New Names Create More Division, Less Community

Calling an earthworm Euripides doesn’t turn it into a poet. Nor does slapping a new name on an old neighborhood turn it into a community. Yet that’s the disturbing trend as San Fernando Valley residents keep on swapping old neighborhood names for new ones. First it was West Hills (nee Canoga Park), then North Hills (nee Sepulveda), then La Tuna Canyon (nee Sun Valley). Most recently, a tiny slice of North Hollywood split off to become West Toluca Lake.

The name change capped two years of work by residents in the southwestern corner of North Hollywood. With the exception of real estate listings and a few blue-and-white street signs, though, nothing changes. The 100 or so homes of West Toluca Lake remain under the jurisdiction of Los Angeles and keep the same ZIP Code. Residents of the new community claim they sought the new name because they wanted to feel more independent. Concerns over crime and property values, they say, were secondary. Yet it’s telling that the residents opted to carve their own niche only after they failed to get annexed by the tonier communities of Studio City and Toluca Lake.

Name changes like West Toluca Lake’s are almost always couched in terms of being inclusive, of creating a sense of community where none existed. By their nature, though, these neighborhood divorces are exclusive--often motivated by nothing more than the desire for higher property values that a classier sounding name might bring. When was the last time a neighborhood wanted to split from Bel Air? Names don’t make--or change--communities. People do.

Residents, of course, have the right to name their neighborhoods whatever they want, but atomizing the Valley with new names and boundaries threatens to dissipate further whatever sense of wider community exists in Southern California. As residents retreat deeper into their self-named communities, tracts, neighborhoods, blocks and backyards, they lose a sense of responsibility for the city around them. And withdrawing from the problems of the city only makes it more likely that the place “out there” will become more dangerous, corrupt and neglected.

If neighbors spent half as much time fixing shared problems as they do fretting about what to call themselves, the need for name changes would no doubt disappear. Shakespeare recognized the fallacy of names 400 years ago. It’s time for the Valley to do the same.