The third and final quarter of the Urban Humanities core curriculum brought focus back to Los Angeles, where students developed situated, collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-modal research to provide engaged, scholarly, creative projects around the broad theme of “spatial justice” within the context of the Westlake/MacArthur Park (WMcAP). Students were tasked with conducting in-depth urban ‘excavations,’ that included archival research, digital mapping, interviews, and ephemeral popular knowledges (such as myths, local stories, gossip, merchant posters, political paraphernalia, etc.) of some of the most significant urban issues that have affected the Westlake/MacArthur Park area.
The main aim of the research was to construct a multi-dimensional, layered, and more nuanced understanding of the WMcAP neighborhood. The end result provides a broader and deeper understanding of the complex dynamics that have produced and reproduced spatial justice/injustice conditions in the area. Our objective was to develop an open-ended, dynamic, multi-modal e-document (or a platform such as a responsive web design) that would encapsulate all the students’ research projects. We thought of this platform as a collective digital library created from and for the community. Each project took the form of a contemporary digital manuscript, or a type of a localized eCodex. Together, these Codices created a community-based archive and gave form to a digital community public library. The concept and format of this community public library have been created collectively.
