E. Hillard

But then I often think, you know, why did I go to California all that time ago in the first place? At the time, I always said Id gone because it was sexy, it was sunny. But Los Angeles is also the most spacey city in the world. You feel the most space.David Hockney, in an interview with Lawrence Weschler, David Hockney: looking at landscape/ being in landscape, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: LA Louver, 1998), 10.

Presentation events and publications organized by Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California Publication coordinated by Morphosis Assisted by students from Graphic Design Program, School of Art, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, Ca. Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of California, Los Angeles Photography, Film, and Environmental Design Departments, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, Ca. Distributed by the University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London

The L.A. Now presentation events and publications are made possible by generous funding provided by: The Seaver Institute ARCO Foundation California Statewide Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles Broad Art Foundation Catellus Development Corporation Thomas Properties Group Edward P. Roski, Jr./Majestic Realty Co. Urban Partners LLC Cushman Wakefield Inc. Maguire Partners

ISBN 0-9618705-6-7 Library of Congress Control Number 2001096796 Copyright 2001 Art Center College of Design 1700 Lida Street, Pasadena, California 91103 All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. Printed and bound by Dr. Cantzsche Druckerei, Germany

L.A. Now Volume One Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California

J. Fleischmann

ContentsINTRODUCTION

8

Foreword

8

Country Comparisons

Desert

42

70 74

Natural Disaster: Earthquakes

92

LOS ANGELES

14

Introduction

10 12

Sprawl

44

Flora

Natural Disaster: Wildfires

98

NATURAL HABITAT

Acknowledgments

50

Ecological Footprint

Fauna

58 60

82

Built Mass & Land Use

112

MAN-MADE HABITAT

Urban Growth

104PEOPLE

24

Ocean

Temperature

84

Parks & Public Lands

116

154MONEY

City Comparisons

30 33

Rivers & Lakes

Precipitation

64

86 87

Resources & Consumption

118

198CREDITS

Agglomeration Comparisons

Mountains

68

Wind

Resources & Consumption: Water

120 122

248

Megalopolis Comparisons

38

Natural Disaster: Landslides

90

Resources & Consumption: Energy

State Comparisons

40

Resources & Consumption: Food

Ethnicity

126

172

Spirituality

184Death

Technology/ Financial Services

220 222

Resources & Consumption: Waste

Immigration & Migration

128 132

178Age

196Global Economy/ Top Industries

Business Services/ Government Money/ Health Services

Air Travel

182Language

Tourism

206 210 212

226

Rail Travel

138

184 186

Los Angeles Industry

Pornography

230

Road Travel

Education

144

International Trade

Employment/ Unemployment

234

Air Quality

150

Civic Identity

188 192

Wholesale Trade/ Manufacturing

216

Income/ Household Ranking

238

100 People of Los Angeles

Homeless

162

Motion Picture/ T.V. Production

Expenditure

218

240 244

Body Beautiful

168

Housing

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INTRODUCTION

8

Foreword

Within every great city thrives a rich cluster of creative resources. These resourcesoften hidden behind the walls of cultural and educational institutions must somehow get involved in the critical issues that confront cities today and in the future. Their expertise and creativity must engage with ideas that can benefit the greater society. Leading educational institutions must, in essence, become civic leaders to shape the future in a tangible way. For this reason, Art Center College of Design organized L.A. Now as a design initiative to focus on downtown Los Angelesthe first in a series of wall-less classroom initiatives to foster fresh thinking about current architectural, design, art, and cultural issues beyond the classroom. L.A. Now is also the first collaboration between Art Center; the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts); and the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and, it is hoped, a model of how a citys native resources can benefit the community at large. This landmark booka graphic snapshot of the city at the beginning of the twenty-first century comprises vital data, images, and documentation about Los Angeles. We hope that through the material provided, civic and government leaders, developers, planners, architects, students, and citizens can explore the citys unique attributes and contemplate where we are heading in the next twenty years. By establishing the broader context of Los Angeles, a context that is not limited to formal or architectural conditions but includes socio-political and infrastructural ones as well, we hope to identify problems and opportunities within the city.

Because the responsibility of designing the citys future will fall both to individuals like Thom Mayne and todays architecture and design students, and to institutions like Art Center, UCLA, CalArts, and SCI-Arc, we asked Thom to join L.A. Now as the tutor and design leader for the initiative, which involved students, faculty, and creative individuals from around the city. Through L.A. Now, we strongly encourage the citys key decision-makers and the new mayoral administration to address the large-scale, long-range planning ideas necessary to address the citys enormous challenges. Volume two of L.A. Now presents proposals developed by students in UCLAs Architecture and Urban Design Department, in collaboration with SCI-Arc, to meet the future needs of downtown Los Angeles. The research and issues featured in this volume directly informed these urban studies. The L.A. Now proposals are far from unattainable, theoretical projects. They are, in fact, achievable and well worth considering in light of the profound growth and changes projected for Los Angeles by 2020. As a series of next steps to these proposals, we strongly recommend the formation of a unique task force of thinkers and civic and community leaders to develop discrete programs of urban ideas that can be implemented in the near future. We propose, as one of many such programs, the following twelve ideas (with thanks to Dan Rosenfeld for providing the first draft): (1) implement the plans for Civic Center MallLos Angeless Central Parkand develop Grand Avenue from the new cathedral to the Central Public Library with additional cultural and entertainment activites; (2) create a parkway along the Los Angeles River and rescue Taylor Yard, the largest parcel currently threatened by unsympathetic development; (3) restore El Pueblo as a vibrant cultural and commercial center; (4) extend the subway down Wilshire Boulevard to the ocean and down Ventura Boulevard to Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley, connect LAX to downtown via rail, and implement the continuation of the El Monte bus line to LAX via the I-110 and the I-105 high-occupancy vehicle lane; (5) develop 10,000 new residential units downtown; (6) plant trees that provide shade on downtown sidewalks; (7) cover the Hollywood/Santa Ana Freeway from Hill Street to Alameda, linking El Pueblo with downtown Los Angeles; (8) develop the Staples Center/Figueroa Corridor entertainment zone; (9) install historic street lamps throughout downtown; (10) develop the Central Avenue Art Park around The Museum of Contemporary Art at The Geffen Contemporary, Japanese American National

Museum, and proposed Children's Museum; (11) develop a new Justice Center to replace our outdated police headquarters; and (12) resurrect the Red Car surface trolley and its route from Chinatown through downtown to Exposition Park. Unlike the many studies of Los Angeles that are now on the shelf, we believe that L.A. Now can provide a real foundation for public discussion and subsequent development in Los Angeles. It is our greatest hope that the data and architecture proposals shown in the L.A. Now publications and presentation events will act as catalysts to spark new thinking about Los Angeles by the citys leadership and citizens at large. As an advocate for art and design throughout the world, Art Center College of Design will continue to implement wall-less classroom initiatives, both nationally and internationally, within diverse contexts and institutions to bring creativity, original thinking, and leadership to the challenges of today.

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INTRODUCTION

10

Introduction

The places of present-day architecture cannot repeat the permanences produced by the force of the Vitruvian firmitas. The idea of place as the cultivation and maintenance of the essential and the profound, of a genius loci, is no longer credibleYet the loss of these illusions need not necessarily result in a nihilistic architecture of negation. From a thousand different sites the production of place continues to be possible. Place is, rather, a conjectural foundationcapable of fixing a point of particular intensity in the universal chaos of our metropolitan civilization.Ignasi de Sol-Morales, Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture, trans. Graham Thompson (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997), 10304.

Los Angeles is a remarkable city. And it can be remarkably intimidating: elusive by virtue of constant flux, unfathomable in scope, and sublime in its chaotic complexity. Threatening to render any individual gesture meaningless in the overall scheme of things, the scale of L.A. can overwhelm us into inaction and apathy. The multiplicity of logics at play breeds conservative planning and other movements to fix, regulate, or otherwise circumscribe stable boundaries and values. But change is a permanent condition of the city, and while its fluctuations and discontinuities can overwhelm, it is possible to come to terms with them. It may even be possible to derive a certain comfort from them. It is with this attitude that L.A. Now has been put together. When Richard Koshalek, President of Art Center College of Design, asked us to develop projects for downtown Los Angeles, we responded by asking, What is Los Angeles? Our team of students needed to grapple with issues of scale, flux, and complexity prior to formulating any definitions or proposals. In this sense, it became useful to think of Los Angeles as a nation. With 13.1 million people, the population of the Los Angeles Agglomeration is larger than the population of Cuba or Sweden, twice the size of Switzerland, and four times that of Ireland. In the film Powers of Ten (1977), Charles and Ray Eames made cosmic concepts comprehensible by reducing them into familiar and conceivable units. Multiplying these units by ten to derive the larger entity at hand, these prolific and imaginative Californian designers organized and conveyed the scope of the universe through bite-sized chunks. Making the complicated more accessible, equating large concepts with known quantities, a sense of scale emerges. The unfathomable begins to become knowable.

While our project is about making vast quantities and complex systems accessible, it is not about finding lowest common denominators. Adamantly opposed to the rampant fascination with the generic, we locate the specific and idiosyncratic aspects of Los Angeles rather than identifying its common ground with other global locales. L.A. Now is particular to L.A.; there is no other way to engage a city and project its future without embracing its distinctions. To skirt these particulars, to flatten complexity under an organizational rubric that seeks out trends and commonalities, is to eschew the intimacy that a deep exploration of a city engenders. Engagement with the polyvalent, fluctuating complexity of Los Angeles is the only way to understand it, and to orchestrate its future. It should be said that we willingly acknowledge the reckless ambition of this inquiry and the dilettante nature of such an undertaking. With growth and flux operating simultaneouslythe city is expanding rapidly and in ways beyond our capacity to monitor the contents of this book are equal parts statistical and anecdotal. Both raw data for specific research agendas and interpretive guidelines for speaking about broader issues, L.A. Now is a tool for engaging the city and cultivating coherency. Rather than ascribe negative values to chaotic behavior, we endeavor to schematize these liquefactions of boundaries and territories. There is no literal jurisdiction to the Los Angeles Agglomeration, just urban intensification of radical proportions. Formulating a way of working on a city without discrete edges, allowing for the permutations of rapid, often exponential, expansion is paramount to such an enterprise. Resisting polemics and ideological alignments, we pursued a neutral field of information from which citizens, planners, and architects alike may draw interpretations and assessments. Our objective was first to render the conditions of the itinerant city apparent, developing projective frameworks in subsequent phases (see volume two, L.A. Now: Seven Proposals). Organizing information on shifting and unstable terrain is also the subject of the recent film Memento. The territories in the film, however, are interior ones, and involve the ways in which mental maps and memories are charted. In the story, the protagonist, who has lost the ability to form new memories, develops a system for registering information. Through a combination of annotated polaroids and textual tattoos, he devises a flawed but effective system for recording recent events and encounters: a fallback memory from which to sort, read, and re-shuffle when confronted with new input. Memory, in this sense, becomes an open catalog that

the main character references to make sense of his world. As the search for his wifes killer ensues, each subsequent entry allows the character to construct new, interpretive narratives of his recent past. As the film unfolds, we understand that truth is contingent and iterative, subject to new and malleable arrangements. If one recognizes the logic that enables this character to navigate the catalog that stands as his surrogate past, then one can easily imagine a technique for using this book. The information in the following pages is subject to a similar process of interpretation, as growth and fluctuation inflect current readings of the city. A series of working narratives develop as a result. An allied condition to working title or work in progress, these narratives are subject to change and further development. In this sense, the reader enacts the connective tissue that holds the city together or allows it to cohere. The Memento technique is one interpretive logic that might be deployed in navigating this bookand the city, by extension. This book is divided into four subjects: Natural Habitat, Man-Made Habitat, People, and Money. Not to be construed as a priori categories, they are simply the most minimal means of disciplining the information contained within the book. The will to engage with the city at this level, to pursue a kind of meaningful reading of it, is bound to two fundamental rights: to be a citizen, and to have access to public information. One could even argue that access to public information is necessary to true citizenship. This book is as much an effort to bridge these rightsto meet people halfway in the exercise of citizenship and accessas anything else. It allows residents a larger picture of the fabric in which they are a part, and makes public information intelligible. Noted information architect Richard Saul Wurman has observed that public shares the same root as publication. This formulation promotes a kind of freedom of information disposition toward data, replacing the ownership of information with a public compact for full and legible disclosure. It is in the same spirit that our research efforts were carried out. We are concerned with the lack of ingenuity in grappling with the city as an idea, and in developing tools to wrestle with its scope and complexity. L.A. Now is a provocation for further analysis and the advancement of interpretive techniques.

On behalf of Art Center College of Design, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to everyone who contributed to this extraordinary endeavor. We thank the generous sponsors, who gave us the encouragement and support to launch a project of considerable ambition; the core group of dedicated advisors who donated their Saturdays and gave shape to a daunting task; the design team working with Thom Mayne, whose inspiration, industry, and fortitude fostered the multiple projects within the project and kept them all moving; the staff and faculty members at Art Center, UCLA, CalArts, and SCI-Arc, whose openness and creativity allowed L.A. Now to take form; the exceptional group of advisors, jury members, and civic and community leaders, who provided insight and brought our visions closer to reality; the book and presentation event teams, who did a remarkable job of organizing a magnitude of material; and most of all, the students, whose imagination, ingenuity, and enthusiasm truly made L.A. Now happen. It is INTRODUCTION difficult to fathom the sheer amount of energy and hours necessary to coordinate a collaborative and collective project of this scope, and we would like to thank each of the creative individuals who helped to realize L.A. Now.

Book Team Graphic Design Directors Lorraine Wild and Scott Zukowski, CalArts CalArts Graphic Design Students Jessica Fleischmann, Stuart Charles Smith, Jon Sueda CalArts Publication Design Class Christina Chung David Grey Lehze Flax Jessica Fleischmann Jennifer McKnight Bruce Sachs Stuart Smith Jon Sueda Text Editor: Frances Anderton, Which Way, L.A.?, KCRW Art Center Photography Students (Book and Presentation Events) Izabela Berengut Dunja Dumanski Erik Hillard Brandon Kalpin Jane Kung Dave Lauridsen Theo Morrison Gala Narezo Lorenzo Pesce Jennifer Rocholl Allen Scott Vanessa Stump Makiko Takehara Art Center Environmental Design Students (Presentation Events) Nathan Barbour David Desmarais Eugene Han Chiaki Kanda Nadine Schelbert Art Center College of Design Film Students (Presentation Events) Annelize Bester Jasmine Bocs Eve Bregman John Brooks Michael Buchbinder Albert Choi Sean Donahue Melinda Epler Chris Gehl Ralph Herscu Eric Katz Jennifer Krasinski Omar Lagda Stephen Latty (team leader) Manny Marquez Alexander Martinez Trevor McMahan David Neham Elisabeth Rubin David Sanders Simba Sims Jackie Sourvelis Cassidy Sullivan Vee Vitanza Martin Von Will Randy Walker Il-Hoon Won David Zimmerman

12

Richard Koshalek and Dana Hutt I would like to acknowledge the tremendous efforts of the following people: Julianna Morais and Rose Mendez, for their vast organizational focus critical to this type of project, as well as their energy, intelligence, and proprietary care; Frances Anderton, Michael Dear, Con Howe, John Kaliski, and Richard Weinstein, who generously gave their time in the early formulation and definition of this project; Sylvia Lavin, for her support and advice; Dana Hutt, a trusty conduit and second voice throughout the dialogue between myself and Richard Koshalek; my students, Acknowledgments who set aside their own work to contribute to a project both larger and outside of themselves; Lorraine Wild, who has my implicit trust for her ability to instantaneously grasp sensibility, and for her independence and leadership; and Alexandra Loew, for her editorial advice. I second all the thanks that Richard extended, including the insight and guidance of our jury members. And, of course, thanks to Richard Koshalek, for allowing me to participate in his vision. His boundless energy and unlimited optimism made this project possible. Thom Mayne Project Team Project Directors: Richard Koshalek and Dana Hutt, Art Center College of Design Project Architect: Thom Mayne, Architecture and Urban Design Department, University Of California, Los Angeles, and Morphosis Project Manager: Julianna Morais, Morphosis Project Manager, Conceptual Phase: Rose Mendez, Morphosis Team Morphosis: Joe Baldwin, Perri Chasin, Mario Cipresso, David Grant, Vicki Hanson, Ed Hatcher, Maia Johnson, Edit Kozma, Mark Lipson, Alexandra Loew, Robyn Sambo, Martin Summers, Karen Wolfe, and Susan Wong Organizing Institution Art Center College of Design: Richard Koshalek, President Participating Institutions California Institute of the Arts (CalArts): Steven D. Lavine, President Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc): Neil Denari, Director University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA): Sylvia Lavin, Chair, Architecture and Urban Design Department Project Advisory Board Frances Anderton, Which Way, L.A.?, KCRW Michael Dear, Department of Geography, University of Southern California (USC) John Kaliski, AIJK and SCI-Arc Nelson Rising, Catellus Development Corporation Richard Weinstein, Architecture and Urban Design Department, UCLA Con Howe, Los Angeles City Planning Department Art Center College of Design Faculty Leaders Jeff Atherton, Photography Rob Ball, Environmental Design Peter di Sabatino, Environmental Design Nan Oshin, Photography Bob Peterson, Film

Project Contributors UCLA Architecture Students Paul Andersen Joe Baldwin Hojin Chang Jae Kwon Mario Cipresso Birgit Bruun Hansen Ed Hatcher Maia Johnson Peter Kimmelman Jae Kwon Nishant Lall Patrick McEneany Apurva Pande Andrew Scott Apoorva Shetty Martin Summers John Truong Susan Wong Daniel Wright Young Yi YiYi Zhou SCI-Arc Students Katsuhiro Ozawa Chea Seon Roh Angus Schoenberger UCLA Architecture Jury Members Frances Anderton, Which Way, L.A.?, KCRW Dana Cuff, UCLA Victoria Seaver Dean, The Seaver Institute William Fain, Johnson Fain Partners Tom Gilmore, Gilmore Associates Joseph Giovannini, Giovannini Associates Martha Harris, USC Craig Hodgetts, Hodgetts+Fung and UCLA Con Howe, Los Angeles City Planning Department John Kaliski, John Kaliski Urban Studio and SCI-Arc Rick Keating, Keating/Khang Sylvia Lavin, UCLA Greg Lynn, Greg Lynn FORM and UCLA Marta Male, Visiting Faculty, UCLA Eric Owen Moss, Eric Owen Moss Architects and SCI-Arc Nicolai Ouroussoff, Los Angeles Times Stephanos Polyzoides, Moule & Polyzoides Wolf Prix, Coop Himmelblau and UCLA Andrew Ratner, Cushman Realty Nelson Rising, Catellus Development Corporation Daniel Rosenfeld, Urban Partners Robert Somol, UCLA Anthony Vidler, UCLA Richard Weinstein, UCLA Art Center Project Support Margaret Bach, Director, Foundation Relations Jan Bronte, Manager, Cafeteria Bryan Brown, Supervisor, Production and Media Services Will Cheeseborough, Manager, Production and Media Services Erica Clark, Senior V.P International Initiatives ., Denise Gonzales Crisp, Senior Designer, Design Office Ellie Eisner, Production Manager, Design Office Linda Estrada, Administrative Assistant, Operations and Real Estate George Falardeau, V.P Operations and Real Estate ., Jill Farmer, Secretary, Design Office

Rich Haluschak, Controller Ron Jernigan, Executive V.P. and C.F.O. Ronald Jones, Provost Yasmine Khan, Associate Designer Jan Kingaard, Director, Communications and P.R. Sheila Low, Administrative Assistant to the President Leslie Marcus, Director of Alumni Affairs Kyoko Matsuo-Dominguez, Director, Photo Operations Lisa Mayeda, Associate Director, Corporate Relations Stephen Nowlin, V.P., Director, Williamson Gallery Patricia Belton Oliver, Director of Architecture and Planning Scarlett Powers Osterling, Senior V.P., Advancement Bill Sparling, Director, Campus Safety and Security Rachael Tiede, Coordinator, Communications and P.R. Janet Yamanaka, Student Store Project Sponsorship The Seaver Institute ARCO Foundation California Statewide Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles Catellus Development Corporation Broad Art Foundation Thomas Properties Group Edward P. Roski, Jr./Majestic Realty Co. Urban Partners LLC Cushman Wakefield Inc. Maguire Partners In-kind Support Southern California Association of Governments Los Angeles Magazine L.A. Weekly Magazine The Los Angeles Times I-Cubed Information Integration and Imaging, LLC Blair Graphics Artisan Entertainment Columbia Tristar Forward Pass TNT Original Movies United Artists/MGM Warner Brothers Project Assistance Aaron Betsky, Netherlands Architecture Institute John Bowsher Tim Christ, Morphosis Victoria Seaver Dean, The Seaver Institiute Jennifer Demello, Town Hall, Los Angeles Frank Gehry, Gehry Partners Gilmore Associates (Tom Gilmore, Dawn Garcia, Philip Stockstill) James Kenneth Hahn, Mayor of Los Angeles Bruce Herbkersman, Lowe Enterprises Commercial Group Jane Hyun Peter Kirby, Media Art Services Andrew Liang, Form Zero Robbie Macfarlane Michael Mann Lawrence Reed Manville Adrienne Medawar, Town Hall, Los Angeles Cara Mullio, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles Jang Park Jan Perry, Councilmember, Los Angeles City Council District 9 Margie J. Reese, General Manager, Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department Russell Sakaguchi, ARCO Foundation Jerry Scharlin, Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles Carol Schatz, Central City Association of Los Angeles Trollbck & Company (Jakob Trollbck, Bob Swensen, Laurent Fauchere, Antoine Tinguely, Chris Haak, Christian Gatgens, James Tosatti, Jasmine Jodry, Todd Neil, Nicole Amato, Meghan O Brien) David Trowbridge, Dogma Barbara Vohryzek, California Statewide Charlene Woodcock, University of California Press

photos 1449: E. Kozma

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Megalopolis Comparisons

3818.0 km 18.5 km

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This line spans 135 kilometers through Los Angeles. A series of photographs taken every 0.5 kilometers along the line starts on page 14 and continues through this chapter. Photographs by Edit Kozma

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It had taken almost half a day, and I had covered a distance that would have taken me through three or four Northeastern states, but I had finally found the other end of Los Angeles. And as I traveled around Moreno Valley that day, the people I talked to felt as much alienation from Los Angeles as my neighbors in Ventura.William Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles (Point Arena, Ca.: Solano Press Books, 1997), 2.28.5 km 29.0 km 29.5 km 30.0 km 30.5 km

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Defining Los AngelesFor the purposes of this book, the Los Angeles under scrutiny comprises the built mass that radiates from Los Angeles County to absorb parts of Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties. This is not the oftenconsidered, politically defined five-county area. The Los Angeles under consideration is the continuously connected mass of urban growth, or agglomeration, framed by mountains, ocean, and desert. All data in this book pertains to this area. L.A. Now is a snapshot of Los Angeles as defined above at this point in time. The region as described here is not definite; growth is anticipated north into Ventura County, south to San Diego, and east to Palm Springs, indicated in some maps in this book by a dotted line.

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TimelineLOS ANGELES 8,000 B.C. The Chumash settle in coastal villages 7,000 B.C. La Brea Woman dies in the Park La Brea area of Los Angeles 200 A.D. First Tongva Indians arrive in Southern California from the Mojave area 1769 First European explorers reach present-day Orange County 1769 Spanish occupation of California begins 1771 Mission San Gabriel founded 1776 Mission San Juan Capistrano becomes present-day Orange County's first permanent settlement 1781 El Pueblo de Nuestra Seora de la Reina de Los Angeles de Porcincula founded 1784 First three ranchos in Los AngelesDominguez, Nieto, and Verdugogranted 1797 Mission San Fernando Rey de Espaa founded by Father Lasun 1801 Jose Yorba establishes first rancho in Orange CountySantiago de Santa Ana 1805 First American visits Los Angeles 1805 First American commercial trading ship arrives San Pedro Bay 1810 Padres from Mission San Fernando dam Los Angeles River north of El Pueblo 1812 San Juan Capistrano-Wrightwood Earthquake 1817 First school established 1822 Mexico wins independence from Spain and begins rule over California 1827 John Temple opens El Pueblo's first general store 1835 Los Angeles given city status 1836 First official census taken in Los Angeles 1841 First California-bound wagon trains, the Workman-Rowland party, arrives 1842 Gold discovered near Saugus 1849 First city map drawn, comprising 28 square miles 1850 POPULATION: 2,968; AREA: 1.3 SQUARE MILES 1850 Los Angeles County established, comprising 4,340 square miles 1850 City of Los Angeles incorporated 1851 Mormon community settles in San Bernardino County 1853 San Bernardino County established 1853 First jail built 1854 Crime in Los Angeles rises to one murder per day 1854 Chinese immigrants brought in as laborers and servants 1857 Mormon community leaves San Bernardino County 1858 Butterfield Stage Line links L.A. to San Francisco and St. Louis 1858 Sisters of Charity becomes first hospital 1860 First telegraph link to San Francisco established 1862 Severe drought ends cattle ranching 1865 Union troops stop L.A. residents from celebrating Lincoln assassination 1865 First institute of higher learning, St. Vincent's College (now Loyola-Marymount), opens 1866 Central Park (now Pershing Square) established 1868 Los Angeles water system installed using iron pipes 1869 First railroad station at Alameda and Commercial Streets 1870 Navel oranges planted in Riverside County 1871 Massacre of 19 Chinese by mobs at Negro Alley 1873 Trolley line established by Main Street Railroad Company 1876 Southern Pacific Railroad completes connection to San Francisco 1881 Urban Southern Pacific Railway links L.A. to East Coast 1881 Los Angeles Times founded 1882 Downtown lit by electric Growth street lights 1885 Wilshire Boulevard dedicated 1887 Silver discovered in Santa Ana mountains 1887 Harvey Wilcox lays out Hollywood 1887 Los Angeles Electric Railway begins operation 1889 Orange County established 1889 New City Hall built on Broadway 1890 First Tournament of Roses Parade held in Pasadena 1891 Throop Polytechnic Institute of Pasadena (now California Institute of Technology) founded 1892 Oil discovered in Los Angeles 1892 Abbott Kinney purchases land to develop in present-day Venice 1892 Banning brothers begin developing Avalon on Catalina Island 1893 POPULATION: 66,020; AREA: 31 SQUARE MILES 1893 Mt. Lowe Railway opens 1893 Riverside County established 1893 Santa Fe Railroad dedicates La Grande Station 1894 National railroad strike triggers labor rioting 1895 California Bureau of Highways created 1896 Congress appropriates $3.9 million to build harbor at San Pedro 1896 Griffith J. Griffith donates 3,015 acres to create nation's largest urban park 1897 First known sighting of an automobile in L.A. 1897 City of Long Beach incorporated 1897 California Department of Highways created 1898 Los Angeles forms fifth symphony orchestra in the nation 1899 Los Angeles Stock Exchange opens 1900 The Automobile Club of Southern California established 1901 Pacific Electric Railway formed, connecting L.A. to Long Beach 1902 First movie theater opens on Main Street 1903 Hearst publishes the Los Angeles Examiner 1904 Mount Wilson Observatory founded 1905 Announcement of Owens Valley water project 1906 Beverly Hills founded 1907 Los Angeles Department of Engineering created 1908 First motion picture made completely in L.A. (In the Sultan's Power) completed 1909 Wilmington and San Pedro annexed by Los Angeles 1909 Southern California Edison founded 1909 Construction begins on L.A. Aqueduct 1909 First State Highway Bond Act issued for State Highway System 1910 Hollywood joins Los Angeles in order to receive water 1910 11,050-foot breakwater at L.A. Harbor built 1910 Los Angeles Times building bombed, killing 20 1911 C. P. Rodgers makes first transcontinental airplane flight from New York to Pasadena 1911 Manhattan Beach closed to African Americans 1912 First gas station in L.A. opens 1912 Los Angeles County Library established 1913 Georgia Broadwick becomes first woman to parachute from an airplane over L.A.1913 Aqueduct brings water from Owens Valley 1913 Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History opens 1914 Ford Motor Company opens first auto assembly plant in Southern California 1914 S.S. Missourian becomes first vessel to dock at L.A. Harbor after passing through Panama Canal 1915 POPULATION: 310,479; AREA: 191 SQUARE MILES 1915 Direct steamer service established between L.A. and Japan 1915 Universal Studios founded 1933 Long Beach Earthquake 1933 Mineral Wells Canyon Fire 1934 California State signroute numbering system adopted 1934 First drive-in theater opens 1939 Union Station opens 1939 90 film companies in operation 1940 First freeway (now Pasadena Freeway) in California opens 1942 First smog alert issued 1943 Zoot Suit Riots 1943 San Bernardino Freeway construction starts (I-10, completed in 1957) 1945 Santa Ana Freeway construction starts (I-5, completed in 1958) 1946 Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board established 1946 Commercial airlines move operations from Burbank to LAX 1946 KTLA becomes city's first commercial television station 1947 Cleveland Rams football team begins playing in Los Angeles 1947 Hollywood Ten charged with contempt of Congress 1947 Hollywood Freeway opens 1947 Black Dahlia murder occurs 1947 Mobster Bugsy Siegel gunned down in Beverly Hills 1947 Collier-Burns Act passed to speed up freeway building 1951 Bloody Christmas incident occurs 1951 State establishes Metropolitan Transit Authority 1952 Long Beach Freeway construction starts (I-710, completed in 1965) 1952 Harbor Freeway construction starts (I-110, completed in 1970) 1953 Driest year on record 1953 Four-level interchange links highways 101 and 110 1954 L.A. hit by worst smog ever, air and shipping traffic diverted 1954 Watts Towers completed 1954 President Eisenhower proposes National System of Interstate and Defense Highways 1955 Disneyland

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opens 1955 Ventura Freeway construction starts (U.S. 101, completed in 1974) 1955 Foothill Freeway construction starts (I-210, completed in 1977) 1956 California State University at Northridge established 1956 L.A. City Council rescinds 140-ft. building-height limit 1956 Golden State Freeway construction starts (I-5, completed in 1975) 1957 San Diego Freeway construction starts (I-405, completed in 1969) 1958 Brooklyn Dodgers move to Los Angeles 1958 First telecopter introduced 1959 First jet service from LAX connects L.A. to New York 1960 Minneapolis Lakers move to Los Angeles 1960 L.A. becomes the nation's second largest city 1961 Bel Air Fire 1961 Santa Monica Freeway construction starts (I-10, completed in 1966) 1962 Dodger Stadium opens 1963 Vincent Thomas Bridge opens in San Pedro 1964 Music Center opens 1964 Southern California Rapid Transit District formed 1965 Los Angeles County Museum of Art opens 1965 Watts Riots 1966 Los Angeles Zoo opens 1969 Manson murders take place 1970 POPULATION: 2,811,801; AREA: 908 SQUARE MILES 1971 Sylmar Earthquake 1971 Arco builds twin towers in downtown L.A. 1974 J. Paul Getty Museum moves to Pacific Palisades 1975 Southern California Air Quality Management District formed 1975 Pacific Design Center opens 1978 Pasadena hosts first Doo-Dah Parade 1978 Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area created by Congress 1978 Agoura-Malibu Fire 1979 Los Angeles National Forest Fire 1980 Screen Actors Guild strike 1980 Panorama Fire 1985 Wheeler Fire 1987 Whittier Narrows Earthquake 1990 Santa Barbara Fire 1991 Rodney King incident occurs 1992 Landers Earthquake 1992 Rodney King verdict triggers riots 1993 Twenty-one wind-driven fires rage across the agglomeration 1993 Kinneloa Fire 1993 Laguna Fire 1993 Topanga Fire 1993 Inaugural run of MTA's Metro Rail into Union Station 1993 Glenn Anderson Freeway opens (I-105) 1994 Northridge Earthquake 1999 Willows Fires 2000 POPULATION: 13,100,768; AREA: 1,634 SQUARE MILES Projected 2003 Metro Blue Line links Union Station with Chinatown, Highland Park, and Pasadena Projected 2010 High Speed Rail begins operation PROJECTED 2020 POPULATION: 21,139,700; AREA: 1,797 SQUARE MILES WORLD 150,000 YEARS AGO POPULATION: 1,000,000 120,000 years ago Neanderthals roam in Western Europe and Central Asia 100,000 years ago Modern humans in eastern and southern Africa 90,000 years ago First evidence of modern humans in East Asia 35,000 years ago Fully modern humans settle the European continent as Neanderthals go extinct 20,000 years ago Peak of last ice age 11,000 years ago Animals first domesticated 10,000 years ago Glaciers retreat, as temperate deciduous woodlands spread northward 5,0002,500 B.C. Urban civilizations thrive in the valleys of the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow Rivers 2,500 B.C. Major cities take root in the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley 500 B.C. Climax of the Classical Age 1 B.C. Half the global population lives in the three major empires of Rome, Parthia, and Han China 10501350 The Crusades 13001400 Bubonic Plague 15001600 The age of exploration and European expansion 175663 French and Indian War 1776 America declares independence 1803 Louisiana Purchase 1820 Missouri Compromise 1845 Texas Annexation 1846 Oregon settlement 1849 California Gold Rush 1850 POPULATION: 900,000,000 1848 Mexican-American War ends, Mexico cedes California to U.S. 1850 California admitted to statehood 1853 Gadsden Purchase 1837 Patent of first electric telegraph 186165 American Civil War 1867 U.S. purchases Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million 1869 Transcontinental Railroad in U.S. completed 1876 Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone 1882 Chinese immigration to U.S. banned 1885 Development of first automobile by Daimler & Benz 1890 Bureau of the Census announces closing of the American frontier 1893 POPULATION: 1,484,660,000 1895 Marconi invents radio telegraphy 1896 Revival of Olympic Games in Athens 1914 Panama Canal opens 1914 World War I begins 1915 POPULATION: 1,677,150,000 1917 U.S. enters World War I 1917 U.S. Immigration Act bans immigrants from Asiatic zone 1918 World War I ends 1919 U.S. declines entry into League of Nations 1919 Volstead Act passes, implementing Prohibition in U.S. 1920 Inauguration of League of Nations 1921 Emergency Quota Act drastically curbs immigration to U.S. 1923 More than 13 million cars on U.S. roads 1928 Penicillin discovered 1929 Wall Street Crash starts Great Depression 1932 POPULATION: 1,921,662,000 193436 Mass migration of farmers from Great Plains to California 193945 World War II 1945 Cold War begins 195055 The Korean War 195475 The Vietnam War 1957 First artificial satellite, Sputnik II, launched by U.S.S.R. 1959 U.S. Senate Bill 480 establishes a national 12, 414-mile freeway and expressway system 1961 Berlin Wall built, separating East and West Berlin 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis 1966 U.S. Department of Transportation created 1969 NASA lands first man on moon 1970 POPULATION: 3,548,414,000 1972 U.S. Senate approves Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT) I 1973 Oil crisis 1989 Cold War ends 1989 End of Communism in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, East Germany, and Bulgaria 1990 NATO and Warsaw Pact agree on conventional arms limitation in Europe 1993 1.8 million online hosts 1998 36.7 million online hosts 1998 107 million online users 2000 POPULATION: 6,000,000,000 2000 50% of worlds population lives in cities 2000 600 million passenger cars worldwide 2000 1.7 million biological species in the world identified 2001 Over 100 million online hosts Projected 2005 Interactive TV in over 30% of American, Japanese, and Western European homes Projected 2015 Populations approach 1015 million in Buenos Aires, Cairo, Istanbul, Jakarta, Lahore, Los Angeles, Manila, Osaka, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, Tehran, and Tianjin; approach 16-20 million in Beijing, Calcutta, Delhi, Dhaka, Karachi, New York, So Paulo, and Shanghai; and exceed 25 million in Bombay, Lagos, and Tokyo PROJECTED POPULATION IN 2020: 8,000,000,000 Projected 2020 Top ten countries receiving tourists (in descending order): China, U.S., France, Spain, Hong Kong, U.K., Italy, Mexico, Russia, and Czech Republic Projected 2020 Top ten countries creating tourists (in descending order): Germany, Japan, U.S., China, U.K., France, Netherlands, Canada, Russia, and Italy Projected 2090 Average temperature 5 degrees Celsius higher than average in 1900 due to global warming -

38.0 km

Timeline mapLa Brea Woman 8

gold discovered at Placerita Canyon

Indigenous villages 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. Akurangna Asuksangna Engovangna Hutukngna Kuruvangna Nakaungna Pasbengna Pasekgna Puvungna Saangna Sibangna Sisitcanongna Suangna Sukangna Tibahangna Tsavingna Yangnaf ir s

Mission San Fernando Rey de Espaa

San Gabriel Mission (1775) San Gabriel Mission (1771)

nd par Rowla manWork

ty

Range of Chumash Indians 5 10

1

12 11 14

2

6 Range of Tonguu Indians 3 13 16 15 9

4 7

firs

LOS ANGELES

26San Francisco

tc

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se l

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isi Mission San Juan Capistrano to rs

Early

17001850

Mormons arrive

ns leav e

Los Angeles County New York Ventura County Mt. Wilson Observatory Griffith Park Universal Studios

S Bu outh tte e rfie rn Pa ld S cif tag ic Ra tel e li ilw eg rap ne ay h li ne

Los Angeles County

Mormo

Mt. Lowe Railway

Throop Polytechnic Institute of Pasadena Tournament of Roses

San Bernardino County

t l fligh nenta conti trans

San Bernardino County

Urban Growth

ilroad tinental Ra Transcon

Chin

nts igra imm eseite Bu

St. Vincent's (Loyola-Marymount) Japan

Orange Countysteamer to Ja

iel ds

panS.S. Missourian

silver discovered

rf

ta ge lin e

San Pedro Harbor

Orange County

Riverside County San Diego

Riverside County

18511893

18941915

San Diego County

Panama

Minneapolis

Ventura County Hollywood Bowl Hollywood Sign San Francisco1

Ra m s

Los Angeles County Rose Bowl

Burbank Airport Ventura County

Cleveland Brooklyn

Bloody Christmas

La ke rs

er dg Do

s

San Bernardino County New York

California Aqueduct

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1LAXZoot Suit Riots 110s jet

California Aqueduct

Watts Towersairl ink

ic erv

e

Colorado River Aqueduct Orange County

Watts Riots

Disneyland

Colorado River Aqueduct

Orange County

Riverside County

Riverside County

19161932

San Diego County

19331970San Diego County

38.5 km

39.0 km

39.5 km

40.0 km

40.5 km

41.0 km

Colorado River Aqueduct14

Sierra Pelona

Ventura County Los Angeles County118

San Gabriel MountainsSan Bernardino County

27

San Fernando Valley170

2

Sa n

Be rn

ard in

Santa Monica Mountains National Recreational Area1

oM ou

19

66 10

California Aqueduct

nta

ins

Puente Hills42 105 107 72 57

71

83 215

n Sa ta

Chino Hills

a nic Mo y Ba

wildfire earthquake railways

605 39 22 56

highways / freeways aqueduct river

Sa ntOrange County

aA

na M

Sa n

Pe dro

Ch an ne l

19712001

Sa nP ed ro B

ou nt ain sRiverside County

ay

San Joaquin Hills

San Diego County

Ventura County

Los Angeles County San Bernardino County

Orange County

Riverside County

Futuresources: www.losangelesalmanac.com Michael Jacob Rochlim, Ancient L.A. and Other Essays (Los Angeles: Unreinforced Masonry Studio, 1999)

San Diego County41.5 km 42.0 km 42.5 km 43.0 km 44.0 km

Population of Los Angeles, 2000rank 1 2 3 4 5 LOS ANGELES 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 population city 3,694,820 Los Angeles 1,123,224 Unincorporated 461,522 Long Beach 337,977 Santa Ana 328,014 Anaheim 255,166 Riverside 194,973 Glendale 189,594 Huntington Beach 185,401 San Bernardino 165,196 Garden Grove 158,007 Ontario 151,088 Santa Clarita 149,473 Pomona 143,072 Irvine 142,381 Moreno Valley 137,946 Torrance 133,936 Pasadena 128,929 Fontana 128,821 Orange 127,743 Rancho Cucamonga 126,003 Fullerton 124,966 Corona 117,005 Thousand Oaks 115,965 El Monte City 112,580 Inglewood Comparisons 111,351 Simi Valley 108,724 Costa Mesa 107,323 Downey 105,080 West Covina 103,298 Norwalk 100,316 Burbank 96,375 South Gate 93,493 Compton 93,102 Mission Viejo 91,873 Rialto 89,730 Carson 88,207 Westminster 85,804 Alhambra 84,112 Hawthorne 84,084 Santa Monica 83,680 Whittier 79,345 Lakewood 78,282 Buena Park 75,837 Baldwin Park 72,878 Bellflower 70,032 Newport Beach 69,845 Lynwood 68,393 Upland 67,504 Tustin 67,168 Chino 64,029 Victorville 63,591 Redlands county Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Orange Orange Riverside Los Angeles Orange San Bernardino Orange San Bernardino Los Angeles Los Angeles Orange Riverside Los Angeles Los Angeles San Bernardino Orange San Bernardino Orange Riverside Ventura Los Angeles Los Angeles Ventura Orange Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Orange San Bernardino Los Angeles Orange Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Orange Los Angeles Los Angeles Orange Los Angeles San Bernardino Orange San Bernardino San Bernardino San Bernardino rank 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 population 63,428 63,261 62,582 62,150 61,891 61,348 60,051 58,974 58,918 58,812 57,746 57,716 57,077 56,287 55,266 54,978 53,505 53,054 51,488 49,415 47,662 46,837 46,783 46,488 46,229 44,712 44,605 44,054 41,207 41,145 41,063 39,804 38,816 37,403 36,929 36,664 36,189 35,716 35,410 35,110 34,980 33,998 33,852 33,826 33,784 33,377 33,049 31,711 31,638 31,415 30,004 28,928 city Pico Rivera Redondo Beach Hesperia Montebello Laguna Niguel Huntington Park Monterey Park La Habra Yorba Linda Hemet Gardena Temecula Camarillo Diamond Bar Paramount Fountain Valley Rosemead Arcadia Cerritos Glendora Colton Covina La Mirada Placentia Cypress Azusa Highland Bell Gardens Yucaipa Rancho Palos Verdes La Puente San Gabriel Culver City Stanton Monrovia Bell Perris West Hollywood Brea Dana Point San Dimas Claremont Manhattan Beach San Juan Capistrano Beverly Hills Temple Montclair Lawndale La Verne Moorpark Walnut Lake Elsinore county Los Angeles Los Angeles San Bernardino Los Angeles Orange Los Angeles Los Angeles Orange Orange Riverside Los Angeles Riverside Ventura Los Angeles Los Angeles Orange Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles San Bernardino Los Angeles Los Angeles Orange Orange Los Angeles San Bernardino Los Angeles San Bernardino Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Orange Los Angeles Los Angeles Riverside Los Angeles Orange Orange Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Orange Los Angeles Los Angeles San Bernardino Los Angeles Los Angeles Ventura Los Angele Riverside

30

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125

111 101 25 116

154

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136 143

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22 137 115

146

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153 128 152

50.0 km

19 71 78 77 34 83 69 149 47 92 100 8 93 89 148 97 37 68 23 43 73 17 96 118 98 10 114 28 58 72 51 12 1 130 39 150 82 55 49 84 102 151 129 141 65 57 104 156 5 24 87 79 52 40 106 145 107 120 122 31 46 27 14 38 159 59 94 138 60 74 29 90 32 66 44 155 99 62 20 119 75 21 121 42 15 70 41 123 53 35 4 88 117 140 76 135 124 157 85 9 18 131 139 126 2 108 36 147 48 67 81 3 158 7 13 105 127 26 45 103 33

16

133 86

113

80 132

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56 95 91

63

0 2 4 6 8 10

20 Miles

144

There were millions of LAs, an infinite fan of superimposed cities, each one thrown out from somebodys perception and memory. Every bit of town, every sunny facade and piece of street litter and palm frond, had to be illuminated by personal significance, to seem to collude in someones fate somehow, or else never get noticed at all, never in some sense exist.Jim Paul, Medieval in LA: A Fiction (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1996), 23.

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Population of Los Angeles, 2000 (continued)rank population city 104 28,083 Maywood 105 24,292 South Pasadena 106 24,208 Cudahy 107 24,157 Norco 108 24,157 Seal Beach 109 23,779 San Jacinto 110 23,727 Laguna Beach 111 23,564 San Fernando 112 23,562 Banning 113 21,486 Duarte 114 21,144 South El Monte 115 20,537 Agoura Hills 116 20,318 La Caada Flintridge 117 20,046 Lomita 118 18,681 Loma Linda 119 18,566 Hermosa Beach 120 17,438 Santa Fe Springs 121 16,380 Artesia 122 16,033 El Segundo 123 15,408 La Palma 124 14,779 Hawaiian Gardens 125 13,643 Fillmore 126 13,340 Palos Verdes Estates 127 12,945 San Marino 128 12,575 Malibu City 129 12,568 Commerce Comparisons 130 11,626 Grand Terrace 131 11,536 Los Alamitos county Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Riverside Orange Riverside Orange Los Angeles Riverside Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles San Bernardino Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Orange Los Angeles Ventura Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles San Bernardino Orange rank 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 population 11,384 10,578 10,218 9,333 8,934 8,368 8,342 7,676 5,999 5,712 5,438 5,125 3,127 2,155 1,875 1,871 1,446 855 777 ---------city Beaumont Sierra Madre Crestline Signal Hill Lake Arrowhead Westlake Village Woodcrest Rolling Hills Estates Villa Park La Habra Heights Big Bear Lake Running Springs Avalon Arlington Hidden Hills Rolling Hills Irwindale Bradbury Industry Vernon Point Dume Topanga Devore Winchester Venice Wilmington San Pedro Watts county Riverside Los Angeles San Bernardino Los Angeles San Bernardino Los Angeles Riverside Los Angeles Orange Los Angeles San Bernardino San Bernardino Los Angeles Riverside Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles San Bernardino Riverside Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES

32

The total population of Los Angeles is 13,100,768source: U.S. Census 2000 (www.census.gov)

50.5 km

51.0 km

51.5 km

52.0 km

52.5 km

53.0 km

How big is the population of Los Angeles compared to other major metropolitan areas? London x 1.8Amsterdam x 8.2 Hong Kong x 1.9 Paris x 6.1

Madrid x 4.6 Barcelona x 8.7

Taipei x 2.7

Chicago x 4.5

Philadelphia x 8.6

Sydney x 3.2 Phoenix x 9.9 Caracas x 3.8 Brasilia x 6.6

Agglomeration Comparisons

Houston x 6.7

sources: The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 2001 (New York: World Almanac Books, 2001) U.S. Census 2000 (www.census.gov)

57.0 km

It has often been confidently predicted that Los Angeles will eventually become the first world city, both in its techno-economics and in the mosaic of its population and culture, what Mayor Richard Riordan calls the capital city of the future. But it may be a future like none ever envisaged in America. In the apparently unbridgeable gap between the people on the streets and barrios, and those in the picture-window suites, Los Angeles bears worrisome resemblances to Caracas and Singapore, to Warsaw and Seoul, and, until recently at least, to Hong Kong. The elites behind those picture windows have more in common with their offshore counterparts than they do with their compatriots down below and beyond the gates.Peter Schrag, Paradise Lost: Californias Experience, Americas Future (New York: The New Press, 1998), 27980.

56.0 km

56.5 km

53.5 km

54.0 km

54.5 km

55.0 km Claremont

55.5 km

68.5 km

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LOS ANGELES

3459.0 km

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Sao Paulo

Tokyo

LOS ANGELES

36

New York City

Agglomeration Comparisons

Mexico City

Bombay

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73.5 km

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75.0 km

75.5 km

Lagos Shanghai

Los Angeles

Agglomerations around the globe, 2001rank population 1. 26,444,000 2. 21,199,865 3. 18,131,000 4. 18,066,000 5. 17,755,000 6. 13,427,000 7. 13,100,768 8. 12,918,000 9. 12,887,000 10. 12,560,000 city Tokyo New York City Mexico City Bombay So Paulo Lagos Los Angeles Calcutta Shanghai Buenos Aires projected population (2015) 26,444,000 29,043,815 19,180,000 26,138,000 20,397,000 23,173,000 21,139,700 17,252,000 14,575,000 14,076,000 projected rank (2015) 2 1 9 3 7 4 5 11 13 14

source: The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 2001 (New York: World Almanac Education Group, Inc., 2001)

Buenos Aires

Calcutta

Los Angeles is a new addition to the list of world citiesa city that hardly existed in the middle of the nineteenth century, which is on course to become the largest in the United States, a key focus of the Pacific economy, a city that is still growing with the frenetic speed of the Third World. Equally, it is a city that is peculiarily geared to the fragmented shape of the post-industrial economy, a place which is a key centre simultaneously for low-skilled, low-wage manufacturing and the highest of high technology, as well as for what some at least would say is the most important of all, that is the Hollywood image manufacturing industry, with its power to tap deep-seated emotional responses to the Los Angeles way of life.Deyan Sudjic, The 100 Mile City (New York: Harvest Books, 1993), 26566.

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SanSan Megalopolis(San Francisco to San Diego) Population 29,016,756 1. Bakersfield 2. Concord 3. Dana Point 4. Encinitas 5. Escondido 6. Fresno 7. Gilroy 8. Hanford 9. Lancaster 10. Lompoc 11. Long Beach 12. Los Angeles 13. Los Banos 14. Madera 15. Merced 16. Modesto 17. Monterey 18. Moorpark 19. Napa 20. Oakland 21. Oceanside 22. Oxnard 23. Palmdale 24. Palo Alto 25. Porterville 26. Riverside 27. Sacramento 28. Salinas 29. San Bernardino 30. San Diego 31. San Francisco 32. San Jose 33. San Luis Obispo 34. Santa Barbara 35. Santa Clarita Megalopolis 36. Santa Cruz Comparisons 37. Santa Maria 38. Santa Monica 39. Santa Rosa 40. Stockton 41. Thousand Oaks 42. Tulare 43. Tustin 44. Vacaville 45. Vallejo 46. Visalia 47. Woodland

LosLas Megalopolis(Los Angeles to Las Vegas) Population 14,866,019 1. Apple Valley, California 2. Baker, California 3. Barstow, California 4. Hesperia, California 5. Los Angeles, California 6. Riverside, California 7. San Bernardino, California 8. Victorville, California 9. Henderson, Nevada 10. Las Vegas, Nevada

BostonD.C. Megalopolis(Boston to Washington, D.C.) Population 42,004,111 1. Bridgeport, Connecticut 2. New Haven, Connecticut 3. Norwalk, Connecticut 4. Stamford, Connecticut 5. Washington, D.C. 6. Wilmington, Delaware 7. Baltimore, Maryland 8. Boston, Massachusetts 9. Lowell, Massachusetts 10. Worchester, Massachusetts 11. Atlantic City, New Jersey 12. Jersey City, New Jersey 13. Newark, New Jersey 14. Trenton, New Jersey 15. Brooklyn, New York 16. New York City, New York 17. Queens, New York 18. Staten Island, New York 19. White Plains, New York 20. Allentown, Pennsylvania 21. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 22. Lancaster, Pennsylvania 23. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 24. Reading, Pennsylvania 25. York, Pennsylvania 26. Providence, Rhode Island

LOS ANGELES

38

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82.5 km

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83.5 km

84.0 km

source: U.S. Census 2000 (www.census.gov)

10 9SanSan Megalopolis

8 4 5 7 6

110 9LosLas Megalopolis

BostonD.C. Megalopolis

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If considered among states, Los Angeles would be the 5th most populous in the nation.LOS ANGELES1. 2. 3. 4. 5. California Texas New York Florida Los Angeles 33,871,648 20,851,820 18,976,457 15,982,378 13,100,768

40

1. California

2. Texas

3. New York

4. Florida

5. Los Angeles Agglomeration

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88.0 km

Among states, the population of Los Angeles equals1.1 Pennsylvanias 1.1 Illinoises 1.2 Ohios State 1.3 Michigans Comparisons 1.6 Georgias 1.6 New Jerseys 1.6 North Carolinas 1.9 Virginias 2.1 Massachusetts 2.2 Indianas 2.2 Washingtons 2.3 Missouris 2.3 Tennessees 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.9 2.9 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.8 3.8 3.9 4.5 Wisconsins Marylands Arizonas Minnesotas Alabamas Louisianas Colorados Kentuckys South Carolinas Oklahomas Oregons Connecticuts Iowas 4.6 Mississippis 4.9 Arkansas 4.9 Kansas 5.9 Utahs 6.6 Nevadas 7.2 New Mexicos 7.2 West Virginias 7.7 Nebraskas 10.1 Idahos 10.3 Maines 10.6 New Hampshires 10.8 Hawaiis 12.5 Rhode Islands 14.5 16.7 17.4 20.4 20.9 21.5 22.9 26.5 Montanas Delawares South Dakotas North Dakotas Alaskas Vermonts District of Columbias Wyomings

source: U.S. Census 2000 (www.census.gov)

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Among countries, the population of Los Angeles equals1.2 1.2 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.5 1.8 Cubas Greeces Belgiums Czech Republics Hungarys Portugals Swedens Switzerlands 1.5 2.5 3.2 3.4 3.5 4.7 47.5 Finlands Denmarks Singapores New Zealands Irelands Panamas Icelands

Country Comparisons

Los Angeles vs. the ten most populous countries in the worldrank 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. country China India United States of America Indonesia Brazil Russia Pakistan Bangladesh Japan Nigeria population 1,261,832,482 1,014,003,817 275,562,673 224,784,210 172,860,370 146,001,176 141,553,775 129,194,224 126,549,976 123,337,822 13,100,768 or how many L.A. agglomerations 96 77 21 17 13 11 10 9 9 9 or one Ecuador or Guatemala

93.0 km

60. Los Angeles

source: The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 2001 (New York: World Almanac Books, 2001)

Guatemala

Ecuador

Los Angeles Agglomeration

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Los Angeles among nationsa short population sketch

Country Comparisons4 9 2 3 2 3 11 6 16 10 1 20 15 4 918 2 7 313 5 17 5 8 14 13 12 4 6 19 1 1 7

LOS ANGELES

42

8 7

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12

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The Netherlands Population 15,892,237 1. Delfzijl 2. Groningen 3. Assen 4. Leeuwarden 5. Zwolle 6. Arnhem 7. Utrecht 8. Amsterdam 9. Den Helder 10. The Hague 11. Rotterdam 12. Terneuzen 13. Dordrecht 14. Tilburg 15. Eindhoven 16. Maastricht

Los Angeles Population 13,100,768 1. Los Angeles 2. Long Beach 3. Santa Ana 4. Anaheim 5. Riverside 6. Glendale 7. Huntington Beach 8. San Bernardino 9. Garden Grove 10. Ontario 11. Santa Clarita 12. Pomona 13. Irvine 14. Moreno Valley 15. Torrance 16. Pasadena 17. Fontana 18. Orange 19. Rancho Cucamonga 20. Fullerton

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Switzerland Population 7,262,372 1. Schaffhausen 2. Frauenfeld 3. Liestal 4. Delemont 5. Biel 6. Neuchtel 7. Bern 8. Lucerne 9. Sarnen 10. Zug 11. Saint Gallen 12. Glarus 13. Altdorf 14. Grindelwald 15. Thun 16. Lausanne 17. Geneva 18. Zermatt 19. Locarno 20. Lugano 21. St. Moritz

Belgium Population 10,241,506 1. Zeebrugge 2. Ostend 3. Bruges 4. Ghent 5. Kortrijk 6. Brussels 7. Antwerp 8. Hasselt 9. Lige 10. Namur 11. Bastogne 12. Charleroi 13. Mons

98.5 km

100.5 km 99.0 km Downtown Los Angeles 99.5 km 100.0 km

106.0 km Jefferson Park

LOS ANGELES

44

Sprawl

101.0 km

Jogging in the dark on Halloween of 1988, on the unfinished interstate leading out of of Forney, Texas, Grant was called the moon. Not that he hadnt been ready to go Forney, Texas, Grant was called by by the moon. Not that he hadnt been ready to go hed been thinking a lot about Los Angeles, anyway. Hed applied to the Art Center in in Pasadena a a kind dare to himself. But until that particular night, he didnt believe Pasadena asas kind ofof dare to himself. But until that particular night, he didnt believe he would go. He doesnt really even want to say this, as its strange, but that night he seemed actually to feel the moon drawing him westward, beyond Dallas, beyond Abilene, all the way to L.A. LA.101.5 km

JayPaul, Medieval in LA: A Fiction (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1996), 109. Jim Gummerman, Chez Chance (Berkeley: University of California102.0 km 102.5 km

Press, 1997).103.0 km

103.5 km

The westward movement of national population centers, 18002000

source: www.census.gov (U.S. Census 2000)

104.0 km

104.5 km

105.0 km

105.5 km

107.0 km

Top 10 sprawlers and the in per-capita wth h gro on owt r ti sources of sprawl ula to g pop tedLOS ANGELES

46

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

city Atlanta 36 Houston 30 Sprawl New York City 100 Washington, D.C. 53 Philadelphia 89 Los Angeles 0 Dallas-Fort Worth 0 Tampa 15 Phoenix 0 Minneapolis-St. Paul 49

rela n d to late io awl l re spr umpt f raw % o cons f sp d %o lan64 70 0 47 11 100 100 85 100 51source: Sprawl City (www.sprawlcity.org)

106.5 km

107.5 km

108.0 km

108.5 km

109.0 km

109.5 km

Population density change, 19901997

above 1, 000 501- 000 1, 1500 declne i

source: Southern California Association of Governments (www.scag.ca.gov)

110.0 km

I remember the day I found the other end. It was a moody, rainy morning in the spring of 1990, and I braved the freeways for three-plus hours in my thirteen-year-old Honda Civic to go to Moreno Valley in Riverside County. Skidding across the wet lanes of the freewaySouthern Californians are terrible wet-weather drivers, treating every rainstorm as if it were a blizzardI traveled through suburb after suburb, past shopping center after shopping center and tract after tract. Camarillo. Calabasas. Woodland Hills. Sherman Oaks. Studio City. Glendale. Pasadena. Duarte. San Dimas. Pomona. Corona. The suburban monotony was so continuous that it was numbing.111.0 km William Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles

112.5 km

110.5 km

(Point Arena, Ca.: Solano Press Books, 1997), 1-2.111.5 km 112.0 km

113.0 km

113.5 km

114.0 km Culver City

114.5 km

115.0 km

116.0 km

116.5 km

117.0 km

117.5 km

118.0 km

121.0 km

121.5 km

122.0 km

122.5 km

123.0 km

LOS ANGELES

48127.5 km

125.5 km

126.0 km

126.5 km

127.0 km

128.0 km

130.0 km

128.5 km

129.0 km

129.5 km

130.5 km

115.5 km

118.5 km Marina Del Rey

119.0 km

119.5 km

120.0 km

120.5 km Santa Monica

123.5 km

124.0 km

124.5 km

125.0 km

131.0 km

Two general kinds of rhetoric can be distinguished, then. One is a kind of hyperbolic exceptionalism. In this case, Los Angeles has been treated as the big exception in the history of urbanism. The other tradition puts Los Angeles into a context of paradigmatic normalcy. In this case, Los Angeles has been assumed to be the future model for all cities.Roger Keil, Los Angeles (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998), xiv.

photos 50-54: B. Kalpin

NATURAL HABITAT

50

NATURAL HABITAT

52

S. Zukowski

Desert

Natural Disaster: Earthquakes

Flora

Natural Disaster: Wildfires

NATURAL HABITAT

54

Ecological Footprint

Fauna

Ocean

Temperature

Rivers & Lakes

Precipitation

Mountains

Wind

Natural Disaster: Landslides

NATURAL HABITAT

56

Oh, I love L.A., the twenty-seven-year-old flack gushed over lunch at the Lido Buffet. Youve got the mountains, youve got the ocean, youve got the desert. Not that I ever go to any of these places, but its nice to know theyre there.Dennis Hensley, Misadventures in the ( 213 ): A Novel (New York: Rob Weisbach Books, 1998), 12.

Paranoia about nature, of course, distracts attention from the obvious fact that Los Angeles has deliberately put itself in harms way. For generations, market-driven urbanization has transgressed environmental common sense. Historic wildfire corridors have been turned into view-lot suburbs, wetland liquefaction zones into marinas, and floodplains into industrial districts and housing tracts. Monolithic public works have been substituted for regional planning and a responsible land ethic. As a result, Southern California has reaped flood, fire, and earthquake tragedies that were as avoidable, as unnatural, as the beating of Rodney King and the ensuing explosion in the streets. In failing to conserve natural ecosystems it has also squandered much of its charm and beauty.Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998), 9.

NATURAL HABITAT

58

34 latitude Osaka, Japan Los Angeles Columbia, S.C. Casablanca, Morocco Beirut, Lebanon

Los Angeles is located at 34 north latitude and 118 west longitude. 34 north latitude is also home to: Osaka, Japan Columbia, South Carolina Casablanca, Morocco Beirut, Lebanon

Los Angeles sits like a car-seat cover, carefully strapped across the elevations of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains, tugged in at the coastline and open towards the north and east where the deserts begin. Underneath the cover, the big story of California history is played out in suprahuman intensity and temporality. It is a story of plate tectonics and earthquakes. Compression and strike-slip motion set the slow but unhaltable pace for the constant reshaping of Southern Californian landscapes. Undead at all times, the seat under the cover is good for many a surprise eruption and certain shifts that measure times in eternities. Yet, many features of todays Southern Californian landscape are witnesses of a more tangible and recent change. The dramatic shift of the mouth of the Los Angeles River from where the International Airport is today and to its current Long Beach location in 1825 after catastrophic flooding in the San Gabriel Mountains, is among them. Nothing under and above the seatcover of built and natural environments in Southern California is stable, nothing but change itself.Roger Keil, Los Angeles (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998), xiii.

118 longitude

Los Angeles

Ecological Footprint

Peru

Los Angeles comprises 450 square miles. The ecological footprint of Los Angeles comprises 521,000 square miles, or the size of Peru.Ecological footprint: That area of productive ecosystems outside its borders that is appropriated for resource consumption and waste assimilation. World Resources Institutesources: Southern California Association of Governments (www.scag.gov) The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 2001 (New York: World Almanac Books, 2001)

S. Moon

NATURAL HABITAT

60

Ocean

J. Rocholl

K. Mller

M. Lipson

S. Moon

S. Moon

S. Moon

J. Rocholl

M. Lipson

M. Lipson

Beach Report Card, 2000Dry weather grade A 66% B 14% C 6% D 8% F 6%

NATURAL HABITAT

Wet weather grade (days of recorded rainfall and following 3 days) A 12% B 11% C 8% D 4% F 65% Heal the Bays Beach Report Card is the only comprehensive examination Card of coastal water quality in Southern California. The report grades local beaches on an A-F scale based on daily and weekly water-quality monitoring data collected by various county and city public agencies throughout Southern California. Beach Report Card grades are based only on biological pollution Ocean the report card does not include data on the amount of trash or toxins found at local beaches. Water quality drops dramatically during and immediately after a rainstorm, but often rebounds to its previous level within a few days. For this reason, wet weather data is analyzed separately in order to avoid artificially lowering a locations grade for the entire month.source: Beach Report Card Heal the Bay (www.healthebay.org) Card,

62

M. Lipson

S. Moon

S. Moon

Point Dume

Malibu Beach & Pier Old Joes Malibu Colony Topanga

Paradise Cove Latigo Canyon

Santa Monica Pier Venice Marina del Rey Playa del Rey D&W

Sunset Boulevard Lighthouse Jetties Santa Monica Palisades Pacic Ocean Park Toes Over the Jetty El Segundo Manhattan Beach King Harbor Redondo Beach Breakwater Haggertys Middles Avalanche $100,000 $113,750 Long Beach Naples Seal Beach Seal Beach Pier Surfside Jetty Sunset Beach Bolsa Chica State Park Surfside Beach Huntington Beach & Pier Santa Ana Rivermouth Balboa Corona Del Mar Jetty Cameo Shores Cove Laguna Beach Victoria Cove Dana Point Doheny Beach State Park $40,250 $3.9 million $255,250

Hermosa Beach

Palos Verdes Cove Lunada Bay Resort Point Abalone Cove

$ being invested by state on sand replacement and research Beach name

Portuguese Bend Royal Palms San Pedro Cabrillo Beach

Huntington Beach State Park Newport Beach

Scotchmans Cove Rockpile Aliso Creek

Salt Creek Killer Capo

San Clemente Pier The Riviera The Depot Trafalgar St. Upper Trestle San Clemente State Park Lower Trestle Cottons Point San Onofre San Onofre State Park

source: The Office of Governor Gray Davis map source: Allan Bank Wright, Jr., Surfing California (Redondo Beach, Ca.: Mountain & Sea Publishing, 1985)

S. Moon

They talked politely for a while about the smog, about the decline in property values, and the tendency of people to hide away in their own gated neighborhoods. There wont be any public land left. We already havent got any parks. This city is shameful on parks. Weve got beaches. You got beaches. Browns and blacks are marooned inland. Maybe the Big One will come along and move the shoreline inland a few miles.John Shannon, The Concrete River (Salem, Ore.: John Brown Books, 1996), 157.photos: A. Scott

Major riversThere are 465 miles of river in Los Angeles, requiring 4,621 square miles of drainage area (an area 10 times the size of Los Angeles).river Los Angeles Rio Hondo San Gabriel Santa Clara Santa Ana length (miles) 97 20 59 75 214 drainage area (miles2) 830 125 350 1,616 1,700

sources: www.losangelesalmanac.com City of Redlands (www.ci.redlands.ca.us)

NATURAL HABITAT

64

photos 64-67: S. Callis

Rivers & Lakes

Sierra PelonaPacoima ReservoirBig Tuju

ima Little Pacoh nga Was

San Gabriel Mountainsn Gab riel

Fish Fork

L yt l

E. F or k S a

Chatsworth Reservoir

San Fernando ValleyEncino Reservoir Stone Canyon Reservoir

Lower Van Norman Lake Hansen Dam

Cajon Wash e Cr eek

Forks Reservoir Cedar Springs Dam Silverwood Lake Lake Arrowhead Lake Gregory

Arroyo Seco Cogswell Reservoir

Cajon Summit

Big Bear Lake

Ly t

Devils Gate Reservoir

reek nC ajo l ec

Sepulveda Dam Hollywood Reservoir Silverlake Reservoir Whittlet Narrows Dam

Santa Monica Mountains

San Gabriel Reservoir Morris Big Dalton Reservoir Reservoir San Dimas Santa Fe Reservoir Dam Puddingston Reservoir

SA

NB

ER

NA

RD

INO

MO UN

do

TA INS

Point Dume

R io

Puente Hills Chino HillsPrado Flood Control Basinn ta Sa

H on

r ive aR An

Santa Monica Bay

Los Ang eles Riv er

San G r a briel Rive

Brea Reservoir Fullerton Reservoir

Carbon Canyon Reservoir Yorba Linda Reservoir Tem e s ca l Wa Peters Canyon sh Reservoir Irvine Lake (Santiago Reservoir)

Mockingbird Lake Lake Mathews

Lake Perris Perris Dam

Ca ny on Wa sh

Sa

Point Fermin

nt

aA

na

San Pedro ChannelSan Pedro Bay

San Joaquin Hills

Mo un ta in s

Pe te

rs

Dana Point

dams rivers 100 year flood 200 year flood historical flood

From its beginning in the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley to its mouth at the Pacific Ocean, the rivers bed and banks are almost entirely concrete. Little water flows in its wide channel most of the year, and nearly all that does is treated sewage and oily street runoff. Chain link fence and barbed wire line the rivers fifty-one-mile course. Graffiti mark its concrete banks. Discarded sofas, shopping carts, and trash litter its channel. Weeds that poke through cracks in the pavement are the only plants visible along most of its course. Fish larger than minnows are rare even where the river does contain water. Feral cats, rats, and human transients are the dominant animal life on its shores. For much of its history, the Los Angeles River has been little more than a local joke. Though millions of people cross it every day on more than a hundred bridges, many do not even realize that the concrete conduit that passes under or alongside some of the nations busiest highways is, in fact, the bed of a river.Blake Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death and Possible Rebirth (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1999), 1.

NATURAL HABITAT

66

Rivers & Lakes

Few people in L.A. noticed the natural features that were still there beneath the grid of streetslike the slope a mile north at Rose that had been the north bank of the floodplain. He had once enjoyed knowing things like that, the broken geography under the asphalt and the lost flora and fauna, it was like getting a leg up on the massive denial that the city feasted on, but he was becoming tired of knowing too many things that did him no good.John Shannon, The Concrete River (Salem, Ore.: John Brown Books, 1996 ), 47.

There used to be enough water to irrigate with nearly all year-round around here. Where did it go? Literally, where did it go go? Now theres just the Technical Advisory Board of Friends of the Los Angeles River trying to figure out how much of it has been lost.Lewis MacAdams, The River: Books One & Two (San Francisco: Blue Press, 1998).

photos: E. Kozma

68

Santa Catalina 2,125 ft.

NATURAL HABITAT

Pacific Ocean239 ft. 9 ft. 1,470 ft. 0 ft. 2,238 ft. 10,064 ft.

Lowest point in L.A.

Whittier Fault

Wilmington

Palos Verdes Hills

Los Angeles Basin

Elevation comparison

Southern CaliforniaMountains3,651 ft.

Mt. San Antonio

Snowmass Mountain

Highest point in L.A. Sea Level5,183 ft. 12,510 ft. 14,110 ft. 14,433 ft.

Mojave Desert

Denver Basin

Pikes Peak

Colorado

Mt. Elbert

Uncompahgre Uplift

14,309 ft.

K. Hirt

Over the years, the Santa Monicas have drawn to them a unique collection of self-styled mountain people, mystics, misanthropes, environmentalists, ardent slow-growth suburbanites, and wealthy executives posing as simple rural folk. In the fifteen or so miles before the flats open up again in Thousand Oaks, these people have dotted the landscape with an eclectic collection of hillside hideaways, ostentatious gated subdivisions, ersatz horse farms, and ordinary tract homes that brush up against natureall of which they protect from flatland interlopers like West Virginia moonshiners trying to fend off federal agents with a few rusty shotguns.William Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles (Point Arena, Ca.: Solano Press Books, 1997), 17778.

K. Hirt

top photos: S. Smith

Desert

NATURAL HABITAT

70

bottom photos: S. Moon

Today, the physical manifestations ofhuman pressures have become evident across the entire desert landscape: over 100 communities, ranging in type from one-person mining settlements to resorts; large industrial mining operations and thousands of speculative digs; canal-fed agricultural valleys; nine military bases and testing grounds; 1.1 electrical power generating plants; 3,500 miles of high-capacity power transmission lines; 12,000 miles of oil and gas pipelines; over 100 communication sites on ridges and mountaintops; 15,000 miles of paved and maintained roads; and thousands more miles of roads and ways cut solely by motorized vehicles.The California Desert Conservation Area Plan 1980 (amended 1999), California Bureau of Land Management, www.ca.blm.gov

photos: S. Smith

Desert

NATURAL HABITAT

72

The California deserts were cooler and moister places in the past. Prior to the end of the last Ice Age, Joshua trees, pinyon pines, sagebrush, and junipers extended across broader expanses than they do today. A subsequent drying trend caused these plant communities to retreat to higher elevations, leaving small enclaves of white fir forests on mountaintops and species like the creosote bush to dominate the lowlands. This trend toward increasing dryness is evident in rainfall records kept since the last century. Today, parts of the Sonora Desert receive less water than any other place in the United States.The California Desert Conservation Area Plan 1980 (amended 1999), California Bureau of Land Management, www.ca.blm.gov

K. Mller

Flora

NATURAL HABITAT

74

In the artificial landscape that is contemporary Los Angeles, where even the palm trees were importedBlake Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death and Possible Rebirth (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press), 3.

M. Lipson

Just then it was the complex smell of the side streetcut grass, oleander, and gardenia scent in the hot, slightly metallic air, a particular LA infusion.Jim Paul, Medieval in LA: A Fiction (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1996), 40.

photos below: J. Fleischmann

photos below: J. Rocholl

photos below: J. Fleischmann

Flora

S. Moon

NATURAL HABITAT

76

photos below: J. Fleischmann

S. Moon

Native

abrams dudleya, abrams alumroot, abrupt-beak sedge, actons encelia, adobe popcornflower, adobe yampah, african mustard, agrimony, ajamete, alabaster plant, alaska rein orchid, alberts creeping zinnia, alkali heath, alkali jimmyweed, alkali mallow, alkali mariposa lily, alkali milk-vetch, alkali muhly, alkali phacelia, alkali sacaton, alkali weed, alpine everlasting, alpine gooseberry, alpine groundsel, alpine mountain-sorrel, alpine pyrrocoma, alpine shooting star, alvords oak, amblyopappus, ambrosia-leaved burbush, american alpine speedwell, american dogwood, american parsley fern, american rocket, american speedwell, american trailplant, american tule, american vetch, andersons lupine, andersons thistle, andro-

sace monkeyflower, angel trumpets, angled-stem buckwheat, annual burrweed, annual coastal plantain, annual desert milk-vetch, annual mountain dandelion, annual muhly, annual pearlwort, annual phlox, annual psathyrotes, annual stillingia, annual tule, annual woolly sunflower, antelope bitterbrush, annual hairgrass, apache plume, aparejo grass, appressed muhly, argus bedstraw, argus blazing star, arizona brome, arizona centaury, arizona cymopterus, arizona cypress, arizona ephedra, arizona herba impia, arizona honeysweet, arizona hymenoxys, arizona lupine, arizona popcorn flower, arizona sandmat, arizona skyrocket, arizona thistle, arrowhead butterweed, arrow-weed, arroyo lupine, arroyo willow, artemisia-leaved chaenactis, ashen milk-vetch, ashey silk tassel, ash-gray indian paintbrush, ashy spike-moss, autumn willowweed, aven nelsons scorpionweed, baby blue eyes, baileys buckwheat, baja birdbush, baja desert thorn, baja navarretia, baja pectocarya, baldwin lake desert trumpets, ball saltbush, ballona cinquefoil, baltic rush, banana yucca, barnebys phacelia, baron flats horkelia, basin butterweed, basket rush, bastardsage, beach evening-primrose, beach morning-glory, beach pinecoulter pine, beach shieldpod, beach-bur, beaked penstemon, beaked rattle-weed, beaked spikerush, bearded cryptantha, bearded flatsedge, bearded melic, beautiful rock-cress, beaver monolepis, beavertail cactus, bee balm, beetle spurge, bent spikerush, biennial cinquefoil, big bear valley phlox, big bear valley sandwort, big bear valley woollypod, big bulrush, big sagebrush, big saltbush, big squirreltail, big-berry manzanita, bigcone spruce, bigelow corssosoma, bigelows blue grass, bigelows coreopsis, bigelows desert four-oclock, bigelows linanthus, bigelows monkeyflower, bigelows nolina, bigleaf crownbeard, bigleaf lupine, big-leaf maple, big-pod ceanothus, big-seed alfalfa dodder, bindweed, biolettis cudweed, birch-leaf mountain mahogany, bird-foot checkerbloom, birdnest buckwheat, birds-foot fern, birdsfoot trefoil, bishop pine, bitter cherry, bitter dogbane, bitter gooseberry, bitter root, black brush, black elderberry, black flatsedge, black grama, black sage, black sagebrush, black sedge, black-foot gayophytum, bladder fern, bladderpod, blairs cliffaster, blazing star, blochmans dudleya, blow-wives, blue dicks, blue elderberry, blue field-gilia, blue grama, blue oak, blue sage, blue toad-flax, blue wildrye, blue-berry dwarf-mistletoe, blueblossom, blue-eyed grass, blue-podded rock-cress, blue-stemmed keckiella, blue-witch nightshade, bluish spike-moss, bluntleaf yellow-cress, bog alkaligrass, bog yellow-cress, boisduvalia, bolanders blue grass, bolanders quillwort, bolanders sedge, bolanders skullcap, booths sun cup, bracted blazing star, bracted popcorn flower, bracted verbena, branched woolly sunflower, branching gilia, branching phacelia, brandegees woolstar, brands phacelia, brauntons milk-vetch, brewers angelica, brewers rock-cress, brewers aster, brewers bitter-cress, brewers calandrinia, brewers cliff-brake, brewers fleabane, brewers lupine, brewers miterwort, brewers monardella, brewers monkeyflower, brewers mountain-heather, brewers ragwort, brickellia-leaved hazardia, bridges campion, bridges gilia, bright green buckwheat, bright-white, bristle-fruit sedge, bristly langloisia, bristly sedge, bristly spermolepis, brittle spineflower, brittlebush, broad-fruited combseed, broad-leaf arrowhead, broad-leaf gilia, broadleaved lotus, broad-liped twayblade, broad-seeded rock-cress, broad-toothed monkeyflower, brook cinquefoil, brook saxifrage, broom baccharis, broom groundsel, broom snakeweed, brown dogwood, brown sedge, browneyes, brown-head sedge, brown-headed rush, brownspined pricklypear, buck brush, bugle hedgenettle, bull clover, burhead, burlews onion, bur-marigold, burro grass, burrobrush, bush arrowleaf, bush muhly, bush poppy, bush-loving cryptantha, bushrue, bushy cryptantha, bushy spikemoss, butter n eggs, butterfly mariposa, button encelia, calabazilla, california adders-tongue, california allseed, california amaranth, california ayenia, california barberry, california barrel cactus, california beardtongue, california bedstraw, california black oak, california blackberry, california box-thorn, california brickellia, california brome, california broomrape, california broomshrub, california buckeye, california buckwheat, california buttercup, california caltrop, california chicory, california cloak fern, california coffeeberry, california copperleaf, california cord grass, california croton, california dandelion, california ditaxis, california dodder, california encelia, california evening-primrose, california everlasting, california fagonia, california false-indigo, california fan palm, california fescue, california fiddleleaf, california figwort, california four oclock, california geranium, california gilia, california goldenbanner, california goosefoot, california grass of parnassus, california groundcone, california heathgoldenrod, california hedgenettle, california herba impia, california hesperochiron, california horkelia, california jointfir, california juniper, california lace-fern, california laurel, california lomatium, california loosestrife, california maiden-hair, california matchweed, california melic, california milkweed, california mountain geranium, california mountain-ash, california muhly, california mustard, california oatgrass, california peony, california plantain, california polypody, california ponysfoot, california poppy, california pricklyphlox, california ragwort, california rayless butterweed, california red fir, california saltbush, california sandwort, california sawgrass, california saxifrage, california scarlet campion, california seablite, california sealavender, california shieldpod, california spear-leaved brickellia, california spineflower, california stickseed, california sun cup, california sunflower, california sweet-cicely, california sword fern, california sycamore, california tea, california tule, california valerian, california waterleaf, california waterwort, california wild grape, california wild rose, california willowherb, california yerba santa, california orcutt grass, caltha-leafed phacelia, camphor weed, cane beardgrass, canyon birdsfoot trefoil, canyon bog orchid, canyon clarkia, canyon dodder, canyon dudleya, canyon live oak, canyon sunflower, capitat