UC Irvine

At the end of 2015, the City Council and Mayor of Los Angeles declared a state of emergency on homeless. This case study sought to redefine the way urban space is categorized by borrowing from a framework to devise a typology that could be applied and refined at a micro-level. Across four different sub-neighborhoods in Hollywood, Los Angeles, the built environment was assessed using a scoring matrix to highlight the dichotomy of opportunities and barriers that individuals experiencing homelessness face on a day-to-day basis. The typology look provided a new insight into the way urban space can be viewed at a micro level, and to do so it is best achieved walking on foot. The findings yielded that barriers across the sub-neighborhoods varied, with exclusion through signage and CCTV being a significant driver in Central Hollywood. While the tower cranes cast shadows over Hollywood, a greater phenomena has been building momentum, a second wave of spatial control through the use of dispersal is inevitable if services cannot keep up with the pace of development.