Study links reasons for inequality in L.A.

  EDWARD LIN Chancellor Albert Carnesale welcomes
conference attendants to Royce Hall.

By Lily Jamali
Daily Bruin Contributor

A new study dispels beliefs that everyone is better off as a
result of America’s current economic boom.

Members of different racial and ethnic groups in urban areas are
suffering because of differences in opportunities, resources and
obstacles, according to “Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in
Los Angeles.”

The book is based on a study conducted over a 10-year period by
the UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty.

Experts in the fields of urban planning and social research
gathered for a two-day conference Thursday and Friday to celebrate
the book’s release.

The team of UCLA faculty and students who wrote the book
conducted the survey of Los Angeles residents as part of a
multi-city project that took similar surveys in Detroit, Boston and
Atlanta. Many of the writers, having received their doctorates
through their work on the book, have since moved on from UCLA to
different universities and social organizations across the
country.

“Prismatic Metropolis” specifically explores
employment issues, housing segregation and racial attitudes through
the study of L.A.’s complex demographics.

“No other set of investigations has so explicitly linked
those three things before,” said Lawrence Bobo, one of the
four editors of the volume and a professor of Afro-American Studies
and Sociology at Harvard University.

Poverty rates have been on the rise since the 1970s despite a
booming economy during part of that time, according to the
conference’s keynote speaker, William Julius Wilson, a
Harvard professor and recipient of the 1998 National Medal of
Science.

“High poverty areas in which at least 40 percent of the
population lives in poverty have grown at an alarming rate,”
Wilson said. “Nearly all the growth has occurred in central
cities that suffer from middle-class flight and commercial
decay.”

According to Wilson’s analysis, the growth of urban
ghettos have not been a result of people moving into those areas,
but rather, a consequence of the “exodus of the non-poor in
mixed-income areas.”

Wilson also addressed how the perceptions of outsiders created
with the growth of urban slums have been a part of the continuing
problem.

“How far out of the way will citizens drive to avoid the
ghetto?” he asked.

Another aspect of the researchers’ approach is their
careful efforts to survey an accurate sample of the diverse Los
Angeles community.

“The book does not operate as if it’s just a
black-white world. It really tries to deal with the multi-ethnic
complexity of urban areas,” Bobo said.

Researchers conducting the study sought a hands-on approach,
according to Melvin Oliver, another editor of the book.

“We didn’t just study things in the classroom
““ we went into the community,” Oliver said. “We
tried to make our work public policy relevant.”

The work, explained Oliver in his speech to open the conference,
was the result of a shared vision to combine research, community
service and teaching together, in order to affect the communities
they worked with.

In his opening remarks to welcome participants in the
conference, Chancellor Albert Carnesale also stressed the
importance of research as a tool to influence the public.

“Having faculty and students making this city their
extended classroom and addressing critical issues from urban
poverty to the environment is an essential part of what we
do,” Carnesale said. “It is incumbent upon us to share
the resources we have with Los Angeles and beyond.”

“Prismatic Metropolis” shows how the process of
fulfilling this responsibility creates further opportunities to
contribute to its well-being by creating a dialogue between and
among the researchers and residents of these communities,” he
continued.