The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century Review

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(More customer reviews)The City starts with admirable intentions in its attempts to identify the major problems currently besetting Los Angeles. To a wide-eyed USC urban theory grad student, this collection of essays succeeds, replete as it is with jargon such as "post-fordist economies" and such. However, to any other reader, the writing style seems to be an attempt at making the book inaccesible to anyone without a Masters degree. If the writers wished to be read only by academics, then they should state that aim on the cover.Despite the "urban planners symposium synopsis" feel of The City, several valuable points are made. Most notable was the interesting explanations of the dangers of the current hour-glass economy and the subsequent creation of first-world and third-world cities within a city. In addition, the multi-aspect historical essays exploring the growth of the cities (I especially enjoyed the "L.A. as a design product" piece) were interesting and even occasionally enjoyable. However, the essays, in their self-described (and laudable) and not entirely succesful attempts at approaching urban theory from multi-disciplinary viewpoints, became somewhat redundant (not necessarily a bad thing considering the density of the stuff) in trying to force a tie-in to each other. Finally, the authors clearly mark their territory as knee-jerk liberals with their conclusions regarding the so-called LA 4 as "angry young men in search of social justice and making a point by beating Reginald Denny to a bloody pulp." As a former and soon to return resident of Los Angeles, I felt that such an apologist point of view is sorely out of touch with the realities of the place. Their points on racial and social injustice in the city are well-taken, but this sort of racialist pandering is absurd.If you can keep your eyes from glazing over while reading this, there are some valuable conclusions here which make The City worth reading. But be prepared to wade through a morass of academi! c dribble on the way.

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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.

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