Scan barcode
A review by sarkycogs
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis
5.0
Recently learned about this lefty history of >100 years in LA up to 1990 and knew I needed to read it. Growing up on the suburban outskirts, part of the white wealthy flight from the city center, so much of why the city is the way it is seemed slippery, ephemeral, lost to time. Almost all of this was new information which unlocked explanation and personal connection to the urban planet my hometown orbits.
Mike Davis writes with plain prose and snide wit, wearing his judgments on his sleeve as he lays down the facts. And the facts show a consistent chaotic struggle for power and control among wealthy elites, at the inevitable expense of blacks, latinos, native peoples, and the working poor. LA is the inorganic result of various cohorts of boosters "establishing," "founding," "remaking" the next vision of utopia that nevertheless turns out a bit bleaker and a bit cheaper than promised. Davis writes the city variously as the site of a Downtown v. Westside Gatsbyish social spat, an HOA-Nimby guerrilla war v. unending Global Development, a Catholic mission on the rim of the known world, a sparkling, power-washed deathtrap of anti-street-culture and hostile urbanism, and a bomb of racist abuse and neglect about to explode. He sees LA as a living omen of what's to come in cities nationwide, and was largely correct by my view (less than 2 years later, his bomb did go off in the citywide riots).
Each chapter takes a different historiographical lens to the picture, while often drawing connections and building on what he's already said. I did not expect the book to end on a 60-page essay on the city of Fontana, but by the time he told the story it made perfect sense as the conclusion. You hear all the time that LA has no history, no memory, and it's easy to see what they're saying. But uncovering some of that history we don't have offers so much explanation towards why we're here now, who made it this way, and who was left behind. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has known or lived in some small, atomized, isolated island in the sprawl of Los Angeles, and hope it offers a bridge to a shared history, and common purpose for the future.
Mike Davis writes with plain prose and snide wit, wearing his judgments on his sleeve as he lays down the facts. And the facts show a consistent chaotic struggle for power and control among wealthy elites, at the inevitable expense of blacks, latinos, native peoples, and the working poor. LA is the inorganic result of various cohorts of boosters "establishing," "founding," "remaking" the next vision of utopia that nevertheless turns out a bit bleaker and a bit cheaper than promised. Davis writes the city variously as the site of a Downtown v. Westside Gatsbyish social spat, an HOA-Nimby guerrilla war v. unending Global Development, a Catholic mission on the rim of the known world, a sparkling, power-washed deathtrap of anti-street-culture and hostile urbanism, and a bomb of racist abuse and neglect about to explode. He sees LA as a living omen of what's to come in cities nationwide, and was largely correct by my view (less than 2 years later, his bomb did go off in the citywide riots).
Each chapter takes a different historiographical lens to the picture, while often drawing connections and building on what he's already said. I did not expect the book to end on a 60-page essay on the city of Fontana, but by the time he told the story it made perfect sense as the conclusion. You hear all the time that LA has no history, no memory, and it's easy to see what they're saying. But uncovering some of that history we don't have offers so much explanation towards why we're here now, who made it this way, and who was left behind. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has known or lived in some small, atomized, isolated island in the sprawl of Los Angeles, and hope it offers a bridge to a shared history, and common purpose for the future.