Luis J. Flores

Después de las concepciones de Descartes sobre el mundo como res extensa y de Newton acerca de la distinción entre espacio absoluto y espacio relativo, el movimiento fenomenológico logra alcanzar un conjunto nuevo de conceptos para comprender el espacio: la noción de cuerpo vivido, la espacialidad originaria del Dasein, el espacio antropológico, el espacio sagrado. Partiendo del concepto de un espacio vivido, sostenemos que: 1) existe una radical diferencia entre dicho espacio y el espacio geométrico; 2) el espacio vivido conlleva cuatro intencionalidades básicas: la cognitiva, la deóntica, la sintomática y la estética; 3) el espacio sagrado es una modalidad de espacio vivido, en la cual las intencionalidades se articulan en torno a lo sagrado, y más específicamente, Dios.

An instrument of wealth accumulation and racial segregation in housing markets, the intersections between zoning and labor are often overlooked. Extending theories of space, race, and class, and drawing on historical and archival evidence, I elaborate three ways that American land-use zoning emerged to shape labor markets in the early 20th century: (1) zoning constrained households from engaging in subsistence and direct market activity, acting as a regulatory source of labor commodification; (2) zoning first emerged as a xenophobic tool for regulating labor competition; and (3) zoning introduced racialized boundaries distinguishing formal work from a sphere of economic informality. I illustrate these theoretical-historical propositions with a study of the frontier origins of American land-use zoning laws in late-19th -century Los Angeles. This first and influential approach to residential zoning emerged amid racial dynamics of western settlement and the class politics of a national “free” labor market. I demonstrate how efforts to regulate the settlement and labor practices of poor urban households and Chinese immigrants on in Los Angeles became the direct legal basis for the dichotomous categories of “residential” and “industrial” districts that the city first defended before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1915. By theorizing the intersections of land-use zoning and labor markets, this paper provides a theoretical framework and historical genealogy for future work to consider entanglements of housing and labor politics amid the concurrent flexibilization of work and land use in the present.