City of Quartz [Paperback]

The style of language may be difficult to read intially,as he uses many metaphors to stir a passion for the homeless and other issues. However, once you have read the first couple of paragraphs, you are hooked, until the end.

This is a crucial text deserving to be on all undergraduate geographiers bookshelfs.

The ubiquitous glare of security cameras renders all public space private in the name of corporate defense. Private security patrols watch every step too. In this city, there is no welcome for those who do not 'fit in', unless you are seen to fuel this system of power you are not welcome.

A startling read, more so when one faces up the fact that all our cities here in the West are going along a similar line.

Every visit has taken me downtown. Plenty of it is still scruffy like in 1963, but in recent years I have been able to go to Otello and symphony concerts. I have been to east LA and I have been to Bel Air, I have watched the ethnic mix visibly change and I have seen people become more careful than before even in placid Westchester. The most interesting new building seems to me the Taj Mahony as I have seen it called in the LA Times, and one of the most interesting chapters in this book is concerned with Cardinal Roger M. himself. Padre Rogelio came up on the left, (not the Marxist left obviously) as a champion of the hispanic poor and I wonder why he needs a new cathedral. Was the damage to the old one in the North Ridge quake really that bad, or is ostentation necessary if you are going to count at all in LA? Are those skyscrapers really earthquake-proof (I have read Arthur C Clarke's Richter 10) or do you just have to have skyscrapers to be taken seriously as a city? I am not religious, but the most interesting question of biblical criticism has always seemed to me to be 'What did they do in Gomorrah?'. If the rich barricaded themselves in fortress-compounds and builded themselves towers even unto the sky and the high priest joined them in a not inconsiderable effort of his own it is not hard to imagine a few parallels if, God forbid, the Big One ever strikes. Mike Davis's basic theme is not too far from this. LA has had its share of natural troubles over the years I have known it -- fires, floods and some mercifully 'minor' quakes, but the 1992 riots illustrate his main thesis which is that LA could be riding for a bad fall through social tensions, and high-profile instances of repressive policing are further grist to his mill. Whether any of this counts as neo-Marxist etc I neither know nor care, and I cannot comment on his accuracy or otherwise but it's hard to think of a viewpoint that could see all this as anything but plausible. I can quite understand the reservations that have been voiced about his tone and his style, but these are side-issues. This is not fiction.

Me, I love the place. This is mainly because of the people I am privileged to know there, but it has magic just for itself, for me anyway. On the other hand that just makes me privileged too in my own degree. The first thing that struck me on my latest visit to America, for some reason, was the omnipresent injunction 'Eat, Eat, Eat'. A sociologist friend tells me that 80% of Americans are clinically obese. Whatever one's views about inequality, repression and what have you, the underlying issue seems to me to be that our rate of consumption is simply unsustainable, and that a world economy based on growth has to come to an end somewhere. This is not music to my own ears let alone American ears, but Galbraith has been arguing it for long enough and if there is any answer to the point overall, as opposed to disputing details, I have not yet seen it. It makes me think of ostriches. When the ostrich takes her head out of the sand she can run very fast. She passeth the horse and his rider, the scripture tells us. It also tells us that God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding. I hope this is not us.