The United States Department of Homeland Security launched Secure Communities in 2009, expanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) jurisdiction and establishing partnerships between federal immigration officers and municipal law enforcement agencies (LEAs) across the country. The effects of Secure Communities have been numerous. While rates of deportations had been rising annually for decades, the program granted ICE with even more power to detain and deport undocumented immigrants and dramatically increased federal collaboration with LEAs. Secure Communities was terminated by then Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson in 2014; replaced by the comparable, but lesser known, Priority Enforcement Program (PEP); and reinstated in January of 2017 immediately following the inauguration of Donald Trump. This thesis focuses on the greater implications Secure Communities has on immigrant sense of safety and more generally on public health. As anti-immigrant rhetoric and fear of deportations are on the rise, there have been noticeable disengagements of immigrant populations from public services. I investigate the impacts of Trump’s anti-immigrant platform in 2016 and reinstatement of Secure Communities in 2017 on how immigrant communities in South Central Los Angeles make use of health clinics.

This paper explores the historical and contemporary situation of waterways in Los Angeles. It examines the birth and growth of metropolitan LA and contrasts this narrative with the current and pressing issues of drought and gentrification. This contrast raises the question of the sustainability of human growth in resource-scarce regions. From this analysis it forwards a nuanced perspective of the hypothesis that the dynamics of environmental degradation in the LA region threaten human growth. It suggests that this degradation comes as a result of egocentric human development projects by the elite. This paper examines all of this through the lens of a creative body of work. The body of work consists of a series of four large paintings. It discusses the artist’s inspiration and process of creation, as well as the influence of neo-expressionism and various contemporary artists on the work. It concludes with a consideration of where to go next with the series of paintings in order to address the issue of environmental degradation further.

abstract: Contrary to many previous travel demand forecasts there is increasing evidence that vehicle travel in developed countries may be peaking. The underlying causes of this peaking are still under much debate and there has been a mobilization of research, largely focused at the national scale, to study the explanatory drivers but research focused at the metropolitan scale, where transportation policy and planning are frequently decided, is relatively thin. Additionally, a majority of this research has focused on changes within the activity system without considering the impact transportation infrastructure has on overall travel demand. Using Los Angeles County California, we investigate Peak Car and whether the saturation of automobile infrastructure, in addition to societal and economic factors, may be a suppressing factor. After peaking in 2002, vehicle travel in Los Angeles County in 2010 was estimated at 78 billion and was 20.3 billion shy of projections made in 2002. The extent to which infrastructure saturation may contribute to Peak Car is evaluated by analyzing social and economic factors that may have impacted personal automobile usage over the last decade. This includes changing fuel prices, fuel economy, population growth, increased utilization of alternate transportation modes, changes in driver demographics , travel time and income levels. Summation of all assessed factors reveals there is at least some portion of the 20 billion VMT that is unexplained in all but the worst case scenario. We hypothesize that the unexplained remaining VMT may be explained by infrastructure supply constraints that result in suppression of travel. This finding has impacts on how we see the role of hard infrastructure systems in urban growth and we explore these impacts in the research. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Civil Engineering 2014

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This is a reflexive documentary on the Open School in Los Angeles, an elementary school which is a field research site for Apple Computer, Inc. This videotape explores filmmaker/subject relationships, media perception by children, and issues of representation. An accompanying production book describes the grantwriting process, the pre-production, production, and post-production stages, as well as theoretical implications of the documentary.

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Previous research suggested Election 2004 involved many issue regimes and wedge issues (Kaplan, 2004; Drum, 2004; Fagan & Dinan, 2004). Preceding research proposed that the American perception of presidential candidates has been somewhat based on the mass media's increasing priming and agenda setting techniques (Scheufele, 2000; Kiousis & McCombs, 2004). Hence the research addressed two questions: Is there a bias for or against either candidate in the headlines of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Times? If there is bias, which issues tended to produce the most positive, negative and neutral results? All election headlines, from February to November 2004, pertaining to a specific candidate were recorded and analyzed. The researcher chose to study headlines because they convey the newsworthiness of the story and former research confirms that reader perceptions of a news account can depend on the headline (Pfau, 1995; Tannenbaum, 1953). This study utilized content analysis to assess the word choices and biases of the headlines of the two newspapers. The researcher created definitions for coding, trained two coders, and analyzed and discussed the results. The main findings were the Washington Times contained more headlines that were pro-Bush, while the Los Angeles Times contained more headlines that were pro-Kerry. The key issues that reflected bias included that candidate's campaign, homeland security, and values.

Recent advancements in social networking and technology, and the increasing popularity of “gourmet” food trucks, have brought renewed attention to mobile food vending. Research indicates that vendors can provide inexpensive food to city dwellers and have a positive impact on the vibrancy of public spaces. The recent popularity of vendors, however, has fueled ongoing debates over public space use and regulation. Municipalities are looking to craft policies to appease community members with a range of opinions on the acceptability of vending on public streets. This thesis uses the case study of Los Angeles to attempt to answer the research question: What are the relationships among policies on food vendors, food vendors, and the public’s use and perception of urban space? The study triangulates information gathered from public space user surveys, behavior mapping and observation, in-depth interviews, and archival research to address this research question. Findings indicate that vending can contribute to vibrancy and activity in public spaces, and public space users generally perceive vendors positively. Findings of the research also suggest, however, that some public spaces do not provide adequate amenities for food truck customers and public space users. These, and other findings, are used to inform the policy and planning recommendations presented in this study.

This dissertation traces the ways in which the emergent countercultures on the West Coast, in parallel with the high-technology industrial complex of Southern California, fostered ad-hoc experimentation with technology in studio and post-studio practices. In the studio, individual artists researched, experimented with, and became self-taught experts on discrete technologies. In comparison, post-studio methods functioned less as a top-down mastery and innovation within a singular craft (as in the initial studio methods), and, instead, involved the creation of immersive, perceptual environments. The Introduction situates the development of the art/technology phenomenon alongside the emergence of the art scene in Los Angeles, expanding the literature in relation to other more established histories. Each of the first three chapters focuses on one case study--Larry Bell, Mary Corse, and Fred Eversley--to reveal the scope of appropriated technologies and the permutations within various mediums (glass sculpture, industrial lighting schematics, acrylic painting, and polyester sculpture). Chapter 4 analyzes this plurality, focusing on the appropriation of cognitive psychology. As technological appropriation became more commonplace, and particularly as some artists came to require larger spaces, curators and institutions helped orchestrate experimentation with immersive environments. I explore the range of post-studio practices in the works of Lloyd Hamrol, Tom Eatherton, Michael Asher, Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Maria Nordman, and Eric Orr, among others, and include Hal Glicksman as a key example of curatorial influence. The concluding chapter considers the art/technology legacy alongside themes of dilapidation and obsolescence. This dissertation demonstrates how art with reflective and/or transparent materials of high-tech industry prescribed movements for viewer engagement--an embodied experience of mobile spectatorship in Los Angeles of the 1960s and 1970s. I correlate these movement patterns, in parallel with light, space, and sourced technology, to the experience of each work.

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