IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v33y2001i12p2109-2125.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Having Arrived, Time to Move on: Coupland's Brentwood as an Experiment with Space and Time

Author

Listed:
  • David Hamers

    (Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Culture, Maastricht University, PO Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands)

Abstract

In “Brentwood Notebook†the Canadian author Douglas Coupland depicts Brentwood, an affluent community on the outskirts of Los Angeles, as a place that in many ways hardly deserves our attention, but that for some of its characteristics may nevertheless serve as a symbol of our hypermodern Western society at the close of the 20th century. Coupland's essay can be interpreted as a challenging experiment with time and space. His Brentwood has various faces and they are evoked in a text that relies on a number of creative and disciplinary traditions, including cultural philosophy, social and cultural geography, new journalism, and literature. His representation of Brentwood is not only based on his personal observations, but it is also informed by three powerful cultural myths, involving notions generally associated with utopia, dystopia, and the ideal of upper class suburban life. If we are to grasp the meaning of the “Brentwood Notebook†properly, we should focus on what the text reveals about this California community and especially on how it conveys the author's understanding of that place. A close reading suggests that the tension between presence and absence, between the visible and the hidden, as well as between progress, stasis, and decay characterizes Brentwood in particular.

Suggested Citation

  • David Hamers, 2001. "Having Arrived, Time to Move on: Coupland's Brentwood as an Experiment with Space and Time," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 33(12), pages 2109-2125, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:33:y:2001:i:12:p:2109-2125
    DOI: 10.1068/a33189
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a33189
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a33189?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton, 1989. "Hypersegregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas: Black and Hispanic Segregation Along Five Dimensions," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 26(3), pages 373-391, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ron Johnston & James Forrest & Michael Poulsen, 2002. "Are there Ethnic Enclaves/Ghettos in English Cities?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 39(4), pages 591-618, April.
    2. Tse-Chuan Yang & Stephen A Matthews, 2015. "Death by Segregation: Does the Dimension of Racial Segregation Matter?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-26, September.
    3. Bayer, Patrick & McMillan, Robert & Rueben, Kim S., 2004. "What drives racial segregation? New evidence using Census microdata," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 514-535, November.
    4. Mark Rank & Thomas Hirschl, 1993. "The link between population density and welfare participation," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 30(4), pages 607-622, November.
    5. Schwartz, Gabriel L. & Chiang, Amy Y. & Wang, Guangyi & Kim, Min Hee & White, Justin S. & Hamad, Rita, 2023. "Testing mediating pathways between school segregation and health: Evidence on peer prejudice and health behaviors," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 335(C).
    6. Borjas, George J., 1998. "To Ghetto or Not to Ghetto: Ethnicity and Residential Segregation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 228-253, September.
    7. Matthew Hall, 2013. "Residential Integration on the New Frontier: Immigrant Segregation in Established and New Destinations," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(5), pages 1873-1896, October.
    8. Simon Burgess & Deborah Wilson & Ruth Lupton, 2005. "Parallel Lives? Ethnic Segregation in Schools and Neighbourhoods," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(7), pages 1027-1056, June.
    9. Jessica Lavariega Monforti & Gabriel R. Sanchez, 2010. "The Politics of Perception: An Investigation of the Presence and Sources of Perceptions of Internal Discrimination Among Latinos," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 91(1), pages 245-265, March.
    10. Yuki Kato, 2006. "Planning and Social Diversity: Residential Segregation in American New Towns," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(12), pages 2285-2299, November.
    11. Colin Getty Tredoux & John Andrew Dixon, 2009. "Mapping the Multiple Contexts of Racial Isolation: The Case of Long Street, Cape Town," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(4), pages 761-777, April.
    12. Judith K. Hellerstein & David Neumark, 2011. "Employment in Black Urban Labor Markets: Problems and Solutions," NBER Working Papers 16986, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Mercedes A. Bravo & Man Chong Leong & Alan E. Gelfand & Marie Lynn Miranda, 2021. "Assessing Disparity Using Measures of Racial and Educational Isolation," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(17), pages 1-21, September.
    14. Zenou, Yves & Boccard, Nicolas, 2000. "Racial Discrimination and Redlining in Cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 260-285, September.
    15. Mehra, Renee & Boyd, Lisa M. & Ickovics, Jeannette R., 2017. "Racial residential segregation and adverse birth outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 237-250.
    16. Samuel H. Kye & Andrew Halpern-Manners, 2022. "Detecting “White Flight†in the Contemporary United States: A Multicomponent Approach," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 51(1), pages 3-33, February.
    17. Lawrence D. Bobo & Camille Z. Charles, 2009. "Race in the American Mind: From the Moynihan Report to the Obama Candidacy," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 621(1), pages 243-259, January.
    18. David Consolazio & David Benassi & Antonio Giampiero Russo, 2023. "Ethnic residential segregation in the city of Milan at the interplay between social class, housing and labour market," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(10), pages 1853-1874, August.
    19. Amber Crowell & Mark Fossett, 2022. "Metropolitan racial residential segregation in the United States: A microlevel and cross-context analysis of Black, Latino, and Asian segregation," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 46(8), pages 217-260.
    20. Ludi Simpson & Vasilis Gavalas & Nissa Finney, 2008. "Population Dynamics in Ethnically Diverse Towns: The Long-term Implications of Immigration," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 45(1), pages 163-183, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:33:y:2001:i:12:p:2109-2125. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.