ABOUT

Culture is not only contained in a museum or a building, but it’s also in the streets!  The city is literally speaking to us through millions of signs, posters, and fliers posted on buildings, windows, and lightpoles. We generated a database and mapped 6 million signs on the major streets of Los Angeles county from 2011-2018.
We then organized a dataset of sign words that are expressing cultural identity – we found 96 different cultures! When these signs cluster together, they start to form a place – a cultural hub. This interactive map allows you to explore the 62 cultures’ hubs we found which is many more than those officially designated. This is grassroots cultural placemaking.

EXPLORATION

      • Can you find any cultural hubs you had not known were in LA?
      • Which cultures have more than one hub? And where are they located?
      • Which cultures share space?
      • Zoom out to see the cultural hubs in relation to the sending countries to get the view of LA as a global city.
      • Locate places you are familiar with (type in addresses or names of places in the search box) and view them in light of these cultural hubs – any insights?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Slabbers who helped build this project: Scott Mahoy, Michael Chiang, Samirita Dabade, Duo Bao, Temi Omotinugbon, Julia Harten, Jonathan Crisman, Matthew Miller, Thu Nguyen, Seongmoon Cho, Clemens Pilgram, and Sihan Mao.
Financial support:  American Council of Learned Societies, USC Provost, USC Price School, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate

OTHER INTERACTIVE SPACE/TIME MAPS