Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles

ISBN-13: 9780822959397 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 360 str.

William Deverell; Greg Hise

Opis

Most people equate Los Angeles with smog, sprawl, forty suburbs in search of a city - the great what not to do of twentieth-century city building. But there's much more to LA's story than this shallow stereotype. History shows that Los Angeles was intensely, ubiquitously planned. The consequences of that planning - the environmental history of urbanism - is one place to turn for the more complex lessons LA has to offer. Working forward from ancient times and ancient ecologies to the very recent past, Land of Sunshine is a fascinating exploration of the environmental history of greater Los Angeles. The essays, by nineteen leading geologists, ecologists, and historians consider the changing dynamics both of the city and of nature. In the nineteenth century, for example, density was considered an evil, and reformers struggled mightily to move the working poor out to areas where better sanitation and flowers and parks made life seem worth the living.