In this article, we examine the landscapes of Los Angeles for evidence of a postmodern urbanism. We begin by contrasting the principles of the Chicago school's modernist industrial metropolis with the putatively postmodern Los Angeles school. We then examine the range of contemporary Southern California urbanisms and interpret this evidence as defining the problematic of a distinctively postmodern urbanism embedded within an emergent global capitalism.
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References
1.
1. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), p. 44.
2.
2. Jacques Derrida, quoted in Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London: Methune, 1982), p. 127.
3.
3. Jonathan Raban, Soft City (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974), p. 157.
4.
4. Ernest W. Burgess, “The Growth of the City,” in The City: Suggestions of Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment, by R. E. Park, E. W. Burgess, and R. D. McKenzie (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925).
5.
idem , One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933).
6.
6. Chauncy D. Harris and Edward L. Ullman, “The Nature of Cities,”The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 242:7-17 (Nov. 1945).
7.
7. The term “school” is problematic, but we here follow Jennifer Pratt and use the term to refer to “a collection of individuals working in the same environment who at the time and through their own retrospective constructions of their identity and the impartations of intellectual historians are defined as representing a distinct approach to a scholarly endeavor.” Quoted in Gary Alan Fine, “A Second Chicago School? The Development of Postwar American Sociology,” in A Second Chicago School? ed. G. A. Fine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 2.
8.
8. Society and Space, Environment and Planning D, 4(3):249-390 (1986).
9.
9. Marco Cenzatti, Los Angeles and the L.A. School: Postmodernism and Urban Studies (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, 1993).
10.
10. Ibid.
11.
11. C. M. Robinson, “The City Beautiful” (Report to the mayor, City Council, and members of the Municipal Art Commission, Los Angeles, 1907), p. 4.
12.
12. Edward C. Relph, The Modern Urban Landscape (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 213.
13.
13. Ibid., p. 261.
14.
14. Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (New York: Doubleday, 1991), p. 3.
15.
15. Ibid., p. 8.
16.
16. Ibid., p. 112.
17.
17. Ibid., p. 116.
18.
18. Ibid., p. 187.
19.
19. Evan McKenzie, Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994).
20.
20. Ibid., p. 19.
21.
21. Ibid., p. 196.
22.
22. Ibid., pp. 204-5.
23.
23. Thomas S. Hines, “Machines in the Garden: Notes Toward a History of Modern Los Angeles Architecture, 1900-1990.” in Sex, Death and God in L.A., ed. David Reid (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), p. 313.
24.
24. Charles Jencks, Heteropolis: Los Angeles, the Riots and the Strange Beauty of Hetero-Architecture (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), p. 32.
25.
25. Ibid., p. 75.
26.
26. Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill & Wang, 1992).
27.
27. Ibid., p. xi.
28.
28. Ibid., p. xii.
29.
29. Edward Soja, “Inside Exopolis: Scenes from Orange County,” in Variations on a Theme Park, ed. Sorkin, p. 101.
30.
30. Ibid., p. 120.
31.
31. Edward Soja, “Los Angeles 1965-1992: The Six Geographies of Urban Restructuring,” in The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century, ed. A. J. Scott and E. Soja (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming).
32.
idem , Technopolis: High-Technology Industry and Regional Development in Southern California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
33.
33. Mike Davis, “Chinatown Revisited? The Internationalization of Downtown Los Angeles,” in Sex, Death and God in L.A., ed. Reid, p. 21.
34.
34. Ibid., p. 26.
35.
35. Mike Davis, “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space,” in Variations on a Theme Park, ed. Sorkin.
36.
36. Ibid., p. 155.
37.
37. Steven Flusty, Building Paranoia: The Proliferation of Interdictory Space and the Erosion of Spatial Justice (West Hollywood, CA: Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, 1994), pp. 16-17.
38.
38. Ibid., pp. 21-33.
39.
39. Richard Sennett, “Something in the City,”Times Literary Supplement, 22 Sept. 1995, p. 13.
40.
40. The word“cyburbia” was coined by Fred Dewey in Fred Dewey and Ralph Rugoff, “The Floating World,” in The Wild Palms Reader, ed. Roger Trilling and Stuart Swezey (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993).
41.
41. Cf. Daniel Rushkoff, Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Cyberspace (New York: HarperCollins, 1995).
42.
42. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 203-215.
43.
43. Alma Guillermoprieto, “Whodunnit?”New Yorker, 25 Sept. 1995, p. 44.
