Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 4

"You mean to tell me that there are no actual bunnies around here?!"

For this week’s blog I decided to visit the Playboy Mansion, or at least the entrance to it.  I have never visited there before, but once I typed it into Google Search and realized it was less than 2 miles away from where I live I decided to walk there.  I took a pathway of residential streets to avoid Sunset Blvd. as a pedestrian and arrived on its street within 20 minutes.  Despite using my phone as a GPS, I had an extremely hard time locating the actual address, which I assumed was kind of the point.  It wasn’t until I saw a VIP Tour Bus and followed it past several mansions that I was able to arrive at the Playboy Mansion.  At first glance it looked like just like every other plot of land on the street, but after walking and evaluating the area for a couple of minutes I began to see the subtle differences.  The tour bus stayed only long enough for the tourists to take a quick photo and then continued down the street, but I purposely wore gym clothes so I could blend into the neighborhood during my “daily walk” so as to not look so obvious while investigating the property. 

The neighborhood itself was an upper-class community just off Sunset Blvd.  Although narrow and windy, the street allowed for a great deal of public access, which is most likely why every house on the street was gated.  Even though I was walking the street in the late morning of a weekday, there was still a constant flow of expensive cars driving past me.  Some houses were more elaborate than others, but each gate had a unique design that added to the overall aesthetics of the resident’s property.  At first I found it rather pointless to spend so much money to create a fancy entrance to their homes, but after I spent more time there I realized that from the public street view one could barely even see their homes.  Between the long driveways, tall vegetation, and gated entrances, the residents were surrounded in their own world even though they were nestled right next to one of the busiest streets in L.A.

The Playboy Mansion definitely had one of the largest properties, expanding across the majority of the street, but was heavily covered with tall vegetation, which made it difficult to see the actual property lines.  The gate itself was white, with lush landscapes and several statues at the entrance.  The intercom that guests use to speak with the private security is disguised as a rock to add to the natural ambiance.  As I headed along the fenced property I noticed a camera every 50 feet or so, mounted on top of a fence double the size of me.  Towards the end of the property facing the street there was even barbed wire lining the top of the gate. It was very evident that they did not want anyone who wasn’t invited inside. 

The Playboy Mansion and its urban design that privatizes the otherwise public space surrounding it explains why “L.A. has become America’s archetypal decentralized metropolis” (Krupa 1993).  Communities like the one surrounding the mansion that section off parts of L.A. “provide professionals… with an escape from the problems of the disenfranchised that lie beyond their well protected enclaves” (Krupa 1993).  Frederique Krupa and his piece “Los Angeles: Buying the Concept of Security” highlights a particular factor of the postmetropolis that we discussed in lecture that Professor Wilford described as “the carceral archipelago.”  The carceral ideal plays with the question of public versus private security and restrictment of the surrounding urban space to ensure that the undesirable population keeps away despite the ability of easy movement through the automobile. 

The urban design of this neighborhood, and in particular the Playboy Mansion, is modeled to keep public access restricted.  It is a public street just feet away from a commuting road, yet is made privatized by the people who live there.  The Playboy Mansion (along with the community itself) goes to great lengths to differentiate the space.  The first technique I noticed was the surrounding landscape and vegetation.  Instead of twenty feet tall walls surrounding the house to ensure privacy from the public view, there is tall and thick vegetation that creates a wall of its own.  The second technique was the front gate itself along with a sign announcing its home security alarm, as well as a personal security guard gate that operates within the property (I was unable to picture him due to the harsh angle, but there was certainly a security guard posted in his “security hut”).  The fourth was the display of the hidden camera and barbed wire lining the property fences.  The last and most natural technique was the constant flow of protective neighbors driving by in their luxurious cars monitoring the outsiders who were occupying the street and essentially “their” space.  Of the five techniques some are symbolic and more natural representations of private sectoring while others display real and physical preventative measures to keep intruders out.  However, together the symbolic and real protective methods create an environment that keeps commoners out and continues to privatize the urban space just like “the carceral archipelago” of the fourth urban revolution suggests.  

-Britt

Frederique Krupa "Los Angeles: Buying the Concept of Security" (1993)
http://www.translucency.com/frede/lagc.html