Magnetic Los Angeles: planning the twentieth-century metropolis.

Magnetic Los Angeles: planning the twentieth-century metropolis. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University,mainly at Baltimore, Md. Johns Hopkins in 1867 had a group of his associates incorporated as the trustees of a university and a hospital, endowing each with $3.5 million. Daniel C. Press, 1997. Pp.xiii, 294. Maps, black and white illustrations, bibliography and index.US $35.95 (cloth). Los Angeles has been called everything imaginable, most of it bad.Perhaps the most acid description was discovered by Carl Abbott whoquoted, though not approvingly, a critic who said that "Los Angeleswas" topless, bottomless, shapeless, formless form��less?adj.1. Having no definite form; shapeless. See Synonyms at shapeless.2. Lacking order.3. Having no material existence. , and endless, ...random, frenzied, rootless, and unplanned" and "a violentlyaggressive organism."1 One hopes that this critic will never readGreg Hise's very good book on metropolitan planning in the citythat everyone loves to hate. Not only will the critic read a verystimulating story of planning in the Los Angeles and other areas, hewill be in for an agonizing reappraisal. It has been an open secret inthe profession of urban history that Los Angeles County created one ofthe first countywide planning commissions in the nation; that the cityand county adopted a uniform street plan in the 1920s; that the cityelected the first African American to the California state legislature The California State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of California. It is a bicameral body consisting of the lower house California State Assembly, with 80 members, and the upper house California State Senate, with 40 members. ;that the area created an enlightened scheme for metropolitan governmentin the Lakewood Plan; and that people from its suburb of Pasadenaprovided leadership for everything from the reinvention of ThroopInstitute into the California Institute of Technology California Institute of Technology,at Pasadena, Calif.; originally for men, became coeducational in 1970; founded 1891 as Throop Polytechnic Institute; called Throop College of Technology, 1913–20. to the creation ofthe Mount Wilson and Palomar observatories. These, together withdevelopments in the Bay Area, made California the world leader inastronomy. The area is, and has been, anything but the retrograde,bible-thumping, poodle-worshipping nut case that its critics havecharged. Rather, the area was, and is, a captivating human cauldron,fusing a new culture. Kevin Starr and Carl Abbott have made this story clear, andHise's history of city planning adds many important dimensions.Hise argues that the Los Angeles area was a leader in the adoption ofsound, reformist, Progressive city planning principles. The Americancity planning tradition evolved from a number of sources, and as it did,both public planners and private developers quickly incorporated thistradition of "community building" into their repertoire. Thetradition drew on the work of Ebenezer Howard; Lewis Mumford, HenryWright, Clarence Stein and the regionalists of the 1920s; housingreformers; the New Deal new towns; the rural housing and "physicalplanning and social reform" work of the Resettlement Administrationin California; the developments of businessmen and builders; andSouthern California's and the Bay Area's experiences withwartime housing. From the 1920s, when developer Walter Leimert created Leimert Park,Southern California has been at the forefront of the American planningtradition, along with other areas like the Country Club District ofKansas City. In the thirties, the Farm Security Administrationexperimented with mass-produced housing, novel materials like metal,innovative groupings, and enlightened models from Radburn, New Jersey Radburn is an unincorporated new town located within Fair Lawn, in Bergen County, New Jersey.Radburn was founded in 1929 as "a town for the motor age"[1]. . From there, the FSA FSA Financial Services AuthorityFSA Food Standards Agency (UK)FSA Farm Service Agency (USDA)FSA Financial Services Agency (Japan)ideas drifted back into town, along with thewar workers from the agricultural camps, and took root in Bay Areawartime housing. In Southern California, other experiments wereconducted by both the aircraft industry and private builders. Like theFSA, they also had adopted mass production principles years beforeLeavitt and Sons. Far from being "planless" and"formless," these suburbs were located within driving distanceof the factories that were churning out warplanes, as was Westchester,located within sight of the plants at Los Angeles Municipal Airport. Allthis was not a flight from the center city, but rather an attempt tointegrate shopping, services, home, and work for suburban factory hands. These threads of "community building," harking back tothe 1920s, came together in the postwar developments of Henry Kaiser.One was planned decentralization de��cen��tral��ize?v. de��cen��tral��ized, de��cen��tral��iz��ing, de��cen��tral��iz��esv.tr.1. To distribute the administrative functions or powers of (a central authority) among several local authorities. , enough to have warmed the cockles ofLewis Mumford's heart. These suburbs offered not single use, butrather occupational and economic diversity; access to employment;comprehensive financial and city planning; and linkage of center cityand periphery. Too, they were systematically formed around majorarterials. The city was not being disowned, but rather tied together;the past was not rejected, but rather affirmed and built upon. Kaiserand his partner Fritz Burns believed that a home gave a working classfamily a stake in American society. To achieve his goal of providingboth white- and blue-collar housing, Kaiser also tried to industrialize in��dus��tri��al��ize?v. in��dus��tri��al��ized, in��dus��tri��al��iz��ing, in��dus��tri��al��iz��esv.tr.1. To develop industry in (a country or society, for example).2. the process of home building and to promote vertical businessintegration. This is a very good book which pulls together well all of theAmerican planning traditions and relates them to trends in business. Roger W. Lotchin Department of History University of North Carolina