The City

Los Angeles has grown from a scattered collection of towns and villages to one of the largest megacities in the world. In the process, it has inspired controversy among critics and scholars, as well as among its residents. Seeking original perspectives rather than consensus, the editors of The City have assembled a variety of essays examining the built environment and human dynamics of this extraordinary modern city, emphasizing the dramatic changes that have occurred since 1960. Together the essays—by experts in urban planning, architecture, geography, and sociology—create a new kind of urban analysis, one that is open to diversity but strongly committed to collective theoretical and practical understanding.

Allen J. Scott is Professor of Geography and Associate Dean of the School of Public Policy and Social Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. His previous books include Technopolis: High-Technology Industry and Regional Development in Southern California (California, 1993). Edward W. Soja is Professor of Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (1996).

           
         PREFACE 
        CONTRIBUTORS 

1. Introduction to Los Angeles: City and Region 
     Edward W Soja and Allen I Scott 
2. The First American City 
       Richard S. Weinstein 
3. Hetero-Architecture and the L.A. School 
         Charles Jencks 
4. In the City, Time Becomes Visible: 
    Intentionality and Urbanism in Los Angeles, 1781-1991 
         Michael Dear 
5. The Evolution of Transportation Policy in Los Angeles: 
    Images of Past Policies and Future Prospects 
        Martin Wachs 
6. How Eden Lost Its Garden: 
   A Political History of the Los Angeles Landscape 
         Mike Davis 
    7. Bounding and Binding Metropolitan Space: 
   The Ambiguous Politics of Nature in Los Angeles 
   Margaret FitzSimmons and Robert Gottlieb 
8. L.A. as Design Product: How Art Works in a Regional Economy 
        Harvey Molotch 
9. High-Technology Industrial Development in the San Fernando Valley 
     and Ventura County:
    Observations on Economic Growth and the Evolution of Urban Form 
              Allen J. Scott 
10. Income and Racial Inequality in Los Angeles 
          Paul Ong and Evelyn Blumenberg 
11. A City Called Heaven: Black Enchantment and Despair in Los Angeles 
             Susan Anderson 
12. Latino Los Angeles: Reframing Boundaries/Borders 
            Raymond A. Rocco 
13. From Global to Local: 
      The Rise of Homelessness in Los Angeles during the 1980s 
             Jennifer Wolch 
14. Los Angeles, 1965-1992: 
   From Crisis-Generated Restructuring to Restructuring-Generated Crisis 
             Edward W. Soja 

    ILLUSTRATION CREDITS  
    INDEX