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cherrie_bluhd's review against another edition
4.0
This book was a little hard for me to get into at first — it’s a critical onslaught of statistics, references, names, and dates from the get-go. I expected some vaguely comprehensive, linear history of LA from it to explain why LA is, well, like *that* (I say, as both a lover and hater). The book clarified and illuminated aspects of the city I had unconsciously taken in but not consciously reflected on, and culminated in a portrait of the city as amnesiac and destructive of its own past — part of why, as a transplant, I think it was so hard to get a grip on how the city sees itself and how it made me feel. The book collects seemingly disparate narratives into one piecemeal picture of LA, covering topics like land-ownership, unionization, and policing, as well as, somewhat unexpectedly for me, things like Fontana and the Catholic church. There is, to my relief, very little mention of ‘Hollywood’ (as a concept rather than the place) or the film industry — something that did impact my experience of the city, but was often the least-interesting part of it. I am glad Davis, too, has made the critical choice to focus on more relevant aspects.
As I prepare to move from LA (and come down from some time outside of it), I can’t say that this book made me want to stay. LA feels, and, as Davis proves, is, deeply flawed as a city, repeatedly sacrificing the well-being of its actual population, it’s sense of history and community for the never-ending corporate exchange of hands and wealth. But, Davis also convincingly portrays the city as more complex, interesting, alive, and conscious than the image the money of LA constantly constructs and reconstructs of it. For that, I am grateful, to both Davis, and in-spite of it all, this god-forsaken city.
As I prepare to move from LA (and come down from some time outside of it), I can’t say that this book made me want to stay. LA feels, and, as Davis proves, is, deeply flawed as a city, repeatedly sacrificing the well-being of its actual population, it’s sense of history and community for the never-ending corporate exchange of hands and wealth. But, Davis also convincingly portrays the city as more complex, interesting, alive, and conscious than the image the money of LA constantly constructs and reconstructs of it. For that, I am grateful, to both Davis, and in-spite of it all, this god-forsaken city.
saxonnefragile's review against another edition
Un travail rare, qui combine à la fois sociologie urbaine et géographie, histoire et histoire des idées. Mike Davis revient sur l'histoire de la cité des Anges depuis la fin du XIXème siècle, une histoire faite de spéculateurs fonciers, de racisme, et d'urbanisation à outrance. Los Angeles, de ville pour ainsi dire sans grand intérêt devient une métropole tentaculaire, qui matérialise la lutte des classes (je veux dire par là via l'architecture et le mobilier urbain, notamment le mobilier dit "anti SDF"). Le chapitre qui m'a le plus marqué est consacré à la militarisation de la police de Los Angeles notamment suite aux "émeutes" (Davis, à l'image des Black Panthers préfère le terme de rébellion) de Watts.
Pour Davis Los Angeles est le prototype de la ville du futur, un futur qui n'a rien de particulièrement joyeux, puisqu'il est caractérisé par les pauvres (c'est à dire les latinos et les Noirs) parqués dans des ghettos, soumis au harcèlement policier constant, et par les plus aisés (notons que la classe moyenne tendait à l'époque de l'écriture du livre, à disparaître) qui vivent dans des véritables forteresses urbaines, avec milice privé et des murs de "protection" à la clé.
Pour Davis Los Angeles est le prototype de la ville du futur, un futur qui n'a rien de particulièrement joyeux, puisqu'il est caractérisé par les pauvres (c'est à dire les latinos et les Noirs) parqués dans des ghettos, soumis au harcèlement policier constant, et par les plus aisés (notons que la classe moyenne tendait à l'époque de l'écriture du livre, à disparaître) qui vivent dans des véritables forteresses urbaines, avec milice privé et des murs de "protection" à la clé.
breadandmushrooms's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
julcoh's review against another edition
4.0
In the author’s words, “City of Quartz … is the biography of a conjuncture: one of those moments, ripe with paradox and non-linearity, when previously separate currents of history suddenly converge with profoundly unpredictable results. [It is] … about the contradictory impact of economic globalization upon different segments of Los Angeles society.”
I moved to Los Angeles two years ago, weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent George Floyd protests shattered the currents of city life and indelibly altered society. Put in perspective the events of 2020 become less extraordinary— one more meteoric change to a city (LA) and a region (Metro LA/SoCal) tacked to the end of a long list. This is what Mike Davis dissects and catalogs in City of Quartz: the inflection points, as he sees them, in LA’s growth and development over the past 150 years.
Broken down by chapter, Davis writes densely and at length on:
1. People— who immigrated to LA and why, it’s visitors and their thoughts, the growth of its society and downstream effects on the city.
2. Power— the structures and lines of power that built LA, both physically (in the case of developers, land speculators, and associated industry like the railroad companies) and politically. These two groups tended to be single individuals or collectives of unfettered capitalists directing politics.
3. Real estate, suburbanism, and “affluent homeowners … engaged in the defense of home values and neighborhood exclusivity.” NIMBYism exhaustively analyzed.
4. LA’s architectural reflection of the 1960s-80s sociopolitical repression. “The dire predictions of Richard Nixon's 1969 National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence have been tragically fulfilled: we live in 'fortress cities' brutally divided between 'fortified cells' of affluent society and 'places of terror' where the police battle the criminalized poor.”
5. Police, policing, and the political-law enforcement axis in LA. If you already know the LAPD’s history, its organized internal gangs and utterly fucked up criminalization of the poor and non-whites, there is still much specific history here to anger and educate you. If you don’t know anything about it yet, buckle up.
6. Religion. Particularly the history of the Catholic Church in LA; how it has reacted, and failed to react, in the face of rapidly changing demographics due to immigration.
7. The history of Fontana as a microcosm. “If violent instability in local landscape and culture is taken to be constitutive of Southern California's peculiar social ontology, then Fontana epitomizes the region. It is an imagined community, twice invented and promoted, then turned inside-out to become once again a visionary green field. Its repeated restructurings have traumatically registered the shifting interaction of regional and international, manufacturing and real-estate, capitalism. Yet despite the claims of some theorists of the 'hyperreal 'or the 'depthless present' - the past is not completely erasable, even in Southern California. … To this extent the Fontana story provides a parable: it is about the fate of those suburbanized California working classes who cling to their tarnished dreams at the far edge of the L.A. galaxy.”
City of Quartz was written in 1990 and the edition I read contains a 2006 preface from Davis. He points out why he continues to be so pessimistic— “Taking 1990 as a baseline, consider some of the most important structural trends and social changes of the generation that followed the original ‘conjuncture.’”
1. Regional (Im)mobility: the complete failure to develop sustainable public transport.
2. Branchville: capital flight and the echoes of the “L.A. 2000” scheme to become the new command center of the California and Pacific Rim economies which collapsed in the 1990s recession. Even more poignant as Silicon Valley has exploded in the age of smartphones and social media.
3. Manufacturing Decline: in 2006 starkly highlighted by the flight of jobs and industry to China. This has only accelerated.
4. The New Inequality: the permanent healthcare, education, and income crisis among the city’s vulnerable, “emblematic of the larger deficit of investment in a humane social safety net.”
5. Terminal Suburbs: regional re-segregation in California and massive white flight (LA County losing 20% of its white population in the 90s), “part of a larger sorting-out process by which white, religiously-conservative ‘red America’ is taking its distance from heavily immigrant and liberal ‘blue America.’”
6. Spurning the Peacemakers: the complete failure to build on inter-gang solidarity in the wake of the Rodney King riots, and in fact the deliberate spurning and undermining of the truce.
7. City of Organizers: here is Davis’ note of cautious optimism on the future of the labor movement, which I tend to think was misguided given the subsequent 15 years leading to today. He was however spot on about politics: “I find nothing praiseworthy in current calls for more 'centrism' or 'pragmatism': euphemisms for the continual process of incremental adjustment to the rightward drift of the Democratic Party. In contrast, conservative Christian groups have built impressive political bases in local suburban politics largely through unyielding, programmatic tenacity. Odd to say, but many conservatives seem to have a better grasp of Gramsci than many on the Left. Above all, they understand the principle that a hegemonic politics must represent a consistent continuum of values: it must embody a morally coherent way of life.”
“We live in a rich society with poor children, and that should be intolerable.”
I moved to Los Angeles two years ago, weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent George Floyd protests shattered the currents of city life and indelibly altered society. Put in perspective the events of 2020 become less extraordinary— one more meteoric change to a city (LA) and a region (Metro LA/SoCal) tacked to the end of a long list. This is what Mike Davis dissects and catalogs in City of Quartz: the inflection points, as he sees them, in LA’s growth and development over the past 150 years.
Broken down by chapter, Davis writes densely and at length on:
1. People— who immigrated to LA and why, it’s visitors and their thoughts, the growth of its society and downstream effects on the city.
2. Power— the structures and lines of power that built LA, both physically (in the case of developers, land speculators, and associated industry like the railroad companies) and politically. These two groups tended to be single individuals or collectives of unfettered capitalists directing politics.
3. Real estate, suburbanism, and “affluent homeowners … engaged in the defense of home values and neighborhood exclusivity.” NIMBYism exhaustively analyzed.
4. LA’s architectural reflection of the 1960s-80s sociopolitical repression. “The dire predictions of Richard Nixon's 1969 National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence have been tragically fulfilled: we live in 'fortress cities' brutally divided between 'fortified cells' of affluent society and 'places of terror' where the police battle the criminalized poor.”
5. Police, policing, and the political-law enforcement axis in LA. If you already know the LAPD’s history, its organized internal gangs and utterly fucked up criminalization of the poor and non-whites, there is still much specific history here to anger and educate you. If you don’t know anything about it yet, buckle up.
6. Religion. Particularly the history of the Catholic Church in LA; how it has reacted, and failed to react, in the face of rapidly changing demographics due to immigration.
7. The history of Fontana as a microcosm. “If violent instability in local landscape and culture is taken to be constitutive of Southern California's peculiar social ontology, then Fontana epitomizes the region. It is an imagined community, twice invented and promoted, then turned inside-out to become once again a visionary green field. Its repeated restructurings have traumatically registered the shifting interaction of regional and international, manufacturing and real-estate, capitalism. Yet despite the claims of some theorists of the 'hyperreal 'or the 'depthless present' - the past is not completely erasable, even in Southern California. … To this extent the Fontana story provides a parable: it is about the fate of those suburbanized California working classes who cling to their tarnished dreams at the far edge of the L.A. galaxy.”
City of Quartz was written in 1990 and the edition I read contains a 2006 preface from Davis. He points out why he continues to be so pessimistic— “Taking 1990 as a baseline, consider some of the most important structural trends and social changes of the generation that followed the original ‘conjuncture.’”
1. Regional (Im)mobility: the complete failure to develop sustainable public transport.
2. Branchville: capital flight and the echoes of the “L.A. 2000” scheme to become the new command center of the California and Pacific Rim economies which collapsed in the 1990s recession. Even more poignant as Silicon Valley has exploded in the age of smartphones and social media.
3. Manufacturing Decline: in 2006 starkly highlighted by the flight of jobs and industry to China. This has only accelerated.
4. The New Inequality: the permanent healthcare, education, and income crisis among the city’s vulnerable, “emblematic of the larger deficit of investment in a humane social safety net.”
5. Terminal Suburbs: regional re-segregation in California and massive white flight (LA County losing 20% of its white population in the 90s), “part of a larger sorting-out process by which white, religiously-conservative ‘red America’ is taking its distance from heavily immigrant and liberal ‘blue America.’”
6. Spurning the Peacemakers: the complete failure to build on inter-gang solidarity in the wake of the Rodney King riots, and in fact the deliberate spurning and undermining of the truce.
7. City of Organizers: here is Davis’ note of cautious optimism on the future of the labor movement, which I tend to think was misguided given the subsequent 15 years leading to today. He was however spot on about politics: “I find nothing praiseworthy in current calls for more 'centrism' or 'pragmatism': euphemisms for the continual process of incremental adjustment to the rightward drift of the Democratic Party. In contrast, conservative Christian groups have built impressive political bases in local suburban politics largely through unyielding, programmatic tenacity. Odd to say, but many conservatives seem to have a better grasp of Gramsci than many on the Left. Above all, they understand the principle that a hegemonic politics must represent a consistent continuum of values: it must embody a morally coherent way of life.”
“We live in a rich society with poor children, and that should be intolerable.”
eljaspero's review against another edition
challenging
slow-paced
2.5
This is a good LA read, if you're really into one guy beating you over the head with his solitary opinions and interpretations.
welcometothe90smrbanks's review against another edition
4.25
like driving in la — sometimes you’re stuck in traffic and other times you’re cruising down the 405
rc90041's review against another edition
5.0
An indispensable book about L.A. Relentlessly, and, at times, absurdly pessimistic and bleak, but full of passages of deep, dark, frightening beauty. Davis likes nothing better than to revel in descriptions of the dark beauty of the city he loathes and fears, but obviously loves, in his own perverse, obsessive way. The chapters on Prop 13 and homeowners associations (Homegrown Revolution) and the spatial control in L.A. (Fortress L.A.) are especially powerful. If you're interested in L.A., you have to deal with this book at some point.