Historically, public transportation has served several key purposes. Among them is the need to provide accessible transportation for all persons in an area to increase commercial and social connectivity. However, the effectiveness of public transit in accomplishing this goal is relatively unstudied. I use U.S. Census data and a proprietary dataset matching each neighborhood of Los Angeles County with its nearest public transportation option to estimate median household incomes based on proximity to rails-based public transportation in 2000, 2010, and 2017. Using a fixed effects regression, I find that, in Los Angeles County neighborhoods more than 5 miles from the city’s central business district (CBD), being closer to a rails-based public transportation station is linked with higher median income levels. The magnitude of this effect is more pronounced as a neighborhood gets further from the CBD.

This project is a collection of interconnected short stories all based in the Los Angeles area. Each story is able to stand on its own as a short piece, but ultimately plays a larger role of possessing a relationship with those that come before and after it. The collection is broken into three segments, each segment possessing its own theme. And while each segment, and the stories within each segment, flourishes with the theme they are placed in, each and every story still interconnects with each other in order to produce the framework of the book entirely; that being the story of two young lovers: “Leslie,” and “Thomás.” These two characters that I have produced are at the basis of this project. Their stories are peppered throughout the collection in order to better convey the sporadic nature of their relationship.

This study attempts to find out the role expectations of the city managers in the policy processes of urban government by using the survey research method. Fourteen managers from Los Angeles , California, and eight managers from Utah selected at random were administered a questionnaire with ten specific statements about a city manager's role in urban· politics. The main hypothesis of the thesis was: The policy role expectations of the city managers in Los Angeles County, California, and in the State of Utah differ because of: 1. the rise of the political boss or the mayor; 2. the discretionary powers given to the city managers; 3. the types of education the city managers have had; 4. the size of the city population; and 5. geographical and environmental differences. The data reveal that these variables , viz., advanced education,mayoral election, the discretionary powers given to the city managers, types of education , and the size of the city population and the differences of geography and environment are crucial factors that affect the role expectations of the city managers in the two areas selected for study. In Los Angeles County, California, the city managers tend to take a strong stand on initiation and participation in policy processes, whereas, in the State of Utah the city managers were content to abide by the mandates of the council. The concept of policy-administration dichotomy did not seem to bother the Los Angeles County city managers and they tended to feel it was out-moded and not practical in a complex situation of today's cities.

The purpose of this study was the development of an architectural methodology capable of re-establishing polycentric civitas in the City of Los Angeles. To establish a new civic design framework for the city of Los Angeles, research and analysis was conducted in many fields using several different methods. A review of literature pertaining to the historic establishment of civitas serves an analysis of the different forms of public space in Western civilization. An analysis of urbanism in Los Angeles was conducted using existing literature related to the topic, while an analysis of the neighborhood chosen as the site for the “execution” of the methodology was performed through first-hand research and field study. This information was then synthesized, producing a building program customized to the Miracle Mile in Los Angeles. The final stage of the study was the design of this new civic core. In the context of the Miracle Mile—defined by the presence of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—the proposed civic core took the form of an artist commune. The study concludes that the re-establishment of polycentrism in Los Angeles, as a means for (re)discovering civitas, requires the development of several new alternative civic cores, dispersed throughout the urban fabric of the Los Angeles Basin. In order to effectively operate as sites of critical civic engagement, however, each core must be developed independently of the other, responding to specific micro-cultures. This study advocates choosing sites based on the presence of existing civic potentials. In this way, the alienating effects of tabula rasa city planning are avoided. The architectural project presented at the end of this study, should therefore be understood, not as an architectural prototype to be universally replicated across the city, but as a prototype for an architectural research method. In order to (re)discover civitas in Los Angeles, architects and urban planners must recognize the limitations of universal models and accept that the architectural spaces that define the civic realm must reflect the needs of the specific societies who will ultimately activate them.

Mass transit in the form of light rail is, in many ways, a new and revolutionary idea for the Greater Los Angeles Area. Although mass light rail transit did exist in Los Angeles in the form of the Pacific Electric Railways red car system, an extensive network of metro rail lines has never existed in Los Angeles County since Pacific Electric was dismantled and shut down in 1950. Because of this, the popular mode of transport in LA County has traditionally been cars, and public transport has consisted mostly of bus routes. This has all changed in the last few decades. Since the 1980s, LA County has conducted several studies and, as a result of those studies, has proposed to build an extensive network of light rail lines to connect the county. In more recent years, many of these project plans have been approved, and the MTA has overseen the construction and functioning of new railway lines that are connecting far-flung regions of LA County with Union Station in downtown LA. Currently, the MTA operates 5 light rail lines within LA county-the Blue Line, the Red Line, the Purple Line, the Green Line and the Gold Line-that extend north, south and east of downtown LA. Each of these lines has been functional for a varying amount of time, but current weekday ridership on this system of lines has crossed the 280,000 mark as off September 2009.

Visually, Baldessari’s art mirrors the schoolroom chart, the cinematic storyboard, the Surrealist collage, the sensationalist graphics of the tabloid, and the grid format of the textbook. Black and white photography, performance, collage, bright prints, film, drawing, and painting: Baldessari has done it all. The artist has consistently demonstrated an inventiveness and sense of play in his work, and it is unlikely that he would stick to any one mode of artmaking for an extended period of time. It is probable that the explicit critique of contemporary Conceptualists of the text paintings mellowed because Baldessari had moved on to new questions. While he continues to examine the trope of the artistic outsider despite his commercial success, it is always with a wink. As Baldessari’s use of his own image in Portrait (Self) demonstrates, he has encouraged his audience to interrogate any artistic self-representation as a purposeful construct. Unlike the majority of his fellow Conceptualists, Baldessari’s serious goals are couched in a selfmocking attitude and in the colorful, playful style he has made his own.

The tale of South Korea's Cheonggyecheon River is one to warm an urban environmentalist's heart. Cheonggyecheon runs through the center of Seoul, a bustling metropolis of ten million that has been the capital of Korea since the 14th century. The Japanese were the first to sacrice Cheonggyecheon on the altar of urbanization, turning the River into a sewage system during their 35 year occupation between 1910 and 1945. Already thusvdegraded, it was easy for later administrations to eventually completely cover the river with the Cheonggye Road and Cheonggye Elevated Highway between 1958 and 1976. Cheonggyecheon became an exemplar of the expendability of urban environments in the face of modernization and economic growth, particularly the need for transportation in a quickly developing city. In the early 1990s it was discovered that extensive repair would be necessary to maintain the Highway, and with heavy political leadership of Mayoral Candidate Myung-Bak Lee, now the president of South Korea, the decision was made to restore the river rather than repair the road (Park, 2006).

The purpose of this study was the development of an architectural methodology capable of re-establishing polycentric civitas in the City of Los Angeles. To establish a new civic design framework for the city of Los Angeles, research and analysis was conducted in many fields using several different methods. A review of literature pertaining to the historic establishment of civitas serves an analysis of the different forms of public space in Western civilization. An analysis of urbanism in Los Angeles was conducted using existing literature related to the topic, while an analysis of the neighborhood chosen as the site for the “execution” of the methodology was performed through first-hand research and field study. This information was then synthesized, producing a building program customized to the Miracle Mile in Los Angeles. The final stage of the study was the design of this new civic core. In the context of the Miracle Mile—defined by the presence of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—the proposed civic core took the form of an artist commune. The study concludes that the re-establishment of polycentrism in Los Angeles, as a means for (re)discovering civitas, requires the development of several new alternative civic cores, dispersed throughout the urban fabric of the Los Angeles Basin. In order to effectively operate as sites of critical civic engagement, however, each core must be developed independently of the other, responding to specific micro-cultures. This study advocates choosing sites based on the presence of existing civic potentials. In this way, the alienating effects of tabula rasa city planning are avoided. The architectural project presented at the end of this study, should therefore be understood, not as an architectural prototype to be universally replicated across the city, but as a prototype for an architectural research method. In order to (re)discover civitas in Los Angeles, architects and urban planners must recognize the limitations of universal models and accept that the architectural spaces that define the civic realm must reflect the needs of the specific societies who will ultimately activate them.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Sally E. McRorie, Florida State University, School of Visual Arts and Dance, Department of Art Education. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 16, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

In 2010, the L.A. Times newspaper used the test results of Los Angeles County elementary students to assess and rank the elementary teachers. They then published the results on their website. Publicly ranking teachers in this manner has important implications on the careers of the teachers being ranked. It is, therefore, important that any model claiming to rank teachers be as accurate as possible. It seems plausible that a teacher's ability to help a student depends upon that student's prior academic ability. Some teachers might be better at teaching gifted students while others might be better at teaching remedial students. The L.A. Times did not account for this in their model. This paper looks at the results of allowing teacher effect to vary with prior student ability and how that interaction affects the relative rankings of the individual teachers. To assess this, the same Value-Added model the L.A. Times used is employed, with the exception that teacher effect is allowed to vary with the prior abilities of the students. New teacher ranks are then calculated and compared with the ranks calculated by the L.A. Times. The results of this analysis show a relatively small number of rank changes between the two models. In general, allowing teacher effect to vary results in a 5% to 12% change in the rankings of both the Math and Reading teachers relative to the L.A Times model. Other research on the same data has resulted in a 20% to 55% change in the rankings of the Math teachers and a 40% to 65% change in the rankings of the Reading teachers relative to the L.A. Times model. Although ranking teachers is a popular idea for determining the distribution of funding, the model shown in this paper as well as the other models reviewed, illustrate that a change in the model results in a change in the rankings of the teachers. A model that allows teacher effect to vary with prior student ability results in a better model fit than a model that does not. Whether or not this is a good thing is hard to say. Two examples are provided in this paper. One shows a teacher whose rank appears to be artificially inflated by this model and the other shows a teacher whose rank appears to be artificially lowered by this method. Although the fit of the model proposed by this paper is better than the model used by the L.A. Times, it does not result in radical changes in the rankings of the teachers. Rather, it seems that teacher rankings are sensitive to the particular model used and there are countless numbers of valid models. For this reason it is not wise to release such sensitive information to the public. It is probably true that the weak teachers are ranked relatively low in this analysis and that the truly good teachers are ranked relatively high. However, these rankings should only be used as one part of a larger metric to rank teachers and too much weight should not be placed on them for the purposes of rewarding or penalizing teachers due to the sensitivity of the model specification. / text