design of the Aqua Line takes into account many elements that are integral to a successful subway line, including bus connections, usage demand, existing right-of-ways, points of interest, historic rail lines, and shortcomings in current public transportation. The Aqua Line runs along Ocean Avenue from Wilshire Boulevard to San Vicente Boulevard, then turns down San Vicente all the way back to Wilshire. It then follows Wilshire down to the metrorail Red Line connection near downtown.

The Aqua Line stops provide access to a wide variety of attractions, including the Santa Monica beach, the UCLA campus, the stores on Rodeo Drive, and the museums on Miracle Mile. The line also connects to the Santa Monica Blue Bus line that travels to the Getty Center. Many of the Aqua Line stops are located near the hotels of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in the hope that delegates can bring home a growing awareness of this debate regarding the development of public in cities across the nation.

The history
Los Angeles was once home to one of the most thorough intraurban transit systems in the country. From 1910 to 1950, the Pacific Electric Railway connected the greater Los Angeles area with over 1,000 miles of track, including lines that ran along the proposed route of the Aqua Line. As early as the 1920s, an organized—and illegal—group of automotive corporations (including General Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone Tires, and Mack Trucks) drove the railway to the ground by systematically buying up and dismantling the transit lines, creating today’s automotive city as we know it.

In Los Angeles, recent attempts at expanding the mass transit system have been shot down by community groups. Efforts to create a light rail system on the preexisting tracks of Exposition Boulevard met fierce opposition, prompting one city official to call it a “recipe for disaster.” A Los Angeles Times news article on the debate was bluntly titled “MTA to Study Rail, Bus Route That Skirts Upscale Areas” referring to Cheviot Hills. Another plan to create a dedicated busway or possibly even an elevated-rail line down Wilshire Boulevard also faced intense opposition almost immediately after it was proposed.

In response to this opposition, Heavy Trash created the Aqua Line to bring attention to the importance of mass transit in the hope of creating a united Los Angeles.

Press
Pool, Bob. "Signs Point to Westside Transit Mytery." Los Angeles Times. August 16, 2000, B2.
[ link ]

What's Wrong With Gated Communities?

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Gated communities are not a black-and-white issue. Many who live inside them, like those on the outside, have strongly mixed feelings. We at Heavy Trash respect the reasons some choose to live in enclosed enclaves, and we equally respect the reasons many choose not to. We also appreciate why many people do not want walled fortresses dividing their neighborhoods or blocking off what would otherwise be public streets and sidewalks.

When developers market gated communities, they often emphasize core features like safety, property values, community spirit, services, and amenities like pools and clubhouses. In a nation where our trust in government and each other is at a low, closed neighborhoods secured by strong homeowners' associations, solid walls, uniformed security guards and cameras can be seductive.

The problem is, gated communities do not increase people's trust in each other or the overall quality of life. They may in fact do harm to both.

Robert Putnam, director of the Saguaro Seminar at Harvard University, has written extensively about the loss of "social capital" in America. (By "social capital," he means people's sense of trust and inclination to do things for each other -- things that characterize successful communities.) Putnam and others have quantified this decline extensively. And among the causes he and others have identified is the privatization of our leisure time. Think how often we choose to watch TV in our own living rooms, for instance, over visiting with neighbors or participating in organized non-work-related activities.

While a sense of social decline can drive people into gated communities, what they find when they get there is often, ironically, more of the same. Citing research outlined in "Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States" by Ed Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder in Public Management 22, Vol. 80 1998, Carol Tucker says:

". . . [T]he quality of community is no different in gated communities, Even though residents have moved to gated areas believing that they would find their nostalgic idea of community, they have not. In fact, these communities promote privacy within privacy: residents tend to stay in their own backyard and do not visit on porches or front lawns."

Moreover, gates send an unwelcoming message to the rest of us. They tell us that we are not to be trusted, that we are not part of the same social network as those inside the walls.

And worse, gates break up neighborhoods. Ungated streets that are maintained by the city and are publicly accessible often sit cheek-by-jowl with gated ones whose controlled access and private maintenance keeps them functionally very much apart. This separation is especially jarring when public throughways become restricted, as has happened in the Brentwood Circle neighborhood of L.A.

Author Peter Schrag, in "Paradise Lost: California's Experience, America's Future," attributes the proliferation of gated communities in California in part to the aftermath of the 1978 anti-tax measure, Proposition 13. Proposition 13 severely restricted California's ability to raise revenues through property taxes and fairly eviscerated localities' ability to build or maintain public infrastructure. As a result, California went from being a world model of well-kept streets, parks, and transit systems to trailing much of the nation in these areas. Notable exceptions to this trend can be found in gated communities, where ample "community" (rather than public) amenities can be paid for by substantial homeowners' association dues and/or special assessments. Ironically, residents of these areas still pay the taxes we thought we were voting away with Proposition 13 -- only now they call them by different names and restrict the benefits to those who live behind the walls. The result is further decline in the world outside the gates, and this, in turn, creates more incentive to build self-funding, self-contained communities.

Ultimately, it is clear that gated communities are a desperate, if earnest, response to the decreasing trust and investment in our society -- but one that sadly ends up hurting both trust and public investment even more. Gated communities perpetuate a vicious cycle.

How Can We Build Communities Without Gates?

Manifesto

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Heavy Trash is an anonymous arts organization of architects, artists, and urban planners. Heavy Trash creates large, disposable art objects that draw community and media attention to specific urban issues. By explaining a particular urban problem and suggesting a solution, Heavy Trash seeks to provoke dialogue among citizens.

How to Build a Viewing Platform

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Bibliography

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Blakley, Edward and Mary Gail Snyder. Fortress America, Gated Communites in the United States. New York: Brookings Institution Press. New York. (June 15, 1999).

Crane, David. Hamilton Spectator. (September 11, 2004).

Davis, Mike. City of Quartz. New York: Vintage Books. (1990).

El Nasser, Haya. "Gated Communites More Popular, and Not Just for the Rich." USA Today. (December 15, 2002).

Frost, Robert. "Mending Wall" (1915).

Judd, Dennis R. Journal of the American Planning Association, 1. (October 1998).

Kass, Jeff. "Do Fence Me In! Gated Communities Explore Ways to Shut Outside World Out." Los Angeles Times. (May 4, 1995).

Low, Setha. Behind the Gates, Life Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America. New York: Routledge. (2003).

Low, Setha. "Imprisoned by the Walls Built to Keep 'the Others' Out." Los Angeles Times. (December 19, 2003).

Schrag, Peter. "Paradise Lost: California's Experience: America's Future." New York: New York Press. (1998).

Tucker, Carol. Public Management 22, Vol.80. (1998).

Wimsatt, William Upski. The Fear Economy.

Audio Links

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Horsley, Scott. "Gated Communities Surprisingly Diverse." Morning Edition. (April 5, 2004).

Mantle, Larry. "Private Communities, Public Access." AirTalk. (August 4, 2004).

Low, Setha (guest). "Suburbs, Part Two: Gated Communities." Talk of the Nation. (August 11, 2003).

Roy, Eric. "Faux Gates." All Things Considered. (August 7, 2002).

Harris, Richard "Gated Communities." Talk of the Nation. (July 31, 1997).

Map

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