LOS-ANGELES AND THE ANTI-TRADITION OF THE SUBURBAN CITY

An anti-urban image of Los Angeles that projected the city as a sprawling suburban expanse of automobile freeways and smog without a downtown skyline was broadcast in the national press after the First World War, climaxing in 1960. The national emotional response to the lack of urban order in Los Angeles was triggered by the night view from the Hollywood Hills and realized in the imagery of Los Angeles as "Six suburbs in search of a city". In fact, the night view of the Los Angeles Basin defined the emergent urban axis of Wilshire Boulevard, expanding west from the downtown district along the elite corridor to Beverly Hills and the Pacific shore. The result of the continued development of both Wilshire Boulevard and the downtown district was a revision of the anti-urban imagery, signaled by high-rise construction and increasing urban density after 1960. Recent critical imagery of Los Angeles appears to be based on deep-rooted notions of traditional urban density and Old World pre-industrial city structure. The result is a continuing evaluation of Los Angeles in the national press as a terrae incognitae when compared with New York City as the traditional city prototype of the oikoumene. © 1992.