Like many Northern Californians, I tend to write Los Angeles off as a strange, fictional, glittering sort of place, inhabited by only the superficial and the crazed. We seem to forget that Los Angeles was founded in 1781, not that long after San Francisco (1776), and that it has a rich and complex history all its own; indeed, we do Los Angeles a grave disservice.

I first read this book in college, when I was taking a survey course on California history, and I was driven to pick it up again recently, because…well, I don’t know why, actually. I just thought it might be interesting to read it again, especially since it’s been 18 years since it was published, and a lot has changed. City of Quartz doesn’t talk about the strings of fires which have devastated the Los Angeles area in the last decade, for example, and it doesn’t address the fact that it’s the second largest city in the United States, and growing ever-larger, although it does talk about the sprawling development which characterizes the city.

What it does talk about is the interesting cultural environment of the city, a place where people are encouraged to drive, rather than walk, and a place where architecture and political systems are deliberately designed to be hostile. Although Los Angeles is often heralded as a model of diversity, it’s a very white city, at heart, right down to the checkpoints people need to pass to travel between certain areas of the city.

This book was written before the Rampart Scandal, which is a pity, since I think Davis would have had some excellent commentary on that; as it was, he devoted a lengthy chapter to a discussion of the Los Angeles police state, the corruption rife among LA cops, and the severely handcuffed liberal community in the city. He talks about power, and who has it, and development, and the environment, and a host of other exciting things.

City of Quartz is very much a scholarly work, and that means that it comes complete with snide footnotes and fancy words. But that’s what makes it, I think. It’s a book which forces me to take Los Angeles seriously, even though I may not think much of Los Angeles itself, and it’s an interesting view of cultural trends which aren’t just confined to Los Angeles anymore, like the use of surveillance cameras everywhere and the adroit manipulation of public opinion to restrict civil liberties. For that alone, this book is well worth reading.

Demographics:

City of Quartz, by Mike Davis. Published 1990, 462 pages. Sociology.