L.A. Micro-Publics : expanding the seams of the transportation system

Abstract

The global city is the privileged site of "repositioning ... citizenship in practice," where traditional notions of identity and citizenship are being radically reconstructed. This thesis examines contemporary Los Angeles as such a site, a heterotopia built on difference, without a coherent civic identity. In this context, the region's transportation system emerges as both a form of governmentality and the "strategic terrain" for the struggle to redefine citizenship in the urban environment. The system itself is a space of contestation, where the struggle to claim the Lefebvrian "right to the city" in the form of mobility is currently being played out. If design can be an instrument of governmentality to propagate exclusion, fear, and resistance to difference in contemporary cities, then it must also have the power to accomplish the opposite. This thesis proposes a strategy of design interventions to the existing L.A. transportation system, as explored in the conditions of the nexus, the crossing, the node, and the terminus, with the aim to open up a new micro-public realm. These new urban spaces of encounter, eroticism, and exposure to othernesses in Los Angeles can push this city to a more urban, more inclusive future.