With greater Los Angeles comprising the second-most populous metropolitan area in the U.S., I plan to focus on the eastern end of the city, the stretch of urban sprawl lying between East Los Angeles and the Pomona valley. Nestled in the foothills east of downtown, this expansive suburb is home to about 2 million people, among them middle-class whites, working-class Latinos and a wide diversity of ethnic minorities. Much of it is comprised of domestic housing, while a small yet concentrated portion of the urban space is devoted to industrial transportation and manufacturing. Having been long-established a center for the region’s industrial growth, this corner of Los Angeles has served as a model of neoliberal municipal reform, linking local resources, capital and international trade. With tax-haven development zones and gerrymanderings of municipal boundaries, this suburb exemplifies the pattern of urban growth that came to define the economic trajectory of Los Angeles and much of Southern California (Valle 2009). Although manufacturing in the Los Angeles basin has significantly declined since the early 1980s, products from across the nation still converge here, passing into and through the metropolis, in addition to those goods that are still locally produced. Several miles west lay the bays of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation’s busiest port through which crosses 40% of overseas goods and 70% of Asian imports, a pivotal point within the Pacific-rim economy and U.S. global trade (Sharpsteen 2011). To facilitate this massive orchestration of international exchange, this area provides rail lines, truck traffic and factory space, sustaining an infrastructure that both creates further demand for water while threatening the region with increasing pollution.
SGV
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