...the next room of their trailer. When Walls was 13, her father, an alcoholic named Rex, took her with him on a "business trip." They went to a bar. While Rex played pool, his daughter fended off sexual advances from the seedy men he gambled with. Walls writes that her complaints about the situation were stifled by the knowledge that they needed the money for food. Despite the abundance of shocking stories in her memoir and her past, Walls' message to students and faculty Wednesday was one of hope. "If you had told me several years ago that I would be going around having discussions about my life I would have thought that it would be nightmarish," Walls said Wednesday afternoon at a small gathering of select students and faculty in the L.A. Pittenger Student Center. "I was scared to tell my story. But I've learned that people are much kinder and smarter than I thought." Walls said that just as...
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...Final Film Critique – LA Confidential Adam Ehinger Ashford University: ENG225 Instructor Michael O'Donnell 1/31/2015 Sometimes a movie makes a lasting impression on you as an individual, sometimes you'll come back to this movie time and time again. LA Confidential (1997) is a combination of a star studded cast and a scintillating detective story set in the 50's. The movie combines all aspects of movie making, from acting, directing, writing, mise en scene and all sorts of film techniques to make one of the most entertaining noir's you'll ever see. LA Confidential (1997) is directed by Curtis Hanson, he doesn't have this prolific history of stunning movies like some other directing heavy weights but he handles an a-list cast and directing duties admirably here. While most of the big names in the cast weren't technically BIG names yet they must have still had personalities or needed work to get the job done. Notably at least to me is Kim Basinger, someone who usually I do not enjoy, usually a weak point in movies for me, but in this she is perfectly fine, nothing to much, but not noticeable like usual, a feat in directing to me. The cast is name after name, Russel Crowe as the ham fisted Officer Bud White, Kevin Spacey playing the mercurial Detective Jack Vincennes, Guy Pearce in my eyes as his break out performance playing the golden child Ed Exley. You have a plethora of famous character actors to back these boys up, David Strathairn as...
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... Los Angeles is one of the most economically developed cities in the world and it represents a beacon of technological advancement, social progression and equal opportunity for people all around the world. Los Angeles (L.A.) was recently ranked 9th on the Global Economic Power Index (Florida, 2012) and 20th on the Global Power City Index that included criteria such as “livability”, “cultural interaction”, “environment” and “accessibility” (Institute for Urban Strategies, 2014). These ideas may ring true for some; however there are many who live within the city limits that experience a very different reality. In the last 20 years there has been an increasing amount of academic literature examining rising economic, social, political and underlying racial inequality within L.A. This essay will attempt to evaluate this literature so as to examine what inequalities are occurring and identify possible causes underlying them. For future reference within this essay, I am going to be looking at L.A. as the Greater Los Angeles Area, which includes the city of L.A. and other interconnected urban areas so as to avoid confusion on where possible boundaries are drawn and also to have a greater area from which to draw comparison from. Socio-Economic History Leading to Contemporary Inequality The situation Los Angeles is currently in can be attributed to the combination of events occurring over the last 50 years where the city experienced rapid economic growth whilst also receiving a...
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...Rational Urban Planning Amid Emotion and Politics Much has been discussed about rationality versus emotion and politics when it comes to the topic of urban planning. Although I believe it is possible to design cities from a rational viewpoint, emotional bias and political interests tend to inhibit the manifestation of such a utopia. The idea of “rational planning” is not overrated, however the process by which it is attempted is highly inefficient. The first inhibitor of rational planning is emotion. During the planning process this will often come into play when individuals have concerns with certain aspects or have opposing viewpoints. It is almost impossible to get a unanimous vote on every component of the plan. For example, a proposal is made to demolish a popular sports stadium to make way for a new facility and park. Although many people involved in the planning see this proposal as a way of attracting new visitors into the city, fans of the old stadium have major concerns. Instead of seeing the new facility plan as a positive project for their city, their emotions come into play, and greatly influence their decision to move the planning process forward. Nostalgia is just one example of how emotion influences urban planning. Political interests also greatly influence rational planning. The political system does strive for the best possible solution, but disagree on what that solution is. Consider a plan to develop an efficient public transportation system, reducing...
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...The city of Los Angeles has been without an NFL team since 1994 when both the Rams moved to St Louis and the Raiders relocated to Oakland. It has been proposed that a new stadium should be built to help attract teams that to come back to one of the biggest U.S. city’s without an NFL league franchise. In past years L.A. has been one of the largest media market in the country. With L.A. being second to none as the media capital, why not bring “Sports Entertainment” back to the city of angels. Los Angeles did just that when they decided and took a major step toward building a downtown stadium to lure an NFL team back to the nation's second-most populous city, despite questions about how a 72,000-seat venue in the urban core would impact notorious freeway traffic, nearby housing prices and air quality. Last fall the city council unanimously voted for a new stadium to be constructed in the heart of downtown. The construction of the new stadium comes with its benefits for the debt ridden city. Developers for AEG submitted and won a contract to complete the construction for Farmers Field for 2016. In the past when new stadiums were built much of the renovation and construction were subsidized which in turn leads to a great economic impact. Realistically, employment, visitor spending, public spending and revenue are the benefits that the city wants to bring into play. But one factor that has been overlooked for city great city is that some feel how this new stadium will benefit...
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...The issue confronting the City of Palmdale is the on-going test of reestablishing monetary imperativeness in its breaking down downtown. Numerous more established urban areas the nation over offer a similar issue, that of disintegrating downtowns. Once the focal point of action, downtowns are confronting challenges that must be tended to keeping in mind the end goal to take financial imperativeness back profoundly of the group. Downtowns have languished over many reasons, incorporating a move in activity and shopping designs, the advancement of new business and territorial strip malls far from downtown, breaking down structures, retail facade opening, disintegrating encompassing lodging, expanded levels of wrongdoing, and an absence of financing...
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...Adam Rubenacker Mrs. Ellis English 1101 24 October 2011 The Comparison of Two NBA Lockout Articles The NBA lockout is when the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the NBA and the NBA Player's Association (NBAPA) expires. It began on July 1, 2011 and has resulted in the cancellation of regular season games. The NBA wants to implement a "hard" cap and decrease the salary cap, below $50 million. In the meantime, players cannot get signed, teams cannot report to training camp, trades cannot be made, etc. Many articles have been made and written about the lockout. After searching and finding two articles from FoxNews and MSNBC, it became easy to compare and contrast them. Both are about how NBA games have been canceled and will be canceled more in the future. The NBA should hurry up and end the lockout to make the fans and players happy without having to cancel anymore games. In the two articles, both are very similar. Comparisons from the FoxNews article and the MSNBC article could be how both talk about David Stern, (the NBA commissioner) canceling the first two weeks of the NBA season. The regular season was scheduled to begin November first, which both articles include. It would be the first time the NBA had games canceled since the 1998-99 schedule was reduced to 50 games due to a work stoppage. Both articles conclude the meeting that was called off which actually led to the first two week cancellation. The cancellation is a major economic blow...
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...Los Angeles is often called the “City of Angels,” but it does not live up to its name. There are many reasons why we would not refer to L.A. as the “City of Angels,” but the most significant reason is homelessness. As of May 2017, the percentage of homeless people in the Los Angeles County rose to 23 percent which means that 920,000 of the 4,000,000 people are out on the streets- daily looking for shelter and a place to sleep (US News, 2017). The rise of homelessness is a problem and continues to be one in the Los Angeles Area, affecting our community in both social and environmental sustainability, unless we do something about it. This problem can be resolved by making the public, including the homeless community aware of the issues that have...
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...phenomenal growth in population was in a great measure contributed by immigrations from the Midwest as well as other countries all around the world. Since 1870s, spurred by the gold rush and the completion of the transcontinental line, Los Angeles has been continuously booming and thus attracted vast numbers of boosters to come to this wonderland with numerous job opportunities and desirable climate. One of William Faulkner's short stories, Golden Land, is about one man of those who left their hometowns in the middle of nowhere to this city in pursuit of fortune. The main character, Ira Ewing, fled from his home in Nebraska to Los Angeles and became successful in the real-estate industry, however, at the expense of morality and family ties. Unlike Ira Ewing who is a boomer himself, Ysela, the narrator in an episode titled Oiga of The Republic of East L.A. written by Luis J. Rodriguez, is one of the descendants of those Mexicans who arrived in this city hundreds of years ago. Although, her ancestors used to own horses and properties and were the ones who named lands in this area, Ysela has got nearly nothing to lose after the family got ripped off by Anglos during wartime and she now lives in a trailer, suffering from homelessness and poverty. It seems that, from these two stories, people moved to Los Angeles do not always end up with happy or wealthy lives that they dream of. Los Angeles, which has always been said to be the place where American Dreams come true, is actually a hell...
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...Title: Porous powers create Los Angeles’s character Los Angeles is a young city usually portrayed as a unique place that it captures the essence of a multi-ecological setting bringing the ocean, the skyscraper, and the happiest place on earth under one rooftop. Under this successful marketing pitch, the city has become one of the world’s biggest metropolises. However, the city is in the middle of the desert, and has insufficient natural resources to sustain life. As McWilliams said “Man has made it what it is” (pg.183). This diverse complex metropolis has had many rulers, but all of them have something in common, they have wealth, or they have control over scarce resources, a required need in which the individuals in the area acquire. These characteristics gives them the power, not a complete control, but rather the ability to set the terms under which other groups and classes must operate. In order to keep their power, they must be able to manage both wealth and resources. In this anthology I would present a view of the changes in the power groups in Los Angeles, how these changes created the character of the city, and who was left out of this equation throughout history. In every society there are experiences and material objects that are highly valued. If it is assumed that everyone in the society would like to have as great a share as possible of these experiences and objects, then the distribution of values in that society can be utilized as a power indicator. Those who...
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...THE PROCESS AND PATTERN OF URBANIZATION AND LABOUR MIGRATION IN NIGERIA By Anyaele Samuel O. Mabogunje (1968), defined urbanization as the process whereby human beings congregates in relatively large number at one particular spot of the earth surface. The particular spot is refered to urban centers. Urbanization simply put, is a demographical phenomenon charaterized with the movement of people from the rural settings to permanently dwell in the city (urban areas). Labour migration on the other hand, is the process through which an individual move from an administrative territorial community to another community in order to gain an employment. There are two types of labour migration namely; the contemporary labour migration which is also refered to as oversea or contract workers. Here, an individual migrates for a little period in order to send money back home. And the highly skilled and business migrants; here, people with qualifications like executives, technicians, professionals and its similar prowless move within the international or national labour market to gain employment. Urbanization process are those factors that facilitates a place to turn into urban center. These factors includes; migration (PUSH – PULL FACTORS), natural increase, government policies, exchange of trade etc. MIGRATION- migration is a rational movement that invovles a change in place of residence across a defined geo-political boundary. Migration is age, sex, destination and reason selective. Factors...
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...American dreams. Pulled by its delightful glittering lights, many have been lured to find their luck and fate in the city only to be betrayed in the end. People of varying age, gender, ethnicity or class are all heading to Los Angeles in the hope of making a better life for themselves and their families. The city of angels has at some point been considered as the foremost sensational destination for juvenile runaways. While all light show signs of promising hope of a better future, not all light turns out to be decent or upright. Many have achieved success in exchange of losing their morals. The lights of Los Angeles are treacherously inspiring. It entices people to do everything for wealth, success and fame sometimes at the expense of selling their soul to city. It light however remains dramatically nostalgic that kept people to stay or come back to home. Such was the case of the protagonist in William Faulkner’s short story, “Golden Land,” Ira unconsciously traded his morals, family and soul for worldly success in Hollywood. While he exhibited a sense of repulsion on the materialistic culture of Los Angeles, he was nevertheless a progeny of its mores. In this story, Faulkner showed how a man, who hailed from the conformist place like Nebraska, was altered by the “Golden Land” to become a decadent person. Like many Americans seeking for their fortune in the big city, Ira decided to go to Los Angeles in search of success. He felt rapt in Nebraska, which held him back from pursuing...
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...support from their current cities. While many teams have used the threat solely to gain benefits from their current cities, many were serious in their consideration of relocating to Los Angeles, the second-largest TV market in the country. The city of Los Angeles would not use taxpayer funds to help build a stadium, which along with issues about where a stadium could be located caused many to remain in their current city. Stan Kroenke, owner of the LA Rams, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, and Arsenal Football Club, along with multiple...
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...As detailed in Robinson’s expose, “as redevelopment and rising rents eliminated low-income housing units across the city, the deteriorated Tenderloin absorbed the displaced. Accordingly, the Tenderloin population [grew] over 20%...absorbing the highest concentration of the impoverished, the service dependent, the drug addicted and the criminal” (Robinson 487). The Tenderloin section of San Francisco is rumored to have gotten its name from “Police Captain Alexander S. Williams around 1931… when corruption was rife in the area, and it was said that officers who accepted bribes could then afford more expensive cuts of beef [i.e. tenderloin] for their dinner tables” (Tischer). These statistics paint a grim picture of the Tenderloin, however, one cannot overlook the geographically desirability of this area, as it is “one of the last underdeveloped areas within...
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...proceeding previous studio experience theoretical premise research case studies climate data historical context project goals site analysis an ecological solution personal identification reference list 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 - 12 13 14 15 16 - 34 35 - 58 59 - 65 66 - 71 72 73 - 88 89 - 108 109 110 - 111 abstract Waterways are a vital and productive resource to our environment. Rivers provide a variety of amenities and services to communities across the world such as drinking water, food, travel, recreation, wildlife habitat, connection to place, aesthetic appeal, economic development, etc. This thesis project examines the importance of the Mississippi River to its urban community and how riverfront design can function as a unifying element for the city center and its ecosystem. Over half of the world’s future population will be living in urban environments by 2030, which will dramatically increase the stress on a vulnerable network of water systems. A restoration of a river can bring awareness to people while improving physical and ecological corridor connections (Bernhardt & Palmer, 2007). Keywords: Mississippi, river, community, ecosystem, restoration, urban, connection 5 problem statement How can riverfront design be used to unify...
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