City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (Essential Mike Davis)

Davis is well-known in radical circles as a popular writer on various issues relating to labor movements and the like. This is essentially a history of the city of Los Angeles and its surroundings from a radical perspective. It's quite well-done and very informative (at least to an ignoramus like me), but Davis goes overboard now and then in seeing a conspiracy to repress the poor behind everything. He also has the tendency to call historical incidences of repression a "holocaust" (he actually uses this word multiple times for different things), which I don't like being used in this manner. Aside from that though, it's a welcome different approach from the usual hagiographic or hip postmodern analyses of conglomeration cities like LA. There's not much more I can say about it, as whether you like his left-wing critical vignettes or not will be mostly a matter of taste - judge it for yourself.

Several years ago I picked this book up on a business trip to L.A. and couldn't put it down. Since then I've become an armchair aficionado of L.A./Southland history and returned to explore the area as often as I can afford. This book has to be compared to the likes of Heidi and Alvin Toffler's "Third Wave" and so forth. It's part essay, part history, and part futurism. As with the "Third Wave" it's full of breathless pronouncements of WHAT HAS BEEN and WHAT WILL BE--except this is more of a dystopian nightmare. Like it or not, L.A. has been the most important city in America--probably the world--since World War Two. This comes thanks to the advent of TV, which sold the world on "fun in the sun." So, if you want to read one grand pronouncement on the darkest possible outcome of modern urban inequality, this is a good one. Just figure it won't turn out as badly as he predicts. Mike Davis is like a stopped clock of the analog variety. He's going to be right twice a day. But it sure is fun to read him going on about it.

A mix of good and bad. Good: exhaustively researched, full of references, some of which I intend to read. A good starting point for many topics. I found his chapter on the history of Fontana fascinating. I also enjoyed the explanation of L.A.'s power elite and its development.

Bad: obsessive, and I mean OBSESSIVE, leftist bias. E.g., the Watts riots are the "Watts rebellion." E.g., his constant, grating mockery of the home ownership dreams of working class white people. E.g., Maxine Waters is a "respected legislator." Actually she's the epitome of the bigoted, shrill, corrupt black politician. E.g., "so-called blighted" areas or "purported high crime areas" the author cites are in fact, not just in his sarcasm, in many cases blighted and high crime and wracked by drugs (e.g., Pico-Union District). Visit it if you don't believe me. Teenagers will rush your car to offer you crack cocaine, fake green cards and underage Salvadoran girls.

Bad: The writing style is wretched. When an author has severe problems, don't publishers provide editors anymore? The author delights in using giant words where small ones would do. Even the well-educated reader needs a dictionary, preferably a huge one, at hand. He also is in love with giant sentences and enormous paragraphs. Junior high English teacher to Davis: short sentences! paragraph breaks!

The writing style is so poor that what could be a brisk, lively read (discounting the author's bias, of course) is not. I ran a sample through readability indexes like the Gunning Fog Index and the Flesch Index and it was off the charts. It is probably unreadable for a high school grad, very tough going for a bright college student, and an agonizing slog, thick as treacle, "dry as sawdust without butter" even for someone with a graduate school education and years of professional writing. (Like myself.) What a shame. Even a mechanical clean-up with smaller words, shorter sentences and four times the paragraph breaks would have transformed this book.

The small number of photos are excellent but very poorly reproduced. More photos, sharply printed, would have been worth thousands of words.

I caught Mike Davis on an HBO Documentary about gangs in Southern California, and this book was referenced many times. As a resident of Southern California, I was anxious to learn more about the new megalopolis that I now called home.

I anxiously began reading the book, but quickly became disinterested by Mike Davis's relentlessly dry and academic approach in telling the story of Los Angeles. There would be absolutely no mistaking the fact that Mike Davis is an academic, and not a story teller.

The reader is subjected to a million tiny facts about everything that ever happened throughout the history of the city, and by concentrating on every piece of bark on every tree the reader is denied the view of the forrest. It literally felt like this was a book I had to read for some kind of class or homework assignment, and I had to will myself to finish it. I am a voracious reader, but I found this book to be virtually unreadable.

High marks to Mike Davis for the research that must have gone into this book, but low marks for keeping the reader engaged about the material.

As an avid fan of Los Angeles/Southland history, and having lived there from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, I was eager to get my hands on this book. Sadly, it isn't truly about Los Angeles. The author uses the city as a soapbox to espouse his political view of the world. Any city would do, to be sure. If you want to read a continuous stream of how the "haves" abuse the "have nots", how "power" is always bad and how the ultimate goal of every "majority" is to subjugate every "minority", then have a good read. Don't expect any factual basis or thoughtful analysis, however. This book is just "That's the way it is, thank you very much, and the place has gone to hell."

I got this book thinking it was about the social history and architecture of Los Angeles.

Although City Of Quartz does touch upon various events in LA history, it does so only to use those events as a springboard for the author's political writings. Reading it, I got the impression that ANY American city would have brought forth the same opinions.

To sum up: "Wealthy people, Corporations, the Police, and Conservatives are BAD GUYS and are ALWAYS in the wrong. Poor people, Unions, Criminals and Liberals are GOOD GUYS and are ALWAYS in the right. And don't you people realize that the cost of one stealth bomber could pay for 10000 public housing units!?"

The author is certainly entitled to his opinions, but with such a cut-and-dried world view the book quickly becomes boringly predictable. Page after page of "The rich are oppressing the poor, the Whites are oppressing Minorities, the Police are oppressing criminals..." stated as facts - no need for debate - no discussion as to WHY the author feels this way - just a long laundry list of political grievences, and in the end - very little about L.A. history.

If you're interested in Mr. Davis's opinions, this book might be worth a read. But if you're looking for a history book about Los Angeles, look elsewhere.

Mike Davis' City of Quartz uses excessively repeating imagery to interpret modern Los Angeles architecture and urban renewal as an imposing totalitarian force that seems callous and almost conspiratorial. From the beginning, "forests" of signs that read `Armed Response!' overshadow "carefully manicured lawns of Los Angeles's Westside," while "even richer neighborhoods in the canyons and hillsides isolate themselves" with police and surveillance. A reader is left to wonder why canyon and hillside neighborhoods would be paranoid enough to isolate themselves even further.

While his case is very convincing, Davis makes it so by creating an us-versus-them mentality from the onset. The poor wonder what the rich need so many signs for; the rich wonder why even richer neighborhoods, at the outer rings of the urban community, would feel frightened enough to pay for an insulation thicker than isolation.

Davis claims downtown rejuvenation is creating a "corporate citadel" segregating, and thereby defending, the city's core from the surrounding poor neighborhoods. He does so just after he mentions that this `urban renaissance' is funded by the public. For the rest of the first paragraph, Davis mentions, as a point of irony, the "renowned for his `humanism'" architect Frank Gehry, to whom he comes back later. He follows the humanist label with two dependant clauses discussing police barricades cordoning poor neighborhoods "as part of their `war on drugs'," and modern development doing much of the same in Watts, a community that may possibly stand out for the rest of its history as a black/white riot zone. Within the tail end of the paragraph he crams "recolonization" "an anti-crime `giant eye'" and "plan for a law-and-order Armageddon."

Davis uses the elasticity of language to proclaim reality as something to be feared as it evolves, especially if you are poor.

For instance, "ubiquitous `armed response'" would be beneficial if the enemy were a force outside of the community. In the Davis example, however, it "undergird[s]" "new repressions in space." The enemy is within a community, subliminal, and inclusive of anyone outside his "defense of luxury." This inner tension is followed immediately with a projection of the unrest in every city involved with its own renewal. Urban renewal, according to Davis, "has become a zeitgeist of urban restructuring." In order to back up his paranoia, Davis takes the reader right back to the fears that equate protection with totalitarianism: "...contemporary urban theory...has been strangely silent about the militarization of city life so grimly visible at the street level." What level is "street level"? Davis's readers should be inclined to search for this visible militarization of city life, especially in a revitalized, posh, urban community.

Davis plays upon Los Angeles culture by inserting six Hollywood movies in which the storyline reinforces his own paranoia. By the time the first page ends, Davis has established ingenuity among the poor, rich, and super-rich, based on modern architecture and suburban trends, reinforced with totalitarian imagery that draws directly on some of Hollywood's most established futuristic dystopia. This effectively presents the reader with stimulants in which Davis' paranoia feels inevitable.

Davis' rhetoric is stifling. Every sentence proliferates his paranoia, most with two or three images. Central to his dissertation is the idea that the rich are willfully guarding themselves against those with less via a principle of prejudice. Crime statistics leading up to the creation of this citadel are not included. "Coverage of crime" statistics are not, either. Davis makes no attempt to justify his idea of the paranoid affluent class, stating it only to justify his paranoia as a member of the urban class.

Economic reasons are the most likely cause of architectural security integration, and yet no profit margins are discussed. Again, Davis displays contempt for his reader by withholding evidence that perhaps profitability coaxes investment. In The Destruction of Public Space Davis states, "The Oz-like archipelago of Westside pleasure domes - a continuum of tony malls, art centers, and gourmet strips - is reciprocally dependent upon the social imprisonment of the third-world service proletariat who live in increasingly repressive ghettos and barrios." Once again, it is the rich repressing the poor, rather than the rich bringing mediocre jobs into the area by appealing to investors through architecture and security. Again, this image is reinforced in The Forbidden City by quoting an urban critic Davis balances as "crusty" Sam Hall Kaplan, "the new corporate citadel, with its fascist obliteration of street frontage...hermetically sealed fortress...air dropped pieces of suburbia...has dammed the rivers of life Downtown." Davis then has the nerve to claim Kaplan uses liberal complaints about bland design and elitist planning practices, complaints Davis mimics before reaching beyond to what he sees as "dimension of foresight, of explicit repressive intention, which has its roots in Los Angeles's ancient history of class and race warfare."

Discussing the architect Frank Gehry, Davis crucifies him as an architect whose "work clarifies the underlying relations of repression, surveillance and exclusion." Davis makes no mention about the demands of committees who hire Gehry as an architect, nor those who approve of the designs. Pointing a finger of accusation at the man he compares to "Dirty Harry" is easier than blaming economic desires of investors and the business plans which cater to them. Banks appreciate mall security. Davis sums up with a quote he lifts from Haagan, another individual crucified due to his reputation with retail investors. "We've proved that the only color that counts in business is green." The reality does not reflect Davis's earlier suggestion that the city was being militarized. It is the dollar of the shopper which will make any difference in the design of inner Los Angeles, not conspiracy for control.

Later, Davis has played this "us vs. them" up to such a degree he feels safe to slip in the occasional label of "Republican" when discussing the new high security neighborhoods luring the ultra-rich towards realty investment. Davis's rhetoric has become so black and white that Republican is inferred as equal to ultra-rich.

While I agree with his resentment towards the L.A.P.D., he attacks a hydra of politics behind their ever-more-militant methods of fighting crime. There are simply too many political and economic reasons for keeping a well funded police force concerned more with force protection than understanding the cultures of neighborhoods they patrol. I do not believe "the LAPD is seen as the progressive antithesis to the traditional big-city police department with its patronage armies of patrolmen grafting off the beat." I believe it is a trend in all big, sprawling cities that automobile patrols are more efficient than that of the beat cop. Those participating in a system of city government which has allowed the police department to become militant desire the security of a militant police force.

With paranoid threads throughout the entirety of "City of Quartz," reality is frightfully rendered with repetitive imagery and carefully selected examples. The reality inspiring Davis's fears, however, is that city shoppers and investors in business like security and limited access. If a conspiracy is to be found, Davis should look into economics of capitalism, not in an impending totalitarianism.

I found this really difficult to get through. While Davis's approach is very wide ranging and comprehensive, I often found myself struggling to keep up with all of the historical examples and various people mentioned in this account. Having never been there myself and knowing next to nothing about the area's history, I often felt myself overwhelmed, struggling to keep track of the various people and institutions that helped shape such a fractured, peculiarly American locale. I think it would have helped if I'd read a more general history of the region first before diving into something this intricately informed about its subject

City of Quartz is one of the top 20 books I've ever read. It penetrates the fog that so often surrounds how a thing becomes that which we know. In this case, he illuminates the creation and recreation of Los Angeles, as an idea and a built space. Davis nicely combines the materialist eye of a Marxian with the intellectual awareness of a grounded post-modernist to catch both the ways Los Angeles has operated as a vehicle for capital accumulation and been sold as a cure-all and a dream. Los Angeles is explicated as the model for the real estate capitalism that came to play such a dominant part in the American economy (and which all the kings horses and men are still trying to put back together again after 2007) and our automobile-centric consumer culture. Although it plays a part in his narrative, Hollywood and it's "dream machine" do not suck all the air out of the tale. Davis knows the city too well to let Hollywood swallow his story. And he respects it too much to tie it all up in too neat a bow. He leaves space for the reader to consider, contemplate, and draw his own conclusions. I cannot reccomend this book too highly.

Someone from Los Angeles -- or with more knowledge than me -- might quibble with the conclusions Davis reaches or the ways in which he illuminates the city. However, as someone who is not from there and has never even been there, I found this to be a fascinating read about a place, its history, and its current sociology.

I thought his organization is excellent -- covering politics first and then weaving a story through gang culture, neighborhood topography, and religion -- and his writing is vivid. At several points, I found myself wishing books like this were available on other cities across the United States because I learned so much and thought about things so differently upon finishing it.