Los Angeles School of Urbanism

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Downtown Los Angeles

The Los Angeles School of Urbanism or Los Angeles School of Urban Studies is a loosely organized school of urban research that emerged in the mid-1980s , with the city of Los Angeles as the seat of the two main universities involved, the University of California, Los Angeles and from the University of Southern California , as well as the research object.

Basic positions

In a conscious differentiation from the Chicago School , the urbanization of Modern explained mainly on theoretical models of centralization, consolidation and repression, which conceptualized Los Angeles School , the postmodern urban development of complex cultural and economic factors (especially the post-Ford ) influenced process that nobody follows linear logic and in which urban centers no longer dominate their surrounding areas. Novel developments such as the emergence of edge cities or closed housing estates are rather taking place in the periphery and then affect the inner cities.

In this context, the greater Los Angeles area was given a paradigmatic character. Beyond that, however, there is a rather loose connection between the participating researchers, without a common theoretical or programmatic basis.

Representative

The most important representatives of the Los Angeles School include Michael Dear , Allen J. Scott , Edward Soja , Michael Storper and Jennifer Wolch . The existence of an independent school of thought is particularly propagated by Dear. Others of those named were more skeptical in this regard or, in some cases, clearly turned away from the original critical neo-Marxist approach of the Los Angeles School . A parallel existing name is that of the ( economic geography ) Californian school , which alongside Scott and Storper v. a. Richard A. Walker ( Berkeley ) is attributed.

Mike Davis , who published City of Quartz, probably the most highly regarded work on contemporary development in Los Angeles in 1990 , is one of the founding members of the Los Angeles School and coined the name before Dear, but accused its representatives of joining the to participate in the mystification of Los Angeles as a “place of the future” produced by the cultural industry instead of deconstructing it.

criticism

Mark Gottdiener , who also criticized the Los Angeles School , which mainly consisted of geographers and urban planners, had ignored works from urban sociology, made similar, even sharper criticism . Other critics pointed to the economic problems of Los Angeles in the wake of the decline of Fordist industries and the general claim that there could be a "paradigmatic place" for complex processes affecting the entire world economy.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael J. Dear: The Los Angeles School of Urbanism . In: Geographical Rundschau . tape 57 , no. 1 , 2005, p. 30-37 .
  2. ^ EW Soja, AJ Scott: Los Angeles: Capital of the late twentieth century . In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space . tape 4 , no. 3 , 1986, pp. 249-254 , doi : 10.1068 / d040249 .
  3. ^ Christian Schmid: City, space and society: Henri Lefebvre and the theory of the production of space . Franz Steiner Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-515-08451-7 , pp. 58 .
  4. ^ Neil Smith : Marxism and Geography in the Anglophone World . In: Geographical Review . tape 3 , no. 2 , 2001, p. 5–21 ( geographische-revue.de [PDF]).
  5. ^ Michael Dear: Los Angeles and the Chicago School: Invitation to a Debate . In: City & Community . tape 1 , no. 1 , 2002, p. 5-32 , doi : 10.1111 / 1540-6040.00002 .
  6. ^ Frank Eckardt: On the topicality of Mike Davis . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2014, ISBN 978-3-531-18765-5 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-531-18766-2 .
  7. ^ Mark Gottdiener: Urban Analysis as Merchandising: The 'LA School' and the Understanding of Metropolitan Development . In: John Eade, Christopher Mele (Eds.): Understanding the City: Contemporary and Future Perspectives . Blackwell, Oxford / Malden 2002, ISBN 0-631-22407-6 , pp. 157-181 , doi : 10.1002 / 9780470693582.ch8 .
  8. ↑ James Curry, Martin Kenney: The paradigmatic city: Postindustrial illusion and the Los Angeles School . In: Antipode . tape 31 , no. 1 , 1999, p. 1-28 , doi : 10.1111 / 1467-8330.00089 .
  9. ↑ for an overview, see: Michael Dear, Andrew Burridge, Peter Marolt, Jacob Peters, Mona Seymour: Critical Responses to the Los Angeles School of Urbanism . In: Urban Geography . tape 29 , no. 2 , 2008, p. 101-112 , doi : 10.2747 / 0272-3638.29.2.101 .

literature