City Of Quartz Summary
Descending over the San Gabriel mountains into LAX, Los Angeles, the gray rolling neighborhoods unfurling into the distant pillars of downtown leaping out of its famous smog, one can easily see the fortress narrative that Mike Davis argues for in City of Quartz. A city that has been thoroughly converted into a factory that dumps money taken from exterior neighborhoods, and uses them to build grand monuments downtown. One could compare the concrete plazas of Downtown LA and the Sony Center dominated Postdamer Platz and see little difference. Both stolid markers of their city's presence. These places seem to be modern appropriations of the boulevard. Seemingly places that would allow for the experience of spectacle for all involved, but then
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He first starts with an analysis of LA's popular perceptions: from the booster's and mercenaries who craft an attractive city of dreams; to the Noir writers and European expats who find LA a deracinated wasteland of anti collectivist methods. Methods like an emphasis on the house over the apartment building, the necessity of cars, and a seemingly overwhelming reliance on outside sources for its culture. Though the Noir writers also find fault with the immense studio apparatus that sustains Hollywood. He refers to Noir as a method for the cynical exploration of America's underbelly. He references films like The Maltese Falcon, and seminal Nathaniel West novel Day of the Locust as examples But he also dissects objects like the Getty Endowment as emblematic of LA as utopia. Places where intersection of money and art produce great beauty, even, like the Haussmanninization of Paris, are products of exploitation according to Davis. Davis concludes that the modern LA myth has emerged out of a fear of the city itself.2 Namely, all it represents: the excess, the sprawl, the city as actor, and an ever looming fear of a elemental breakdown (be that abstract, or an earthquake). Indeed, the final group Davis describes are the mercenaries. These are outsider who are contracted by the LA establishment to create and foster an LA culture. One could construe this as a form of 'getting there'. Of enacting a grand plan of city building. LA's pursuit of urban ideal is direct antithesis to what it wants to be, and this drive towards a city on a hill is rooted in LA's lines of
He first starts with an analysis of LA's popular perceptions: from the booster's and mercenaries who craft an attractive city of dreams; to the Noir writers and European expats who find LA a deracinated wasteland of anti collectivist methods. Methods like an emphasis on the house over the apartment building, the necessity of cars, and a seemingly overwhelming reliance on outside sources for its culture. Though the Noir writers also find fault with the immense studio apparatus that sustains Hollywood. He refers to Noir as a method for the cynical exploration of America's underbelly. He references films like The Maltese Falcon, and seminal Nathaniel West novel Day of the Locust as examples But he also dissects objects like the Getty Endowment as emblematic of LA as utopia. Places where intersection of money and art produce great beauty, even, like the Haussmanninization of Paris, are products of exploitation according to Davis. Davis concludes that the modern LA myth has emerged out of a fear of the city itself.2 Namely, all it represents: the excess, the sprawl, the city as actor, and an ever looming fear of a elemental breakdown (be that abstract, or an earthquake). Indeed, the final group Davis describes are the mercenaries. These are outsider who are contracted by the LA establishment to create and foster an LA culture. One could construe this as a form of 'getting there'. Of enacting a grand plan of city building. LA's pursuit of urban ideal is direct antithesis to what it wants to be, and this drive towards a city on a hill is rooted in LA's lines of