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In 1968 the Los Angeles community witnessed the up rise of thousands of Chicano students when they walked out of their high school on an early morning in March. The purpose of this study was to further understand the 1968 student walkouts as presented by student participants. The study was carried out as a phenomenological study and used a Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework to interpret the students' interpretation of the Walkouts.

Abstract Last century witnessed the increase of metropolitan regions and much attention has been paid on them. The concept of megacity appeared during the development process of metropolitan regions. Due to the rapid urbanisation and the population explosion in China, there are three main megacities which have great influence on the national economy. In this thesis, we choose one of the main megacities - Beijing megacity, as our case and the research question is how to strengthen the polycentricity of Beijing megacity to achieve more balanced development. In order to find out the answers to the research question, the concepts of metropolitan region, megacity and polycentric megacity are discussed in the conceptual section of this thesis. The empirical section analyses the Tokyo megacity and Los Angeles megacity on purpose of finding the lessons and experiences that could be learned and applied to strengthen the polycentric characters of Beijing megacity. In the case study chapters, firstly we analyses the problems of monocentric Beijing municipality, then we suggest the approaches of being polycentric Beijing megacity where Beijing, Tianjin and Tangshan participate actively.

Since 1994, Chicana/o artists, musicians, and activists have been in dialogue with the Zapatista indigenous movement of Chiapas, Mexico. Such a transnational bridge has resonated in a new and unique form of Chicana/o cultural politics centered on the Zapatista concept of “autonomy” and “autonomous organizing.” In Los Angeles, California, this brand of “Chicana/o urban Zapatismo,” as I refer to it in the dissertation, is symbolic of recent political and cultural organizing efforts by Chicanos to combat housing gentrification, economic restructuring, racial and ethnic cleansing, environmental pollution in low-income areas, and mass anti-immigrant hysteria. This dissertation contends that Chicana/o urban Zapatismo is a result of various local, statewide, national, and international social justice movements that embrace the global trend in urban and rural areas towards constructing locally rooted participatory and democratic methods of organizing that are “horizontal” and that mobilize against such far-reaching social forces as racism and global capitalism. Using ethnographic data and interviews collected between 2005 to 2007, this dissertation maps the emergence of Chicana/o urban Zapatismo by tracing its historical origins to the changing social, political, and economic conditions of ethnic Mexican communities in Los Angeles, California; capturing the everyday internal and external tensions between one primarily working class Chicano autonomous collective, the Eastside Café ECHOSPACE in El Sereno, California; offering the case study of the South Central Farm, a 14-acre Mexican and Latino immigrant community garden; and charting the trans-border organizing of Chicana/o urban Zapatistas surrounding the most recent Zapatista-initiated project, “the Mexican Other Campaign”. These four distinct case studies converge in Los Angeles in the creation of a unique political process referred to as “urban Zapatismo”. This ethnographic study suggests that by uncovering the everyday relationships and tensions between Chicana/o urban Zapatistas in Los Angeles and the communities they live in, researchers looking at the production of different forms of racisms and structural inequalities in urban areas may derive a greater understanding of social (re)organization and mobilization by a growing, diverse, and historically marginalized group like Chicanos in the United States. / text

This dissertation examines the works of four Chicana/o writers who write about Los Angeles, California urban spaces, and how the literary protagonist experiences the material realities of everyday life. The objective of this dissertation is to look at the mechanisms used by the narrator and the meaning they transmit through the description of urban space. David Harvey's theory on the Urbanization of Consciousness is used to analyze the spatial transformation taking place in Los Angeles from the 1960's to the 1980's. Moreover, I utilize Michael de Certeau's explanations of how the practices of everyday life influence the author's cartographic imaginary. These practices are manifested in the narrator's description of the physical and social space and they convey an ideological message that points to the process of urbanization of consciousness in a capitalist society. Additionally, it draws together the work of important theorists such as Henri Lefebvre, Rodolfo Acuña, Mario Barrera, and James Diego Vigil. Chapter one introduces the theoretical framework that is used throughout this study. It establishes a definition of the urbanization of consciousness and how the main characters' interact with money, family, community, class, and the State. Chapter two explains how the rapid urban development in East Los Angeles during the 1960's shaped the characters' upbringings in the novel Their Dogs Came With Them (2007) by Helena María Viramontes. Chapter three analyzes how urban space molds the consciousness of the individual in Always Running, La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. (1993) by Luis J. Rodríguez. Chapter four examines the architectural imagination in the novel of Alejandro Morales' Caras viejas y vino nuevo (1975). Chapter five studies the urbanization of gang violence among Chicana/o youth in the work of Yxta Maya Murray, Locas (1997). My investigation leads me to conclude that the Chicana/o community became urbanized when its members began to mirror its fragmented environment and when they began to see themselves as wage workers.

This thesis asks the following question, “What are some of the reasonable ethical theories used by urban transportation planners and how have these theories shape public transportation developments in Los Angeles today?” I reply to this question by interpreting the philosophical theories of Jeremy Bentham, Richard Posner, Immanuel Kant, and John Rawls as an urban transportation planner. The approach I take for each philosopher is the following: I explain the basic philosophical arguments, interpret it for the transportation planner, provide critiques of the theory applied to transportation, and relate (if possible) the ethical theory to a recent public transportation project in Los Angeles. Finally, I conclude that 1)existing ethical theories can be applied to transportation development projects, 2) not all ethical theories applied to transportation projects are reasonable or functional theories, 3) some transportation development projects can be philosophically justified, and 4) there is not a singular theory that justifies current transportation development projects in Los Angeles.

The Road to Los Angeles, the first novel written by Italian-American author John Fante, is most often recognized as a tale concerned with Italian-American alienation, xenophobia and existence on the periphery of mainstream society. This essay, however, aims to analyze the novel from the viewpoint of fetishism. Fetishism, a motif that constitutes a vast theoretical field in itself, will be analyzed using the lens of Freudian theory and more recent works by critics such as Louise J. Kaplan and Johanna Malt. While fetishism unproblematically can be defined as the misdirection of libidinal energy, and the objectification of a sexual object’s seductive powers, this essay also aims to throw light on the intricate nature and general applicability of fetishism. Fante depicts fetishism as essentially oxymoronic in its presence-absence duality, as instrumental in animating the inanimate and dehumanizing  the sexual object. Fetishism, which in many ways shares an affinity with scopophilia and voyeurism, is essentially semiotic and instrumental in projecting the will onto the external world. Moreover, read through the lens of the inherent death drive, as theorized by Sigmund Freud, manifestations of brutal violence and self-torture are seen as  direct counterparts to fetishism.

The food justice movement has taken off in recent years. Despite its call for justice in the food system, it has been critiqued as being inaccessible to people who need food the most. The food system marginalizes women, minorities, and low-income people, making these groups the most at risk for food insecurity. Solutions to food insecurity come from both government and non-governmental avenues. This thesis calls for a merger of solutions to food insecurity and food justice in food security justice, and assesses the ability of solutions to food insecurity to confront issues of injustice. Community-based solutions currently have the potential to address issues of justice, as well as providing added benefits of promoting community cohesion and creating new economic spaces. Through a simulation of the SNAP budget and an exploration of the narrative between gang violence and food insecurity in Los Angeles, the necessity for solutions to food insecurity to address justice is established.

The following pages recount the struggle and criticism that went into bringing the first imported water to Los Angeles, the reasons the water was necessary, the legal bases on which water was acquired, and the end results on the distant Owens River Valley.

This paper studies the effects of the gender of the real estate agents on the closing price of residential, single-family homes in seven cities in east Los Angeles county from 2016 to 2017. We conduct two sets of regressions and find that contrary to previous studies, female listing agents outperform male listing agents. We also find that the gender of the buyer’s agents does not have significant effects on house prices. These results suggest that negotiation skills might not be the main key to explain the discrepancy of performance between male and female real estate agents.