Discourses>Discovering>Colonizing>Developing

Posted on October 5, 2007 
Filed under Reflections




There’s the discourse of discovering  SL: buying, owning and settling; the discourse of colonizing SL: settling, owning and controlling; and the discourse of developing SL: buying, owning, selling, and controlling.

I drive north weekly on Interstate 15 to Claremont, California. 15 cuts through the Inland Empire, vast rolling hills of brown, low desert landscape. It’s not dotted with suburban development, development is spray-painted on. It’s not sprawl; it’s organized and systematized. Developers build housing developments  adjacent to the malls they build. The region is colonized by industrialized goods, services and food, and it’s been cyclically colonized for over 250 years.

Is the Inland Empire a geographic facsimile of SL? Is SL a cultural facsimile of the IE? And who named it an Empire, anyway? I like renting my plot of land in dingy old Hillcrest, with it’s bustling nightlife, stained sidewalks and owner-occupied store fronts. Driving through the Empire reminds me of how good I’ve got it. In the Empire, Starbucks is the only friend I have.

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