Up Above: The Geography of Suburban Sprawl in Southern California’s Antelope Valley

Matt Jalbert

Social Friction and Crime

THE FOREMOST REASON PEOPLE WERE WILLING TO ENDURE long commutes to and isolation in the Antelope Valley was the affordability of homes. Unshakable consumer demand for home ownership, fostered by tax advantages, drove thousands of people into the Valley. However, this dispersal of population had considerable social cost and consequence.

The middle-class homeowners who bought into the Antelope Valley have been an encouraging mix of races (tables 11, 12, 13). However, the region’s new demographic has generated a dynamic not wholly welcomed. The Valley’s pre-1980s residents chose to live in the high desert’s isolation, professing a love of its broad spaces and lack of city folk. Easily characterized as “rednecks,” many Valley natives cite shooting and hunting as a favorite recreation. One of Los Angeles County’s last all-white bastions of moderate income before the boom, the Antelope Valley has since been brought into the fold of the county’s highly diverse demographic makeup. With the coming of a sizable African-American and Latino population in the 1980s, racial tensions have risen. Older residents have especially resented the new minorities; the occasional race-based confrontations are significant enough to garner press coverage. Racial tension is not news to any urbanizing region, but the case of the Antelope Valley does point out that the larger society’s irresolution of racial disharmony can be heightened by the intolerance found in small communities.

With such a wide array of newly-arrived residents, the common interests of the region’s inhabitants—besides desire for the single-family home—have yet to surface. The spatial configuration of the Valley, with its wide streets and highly dispersed residences, is an obstacle to the development of neighborhood identity. So, too, is the nodal development pattern and the insular character of subdivisions. Space itself—the space between people, maintained by an automobile-centered development pattern—is a barrier to the nurturing of strong local ties. The only notable community rallying point, it appears, is crime paranoia: in recent years, residents formed some 800 “neighborhood watch” groups in the Antelope Valley. [Footnote #47]

Illegal dumping in the Antelope Valley, January 2005.

Another obstacle to community development is time—here, lost time. In 1990, almost 43% of Lancaster and Palmdale’s workforce spent at least an hour every workday in a round-trip commute (table 14), and fully 36% of Palmdale’s workers commute well over two hours a day. Commuting time is a major social issue in the Valley; the associated stress and family separation has disturbing effects. The Antelope Valley’s child and spousal abuse rates—the highest in Los Angeles County—are blamed primarily on “commuteritis,” the stresses associated with the long-distance commutes so many Valley residents make. These acts are also related to methamphetamine abuse. [Footnote #48] Social isolation and the distance from County social services, too, are cited as factors in the Valley’s familial malaise. Not only do long-distance commuters have few waking hours to spend with their own families, but they also have no time to make neighborhood friends. Leaving for work in the pre-dawn hours and returning in the evening, many Valley commuters “never look out their living room window” [Footnote #49] and simply don’t have the time to know their neighbors. The long hours commuting have robbed many Valley residents of the time to make their neighbors’ acquaintance.

Gang activity, and fear of it, has generated another new dynamic in the Valley. As crime rates skyrocketed in Los Angeles and as “gangbanging” became a glorified and commodified activity in youth culture, many young parents sought to protect their children by moving to the Antelope Valley. In many cases, however, it was too late. Gang participation has become such a common facet of youth that children whose families moved to the Antelope Valley simply spawned new gangs. Unlike their Los Angeles counterparts, though, Antelope Valley gangs tend to be disorganized, non-territorial, and consist largely of what both sheriffs and ex-gang members call “wannabes.”

A cemetary in the Antelope Valley, California.

Still, the pall of gang activity has been cast over the Antelope Valley and the cities have reacted. Evidence of gang paranoia abounds: a sign hanging on the door of an elementary school gives a stiff warning about carrying weapons to class. And at the Antelope Valley Mall (fig. 21), management has placed a large sign denoting “Rules of Conduct” just inside each entrance. Included are such admonitions as

Juvenile groups of four or more will be dispersed. Customers must keep moving in an orderly fashion through the premises and not block walkways or store entrances. When conditions contribute to an overflow of juveniles, management reserves the right to disperse or eject individuals or groups. Proper clothing is required at all times, which includes shoes, shirts and no gang attire or colors.

The fact that “gang attire” is a fashion trend promoted by many of the mall’s retailers is an irony lost on the management.

The Antelope Valley’s gang activity, benign compared to Los Angeles, has nonetheless contributed to increasing violence. Sheriffs note that robberies and assaults have become more violent, which they blame on the suspects’ involvement with gangs. Still, the Valley’s rising crime rate is far below that of Los Angeles. [Footnote #50] The perception of crime, too, is a relative assessment. Long-time residents remember when they never locked their doors and homicide was a freak occurrence making all the headlines. [Footnote #51] New residents, though, often accustomed to the horrific crime rates of down below, find the Antelope Valley’s crime rate a welcome relief.

Crime paranoia—what California State University, Sacramento criminologist Tony Platt calls a “crime rave”—grips much of America, and the Antelope Valley is no exception. A powerful symbol of this social priority is being built right now in Lancaster: a new Los Angeles County Sheriff’s substation. Part of Lancaster’s five-block long downtown “redevelopment,” the building is going up at the corner of Sierra Highway and Lancaster Boulevard (the old town’s Main Street). This corner has considerable historical significance, both in Lancaster and, in the generic sense, in countless other Western railroad towns of similar platting. Towns traditionally had their most potent symbol of development—the bank—on this corner of Main Street and the railroad tracks. Symbolizing investment, progress, and potential for the future, the bank on that corner lot in many ways represented the hopes of the town’s new settlers. Soon this corner in Lancaster will hold the headquarters of an agency that today evokes a society out of control and in need of strong-arm tactics to retain a semblance of order. Though the Lancaster corner retains little of the local significance it once did, the erection of a police headquarters at an historically loaded intersection speaks volumes about the new social power brokers in the Antelope Valley.

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© Matt Jalbert 1995–2002