UCLA

This study explores the extent to which academic fields of study can explain the urban fabric of Los Angeles, a preeminent site of post-industrialization and the burgeoning global cultural economy. Relationships with gentrification are explicitly examined, shedding light on the mutual dependence between cultural capital-driven reproduction in higher education and the active (re)structuring of the urban environment. Spatial analysis techniques draw on data from the US Census American Community Survey and a community college in Los Angeles County, with findings revealing the importance of lateral structural divisions and processes to empirical, theoretical, and policy debates over inequality in education, housing, and other areas of urban life.