Just read the free sample on Kindle. Some interesting descriptions, and/but interwoven with academic analysis.

http://www.amazon.com/Venice-C…..B007PRZOPM

On the northern end of the park, retired African American men sit at picnic tables playing dominoes and reminiscing about the way things used to be. Younger black men in their twenties and thirties congregate by the fence near the picnic tables, listening to music played from cars parked in the street. One of the young men moves away from the group toward a slow-moving vehicle driven by a middle-aged white man and holds a small bag out in the open during daylight hours without even trying to disguise his action. After making an exchange, the car speeds off and he returns to his friends.

Formerly part of a massive operation on many street corners throughout Oakwood, the drug distribution ring has been steadily pushed by LAPD officers into the vicinity of the park, where surveillance cameras now monitor every move. Only a few of the young men engage in illicit activities, but the friendships between dealers and nondealers have complicated histories, as many grew up together in Oakwood and family members have known each other for decades. On the opposite end of the park a different type of lawlessness takes place: newer residents—white men and women in their thirties and forties—let their dogs dogs run off their leashes, disregarding a city ordinance that restricts this activity and runs at cross-purposes with the interests of older residents whose children and grandchildren also use the park to play.

[two pages later]

In contemporary Los Angeles, the static classifications that have historically guided sociological interpretations of urban neighborhoods as rich or poor, black or white, ethnic or Wasp, and working class or professional do not consistently hold. How should we label Oakwood: Is it a black, Latino, or white neighborhood? Is Rose Avenue a skid row for the homeless and the down and out, or is it a middle- and upper-income residential locale? Should we interpret the boardwalk as an up-and-coming shopping district, a free attraction for the masses, or a space of economic opportunity for the most destitute? Furthermore, how did the Canals and Abbot Kinney Boulevard, neighborhoods once deemed as centers of cross-cultural contact, become more exclusive when they are located directly on the boundaries of these other highly diverse spaces?

Just as we have to be careful not to automatically adopt static classifications of distinct neighborhood public cultures, we have to be careful not to oversimplify the place of gentrification in the process of neighborhood change. 

We can certainly see the everyday performances, housing infrastructures, and iconic representations of wealth in all five of the neighborhoods making up this study, but the pathways of neighborhood change are not empty conduits between central power holders, local neighborhood groups, and any given set of neighborhood conditions. Wealthy developers, influential architects, new retailers, and new homeowners are present in this discussion about urban change, but not in a way that makes these adjacent neighborhoods look the same. Venice has emerged over the last four decades as a coastal community in extremely high demand where everyone wants a piece of the property, from longstanding African American residents and bohemians to homeless men and women, Latino immigrants, and wealthier homeowners.