Part of that may have been my Los Angeles upbringing. When traffic began to congest, as it will, my first move was always to go to freeways. Big footprint, expensive to build, funds depleting freeways. And that's where my city always fell apart.
What I'm beginning to realize, thanks in large part to this excellent series on KCET.org, is that LA was no deferent than New York, DC, or San Francisco in it's early development. Railroads were crucial in that early development, and scars through the grid such as Santa Monica, Sunset, San Vicente, and Venice are all just following those early rail lines headed downtown.
Perhaps because I failed so often at Sim City, that development of railroads and roads, residential and commercial lots, has been enough of an obsession to lead me to start blogging about it. Specifically, I was curious about the area directly around my childhood home, which didn't seem to come up in these history articles.
Recently, I watched the movie Gone in 60 Seconds, the original shot in 1974. That version had a 40 minute chase scene that begins in Long Beach, tears through Carson and Torrance before finally culminating at a familiar looking car wash. From the moment Eleanor pulled off the 110 freeway at Sepulveda showing the empty lot where Target now stands, I knew a blog entry was a comin'.
Going up Avalon, Elanor passes by the Scottsdale Estates townhouses. The townhouses were built in 1964 as one of first So Cal gated communities. There were 600 town homes built on 40 acres along Avalon Blvd. There was a central pool, parks, ball fields, and a playground.
Photo credit: Gerano Molina, LA Times
However, by the 80s, it was better known for gangs and drugs. It now has highest crime rate in Carson. The pool has been filled in, there are bars on windows, and some parks are off limits after dark. Homeowners have always been required to pay dues, that fund is controlled by a 15 member board. The central clubhouse, now protected by armed guard, opens out to ball field at the center of complex.
In the movie, the then mayor of Carson is seen at a press conference on an empty lot, praising it's future development and the tax incentives which would encourage even more development. So what happened to the Scottsdale Estates?
It's probably fair to say that as a gated community it had an extreme suburban hive mind, especially with the required member fees. Like the families of rail workers or miners that formed so many of the turn of the century US communities, most of those living in the estates likely worked at the nearby Oil refinery; Carson's largest employer.
Economic downturn leads to people being laid off, after the oil crisis of the 70s. All it would take is a few members getting laid off, a corrupt counsel or two, plus the secluded nature of the parks (perfect for the drug trade) to lead to a community starting to eat itself alive.
It's unfortunate that my last two articles are about Carson development going wrong, especially since there examples of how development in Carson has go right. On the one had, in a house built in the 50s, it's interesting to think of just how undeveloped everything was around this trac at the time.
On the other hand, the blight of southern Carson is disappointing. Of course, that could easily be said of everything south of LA and East of the beach communities. Riding the train from Long Beach to Pasadena yesterday, it was striking just how impoverished those communities along one of the original red car lines are.
Of course, development isn't a science. Factories close for just about any reason. But Carson's two main employers (the BP plant, and Northrop Gunman) are both going through hard times. It seems likely that things in Carson are going to get worse before they get better.
