Social Analysis Paper 2
Create a Report about Los Angeles:
1. Create racial composition and poverty composition maps (see directions on p. 3).
2. Describe how the racial group of interest to you is distributed across Los Angeles in 2010
by answering the questions below. (1/2 to 1 page)
a. Do members of the racial group seem to be clustered in just a few neighborhoods
or distributed evenly in most neighborhoods? Where is the greatest concentration
of members of this racial group (i.e., East side, South, etc or you can say
neighborhood names based on the LA Times Mapping Project or relate it to major
landmarks, highways, etc).
b. Draw on the Logan & Stults reading and course materials to define segregation
and discuss whether you expect the racial group you chose to become more or less
segregated from other groups (specify which other groups), based on trends over
the past several decades.
3. Describe how poor people are distributed across Los Angeles in 2010 by answering the
questions below. (1/2 to 1 page)
a. Where are the poorest areas of the city? Do poor neighborhoods seem to be near
other poor neighborhoods? What parts of the city are poorest?
b. Draw on the Wilson reading and course materials to define poverty concentration
and discuss if or where you observe concentrated poverty in LA in 2010.
4. Visit the LA Times Mapping LA Project (see directions attached) and complete the
following table for one neighborhood of your choosing within LA county. Choosing a
neighborhood that is fairly poor or fairly rich, or fairly white or fairly minority, may make
the report easier, but you can choose any neighborhood as long as it has data for all the
components of this report. Look at the maps you’ve made and cross-reference with the
Mapping Project to select your neighborhood. (You may want to select your neighborhood
before you make your maps to be sure that your neighborhood is visible)

Briefly describe the neighborhood you chose by telling us about the findings in the table
you’ve made. How does it compare to other neighborhoods in terms of racial diversity and
socioeconomic composition (income and education level) (the Mapping Project provides
some comparisons)? If there is another characteristic (age, housing, etc) you find really
interesting, feel free to discuss it. (1/2 page)
5. Report the average number of weekly violent and property crimes in the last three
months. How does this neighborhood compare in terms of crime to other neighborhoods?
Do the crimes in the last week seem to be clustered in certain parts of the neighborhood
(along a particular street, north/south, etc)? (1/2 page)
% White % Black % Asian % Latino Median
Income
% with
BA
% with
less
than
HS
Neighborhoo
d Name
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6. Report the number of public, private, and charter schools in the neighborhood. For the
public schools, look at the API ranks, which stands for Academic Performance Index. The
API is a scale that measures school performance by dividing schools into 10 equal groups
(deciles)—so a 1/10 means the school falls into the lowest 10% of schools and a 10 means
it falls into the highest 10% of schools. For example, a 5/10 means a school is about at the
50th percentile for schools in CA. See https://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/pages/
understandingtheapi.aspx for more. How many schools in this neighborhood are a 9 or 10?
How many are a 1 or 2? Overall, would you say the schools in this neighborhood seem to
be high-quality or low-quality, based on API? (1/2 page)
Once you have completed these steps, answer the following reflection questions:
• Based on the neighborhood you’ve chosen and how it compares to other neighborhoods,
what links do you see, if any, between the racial and poverty composition of a
neighborhood and its levels of social problems in terms of crime and poor schools? (1/2
page)
• (~1 page) Based on class material (cite specific lectures or readings), do we typically see
links between neighborhood composition (racial/ethnic or economic) and (a) crime and (b)
education?
o Name one explanation for links between neighborhood composition and crime and
identify whether it is a structural or cultural explanation.
o Name one explanation for links between neighborhood composition and education
and identify whether it is a structural or cultural explanation.
Lectures from 9/16, 9/30, 10/7, 10/12, 11/9, 11/11 might be particularly useful for this
paper.
Total length: 4 double-spaced pages plus 2 maps( I WILL DO ) and 1 table in 12 point font with
standard (1 inch) margins.
Santa monica CA
Culver city CA
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