The city of Cerritos is very familiar to me. Though I grew up in a part of Lakewood just
directly south of Little India, I attended elementary and middle school in
Cerritos so I am quite familiar with the extent of diversity the city has to
offer and agree that it is quite amazing. If you ever get a chance to come back
and check things out again, I cannot recommend enough dining at one of the
Chinese restaurants on the southern edge of Little India. Sam Woo’s is
excellent, as is the Prince Seafood Restaurant.
There were
several things in your post that caught my eye. I really liked what you noted
about the way that the various city boundaries all kind of mesh together and
you often lose track of where you are. You probably didn’t realize it, but you
actually did this in your post when you identified Little India as a part of
Cerritos. That section of Pioneer is actually in the city of Artesia.
While I
agree that Cerritos is a great example of ethnic diversity, I do not agree with
the idea that the city can be held up as an example for diminishing social
differentiation. The Auto Square and mall that evoked fears that “the debilitating, segregation,
and alienating social aspects common to many suburbs throughout the Los Angeles
Metropolitan Area,” would be found in Cerritos are exactly why the symbol you
hold up as indicative of diminishing social differentiation (the Library)
exists. Funding for the library and its renovation ten years ago came from
sales tax revenue schemes the city put in place in response to Prop 13.
As far as its usage by different
groups goes, up until just a few years ago access to free library cards was
severely restricted. It used to be that you either had to live in Cerritos or
live in a city that had a library sharing agreement with Cerritos (typically
these were similar upper middle class cities like Huntington Beach) to obtain a
free card. It has since been expanded to include anyone who attends a school in
the local school district which covers Lakewood, Hawaiian Gardens, Cerritos and
Artesia and students who go to Cerritos College. Everyone else is paying a
hundred dollars a year. When you consider how the different cities intermesh with each other as you noted, the disadvantages that people like myself had to deal with growing up in the area because we didn't have library cards were problematic. If I want to use my laptop to browse the internet there it still is.
Also, consider the library itself as
a building and institution and compare it to any other library or place of
learning nearby. What function do the titanium plates adorning its exterior provide?
What value do pieces of blown glass that cost the city hundreds of thousands of
dollars add to the library going experience? Those dry frozen palm trees that
cost several thousand dollars apiece and the giant salt-water aquarium are neat,
but do they belong in a library? While the LA County library system was seeing
massive cutbacks Cerritos decided to engage in what many people saw as blatant
conspicuous consumption.
As someone who just visited the city you wouldn't be expected to know these details or understand them, but they give context to the different social processes going on. The fact is, Cerritos is an incredibly wealthy city surrounded by several poorer cities and makes the majority of its revenue off of sales taxes gathered from non-residents. Social differentiation is not only present in Cerritos, it is heavily institutionalized.
LA Times article on some of these issues: http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/03/local/me-cerritos3
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