Which Way, L.A.?
Is Los Angeles Still a 'City of Quartz?'
In 1990, Mike Davis wrote City of Quartz, insisting that Los Angeles was not a west coast utopia, but a dystopia instead. Two years later, the Rodney King riots seemed to make him a prophet. His book is still used as a text for understanding LA history, even though Davis failed to predict the city's massive immigration. What did he tell us about economic inequality, race politics, the role of developers and architects — and community relations with the LAPD?
By Warren Olney • • 26m ListenIt's been 25 years since Mike Davis, a former meat-cutter and truck driver turned academic, published a book about Los Angeles called, City of Quartz. A Marxist intellectual, Davis focused on downtown LA, particularly the gleaming towers of redeveloped Bunker Hill, which loomed over the neighborhoods down below. That's where KCRW producer Evan George caught up with Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the LA Times who teaches City of Quartz at Occidental College.
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Warren Olney
former KCRW broadcaster
Evan George
Director of Content, News
Sarah Sweeney
Vice President of Talk Programming, KCRW
Christopher Hawthorne
Chief Design Officer, Mayor's Office, City of Los Angeles; former architecture critic at the Los Angeles Times
Brenda Stevenson
professor of history and African American studies at UCLA; author of “The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the LA Riots”
Michael Maltzan
Michael Maltzan Architecture