Photos 104-109: S. Zukowski

photos 104-109: S.
Zukowski
MAN-MADE
HABITAT
104
MAN-MADE
HABITAT
106
Built Mass &
Land Use
MAN-MADE Parks &

HABITAT Public Lands
108
Resources &
Consumption
Resources &
Consumption:
Water
Resources &
Consumption:
Energy
Resources &
Consumption:
Food
Resources &
Consumption:
Waste
Air
Travel
Rail
Travel
Road
Travel
Air Quality
MAN-MADE
HABITAT
110
There are at least a dozen streets in Los Angeles named

Central. From an urban-planning standpoint, this defeats
the very idea of the plaza, the city square, the convergence
of far-flung neighborhoods into a single place. Naming
more than one street Central is like calling all of your
children Fred.
Bernard Cooper, Guess Again (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 185.
Our blocks, which were like small, self-contained towns,
were now territories to be defended as though the avenues
and streets had natural resources or religious significance.
Notions of self defense, of preemptive strikes, the need
to never be caught slipping, became a way of life. It was
inevitable, or so it seemed, that sooner or later we all were
going to die some stupid, embarrassing death.
Jervey Tervalon, Living for the City (San Diego: Incommunicado Press, 1998), 21.
J. Rocholl J. Rocholl J. Rocholl
K. Müller
Built Mass &

Land Use
MAN-MADE
HABITAT
112
J. Rocholl J. Rocholl
B. Moss
The tinted halogen streetlamps of Anaheim cast the world before Eastman in the eerie,
filtered light of a perpetual sunset—everything was easier to see yet harder to tell apart.
A haphazard collection of motels and low-rise hotels, gas stations and coffee shops,
had long ago superseded the horizon; in fact, their garish signs were so numerous,
no one of them made any sense—they had run together into a huge, illumined billboard
that shamelessly promoted chaos.
The whole scene made Eastman wonder where in this landscape the permanent
residents lived—there really wasn’t much space left for them to occupy, he thought—
and when he craned his head upward, to the sky, he saw it was empty, even of stars,
there was so much light being reflected back off its surface.
Jay Gummerman, Chez Chance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 31–32.
photos: B. Kalpin
Built Mass &

Land Use
MAN-MADE
HABITAT
114
The light around here is quite remarkable, isn’t it? In fact, I gave the matter some
thought on my walk home this evening. And it seems to me, actually, that there are
four—or, anyway, at least four—lights in L.A. To begin with, there’s the cruel, actinic
light of late July. Its glare cuts piteously through the general shabbiness of Los Angeles.
Second comes the nostalgic, golden light of late October. It turns Los Angeles into
El Dorado, a city of fool’s gold. It’s the light William Faulkner—in his story “Golden
Land”—called “treacherous unbrightness.” It’s the light the tourists come for—
the light, to be more specific, of unearned nostalgia. Third, there’s the gunmetal-gray
light of the months between December and July. Summer in Los Angeles doesn’t begin
until mid-July. In the months before, the light can be as monotonous as Seattle’s.
Finally comes the light, clear as stone-dry champagne, after a full day of rain. Everything
in this light is somehow simultaneously particularized and idealized: each perfect,
specific, ideal little tract house, one beside the next. And that’s the light that breaks
hearts in L.A.
Don Waldie, quoted in Lawrence Weschler, “L.A. Glows,” The New Yorker
(23 February & 3 March 1998): 96–97.
residential
recreational
commercial
industrial
map sources:
San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District (www.sbvmwd.com)
Southern California Association of Governments (www.scag.ca.gov)
Michael W. Donley, Atlas of California (Culver City, Ca.: Pacific Book Center, 1979)
urbanized land
developable land
slope greater than 15%
public lands
parks
farmlands
biologically sensitive areas
wetlands
Rick had been searching for the Pillings’ address for over twenty minutes,
and the hungrier he became, the harder it was to concentrate on the dimly lit street
signs, the six-digit numbers stenciled on curbs. Westgate Village was a planned
community an hour away from the downtown loft where Rick lived, its street names
a variation on the same bucolic phrase: Valley Vista Circle, Village Road, Valley View
Court. Each one-story ranch house looked nearly the same except for the color
of its garage door, and Rick, who’d skipped lunch, began to wonder if the entire suburb
was a hunger-induced hallucination.
Bernard Cooper, Guess Again (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 93.
K. Lubas
MAN-MADE Parks &

HABITAT Public Lands
116
photos: J. Fleischmann
Angeles National Forest
San Bernardino
National Forest
Santa Monica Mountains

National Recreational Area
Chino Hills
State Park
city parkland
public land
Cleveland
National Forest
Acreage of urban parkland in Los Angeles

13,100 acres, or
21 square miles, or
570,600,000 square feet, or
44 square feet per person
Acreage of state and national forest land

in direct vicinity of Los Angeles
2,040,780 acres, or
3,189 square miles, or
88,900,000,000 square feet, or
6,800 square feet per person
source:
National Park Service
When it comes to parkland, Los Angeles is like a man who squandered an inherited
fortune and must now scrounge for coins to maintain a semblance of respectability.
The greed that drove the city’s development devoured so much of an uncommonly
beautiful landscape that the city today has less than one-fourth the national average
of four acres of parkland per 1,000 residents. It is dead last among major cities.
James Ricci, “Metropolis: All We Need Is a Little Space to Breathe,” Los Angeles Times Magazine,
Magazine
1 April 2001, 5.
M. Lipson
MAN-MADE
HABITAT
118 K. Müller
Resources &
Consumption
Amid the tumult of California’s electricity ordeal, an important fact often is lost:
Energy is far from the worst of the state’s long-term infrastructure problems.
Policy experts from all over the political spectrum agree that there are greater
threats to California’s economy and quality of life over the next 20 years.
Strained water supplies, overcrowded airports, jammed freeways, poor schools
and costly housing could prove much more complicated to tackle than keeping
the lights on.
The challenge will be enormous considering that, by an important federal
measure, the state ranks last nationally in infrastructure spending per capita.
Though California may be able to import electricity from other states or countries
to ease its power squeeze, it can’t send its kids to classrooms in Oregon or divert
flights to Arizona airports.…How did California, home of concrete-pouring
visionaries such as William Mulholland and Pat Brown, become the poster child
for infrastructure neglect?
Observers point to a variety of nuts-and-bolts factors, starting with the way
projects are funded. With the exception of gasoline taxes for highways, there
is no dedicated revenue stream for infrastructure flowing into state coffers.
The anti-tax revolution sparked by Proposition 13 in 1978 still makes bond issues
problematic. Some say term limits haven’t helped matters, encouraging legislators
to think short-term.
What’s more, public officials sometimes simply guessed wrong about the future.
Gov. Gray Davis’ own infrastructure committee—the Commission on Building
for the 21st Century—neglected to single out electricity as a major trouble spot
when it began meeting in 1999.
But the biggest change in the last quarter-century, historians and policymak-
ers say, is the entire zeitgeist surrounding California’s spectacular growth.
After pouring vast sums into public works well into the 1970s—starting with
Mulholland’s aqueducts and then Gov. Brown’s freeways—Californians saw their
K. Hirt
state being overrun and became ambivalent about the path it was on. Officials
scaled back spending on huge new projects. Postwar optimism that spending
on world-class universities and highways would benefit the economy and society
gave way to concerns about the population explosion that accompanied it.
Now, amid ever-present worries about overcrowding, some see little to gain
by promoting costly improvements that will only bring more development….
But as a strategy to put the brakes on growth, scaling back on infrastructure
has been a bust. Investment in infrastructure, as a percentage of state spending,
has shrunk from nearly 20% in the late 1960s to around 3%. By one estimate,
the state’s highway capacity grew by only 7% between 1978 and 1998, yet the
state’s population jumped more than 40% during the same period. Translation:
a lower quality of life….
Apart from the coming population pressures, maintaining existing infrastructure
is proving to be an enormous challenge. Spending of inflation-adjusted dollars to
operate state facilities has climbed from $100 per capita in 1930 to around $550
by 1996, according to analysis by the Public Policy Institute….
The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that traffic jams cost L.A. drivers
more than $12.4 billion annually in wasted time, fuel and other costs. That’s nearly
$1,400 for every person of driving age.
The region’s airports, whose cargo handling is crucial to the economy, face a
crunch of their own. Barring expansions, Southern California’s commercial air
hubs could be pushed beyond their capacity sometime between 2010 and 2015,
based on current projections for growth in passenger and cargo traffic.
If you combined the seven major commercial airports in the Los Angeles and San
Diego areas, they would cover just over 8,000 acres—one-quarter the expanse
of Denver International Airport.
What’s more, Southern California’s historic bugaboo, the water supply, is dwindling.
Estimates show that if rainfall follows its normal pattern over the next two
decades, the reserves of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California—
a cooperative supplying 26 water districts in the region—will sink from 35%
of current demand now to a perilous 5%.
Marla Dickerson and Stuart Silverstein, “New Crises Loom in State’s Aging Infrastructure,”
Los Angeles Times,
Times 18 February 2001, A1, A26.
J. Rocholl
Rate of water consumption

2,584,300 acre-feet per year, or
B. Kalpin
1,800,000,000 gallons a day, or
11,432 Olympic-sized swimming pools a day
Sources for consumption

Governor Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct
MAN-MADE 444 miles long
HABITAT
120
Colorado River Aqueduct
242 miles long
Los Angeles Aqueduct

226 miles long
Second Los Angeles Aqueduct

137 miles long
Water
2
Silverwood Lake
California Aqueduct
5
r
ive 3
ngele s R
1
Los A
# filtration plant location Lake Mathews

Lake Perris
S. Smith
aqueduct
i ve r
Colorado River Aqueduct

R
watershed boundaries
na
ta A
rivers/creeks
S an
Lake Elsinore
groundwater basin/sub-basin
lakes 4
Skinner Reservoir
Groundwater basins and filtration plants

1. Diemer Plant
2. Jensen Plant
3. Mills Plant
4. Skinner Plant
5. Weymouth Plant
sources:
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (www.mwd.dst.ca.us.com)
San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District (www.sbvmwd.com)
Municipal Water District of Orange County (www.mwdoc.com)
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (www.ladwp.com)
Of all of these commodities, none is so precious and valuable as water. Like most of
the American West, Southern California is a desert. Not a true desert, climatologi-
cally speaking, but a semi-arid region that suffers from an annual six-month summer
drought and volatile winter rainfall. In a wet year, the region might see twenty to twenty-
five inches of rain; in a dry year only six or seven. On average, Los Angeles gets about
fifteen inches of rain per year. That’s a quarter of Miami’s rainfall, a third of New York’s,
and less than half of Chicago’s. Despite an extensive system of natural underground
water basins, it cannot support a fast-growing metropolitan area of fifteen million
people or more.
William Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles
(Point Area, Ca.: Solano Press Books, 1997), 104.
S. Smith
MAN-MADE
HABITAT
122
Energy
J. Rocholl
Energy
Los Angeles consumes per year
3% of total U.S. consumption, or
8% of total world consumption, or
100% of total consumption of Michigan, or
the power of 8,221,000 tons of TNT
Energy consumption by sector per year

Residential 18%
Commercial 16%
Industrial 30%
Transportation 36%
Energy sources consumed per year

Coal 1,067 thousand short tons or 25 trillion Btu
Natural Gas 974 billion cubic feet or 991 trillion Btu
or the reserves of Hungary
or 1/2 the reserves of New Zealand
Petroleum 299,011 thousand barrels or 1,641 trillion Btu
or the reserves of Thailand
or 3 times the reserves of The Netherlands
Electricity 10,315,238,115 kWh or 352 trillion Btu
or 171,920,635 60-watt light bulbs
Biomass 87 trillion Btu
Other 164 trillion Btu
Total 3,260 trillion Btu per year
sources:
Energy Information Administration (www.eia.doe.gov)
California Energy Commission (www.energy.ca.gov)
The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 2001 (New York, World Almanac Education Group, Inc., 2001)
K. Hirt
Even though government and the business community are beginning to recognize
the impressive technological advances made in renewable energy as well as its bright
(long-term) financial prospects, the technologies remain vastly underutilized, and
their installed capacity is growing far too slowly to substantially reduce global warming.
John Berger, Charging Ahead: The Business of Renewable Energy and What It Means for America
(Berkeley; University of California Press, 1998).
Watts and what they can power
1 watt 1 Christmas-tree light
100 watts 1 standard lightbulb, 1 computer without printer, or 5 plug-in vibrators
1,000 watts 2 refrigerators, or 100 electric toothbrushes
100,000 watts 25 homes with air conditioner at peak demand, or 1 McDonald’s restaurant
1,000,000 watts 1 ten-story office building, or 1/6 of the National Gallery of Art
100,000,000 watts 10 server farms of 100,000 to 200,000 square-feet each
1,000,000,000 watts 100 factories, or 1 Seattle
10,000,000,000 watts 35 Nicaraguas, or 1 Los Angeles
source:
Wired Magazine (July 2001): 125
MAN-MADE
HABITAT
124
Energy
C. Chung
Power plants that feed Los Angeles
1. Big Creek Hydroelectric System
2. Castaic Power Plant Oregon
3. Columbia River Power System, Oregon
4. Harbor Station
5. Haynes Generating Station
3
6. Hoover Dam, Nevada
7. Intermountain Power Project, Utah
8. Mohave Generating Station, Nevada
9. Navajo Generating Station, Arizona
10. Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, Arizona
11. San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS)
12. Scattergood Station
13. Valley Station
7
Nevada
Utah
California
8 9
13
2
4
12
5
11 Arizona
10
A. Scott
Los Angeles consumes

Dairy
per year per day
310,488,200 gallons of milk 13,610,958 glasses of milk
167,689,829 pounds of butter 1,837,808 sticks of butter
407,433,884 pounds of cheese 8,930,000 grilled-cheese sandwiches
326,209,123 pounds of ice cream 223,450 scoops of ice cream
113,321,643 pounds of cream 709,714 cans of whipped cream
3,157,285,088 eggs 8,650,096 eggs
Fruits and vegetables

per year per day
1,745,022,297 pounds of fresh fruit 7,649,315 fresh-fruit salads
2,115,774,032 pounds of processed fruit 6,182,648 cans of fruit salad
2,431,502,540 pounds of vegetables 10,657,534 garden salads
5,925,477,366 pounds of processed vegetables 17,315,068 cans of vegetables
MAN-MADE Meat
HABITAT per year per day
126 1,514,448,780 pounds of red meat

896,092,531 pounds of poultry
193,891,366 pounds of seafood
22,798 cows
818,349 chickens
4,249,500 fish sticks
Other
per year per day
390,402,886 pounds of salad/cooking oil 2,139,178 cups of oil
335,379,660 pounds of baking/frying fats 114,849 gallons of fat
1,961,184,969 pounds of wheat flour 229,253,333 flour tortillas or 3,583,333 loaves of bread
302,627,740 pounds of corn product 414,558 ears of corn or 9,954,000 corn tortillas
255,464,976 pounds of rice 11,200,000 rice bowls
2,018,828,348 pounds of sugar 531,000,000 sugar cubes
sources:
Agriculture Fact Book 2000 (www.usda.gov)
1997 Economic Census (revised 15 May 2000), U.S. Census (www.census.gov)
T. Morrison
photos: S. Zukowski
Food
photos: J. Kung
Tons of waste generated in 2000

household commercial
Paper 1,546,471 2,602,670
Glass 227,376 213,861
Metal 260,665 512,708
Plastic 430,269 702,753
Food 1,125,005 1,320,496
MAN-MADE Other organic materials 1,410,044 967,637
HABITAT Construction 252,311 663,280
128 Hazardous waste

Other
Total
18,211
295,301
5,565,653
79,466
463,728
7,526,599 Grand total of 13,092,252 tons
12,509,294 tons buried in landfills
582,958 tons burned and transformed into energy
$21,002,715 in waste-management fees
source:
Solid Waste Characterization Database, California Integrated Waste Management Board
(www.ciwmb.ca.gov/wastechar)
photos: K. Müller
Waste
During a recent two-day cleanup of the river sponsored by a local environmental group,
two volunteers pulled a Jacuzzi from its channel in the Glendale Narrows. Other exotic
items removed from the river included a VCR, a camper shell, a telephone, a putter,
a moped, a five-foot-tall child’s basketball goal, a Christmas tree still in its stand,
and an American Flag.
Blake Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death and Possible Rebirth
(Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1999), 238.
M. Lipson
Global transportation through LAX, 1999

Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) ranks third among the world’s
busiest airports.
airport # of enplaned passengers
Atlanta (ATL) 78,092,940
Chicago-O’Hare (ORD) 72,609,191
Los Angeles (LAX) 67,303,182
London-Heathrow (LHR) 62,263,365
Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) 60,000,127
Tokyo-Haneda (HND) 54,338,212
Frankfurt/Main (FRA) 45,838,864
Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) 43,597,194
San Francisco (SFO) 40,387,538
Denver (DEN) 38,034,017
average # of people per day

total passengers 184,392
MAN-MADE domestic passengers 136,436
HABITAT international passengers 47,956
132 non-U.S. citizens 21,761
revenue
$1,162,392,000 per year
$3.2 million per day
Who flies to LAX?

76.00% Temporary visitors for pleasure
16.00% Temporary visitors for business
2.00% Students
1.30% Temporary workers and trainees
1.12% Other
.60% Exchange visitors
.60% Treaty traders and investors
.30% Intra-company transferees
.30% Spouses/children of transferees
.30% Spouses/children of temporary workers
.30% Transit aliens
.20% Foreign/government officials
.20% NAFTA workers
.10% Representatives of foreign information
.09% Media
.10% Spouses/children of exchange visitors
.09% Spouses/children of students
.06% Fiancés(ées) of U.S. citizens
.02% NATO officials
.01% International representatives
sources:
Airports Council International, as cited in the Los Angeles Times,
Times 11 February 2001, C6.
Los Angeles World Airports (www.lawa.org)
people per day
4 8 ,0 0 0
tio nal = FRA
HKG rn a
e
int
CDG
LHR
HND
ORD JFK
SFO DEN
ATL
LAX
DFW
MEX
do
es
m
Air tic
=1
Travel 36,0 day
0 0 p e o ple p er
GRU
MEL SYD
EZE
Where are they flying from?

46.00% Asia
28.00% Europe
12.00% Oceania
6.70% Mexico
4.00% South America
2.00% Central America
.60% Africa
.53% Other
photos: L. Pesce
.09% Canada
.09% Caribbean
M. Lipson
MAN-MADE
HABITAT
134
E. Hillard
Air
Travel
E. Hillard
Airports in Los Angeles 998 er d

ay
e , 1 t s p
lum ligh
r vo of f ys way
t n ge ge #
u nwa f r un
por pas
s e r a f r t o
air ave #o fee
1. Los Angeles International Airport 61,216 2,133 4 42,397
2. John Wayne-Orange County Airport 7,460 1,291 2 8,587
3. Ontario International Airport 6,435 429 2 22,398
4. Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport 4,732 498 2 12,918
5. Long Beach Airport 647 1,375 5 30,299
6. Santa Monica Municipal Airport -- 596 1 4,987
7. Hawthorne Municipal Airport -- 35 3 11,115
8. Compton Airport -- 164 2 7,340
9. Whiteman Air Park -- 412 1 4,120
10. Van Nuys Airport -- 1,520 2 12,001
11. Torrance Municipal Airport -- 579 2 8,000
12. Fullerton Municipal Airport -- 262 1 3,121
13. Brackett Field -- 672 2 8,500
14. Cable Airport -- 241 1 3,865
15. Mirofield (Rialto Municipal Airport) -- 343 2 7,150
16. Norton Air Force Base -- -- -- --
MAN-MADE 17. Redlands Airport -- 114 1 4,505
HABITAT 18. Riverside Municipal Airport -- 274 2 8,252
136 19. Flabob Airport

20. March Air Force Base
21. Corona Municipal Airport
--
--
--
74
--
205
1
--
1
3,200
--
3,200
22. El Toro Marine Corps Air Station -- -- -- --
23. Tustin Marine Corps Air Station -- -- -- --
24. Chino Hills Airport -- 548 3 18,081
11,765 40 224,036
or 42.4 miles of runway
sources:
www.airnav.com
photos: Z. Crosher
M. Lipson
10 4
16
14 17
13 15
3
6
19
24
18
1
7 21
8 12 20
Air
5
Travel 11
23
2 22
There is nothing to match flying over Los Angeles by night. A sort of luminous,
geometric, incandescent immensity, stretching as far as the eye can see, bursting
out from the cracks in the clouds. Only Hieronymous Bosch’s hell can match this
inferno effect. The muted fluorescence of all the diagonals: Wilshire, Sunset, Santa
Monica. Already, flying over San Fernando Valley, you come upon the horizontal
infinite in every direction. But, once you are beyond the mountain, a city ten times
larger hits you. You will never have encountered anything that stretches as far
as this before. Even the sea cannot match it, since it is not divided up geometrically.…
This one condenses by night the entire future geometry of the networks of human
relations, gleaming in their abstraction, luminous in their extension, astral in their
reproduction to infinity.
Norman M. Klein, The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory
(New York: Verso, 1997), 112.
Los Angeles is now among the top 4 destination/departure points by rail
in California, and is estimated to be the most popular station for boardings
and alightings via high-speed rail.
Current inter-city travel via automobile,

plane, and rail
35% Major cities to the Central Valley
23% L.A. region to San Diego
14% Sacramento to San Francisco Bay Area
12% L.A. region to San Francisco Bay Area
9% Within the Central Valley
7% Other
Total number of trips: 154 million per year
MAN-MADE
Projected travel transferred to high-speed rail
HABITAT 61% of travel normally made by air
138 71%
7%
14%
of travel normally made by conventional rail
of travel normally made by car
of all travel
Projected high-speed rail travel in 2020

35% L.A. region to San Francisco Bay Area
16% L.A. region or San Francisco Bay Area to Central Valley
17% L.A. region to San Diego
11% L.A. region to Sacramento
7% San Diego to San Francisco Bay Area
5% Sacramento to San Francisco Bay Area
2% Within the Central Valley
7% Other
Total number of trips: 215 million per year
Total number of passengers: 32.1 million per year
Revenue: $889 million per year
High-speed rail statistics

Average length of train: 10 cars accomodating 650 passengers, running every 15 minutes during peak periods
Maximum speed: 100–150 miles per hour
50-foot wide right-of way versus the 225-foot right-of-way necessary for a 12-lane freeway
source:
California High Speed Rail Authority (www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov)
Rail stations
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
47 r i d e 35. Santa Clarita 36. Santa Cruz 37. Santa Maria
e tra i n
0 0 - m in u t 38. Santa Monica 39. Santa Rosa 40. Stockton
27 2
41. Thousand Oaks 42. Tulare 43. Tustin
39 44
19 44. Vacaville 45. Vallejo 46. Visalia
45
47. Woodland
40
2
20
31 16
24 15
Rail 32
13
Travel 36 7 14
28 6
17
ride
ain
46 e tr
8 42 inut
0-m
15
25
33
1
37
9
10 34
23
future rail & stations
18 35
22
existing rail & stations 41 12 29
38
26
e
11 43
rid
in
ra
3 t et
21 inu
5 -m
5 18
4
30
There is probably no more peculiar feeling in all of Southern California

than riding on a train. Traveling along the backsides of industrial
buildings in Northridge, or slipping underneath downtown’s Wilshire
Boulevard, or passing the county courthouse in troubled Compton,
the feeling a rail rider gets is not fear or frustration, relief or relaxation,
but sheer irrelevance.
William Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles
(Point Arena, Ca.: Solano Press Books, 1997), 125.
photos except as noted: B. Kalpin
Metrolink
Metrolink is claimed to be the fastest growing commuter rail system in the nation. Service began in 1992,
implemented by the Southern California Regional Rail Authority. Established for the Southern California
region, Metrolink services the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura.
Its annual operating budget is $80 million, and 51.6% of its operating costs are covered by operation revenues.
In its five years of operation, Metrolink has grown from 11 stations to 49 and from 24 weekday trains to 106.
Daily ridership has grown from 2,400 to over 31,000. It maintains 416 route miles and has a total of 399 network
grade crossings. The “Saturday Explorer” serves recreational interests.
65% of Metrolink riders formerly drove alone, removing 22,048 auto trips a day. The average commute trip
length is 36 miles, and 35% of riders make downtown Los Angeles their destination.
About Metrolink (as of 14 June 2001)

22,048 Number of auto trips removed per day
8.5 Percent of freeway traffic removed on parallel freeways each peak hour
36.7 miles Average commute trip length
MAN-MADE 32,404 Average daily riders
HABITAT 65.4 Percent of riders who formerly drove alone
140 M. Perkins
1/3 mile
35
44 mph
Average distance for a Metrolink train to stop
Percent of riders that make downtown Los Angeles their destination
Average system speed (with stops)
128 Average trains operated per day
416 Route miles
49 Stations in service
6 Number of routes
source:
Metrolink (www.metrolinktrains.com)
proposed high-speed rail and stations
Metrolink commuter rail lines and stations
metro rail transit lines and stations
Rail
Travel
Beyond the arguments of efficiency, however valid, lies a larger question of civic iden-
tity. Public works of the magnitude of the MTA subway system cannot be judged
in snapshots of time, including snapshots of temporary confusion. Is the vision of the
generation that brought the subway project into being as a matter of legislation and
finance…so totally misguided that its investment must now be abandoned? Are the
anti-subway forces so confident in 1997 that they can see the effects of the subway (or
the absence of the subway) in 2007, 2017, 2067 and the rest of the century to come?
And what will the surviving fragment of the subway, already in operation, come to
mean in that distant time, if the subway project is abandoned? Will it mean that a
generation wised-up and corrected its mistakes? Or will it mean that a generation
lost faith in itself, lost faith in the unforeseen gifts and legacies of great public works
across time, lost faith in the City of Angels and stopped its future?
Kevin Starr, “What MTA Debate Is Really About,” Los Angeles Times,
Times 7 September 1997, M-6.
photos: E. Hillard
MAN-MADE
HABITAT
144
There is no architectural element with which Los Angeles County is more closely identified
than the 527-plus miles of curves, loops, and straightaways that make up the freeway
system. Manhattan has its skyline, D.C. its monuments, Venice its canals: We’ve got
the four-level interchange. Stealing water from the Owens Valley made metropolitan
life in Southern California possible, but the Transportation Engineering Board’s Parkway
Plan of 1939 shaped it. Los Angeles built the first freeway in the nation, the six-point-
five mile Arroyo Seco Parkway (later renamed the Pasadena), which opened in 1940.
But unlike the Parisians, who adore their Eiffel Tower, or San Franciscans, who view
the Golden Gate with affection, most Angelenos seem to hate their freeways with
an unbridled passion.
Celeste Fremon, “Freeway,” Los Angeles Magazine (December 2000): 160.
US
195
89
US
395
299
36
Highway destinations
1. Bakersfield 2. Concord 3. Dana Point 4. Encinitas
5. Escondido 6. Fresno 7. Gilroy 8. Hanford
9. Lancaster 10. Lompoc 11. Long Beach
interstate
california
5
12. Los Angeles 13. Los Banos 14. Madera 15.
99 Merced 16. Modesto 17. Monterey 18. Moorpark 19.
Napa 20. Oakland 21. Oceanside 22. Oxnard 23.
89
Palmdale 24. Palo Alto 25. Porterville 26. Riverside
20
27. Sacramento 28. Salinas 29. San Bernardino
US
30. San Diego 31. San Francisco 32. San Jose
101 33. San Luis Obispo 34. Santa Barbara
35. Santa Clarita 36. Santa Cruz
interstate
california
80
47 37. Santa Maria 38. Santa Monica
27 39. Santa Rosa 40. Stockton
39 US
41. Thousand Oaks 42. Tulare

44 395
19
43. Tustin 44. Vacaville 45. Vallejo
45 12
46. Visalia 47. Woodland
40
2 120 US
6
20
interstate
31
california
580
16 49
interstate
california
interstate
california
680
280 24
32 15
7 13 99
36 14
28 6
Road 17
Travel
1 8
198
4246 190
US
101
US
25 395
127
highway 41
33
33 1
drive zone from Los Angeles interstate
california
5
2-hour 58
1
3-hour 37 interstate
california
40
interstate
california
15
10 9
4-hour
23
34
5-hour 35
18 62
22 41
6-hour-plus 12
1 29 26
38 60
91 interstate
california
11 interstate
california 111 10
405
43 74
21
5 78
4 interstate
california
8
98
30 188
Condition of urban highways e
ir mil
epa
of r way
h ar)
S. Smith
ee d i g
i nn p er h f e of c
y s n g ( l i
hwa ndi car
n hig i r spe y per
re a rb a p a c i t
na of u n re t to
p o lita t a ge l u rba e cos
tro ce n ua ra g
me per ann ave
Chicago 44% $ 37,560 $1,284
Detroit 38% 26,088 1,416
Philadelphia 35% 45,090 1,109
New York 26% 28,227 980
Washington, D.C. 22% 65,488 1,071
San Francisco 14% 88,178 837
Boston 13% 83,658 991
Los Angeles 13% 65,104 1,325
Dallas 4% 38,309 722
source:
MAN-MADE Southern California Association of Governments (www.scag.ca.gov)
HABITAT
146
I know it’s fashionable to speak of freeways as instruments of cultural isolation.

It’s true, if one drives from Sherman Oaks to Pomona, one can breeze right by
the housing projects of East L.A. and never acknowledge their existence. Moreover,
freeways were the tool with which the ‘50s middle-class fantasy of suburbia was made
manifest by land barons from the Westside, Palos Verdes, and the Valley out to build
their fortunes. Without freeways, white flight would have proved inconvenient.
On the other hand, as a result of freeway construction, the area of land within
a 30-minute drive from L.A.’s civic center leapt from 261 square miles in 1953 to 705
square miles by 1962, a widening of purview that applied equally to anybody with
a vehicle and some gas money.
Celeste Fremon, “Freeway,” Los Angeles Magazine (December 2000): 160, 242.
K. Müller
14
210
118
170 2
Projected baseline freeway speeds, 2025
US
101 134
605 57
405 10
10 710
60
110 5
105
less than 20 mph
91
20 to 35 mph
more than 35 mph
map source:
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, (www.mta.net)
Road There are…floating bottlenecks—freeway incidents—that haunt engineers’ thoughts.

Travel They are erratic and arrive without notice, and they account for one-half of the
congestion in Los Angeles.
In a city based on imagination, these incidents have no common trope. There are the
flat tires and crashes due to speeding, the tickets due to speeding. There are the
spills: Fuel-oil spill. Antifreeze spill. Orange spill. Lemon spill. Cattle spill. “We have
had cows out there running loose on the freeway,” confirms a Caltrans dispatcher.
The traffic backs up. Other animals run loose on the freeway. In the county’s northern
precincts, across the 210 and the 118, coyote and deer cross the concrete unsuccess-
fully. The traffic slows. On July 5, traffic snarls after the county’s domestic animal
population, spooked and unhinged by our county’s patriotism, runs onto the free-
ways and is killed in record numbers. Sometimes animals are deliberately introduced
into the freeway network. Lacking rivers and bridges, owners of the city’s unwanted
puppy litters leave them by medians in open bags to be killed. On mornings after
cockfights, Caltrans work crews are sent out to recover trash bags of lacerated
roosters that block lanes. The traffic backs up. Motorists dump trash into the lanes.
They leave couches, chairs, refrigerators, stoves on the freeways. In the week after
Christmas, Douglas firs sprout in groves across the network, complete with stands.
The traffic slows. Other things are thrown away. Around February 14, the number
of pedestrians jumping off bridges into the network spikes, jamming traffic. In the
days following a well-publicized suicide, fatality crashes rise, copycat suicides using
Chevrolet instead of Nembutal. Pedestrians drop bricks, bowling balls, pieces of the
coastal range off overpasses. People are dropped into the network. Story told by a
Caltrans dispatcher: “I had a friend of the family a long time ago. Someone I kind of
grew up with. This was my first year in the district. I don’t know what happened to
her, but she threw her kids off the freeway. Off an overpass of the 110. Two children.
This is somebody I knew.”
Dave Gardetta, “Hard Drive,” Los Angeles Magazine (April 2001): 68.
J. McKnight
Freeways and traffic

Who’s on the roads?
36% of the population, or 4,671,279 people, driving solo
7% of the population, or 1,000,113 people, driving carpool
How many cars are in Los Angeles?

10,736,372 registered cars
occupying 1,546,037,568 square feet of parking
or 1/8 of the area in Los Angeles
6,731,705,244 gallons of gas consumed per year
How many cars are on the freeway during rush hour?

46,000
How many vehicle miles are traveled each day?

528,745,000 miles, or 2,937 cars circumnavigating the globe daily
Vehicle-miles traveled is growing at a rate of 8% per year.
MAN-MADE
HABITAT L.A.’s travel-rate index is the highest in the nation at 1.55 during non-congested hours.
148 The travel-rate index during peak-traffic hours is 2.06

(travel-rate index: miles to travel x index rate = travel time in minutes,
i.e., during non-congested hours, 20 miles takes 31 minutes to travel)
Annual delay per person in Los Angeles

56 hours versus the national average of 36 hours
Annual fuel waste in Los Angeles

84 gallons per person
or 901,855,248 gallons for entire agglomeration
Annual congestion cost in Los Angeles

$1,000 per person
or $10,736,372,000 for entire agglomeration
Most congested areas in the United States

1. Los Angeles
2. San Francisco-Oakland
3. Seattle-Everett
4. Washington, D.C.
5. Chicago-Northwestern Indiana
source:
Texas Transportation Institute 2001 Urban Mobility Report (mobility.tamu.edu)
Like a lot of people in LA, he was secretly fond of this solitary commute. He had no
car phone, and in the slow traffic, he’d turn up the air-conditioning and feel insulated
behind his shades, deliciously impossible to reach, disconnected from all of it for
the moment and safe. He’d crank the tape player and sing, sealed in among other
cars containing other drivers, some of them singing as well. A tide had flooded in,
it felt like, covering the connections and leaving him on his own tiny, sunny island.
Jim Paul, Medieval in LA: A Fiction (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1996), 163.
illustrations: C. Chung
If 2,937 cars simultaneously drove once around the earth, they would drive
as many miles traveled every day in Los Angeles.
If those cars were Ford Excursion sports-utility vehicles, this caravan would
consume 11.8 million gallons of gasoline at a cost of $20,009,000 a day.
If those cars were economical Honda Civic hatchbacks, this caravan would con-
sume 3.2 million gallons of gasoline at a cost of $5,407,840.
If those cars were the environmentally sensitive Honda Insight, this caravan
would consume 1.7 million gallons of gasoline at a cost of $2,858,430.
source:
California Department of Motor Vehicles (www.dmv.ca.gov)
Road
Travel
Parking is definitely a “thing.” Finding the right spot for your car at the right time.
How do we do it? Where do we do it? Who can do without it? In this County of Los
Angeles, population nine mil plus, there are four million cars and approximately
40,000 parking meters, 150,000 “No Parking” signs, 41,000 “No Stopping” signs
and 40,000 time limit signs. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there’s
a shortage of parking and that this is no coincidence. The cities scattered through
the County of Los Angeles handed out, at a rate of 45 tickets per officer per day, seven
million parking tickets. At $28 a pop that’s $196 million dollars from the pockets of all
J. Rocholl of us. How do we deal with this highway robbery? How do we leave our houses and
apartments everyday knowing there is little chance of finding a free parking place,
let alone one to pay for?
John D’Amico, “Doris Day Parking: Finding Your Personal Space In L.A.’s Asphalt Jungle,”
Mondo L.A. (February 1994): 8.
s
rds ard
t a nda s t and
lity
s ity
ual
qua
Smog ng
sta
te a
i
n
r -
g fe
der
a l a ir-q
e d i ed i
xce xce
d ays e d a ys e
f f
year #o #o
1980 210 167
1981 222 180
1982 191 149
1983 190 152
1984 207 173
1985 206 158
1986 217 164
1987 196 160
1988 216 178
1989 211 157
1990 184 130
1991 183 130
1992 191 143 J.McKnight
1993 185 124

1994 165 118
MAN-MADE 1995 154 98
HABITAT
150
1996 151 90
1997 141 68
1998 114 62
1999 118 41
pollutants tons per day primary source

Ozone 2,300 vehicles
ple
Particulate Matter (PM10) 357 airborne particles from area n peo
li o
Carbon Monoxide 5,826 vehicles mil
p e r1
Nitrogen Dioxide 1,208 vehicles ns
atio
m plic
o
th c re)
f h eal xposu
o e
ility ime
r o bab n lifet
p o
sed
(ba
toxic air contaminants tons per year
Acetaldehyde 2,749 8
Benzene 9,712 111
1,3-Butadiene 1,668 123
Carbon tetrachloride 2 --
Chromium (Hexavalent) 865 --
Para-Dichlorobenzene 686 --
Formaldehyde 8,116r 30
Methylene chloride 4,317 3
Perchloroethylene 5,781 --
Diesel PM 8,024 720
sources:
South Coast Air Quality Management District (www.aqmd.gov)
California Air Resources Board, The 2001 California Almanac of Emissions and Air Quality (www.arb.ca.gov)
B. Moss
# of days state carbon-monoxide

standard was exceeded
(micrograms/cubic meter), 1999
0–10
11–20
21–30
31–40
41–50
51+
direction of ozone-concentration flows
monitoring site
stationary source
map sources:
Michael W. Donley, Atlas of California (Culver City, Ca.: Pacific Book Center, 1979)
1993 Congestion Management Program: Countrywide Deficiency Plan Background Study, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
South Coast Air Quality Management District (www.aqmd.gov)
Air Quality
Robert Irwin, one of the presiding masters of L.A.’s Light and Space artistic movement
of the late sixties and early seventies, and a native Angeleno, concurred that there’s
something extraordinary about the light of L.A., though he said that it was sometimes
hard to characterize it exactly. “One of its most common features, however,”
he suggested, “is the haze that fractures the light, scattering it in such a way that
on many days the world almost has no shadows.”
Lawrence Weschler, “L.A. Glows,” The New Yorker (February 23 and March 3, 1998), 90.
A. Freitag
MAN-MADE
HABITAT
152
Air Quality
photos 154-159: J. Kung
PEOPLE
154
PEOPLE
156
PEOPLE
158
Ethnicity Spirituality
Immigration & Death

Migration
Age
Language
Education
Civic
Identity
100 People Homeless

of Los Angeles
Body Beautiful
PEOPLE
160
Notice, further, how some people in L.A. talk a great talk

when it comes to cultural diversity—but have secret
limits? They will donate money to refugees in China,
yes, insist on fresh coffee from Kenya, profess delight
in the miserable Bolivians who clutch tiny pockmarked
instruments on our outdoor Promenades. But…will they
shower with them?
Sandra Tsing Loh, A Year in Van Nuys (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), 51.
In another sense, though, Mexico has redeemed L.A.
to me. I’ve discovered a buried city there—a Latino L.A.,
warm and celebratory, where Spanish traces an invisible
heart line deeper than place. In the course of my days
I may encounter a man or woman hailing from Guanajuato
or Jalisco or Oaxaca, and matters of truth and fullness
of heart may pass between us, and much laughter: riches
invisible to most of my other friends. I can trace Los Lobos
riffs back to norteño bands that come through our part
of Mexico: Los Tigres del Norte, Los Bukis. California
street names and foods reveal their origins. Suddenly
the century-old Anglo patina looks flimsy, conditional.
Tony Cohan, On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel (New York: Broadway Books, 2000), 116–17.
T. Morrison
According to the U.S. Census 2000, this photo is representative of Los Angeles.
PEOPLE
162
100 People
of Los Angeles
1. Andrea Dunlop 2. Jennifer Dunlop 3. Tensho Takemori 4. Amy Owen 5. Todd Spiegel 6. Elijah Spiegel 7. Holly Spiegel 8. Ilana Spiegel
9. Ronald Hill 10. Gregory Valtierra 11. Koreen Valtierra 12. P. Max Hanson 13. Caroline Hanson 14. Rachel Penington Day 15. Natalie
Lucia Valtierra Day 16. Monica Valtierra Day 17. Maria Arroyo Wauer 18. Dolores Villanueva 19. Maria Godoy 20. Jeffrey Wauer
21. Cooper Mayne 22. Blythe Alison-Mayne 23. Haden R. Guest 24. Maria Guest 25. Bob Day 26. Patrick M. Hanson 27. Vicki V. Hanson
28. Mark Valtierra 29. Grace E. Hodges 30. William Bryan Hodges 31. Denise Disney Hodges 32. Oliver Doublet 33. Karen Wolfe
34. Miles Wolfe 35. David Wolfe 36. Shaun Kozolchyk-Plotkin 37. Stephen Slaughter 38. Martha Deplazoala 39. Carolyn Castaño 40.
Ann Kneedler 41. David Fletcher 42. Cooper Gerrard 43. Angelica Lopez 44. Myra Gerrard 45. Donny Gerrard 46. Suzanne M. Lopez
47. Rachael Petru 48. Nancy Lambert Mullio 49. Perri Chasin 50. Ann Mullio 51. Darryl Hooks 52. David Plotkin 53. Ray Mullio
43
57 59 63
53 55
66
46 48 50 56
42
54 62
58 68
45 51
49 65
60
7
52 67
47
44 61
36 35 31 64
32
39 37
41 2
38 29
40 72
30 27
5 33 28
2 3
1 34
4 10
PEOPLE
164
9
7 12
6
11
race sex
age
Caucasian 41% Male 49%
under 5 7%
Hispanic 30 Female 51%
5 to 9 8
African American 7
10 to 14 8
Asian 10
15 to 19 7
Asian Indian 1
20 to 24 8
Chinese 3
25 to 34 15
Filipino 2
35 to 44 16
Japanese 1
45 to 54 13
Korean 1
55 to 59 4
Vietnamese 1
60 to 64 3
Other 1
65 to 74 6
Native American 1
75 to 84 4
Pacific Islander 1
85 and over 1
Multi-racial 7
Other 3
sources:
U.S. Census 2000 (www.census.gov)
Los Angeles Almanac (www.losangelesalmanac.com)
54. Cara Mullio 55. Adam Wheeler 56. Bill Mohline 57. Laurence Brockman Tighe 58. Shannah Field 59. Devin McIntire 60. Jennifer
Doublet 61. Piper Olf 62. Jason Kerwin 63. Dwoyne Matthew Cortez Keith 64. Chiaki Kanda 65. Yumna Siddiqi 66. Janet Keith 67. Fredy
Ernesto Gomez 68. Ana Mercedes Sagastume 69. John “Wade“ Keith III 70. Maria Mercedes Gomez 71. Joao Santomauro 72. Mateus
Santomauro 73. Joana Santomauro 74. Daniela Getlinger 75. Hazel Beatriz Gomez 76. Mauricio Antonio Gomez 77. Christopher
Hepburn 78. Heather Heimann 79. Justus Hepburn 80. Hilary Rhode 81. Eliza Hepburn 82. Tiffany Heimann 83. Desirée Trinidad
84. Ji Youn Yi 85. Yoon Kyoun Yi 86. Eui-Sung Yi 87. Garth Trinidad 88. Jeff Howell 89. Sara Yoshitomi 90. Stephen Brockman 91. Paul
Yoshitomi 92. Masahiro Kusumoto 93. David Pakshong 94. Victoria Pakshong 95. Mark Weintraub 96. Nathaniel Joseph Brockman Vail
97. Jasper Pakshong 98. Evan Pakshong 99. James Wauer 100. Reanna Wauer 97
99
98 100
81
88
90
69 96
77 95
79 80 93
76 82
83 87
94
78 91
70 75 89
86
71 92
74
84
85
23 21
26 73 25 22
24
13 16 20
15 17 19
18
14
100 People
of Los Angeles
photos 165-167: S. Latty

these 100 people do the following for fun when they think of L.A., they think
music riot!
art cars
dance freeways
rollerblade palm trees
swim beach
hike sprawl
snowboard cost
party air
entertain home sweet home
run diversity of people, sights, sounds, activities
read cultural diversity
fish economic trendsetter for the world
camp entertainment capital
bike major technology center
play sunshine
eat smog
computer games Lakers
basketball healthy lifestyle
ski melting pot
long drives Hollywood
church activities Disneyland
travel anything is possible/opportunity
scooter movies
garden progressiveness
movies fresh air by the beach
t.v. flavor
theater racism
visit friends congestion
shop festivals
sleep traffic
nursing nice cars
work out money
boogie board anonymity
go to the beach family
walk comfort
festivals image consciousness
PEOPLE
166
relax eclecticism
organize celebrities
sing sea
jog city on the verge of greatness and then it can
cook just piss you off
surf Disney Concert Hall
make magnets history
architecture weather
golf art
hockey pollution
motorcycle fun
sew best home in the world
bake missed opportunities
softball color/visual aesthetics
tennis horrible drivers in the rain
remodel house heat
skateboard Mexican culture
draw
museums
volunteer for children
opera
make love
watch soap operas
watch football, soccer & basketball
download music off the net
cards
stay up late
these 100 people do the following for a living
LAX student
fabulous security
talk radio senior manager
I love L.A. owner post-production facility
great weather homemaker
desert producer/writer
political problems optometrist
Hollywood Hills infant/child
driving realtor
plastic (surgery, credit cards, personalities) office manager
museums chef
dynamism toy tester
beautiful with surrounding mountains festival evaluator
good colleges,churches, institutions sales
vast boulevards architect
convertibles Jewish Community Service Development
swimming pools political mobilizer (grassroots)
Rodeo Drive pro golfer
the Beach Boys graduate student
the Doors museum director
Sunset Blvd. landscape designer
Hollywood Blvd. teacher
Melrose Ave. landscape architect
Venice Blvd. museum curator
Marina Del Rey media management
farmers’ markets design
The Getty environmental graphic designer
gangster rap musician/singer
how big the city is administrative assistant
land of opportunity academic
races united in one region software developer
psychotherapist
--------------- author
sales manager
product manager
sound mixer
executive assistant
artist
loss-control manager
business consultant
dietitian
television producer
art and music independent contractor
construction
cook
100 People
of Los Angeles
G. Borjorquez
PEOPLE
168
photos: S. Latty
The bungalows were filled with kids (music-video production companies) but the
rent was cheap. The girls had tattoos and rings through their tummies—through their
friggin eyebrows
eyebrows—and Jabba said you-know-where else. Maybe he should get one,
Bernie thought, right through the nose, like a fuhcocktuh bull.
Bruce Wagner, I’m Losing You (New York: Villard Books, 1996), 158.
G. Borjorquez
It seems that the only people on TV who don’t dye their hair these days are recently
released captives. Of course, hostages are supposed to look tormented, but everyone
Body Beautiful
else on TV from senators seems unable to stop at anything. This mentality, alas,
is really bad in L.A., where the light is so pitiless.
If you want to see all this striving against the ravages of being human in state-of-the-
art proportions, go to the Rodeo Gardens on any Saturday afternoon; it is there that
body lifts, skin peels, fat suctioning, teeth bonds, and collagen flourish in the gracious
noonday shade.
It would almost look corrupt, except to be corrupt you have to have once not been,
and nobody in this place was ever that.
Eve Babitz, Black Swans (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1993), 17.
photos: M. Lipson
PEOPLE
170
photos: S. Latty
Ethnicity in Los Angeles, 2000
Caucasian 41.4% 5,423,718
Hispanic 29.9 3,917,130
African American 7.1 930,155
Asian 10.3 1,349,379
Native American 0.8 104,806
Pacific Islander 0.2 26,202
Multi-racial 7.6 995,658
Other 2.7 353,720
Growth-rate projections
2000 2005 2015 2025
Caucasian - 6% - 3% 4% 5%
Hispanic 14% 13% 25% 23%
African American .4% 3% 14% 14%
Asian 15% 15% 27% 23%
Native American -2% 1% 13% 13%
source:
U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov)
PEOPLE
172
photos: T. Morrison
J. Rocholl
Ethnicity
White population densities
Russian, Encino
English, Pasedena
Russian, West Hollywood
English, Palos Verdes
English, Long Beach
English, Newport Beach
Asian population densities

Indonesian, Beverly Hills
Thai, North Hollywood
China Town
Indonesian, Encino Hills Little Tokyo
Chinese, Monteray Park
Asian Indian, Granada Hills
Indonesian
Indonesian, Encino Hills Asian Indian, Diamond Bar
Korea Town
Indonesian, El Segundo
PEOPLE
174
Filipino, La Habra Heights
Hawaiian Korean, Fullerton
Japanese, Gardena
Asian Indian, Cerritos
Korean Loatian, Anaheim

Filipino
Guamanian Asian Indian, Anaheim Hills
Samoan, Carson Cambodian, Long Beach Vietnamese, Bolsa
photos: S. Latty
Black population densities
Jamaican
Nigerian, Inglewood
Ethnicity
Hispanic population densities
Belizean, Western Ave., Los Angeles
Mexican, East Los Angeles
Mexican, Santa Ana
Mexican, Long Beach
sources:
James P. Allen and Eugene Turner, The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity in Southern California (Northridge, Ca.:
The Center for Geographical Studies, California State University, 1997).
My piece of east was this big: wide and deep enough to fit a mess of hoboes, boxers,
nine-to-fivers, nutso church ladies, trigger-happy con men, knock-kneed Catholic-
schoolers, and a handful of sexy-walking women in a space about twenty-five miles
back to front. Up on top is our old street, Fisher, a nice stretch of fixer-uppers decorated
with dead lawns and chained-up dogs, and to the west there’s Eastern Ave where the
homeless tip back Bird in the shadow of the 710 Freeway. Down south there’s the
number streets where the super-low-renters squeeze five or six into kitchenette studios,
and then turning to the east is Divine Drive, the richest block in town, where you’ll find
the church ladies who stay busy barking at their maids and polishing their silverplate.
Yxta Maya Murray, What It Takes to Get to Vegas (New York: Grove/Atlantic Inc., 1999), 3.
J. Rocholl
S. Moon
A. Scott
PEOPLE
176
J. Rocholl
S. Moon S. Moon
Ethnicity
T. Morrison
T. Morrison
T. Morrison
A. Scott
S. Moon
I get in my 1980 Datsun 200 SX and head north on Crenshaw Boulevard to the Santa
Monica Freeway. The farther I drive west, the lighter-skinned the people become
in the cars alongside of me. By the time I reach the San Diego Freeway, not only have
the people gotten more European-looking, but so have the cars. It’s a different world
on the west side.
Michael Datcher, Raising Fences: A Black Man’s Love Story (New York: Riverhead Books, 2001), 76.
J. Rocholl
From 1990 to 1999, a net international migration of 1,254,303 people

into the area accounts for 8% of today’s population.
Immigrants admitted through the portal

of Los Angeles, 1998
European 817
Asian 11,902
African 402
Oceanian 552
North American 1,849
Canadian 10
Mexican 14
Caribbean 27
Central American 1,797
South American 359
Total 17,719
Immigrants admitted to the U.S. in 1998

who intend to reside in Los Angeles
European 2,371
PEOPLE
178
Asian 26,631
African 385
Canadian 622
Mexican 31,222
Caribbean 417
South American 1,804
Other 13,107
Total 71,631
9,513 aliens were deported in 1999

from Los Angeles.
deportable aliens located
1992 12,921
1993 10,485
1994 7,229
1995 9,258
1996 9,309
1997 11,476
1998 8,691
1999 9,775
EUROPE
1,160 people
ASIA
22,388 people
AFRICA
NORTH
AMERICA
Los Angeles Caribbean

892 people
Immigration &
Migration
Mexico
36,457 people
AUSTRALIA
SOUTH
AMERICA
Other 432 people
21,764 people
ANTARCTICA
Immigrants naturalized in Los Angeles, 1999

European 2,895
Asian 36,107
Mexican 52,118
Caribbean 1,131
Other 27,810
Total 136,345
sources:
Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service,
Service U.S. Department of Justice (www.ins.usdoj.gov)
Eric Schmitt, “To Fill in Gaps, Shrinking Cities Seek a New Wave of Foreigners,” The New York Times, 30 May 2001.
photos: S. Latty
J. McKnight
Los Angeles now
10.7%: Age 65+
52.1%: Age 25–64
PEOPLE
182 10.5%: Age 18–24
20.6%: Age 5–17
6%: Age 0–4

source:
U.S. Census (www.census.gov)
4% 2005
Los Angeles tomorrow 2% 2000

15% 2015
12% 2025
2% 2005
-2% 2000
31% 2025
22% 2015
Age Age 25–64
Age 65+
Age 18–24
Age 5–17
9% 2025
Age 0–4
4% 2000
10% 2000 12% 2015
14% 2005
23% 2015
7% 2005
-5% 2000 23% 2015
16% 2025
4% 2005
20% 2025
J. McKnight
Languages spoken in Los Angeles
PEOPLE
184
Language
source:
www.losangelesalmanac.com
J. Fleischmann
PEOPLE
186
sources:
Educational Demographics Office, California Department of Education (www.cde.ca.gov/demographics)
Higher education in Los Angeles
University of California
California State University
private university
college
Activities of Angelenos under 18

Education
magazines read movies watched (%)
per month (%) never .4
none 13.9% rarely 4.6
1–2 45.5% several times per year 4.6
3–5 34.7% every other month 14.5
6–10 5% once a month 22
more than 10 5% twice a month 32.8
weekly 19.8
books read (%) several times a week 1.7
don’t read books 9.9
1–2 per year 15.8 video games played (%)
every few months 29.7 never 17.6
monthly 26.7 couple times per year 29.9
weekly 17.8 couple times per month 26.6
1–2 hrs. per week 9.6
hours spent watching 3–5 hrs. per week 7
television per week (%) 6–10 hrs. per week 5
less than one hour 9.1 11–15 hrs. per week 2
1–2 13.3 more than 20 hrs. per week 2.3
3–5 25.7
6–10 27
11–15 11.6
16–20 7.5
21–30 2.5
more than 30 3.3
source:
Los Angeles Times Magazine, 22 April 2001
S. Dimitrov
PEOPLE
188
At present, there is no dearth of significant
stories being told about Los Angeles, although
none of them is comprehensive enough to
constitute an agreed-upon public identity.
In building the Cathedral of Our Lady of the
Angels, the archdiocese is telling a story about
Los Angeles being a profoundly Roman Catholic
city. The Museum of Tolerance, meanwhile,
suggests the city’s equally deep Jewish roots
and consciousness. The completion of Disney
Hall atop Bunker Hill points to Los Angeles’
century-old love affair with music, choral
music especially, and the performing arts. The
retrofitting of City Hall at the cost of tens of
millions evokes a Los Angeles still possessed
of the coherence of an urban body politic,
despite secessionist mutterings all around.
The Alameda Corridor and the debate regard-
ing expansion of the Los Angeles International
AirportCivic
are chapters in a much longer narra-
tive, going back to the stagecoach and drayage
Identity
wagons established by Phineas Banning in the

1860s and the creation of a deep-water port
in the early 1900s: a story about Los Angeles
as Crossroads City….
What will this new Los Angeles story be? What
will it take to bring the citizens of this city once
more into the public square as both a physical
and symbolic place?
Kevin Starr, “A City Desperately Seeking a Civic Identity,” Los Angeles Times, 13 August 2000, M-4.
photos: S. Latty
K. Marchionno
PEOPLE
190
photos: S. Latty
What do I remember of those days in 1992?
I remember standing on a rooftop along Sunset
Boulevard and seeing the southern horizon filled
with smoke. Some terrible excitement, some
evil thrill, made me shiver at the destruction.…
Many people said after those violent days that
L.A. had killed itself, slammed open its soul on
the street and left it to bleed on the pavement
with all the broken glass. I knew people who left
town, left L.A. for any place else. I knew people
who would never again go downtown without
feeling afraid of the stranger.
But L.A. did not die. L.A. is too resilient. L.A. is
filled with too many babies and teenage fathers
and too many grandmothers who hope for
the future. Sometimes I think that L.A. saw its
future for
Civic the first time during those terrible
days ofIdentity
late April and early May.…
It was the worst moment for Los Angeles.
It was also the first moment, I think, when most
people in L.A. realized that they were part of
the whole. The city that the world mocked for
not being a city, for lacking a center, having
only separate suburbs, separate freeway exits—
L.A. realized that it was interconnected. In fear,
people realized that what was happening on
the other side of town implicated them.
Richard Rodriguez, “Letter From 2042, an L.A. Memory,” Los Angeles Times, 27 April 1997, M-5.
J. McKnight
An estimated 261,400 homeless live in Los Angeles.

Out of a national homeless population of 700,000, 38%
live here.
PEOPLE
192
16% hispanic
17% black
61% white
30% have jobs
55% under age 18
79% under age 50
40% women
67% families with children
sources:
www.thedesertsun.com
San Bernardino County, CA Consolidated Plan for 1995, Executive Summary
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Shelter Partnership (www.shelterpartnership.org)
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (www.hud.gov)
Homeless
Sleep under the freeway

freeway.. Antonio had heard this phrase more than once in the weeks
leading up to this humiliation, as the money in his wallet slowly disappeared and the
prospect of eviction became a certainty. Sleep under the freeway. It was almost a refrain
in the neighborhood. José Juan had said it once, just five days ago, when Mr. Hwang
slipped the final, final eviction notice under their doorway. “Podemos
Podemos dormir debajo del
freeway.” It didn’t sound any better in Spanish.
freeway.
Elvira Gonzales, the elderly Mexican-American widow who lived down the hall, and who
was now toward the back of the crowd staring at Antonio with a sad and disapproving
motherly frown, had repeated it too. “Well, muchachos, if they throw you out, I guess
you’ll have to sleep under the freeway. That’s what everybody else does. I guess it’s
warmer there.”
Héctor Tobar, The Tattooed Soldier: A Novel (Harrison, New York: Delphinium Books, 1998), 7.
photos: M. Lipson
S. Durant
PEOPLE
194
photos: S. Latty
It is unlawful to tell the future in my city. One of the oldest ordinances in the city code
book, adopted when the city incorporated in 1954, lists the illegal practices by which
the future may not be foretold.
It is illegal to furnish any information “not otherwise obtainable by the ordinary pro-
cesses of knowledge by means of any occult psychic power, faculty or force,
clairvoyance, clairaudience, cartomancy, psychology, psychometry, phrenology,
spirits, seership, prophecy, augury, astrology, palmistry, necromancy, mind-reading,
telepathy, or by any other craft, art, science, talisman, charm, potion, magnetism,
magnetized substance, gypsy cunning or foresight, crystal gazing, or oriental mysteries.”
D. J. Waldie, Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (New York: Buzz Books for St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 158.
J. Fleischmann
Spirituality
Things were so bad at the start of 1993 that a group associated with the Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi offered to save L.A. through Transcendental Mediation. It would cost the
city only $165 million a year for five years. That would finance nine thousand “coherence-
created experts” who would seek deeper levels of consciousness through TM and radiate
peace and goodwill into the troubled areas of the county, which is just about everywhere
except the gated communities that hire guards and snarling dogs. A press agent
for the group explained that it takes a thousand experts per million population to work.
Al Martinez, City of Angles: A Drive-by Portrait of Los Angeles (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 77.
photos: C. Himmelstein
PEOPLE
196
Death
Los Angeles buried the remains of an estimated 4,193 unclaimed
and unidentified people in 2000.
In Los Angeles, 1,182 deaths were attributed to homicide in 1999.

sources:
Lisa Leff, “Death Without a Ripple,” Los Angeles Times Magazine,
Magazine 6 May 2001.
California Crime Rate, 1999,
1999 CJSC Statitistical Table Site (http://justice.hdcdojnet.state.ca.us/cjsc_stats/prof99/00/11.pdf)
Death
Every year… several hundred men and women lose their identities when they die.
Most are lucky enough to regain them within a few days or weeks after investigators
from the coroner’s office find the medical records or fingerprints that match the body
to the life it led. For others, months may go by before investigators can track down
family members or friends and successfully reunite them with their names. Between
85% and 90% of the… John and Jane Does eventually are identified.
But in a handful of cases, investigations can stretch on for years, remaining officially
open, if not active, long after the dead have been cremated. In the most confounding
cases, the ashes will be consigned to an unmarked common grave at the cemetery
where Los Angeles buries its poor, its abandoned and its nameless dead.
Lisa Leff, “Death Without a Ripple,“ Los Angeles Times Magazine, 6 May 2001, 18.
J. Kung
MONEY
198
M. Lipson
MONEY
200
D. Moser
MONEY
202
Technology/
Financial
Services
Business Services/
Government Money/
Health Services
Global Tourism
Economy/
Top Industries
Los Angeles Pornography

Industry
International Employment/
Trade Unemployment
Wholesale Income/
Trade/ Household
Manufacturing Ranking
Motion Picture/ Expenditure

T.V. Production
Housing
MONEY
204
Not everyone in L.A. is in show biz. In addition to actors,
writers, directors, and others we refer to as being above-
the-line, we are also shoe clerks, air-conditioning repairmen,
freeway litter removers, popcorn salesmen, female mud
wrestlers, and the creators of logos that appear on T-shirts.
This is by way of saying we are a heterogeneous mix in
the nation of Los Angeles, and it is my job as a newspaper
columnist to write about the melange. Actors are simply a
part of the mix, but like blueberries in a muffin, they happen
to be more obvious.
Al Martinez, City of Angles: A Drive-By Portrait of Los Angeles (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 138.
At a time when most native-born Americans were fleeing
the traditional cities, newcomers from abroad flocked to
the metropolitan cores, particularly the creative centers of
New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago.
The newcomers have restocked the human capital of such
urban centers, even as other towns face a continuing loss
of population and economic vitality.
This group’s penchant for living in the urban center has
its basis in cultural as well as economic realities.
Joel Kotkin, The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the American Landscape
(New York: Random House, 2000), 17.
Fortune 500 companies headquartered
in Southern California, 2000
rank company revenue ($ millions) headquarters
41 Ingram Micro 28,068.6 Santa Ana
66 Walt Disney 23,402.0 Burbank
100 Bergen Brunswig 17,244.9 Orange
136 Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) 13,176.0 Los Angeles
144 Fluor 12,417.4 Aliso Viejo
171 Pacificare Health Systems 9,989.1 Santa Ana
178 Edison International 9,670.0 Rosemead
190 Northrop Grumman 8,995.0 Los Angeles
201 Foundation Health Systems 8,706.2 Woodland Hills
231 Computer Sciences 7,660.0 El Segundo
235 Occidental Petroleum 7,610.0 Los Angeles
E. Hillard 239 Wellpoint Health Networks 7,485.4 Thousand Oaks
282 Unocal 6,198.0 El Segundo
305 Mattel 5,515.0 El Segundo
317 Merisel 5,188.7 El Segundo
322 Dole Food 5,060.6 Westlake Village
333 Litton Industries 4,827.5 Woodland Hills
353 Pacific Life Insurance 4,548.9 Newport Beach
402 Countrywide Credit Industries 3,976.4 Calabasas
421 Kaufman & Broad Home 3,836.3 Los Angeles
429 Avery Dennison 3,768.2 Pasadena
442 Fleetwood Enterprises 3,490.2 Riverside
463 Amgen 3,340.1 Thousand Oaks
477 Times Mirror 3,215.8 Los Angeles
Los Angeles companies in 1999’s Fortune 500 but out of 2000’s

247 Rockwell International 7,151.0 Costa Mesa to Milwaukee
MONEY
206
644 Hilton Hotels 4,064.0 Beverly Hills
534 Western Digital 3,541.5 Irvine
United States Filter 3,234.6 Purchased by Vivendi
source:
Fortune Magazine
Magazine, 17 April 2000
Los Angeles has the 16th largest
economy in the world.
gross domestic product ($ billions)
1. United States of America 8,511
2. China 4,420
3. Japan 2,903
4. Germany 1,813
5. India 1,689
6. France 1,320
7. United Kingdom 1,252
8. Italy 1,181
9. Brazil 1,035 Global
10. Mexico 815 Economy/
11. Canada 688 Top Industries
12. Spain 646
13. Indonesia 602
14. Russia 593
15. South Korea 585
16. Los Angeles 470
source:
The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2001
(New York: World Almanac Education Group, 2001)
At millennium’s end, the two largest metropolitan regions, New York and Los Angeles,
after lagging smaller regions for most of the past decade, led the nation respectively
in aggregate payroll and new job creation.
(New York: Random House, 2000), 12.
Who owns L.A. (as of April 2000)?
ASIA
Denver
L.A.Kings
Daily News
Pasadena Star News
and others
Tokyo
Columbia Pictures
Seattle
McDonnell Douglas
North American Aviation
Home Savings Chicago
Times Mirror
KTLA
San Francisco
Glendale Federal Savings
First Interstate
California Federal Savings
Las Vegas
MGM
Phoenix Houston
L.A.Reader Getty Oil Co
AUSTRALIA
MONEY
208 Sydney
Twentieth Century Fox
L.A. Dodgers
KTTV
ANTARCTICA
EUROPE
London
ARCO
AFRICA
Montreal
Universal/MCA
Chicago Lexington, Mass.

Times Mirror Minneapolis Hughes Aircaft Co.
KTLA Santa Monica Bank
Global
Economy/
Detroit Stamford, Conn.
Hughes Aircraft Co UNOCAL Top
Industries
Fairfield, Conn.
KNBC
Dulles, Va.
Warner Bros New York
Paramount
Charlotte, N.C. L.A. Weekly
Marietta, Ga. KCBS
Lockheed Security Pacific
National Bank KCAL
Bank of America KCOP
Houston
Getty Oil Co
SOUTH
AMERICA
source:
“Who Owns L.A.?,” L.A. Weekly,
Weekly April 7–13, 2000
B. Welling
Base industries in Los Angeles
% of gross product revenue

Direct international trade 20
Wholesale trade 18
Manufacturing 14
Business and professional-management services 12
Motion-picture and television production 8
Technology 7
Financial services 7
Health services/bio-med 6
Tourism- 6
Other 2
sources:
B. Kalpin
MONEY
210
Concentration of base industries
Chatsworth-
Canoga Park
Ventura Technology
San Gabriel Valley
Corridor
Eastern
San Gabriel Valley
Airport Area
minor technopole
major technopole
machinery–metallurgical
clothing
Irvine Area
jewelry
furniture
movies & television production
Los Angeles
Industry
Again we passed through the LA landscape, block after block of minimarts and mom-
and-pop stores, boutiques and restaurants and manicure shops. By then I could see
each of these places as the economic center of someone’s life.
How could they all stay in business? I wondered. Where in the world was the volume?
Could there possibly be, back there where they actually lived, in the houses behind
the avenue facades of dry cleaners and Christian bookstores, enough odd need,
enough people coming forth from their homes each day on some pilgrimage that held
the world together for a second—to rent a video game, to restock on Bounty—enough
customers, anyway, to keep all these little shops in business? Evidently so. It seemed
a miracle just then, like the loaves and fishes, though it was so everyday as to be
invisible once you got used to it. In its ordinary way it was magnificent, like a terrific
levitation act in which what gets levitated is a blue Dodge minivan.
Jim Paul, Medieval in LA: A Fiction (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1996), 225–26.
B. Walski
LAX — 3rd busiest airport

MONEY
for freight in the world
212 6,670 tons per day at $167 million per day
Port of Long Beach — 10th busiest

American port
158,205 tons per day at $283 million per day
Port of Los Angeles — 18th busiest

American port
120,943 tons per day at $213 million per day
sources:
Airports Council International, as cited in “World’s Busiest Airports,” Los Angeles Times,
Times 11 February 2001, C-6.
Los Angeles World Airports (www.lawa.org)
www.losangelesalmanac.com
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (www.usace.army.mil)
U.S. Department of Defense (www.defenselink.mil)
Local distribution
4 5
Alam da corri dor
Global distribution $ National distribution

$
via LAX 2 to U.S.
e
major truck terminals

Alameda corridor
3
existing freight rail lines
$
distribution nodes
Global distribution
highway via San Pedro Bay Ports
1. Union Station
2. Los Angeles International Airport
3. San Pedro Bay Ports
4. Van Nuys Municipal Airport
5. Burbank/Glendale/Pasadena Airport
International
Trade
National/Global distribution
VALUE OF FLOWS ($ millions)

LAX
20,000–35,000
12,000–20,000
Port of
Los Angeles 10,000–12,000
Port of imports exports

Long Beach
out of Los Angeles
in to Los Angeles
source:
1993 Commodity Flow Survey,
Survey U.S. Department of Transportation (www.dot.gov)
photos: S. Dimitrov
MONEY
214
International
Trade
T. Morrison
Wholesale trade
# of establishments gross product
Durable goods
(cars, furniture, construction materials, computer equipment, medical supplies, etc.)
19,973 $190,055,931,000
Non-durable goods
(clothing, drugs, food, tobacco, liquor, books, etc.)
12,565 $112,964,715,000
total 32,538 $303,020,646,000
Manufacturing
auto parts 1,068 $23,040,469,000
food and beverage 1,707 $13,417,227,000
petroleum 94 $412,863,013,000
apparel and textiles 5,341 $10,635,538,000
furniture 1,532 $5,053,514,000
total 9,742 $65,009,761,000
source:
1997 Economic Census, U.S. Census (www.census.gov)
D. Dumanski
MONEY
216
T. Morrison
J. Rocholl
Concentration of aircraft, missile, and apparel

manufacturing workers (percent of employed persons, 1990)
aircraft and missile manufacturing
apparel manufacturing
Wholesale
map source:
Trade/
James P. Allen and Eugene Turner.
Manufacturing
The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity in Southern California
(Northridge, Ca.: The Center for Geographical Studies, 1997).
The district now known as Toytown represents a remarkable turn-around of the kind
of archaic industrial area that has fallen into disuse all across the country: Here a combination
of largely immigrant entrepreneurship and the fostering of a specialized commercial district
have created a bustling marketplace that employs over four thousand people, boasts
revenues estimated at roughly $500 million, and controls the distribution of roughly
60 percent of the $12 billion in toys sold to American retailers.
(New York: Random House, 2000), 80–81.
S. Zukowski
Motion-picture/Television production
motion-picture production 5,056 $29,184,223,000
sound recording 479 $4,650,036,000
television broadcasting 92 $3,137,074,000
M. Lipson
radio broadcasting 185 $65,362,000
total 5,812 $37,036,695,000
source:
1997 Economic Census, U.S. Census (www.census.gov)-----------
M. Lipson
MONEY
218
Guaranteed motion picture attendance is no longer a slam dunk. To sell a movie today,
to create not just the desire to see a particular film but rather the need to see it, studios
hire hordes of flimflam men to create publicity, promotion, advertising, and only Harvey
Weinstein knows what else. The average cost of this marketing mavenry? Twenty-six
million dollars. Twenty-six million dollars to promote a single motion picture—
whose story, as often as not, is given away in its briskly paced three-or four-minute
trailer in a far more entertaining fashion than the life-sucking three-or four-hour film
itself. We’ve certainly come a long way from the days when, for twenty-six mil, a studio
could turn out two dozen Andy Hardy pictures, a Ben-Hur
Ben-Hur, and a Ben-Him.
Larry Gelbart, “Hype!,” Los Angeles Magazine (December 2000): 158.
S. Zukowski S. Zukowski
Concentration of theater and motion-picture workers

(percent of employed persons, 1990)
theater and motion-picture workers
M. Lipson
map source:
James P. Allen and Eugene Turner,
The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity in Southern California
(Northridge, Ca.: The Center for Geographical Studies, 1997)
Motion Picture/
T.V. Production
A nest of movie vans parked on a residential street is a common sight in Los Angeles.
The crew rarely look pleased. The waits are interminable. It is hard to believe that any
of this will make an impact except on available parking. And yet, the imaginary maps
that these movies generate are repeated throughout the world.
Norman M. Klein, The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory
(New York: Verso, 1997), 103.
Concentration of technology industries
Chatsworth /
Canoga Park
Ventura Technology
Corridor San Gabriel Valley
Eastern
San Gabriel Valley
telecom companies Airport Area

biotech
internet / software hubs
M. Lipson
Irvine Area
MONEY
220
Technology firms
# of firms
Los Angeles 19,000
Austin, Texas 8,000
Massachusetts 5,000
Silicon Valley 4,000
gross product
manufacturing $27,114,095,000
design and development $5,986,715,000
total $33,100,810,000
sources:
The Zone News, February 2001
Concentration of managers, professionals, and lawyers
(percentage of employed persons, 1990)
Technology/
Financial
Services
managers and professionals

lawyers
map source:
James P. Allen and Eugene Turner, The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity in Southern California
(Northridge, Ca.: The Center for Geographical Studies, 1997)
Financial services
banking 4,072 $592,000,000
non-depository credit institutions 2,580 $17,270,882,000
mortgage and loan brokers 1,440 $1,456,033,000
securities 3,128 $9,217,901,000
insurance 7,021 $4,360,747,000
total 18,241 $32,897,563,000
Business services
real estate and rental/leasing services 17,465 $20,184,432,000
accounting/bookkeeping services 6,207 $9,766,902,000
legal services 10,610 $9,762,390,000
architectural/engineering services 4,875 $7,157,974,000
advertising/media/public relations 2,477 $4,137,001,000
management consulting 4,264 $3,710,725,000
other design services 1,854 $1,386,070,000
scientific research and development 497 $1,320,539,000
total 49,785 $58,483,427,000
source:
Government money
contributions
federal government $2,454,226,000
B. Kalpin state government $5,963,000,000
county government $1,893,000,000
local government $56,529,000,000
expediture
health care $2,012,000,000
infrastructure $262,000,000
libraries $94,000,000
source:
Rand California (www.ca.rand.org)
C. Chung
MONEY
222
In 1994, after the Northridge earthquake devastated parts of the Los Angeles area,
Paula Boland, a conservative Republican assemblywoman whose own home in Granada
Hills was damaged, and who was then sleeping in her car, showed something of the
same spirit when she declared that she would oppose even a small temporary sales
tax increase to help repair quake-damaged roads, schools, university buildings,
and other infrastructure. “Californians,” she declared, “are already paying too much
in taxes.” It was the feds who should pay. “The President owes us. They’ve taken our
military bases and all those jobs. They’re going to have to start giving something
back to California.” There was an earthquake, but there was an almost equally
ferocious determination—come hell, quake, or high water—not to allow anything
to nuzzle up tax rates.
Peter Schrag, Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future (New York: The New Press,
1998), 65–65.
Health services
# of establishments gross product ($ millions)
physician offices 26,484 16,278.45
hospitals 106 3,064.78
nursing/residential care 2,040 2,532.78
laboratories 685 1,387.82
outpatient care 703 1,050.97 Business Services/
home health care 752 918.68 Government Money/
social assistance 2,490 667.67 Health Services
other 216 423.12
total 33,476 26,324.28
Hospital ownership
non-profit 50%
for-profit 43%
public 7%
source:
C. Chung
A. Scott
Tourism industry
# of establishments gross product ($ millions)
performing arts/spectator sports 6,275 10,965.23
food services 14,579 8,899.10
amusement, gambling, recreation 1,786 4,071.09
accommodations 1,158 2,185.22
museums, historical sites 26 16.34
total 23,824 26,136.98
1999 tourism statistics

25.1 million business trips
42.5 million leisure trips
80% California residents
16% out-of-state travelers
4% international travelers
Travelers spent an average of $77.60 per day.

Travel revenue: $23,922,400,000
Payroll: $5,027,200,000
Employment: 248,280,000 jobs
Out of the top 25 amusement/theme parks

worldwide, 3 are located within Los Angeles.
3. Disneyland, Anaheim
13. Universal Studios Hollywood, Universal City
20. Knott’s Berry Farm, Buena Park
MONEY
226
sources:
California Division of Tourism (www.socalif.ca.gov)
The World Almanac 2000 (New York: World Almanac Education Group, 2000)
photos 227-229: G. Narezo
Tourism
MONEY
228
Tourism
M. Lipson
In 2000, the porn industry made 3,500 original productions

and released 11,000 titles.
In Hollywood, 400 titles were released in 2000.
source:
Adult Video News
MONEY
230
Pornography
Although cities like New York and San Francisco have given us plenty of porn in their heydays, if you are serious
about being a sex performer, you will probably want to move to Los Angeles. Not only are 50 of the 85 top porn
companies based there, but the City of Angels really lives up to it [sic] name: L.A. is home to the largest congregation
of porn stars on Earth—around 1,600 of them!
The heart of the porn business is in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, often referred to as “Silicone
Valley” or the “Valley of Sin.” Some of the hottest adult spots in the Valley include Sherman Oaks, Canoga Park,
Van Nuys, Studio City, and Chatsworth. Porn moved out to L.A. from New York in the mid-80s during the explosion
of the home-video market. The reason was more financial than anything else, since rent, equipment, and talent were
significantly cheaper there. Now, the Valley accounts for 90% of America’s porn production. While mainstream film
shooting in L.A. has decreased 13%, porn film production is up almost 25%. In July of 1999, one out of every five
shoots in L.A. was an adult-film shoot. According to Adult Video News, the industry released 10,000 titles in 1999,
up from 8,950 titles in 1998, and up from around 8,000 in 1996. That’s adding nearly 1,000 new titles every year!
Considering that Hollywood only puts out about 400 theatrical releases a year, you can understand why people,
whether they want to be talent or crew, have little difficulty finding employment in the adult industry. Porn taps
into the underemployed, disaffected people who can’t find—or are waiting for—work in the big Hollywood studios.
The L.A. County Economic Development Corporation estimates the number of jobs created by the adult film industry
is between 10,000 and 20,000. A sign of the times for porn’s triumph over Hollywood came when Ron Jeremy,
perhaps the only male porn star who is a household name in America, was invited to speak to executives at
Paramount Pictures and Columbia TriStar on the theme, “Why can the porno industry spin out films for $50,000
in 3 days and make big profits while the major studios spend $40 million in six months and can’t?” (Ron’s answer?
“Low overhead.”)
Matt Duersten (a.k.a. Ana Loria), 1-2-3 Be a Porn Star!: A Step-By-Step Guide to the Adult Sex Industry
(Malibu, Ca.: InfoNet Publications, 2000), 57–58.
J. Fleischmann
MONEY
232
I. Sharp J. Gillingham
Employment in Los Angeles

# of people average salary
services 2,207,390 17% $19,255
retail trade 1,093,042 8% $19,908
manufacturing 1,013,282 8% $38,108
government 887,100 7% $46,900
wholesale trade 436, 287 3% $46,073
finance/insurance/real estate 401,685 3% $56,526
transportation/utilites 352,516 3% $42,861
agriculture 60,939 1% $21,238
source:
National Compensation Survey, July 1999
1999, Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.stats.bls.gov)
Among those with incomes in the lowest 25%,

the percentage of Americans who cannot
freely take breaks 39
choose working hours 64
be absent from work to care for a sick child 70
be absent due to personal sickness 78
J. Rocholl
take vacation leave 59
source:
“On the Job: Freedom by Income,” The New York Times, 13 May 2001, IV–14.
MONEY
234
I. Sharp
L. Hammerness
Employment/
Unemployment
Contemplating a day in Los Angeles without the labor of Latino immigrants taxes the
imagination, for an array of consumer products and services would disappear (poof!)
or become prohibitively expensive. Think about it. When you arrive at many a Southern
California hotel or restaurant, you are likely to be first greeted by a Latino car valet.
The janitors, cooks, busboys, painters, carpet cleaners, and landscape workers who
keep the office buildings, restaurants, and malls running are also likely to be Mexican
or Central American immigrants, as are many of those who work behind the scenes
in dry cleaners, convalescent homes, hospitals, resorts, and apartment complexes.
Both figuratively and literally, the work performed by Latino and Latina immigrants
gives Los Angeles much of its famed gloss. Along the boulevards, at car washes
promising “100% hand wash” for prices as low as $4.99, teams of Latino workers
furiously scrub, wipe, and polish automobiles. Supermarket shelves boast bags of
“prewashed” mesclun or baby greens (sometimes labeled “Euro salad”), thanks to the
efforts of the Latino immigrants who wash and package the greens…. Only twenty
years ago, these relatively inexpensive consumer services and products were not nearly
as widely available as they are today. The Los Angeles economy, landscape, and life-
style have been transformed in ways that rely on low-wage, Latino immigrant labor.
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows
of Affluence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 3.
S. Dimitrov
A. Fishbein
MONEY
236
M. Lipson
Ever since becoming a producer at Paramount, Walter hadn’t had a day to himself.
Twenty-four hours without last-minute script revisions or consultations with the studio
lawyers, a cell phone practically grafted to his ear, was as hard for him to grasp
as higher mathematics. He could barely remember what it was like to eat lunch alone,
and prided himself on being able to talk business and chew food at the same time,
no stray particles flying from his mouth or clinging to his teeth. Once, he knew
enthusiasm for a great screenplay in the pit of his stomach, but now every day was filled
with the hype and reflexive white lies—“This is a hot property”; “You’ll hear from us
next week”—he relied on to spare a writer’s feelings, get cozy with a powerful agent,
or end a tedious meeting early. Praise was little more than a convenience, and his
opinions eventually circled back as dubious rumor.
Bernard Cooper, Guess Again (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 30–31.
I. Sharp
Unemployment
As of June 2000, Los Angeles’s unemployment rate was 4.1%,
or roughly equal to the national average.
source:
Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.stats.bls.gov/blshome)
Employment/
Unemployment
An estimated 25,000 desperate men gather each morning on roughly 125 corners
in Southern California to beg for work.
Steve Lopez, “Staying Ahead of the Pack With a Professional Passenger,” Los Angeles Times,
Times
1 June 2001, B-1.
S. Dimitrov
How much do people make in Los Angeles?

mean annual salary
lawyers and judges $81,351
college- and university-level teachers $71,693
business executives $71,251
writers/authors/entertainers/athletes $69,562
engineers/architects/surveyors $65,530
social scientists/urban planners $63,456
teachers $60,442
math/computer scientists $54,777
technicians $41,357
social/religious workers $40,109
precision production $37,478
police/detectives/guards $35,425
sales $31,622
administrative support $25,862
truck drivers $25,747
personal services $20,582
machine operators $19,546
groundskeepers/gardeners $18,528
nurses and health aides $17,818
janitors and maids $16,838
waitresses and bartenders $15,571
(calculated on the 40-hour work week)

source:
Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.stats.bls.gov)
MONEY
238
M. Lipson
T. Morrison- M. Lipson
Household incomes in Los Angeles

22% $35,000 to $49,999
18% $50,000 to $74,999
15% $15,000 to $24,999
14% $25,000 to $34,999
8% $75,000 to $99,999
7% $10,000 to $14,999
5% $100,000 to $149,000
4% less than $5,000
4% $5,000 to $9,999
3% $150,000 or more
13% of the population lives below the poverty level

or 1,703,099 people
or the population of Utah
or the population of Slovenia
source:
U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov)
I. Sharp R. Yager
Income/
Household
Ranking
photos: S. Smith
How do Angelenos spend their money?

(based on a median income level of $36,853)
37% housing $13,635

18% transportation $6,633
13% food $4,791
5% clothing/apparel $1,842
5% health care $1,842
4% entertainment $1,474
2% education $737
1% personal care products/services $368
.4% tobacco and smoking supplies $147
.3% reading $111
14.3% miscellaneous $ 5,252
source:
U.S. Department of Agriculture (www.usda.gov)
MONEY
240
C. Chung
D. Dumanski
What a dollar spent for food

paid for in 1999
farm value 20 ¢
labor 59 ¢
packaging 8¢
advertising 4¢
profits 4¢
rent 4¢
transportation 4¢
business taxes 3.5 ¢
depreciation 3.5 ¢
energy 3.5 ¢
interest 2.5 ¢
repairs 1.5 ¢
other 2.5 ¢
source:
www.usda.gov/news/pubs/factbook/001b.pdf
What a taxi costs

Price of a 3-mile daytime ride within city limits (with tip)
Los Angeles $14.60
Tokyo $14.10
London $11.10
New York $10.00
Berlin $9.38
Vienna $9.29
Milan $8.35
Copenhagen $7.95
Paris $7.89
Tel Aviv $7.76
source:
Los Angeles Times
Times, 11 February 2001
Expenditure
“It’s amazing,” Dandy says as we walk away. “Since I’ve been famous, I get better deals
on everything. It’s so ironic. When you can finally afford to buy shit, they give you
everything for free. After my show’s been on a few years, I want to go on Lifestyles
of the Rich and Famous and see if I can go a week without having to open my wallet.”
Dennis Hensley, Misadventures In the (213): A Novel (New York, Rob Weisbach Books, 1998), 68.
A. Scott
MONEY
244
I felt a sharp stab of resentment, no, make that rage. Never in my life would I be able
to live like this. It wasn’t just the money, although these Hollywood Hills were paved
with gold. It was the ease, the confidence, the organization that I’d never be able to
figure out. The best thing I could hope for in my little life would be a house in the Valley,
and the last thing in the world I ever wanted in my life was a house in the Valley.
Carolyn See, The Handyman (New York: Random House, 1999), 127.
Renting versus ownership
monthly mortgage payment

(average by census tract)
$ 500–999
$ 1,000–1,499
$ 1,500+
monthly rent payment

(average by census tract)
$ 0–564
$ 565–681
$ 682–839
$ 840–1,050
Housing
source:
J. Rocholl J. Moon
MONEY
246
J. Moon
J. Rocholl
J. Moon
J. Moon
Housing
Contributing Writers
Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. Big City (2000),
Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in
the History of the U.S. Working Class (1986), City of Quartz:
When I moved here in June 1991 to edit an architecture publication, Los Angeles was recession- Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990), and Ecology
hit but relatively complacent. Architects concerned themselves more with designing stylish of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (1998).
baubles than grappling with issues of the city. The sun shone brightly, but most of us did Davis taught urban theory at the Southern California
not see the glaring social fissures. Then in April 1992 we were smacked in the civic gut Institute of Architecture. He now lives in Papa’aloa, Hawaii.
by the riots. The events of April 29 shook the media, politicians, architects, and most citizens All excerpts from Ecology of Fear
Fear, Copyright ©1998,
from what seems in retrospect to have been a pleasant oblivion to the seething tensions are reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
of a fast-changing city. Even though the riots were succeeded by other, natural calamities, John D’Amico parks his car in West Hollywood. His e-mail
and the recession gave way to economic boom, I believe the mindset here was profoundly address on the web is jad3@aol.com.
altered; for better or worse, L.A. now demanded to be taken seriously. The riots spawned Marla Dickerson is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times,
Times
radio shows like “Which Way, L.A.?” (which I subsequently went to work for) devoted to where she writes about manufacturing and the Southern
analyzing the city. In fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, local writers explored the many facets California economy. An Illinois native, Dickerson holds a
of its complex, contemporary social fabric. bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Illinois
We have turned to some of these writers for insights about Los Angeles to include in this and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern
book. Rather than pluck excerpts from the many great writers of previous decades, we have University.
by and large chosen authors who have captured L.A. now—“now” being the years since Matt Duersten is a Wisconsin-bred freelance writer and
April 1992, which in my mind prematurely kick-started our New Millennium. We have selected editor who has worked for two premiere failed L.A. magazines
excerpts from recent books and articles to illuminate the different chapters of this book. of the 1990s: Glue (for which he served as senior editor)
Listed below are the authors’ names with brief descriptions about their work. I should add and Buzz (for which he was a flunky). In addition to a book
that the great pleasure of being the text editor for L.A. Now has been to enrich my own on L.A.’s porn industry, 1-2-3 Be a Porn Star!: A Step-By-Step
Step-By-Step
understanding and perceptions of L.A. through reading the sharp and varied voices out Guide to the Adult Sex Industry (penned Ana Loria, 2000),
there on the subject. With thanks to the authors for letting us reproduce their work, Duersten has written for Jalouse, Black Book, Variety
Variety, Time
I urge you to buy and read these books. Out, Flaunt, Instinct, Los Angeles Magazine,
Magazine The New Times,
—Frances Anderton and the L.A. Weekly
Weekly.
Celeste Fremon is an award-winning journalist and author
of Father Greg & the Homeboys (1995). She is a frequent
Eve Babitz is a journalist and novelist living in Los Angeles. contributor to the L.A. Weekly
Weekly, Los Angeles Times Magazine,
Magazine
She is the author of Eve’s Hollywood: A Confessional L.A. Good Housekeeping,
Housekeeping Los Angeles Magazine,
Magazine Utne Reader
Reader,
Novel (1974), Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, MSNBC, and Salon. She and her son, Will, live in a small
The Flesh, and L.A. Tales (1977), Sex and Rage: Advice house in Topanga Canyon, which occupies 18.5 square miles
for Young Ladies Eager For a Good Time: A Novel (1979), of chaparral-covered hills in unincorporated Los Angeles
L.A. Woman (1982), Black Swans (1993), and Two by Two: County.
Tango, Two-step and L.A. Night (1999). William Fulton, a journalist and urban planner who has
John J. Berger teaches and writes on energy and natural- lived and worked in Southern California since 1981, is the
resource issues and is a consultant on environmental sci- author of The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban
ence and policy. He is the author of books on nuclear and Growth in Los Angeles (1997). He lives in Ventura, California.
renewable energy including Charging Ahead: The Business Dave Gardetta has been a writer-at-large for Los Angeles
of Renewable Energy and What It Means for America (1998) Magazine since 1995. His stories have appeared in the
and is the editor of Environmental Restoration: Science International Herald-Tribune, The Washington Post,
Post and
and Strategies for Restoring the Earth (1990). the Los Angeles Times Magazine.
Magazine For the last four years,
Tony Cohan is the author of On Mexican Time: A New Life Gardetta has taught journalism at Eagle Rock High School.
in San Miguel (2000), and the novels Canary (1981), Larry Gelbart has been an on-and-off, in-and-out resident
a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Opium of Los Angeles since 1943. For over half a century, he has
(1984). His essays, travel writings, and reviews have written for radio, television, the screen, and the stage in Los
appeared in books, magazines, and newspapers including Angeles, as well as two of its suburbs, New York and London.
The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
Times
He divides his time between Venice, California, and Mexico. Jay Gummerman, author of the novel Chez Chance (1995)
and a collection of stories, We Find Ourselves in Moontown
Bernard Cooper, recipient of the PEN/Ernest Hemingway (1989), received an M.F.A. in fiction writing from the University
Award in 1991 and the O. Henry Prize in 1995, is the author of California at Irvine. He resides in San Clemente, California.
of Guess Again: Short Stories (2000). He has also published
two collections of memoirs, Maps to Anywhere (1990) and Blake Gumprecht is a human geographer and cartographer
Truth Serum (1996), as well as the novel A Year of Rhymes whose research interests focus on the cultural and historical
CREDITS
248
(1993). His work has appeared in Story
Story, Ploughshares
Ploughshares, geography of the United States and Canada, especially
Harper’s, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine,
Harper’s Magazine the West, with emphasis on urban studies, environmental
and in anthologies such as The Best American Essays history, ethnic studies, popular culture, and the perception
(1988, 1995, 1997), and The Oxford Book on Aging: of place. He is presently at work on a book about the
Reflections on the Journey of Life (1994). Cooper is currently American college town.
a contributing writer for Los Angeles Magazine.
Magazine Dennis Hensley is the author of the Misadventures
Michael Datcher is the author of Raising Fences: A Black in the (213): A Novel (1998). As a journalist, his work has
Man’s Love Story (2001). An award-winning journalist and appeared in Movieline, Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan, Us Weekly
Weekly, InStyle
InStyle,
critic, his poetry has been featured in Body and Soul (1996) and The Advocate. He recently released his first CD as a
and Catch the Fire!!!: A Cross-Generation Anthology of singer/songwriter, The Water’s Fine, and is currently working
Contemporary African-American Poetry (1988). Datcher is on his next book, Screening Party
Party.-He lives in the (818).
the co-editor of Tough Love: Cultural Criticism and Familial Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of Doméstica:
Observations on the Life and Death of Tupac Shakur (1996). Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows
Datcher has served as director of literary programs for the of Affluence (2001), is associate professor of sociology
World Stage Anansi Writer’s Workshop in L.A’s Crenshaw at the University of Southern California.
District since 1993. Roger Keil, author of Los Angeles: Globalization, Urbanization,
Urbanization,
Mike Davis is the author of several books, including Magical and Social Struggles (1998), is an associate professor
of environmental studies at York University in Toronto. and a contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine,
Magazine U.S. News
Norman M. Klein is the author of The History of Forgetting: & World Report,
Report and the Sunday opinion section of the
Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory (1997). He is a critic Los Angeles Times.
Times He has published numerous articles in
and historian of mass culture. In addition to being a published such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street
writer, he is also a professor at CalArts as well as a faculty Journal, The American Scholar
Scholar, Time, Mother Jones,
member at Art Center College of Design. and The New Republic.
Republic He has also written two books:
Hunger of Memory, An Autobiography (1981), and Days of
Joel Kotkin is the author of The New Geography: Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father (1992),
How the Digital Revolution Is Re-shaping the American as well as two BBC documentaries.
Landscape (2000). He has published four books and is a
contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times and a colum- Jerry Schad, author of nine books on outdoor recreation
nist for the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Journal A senior fellow in Southern California, is a recognized expert on trails in
with the Davenport Institute for Public Policy at Pepperdine the region. He is a professor of physical science at San Diego
University, Kotkin lives in North Hollywood. Mesa College, writes the weekly column “Roam-O-Rama”
for the San Diego Reader
Reader, hosts the “Afoot and Afield in San
Lisa Leff is a former staff reporter for The Washington Diego” series on KPBS-TV, and exhibits his astronomical
Post and the Los Angeles Times.
Times A Los Angeles native, she photography at www.skyphoto.com
www.skyphoto.com.
writes frequently on youth and social issues for Los Angeles
Magazine and the Los Angeles Times Magazine,
Magazine where her Peter Schrag is the author of Paradise Lost: California’s
article on Jane Doe #59 appeared. Experience, America’s Future (1998). He is an author
of many books and was for nineteen years the editorial page
Sandra Tsing Loh is the author of A Year in Van Nuys (2001), editor of the Sacramento Bee. All excerpts from Paradise
Aliens in America (1997), If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Lost, Copyright ©1998, are reprinted by permission
By Now (1997), and Depth Takes a Holiday: Essays From of The New Press.
Lesser Los Angeles (1996). She is a writer and performer
who received the Pushcart Prize in Fiction in 1995 for her Carolyn See is the author of nine books, including
short story “My Father’s Chinese Wives.” The Handyman (1999). She is Friday morning reviewer
for The Washington Post,
Post and has been on the boards
Steve Lopez is a writer for the Los Angeles Times.
Times of the National Book Critics Circle and PEN/West International.
Land of Giants, a collection of Lopez’s columns on local The recipient of Guggenheim and Getty fellowships,
politics, was published in 1995. He is also a novelist. See currently teaches English at UCLA. She lives in Pacific
His first book, Third and Indiana (1994), was a finalist Palisades, California.
for the Dashiell Hammett Award.
John Shannon is the author of The Orange Curtain: A Jack
Lewis MacAdams is the author of The River: Books One Liffey Mystery (2001). Shannon, a native of Los Angeles,
and Two. He is the author of ten books of poetry, a film grew up in San Pedro and attended Pomona College
documentarian [WhatWhat Happened to Kerouac? (1985) and and UCLA, where he received his M.F.A. in film. His career
Eric Bogosian’s FunHouse (1987)], and an award-winning has spanned writing to teaching to political activism.
journalist for Rolling Stone,
Stone Actuel, Los
os Angeles Magazine,
Magazine
and L.A. Weekly
Weekly, among others. His recent book, Birth of Stuart Silverstein is a writer for the Los Angeles Times.
Times
the Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant-Garde (2001), Kevin Starr, a contributing editor to the opinion section
is a cultural history of the American avant-garde of the 1940s of the Los Angeles Times,
Times is State Librarian of California and
and 1950s. A founder of Friends of the Los Angeles River, a professor at the University of Southern California. The latest
he lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles. volume of his series on the history of California, The Dream
Al Martinez is the author of City of Angles: A Drive-By Endures: California Enters the 1940s, was published in 1997.
Portrait of Los Angeles (1996). Born in Oakland, California, Deyan Sudjic is the author of The 100 Mile City (1993) and
he studied at San Francisco State University and the University editor of Domus magazine.
of California at Berkeley. In 1972 Martinez joined the Los Jervey Tervalon, author of Living for the City (1998),
Angeles Times,
Times where he worked as a senior writer on an was raised in the neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles.
editorial team that won the 1984 Public Service Pulitzer Prize He has translated the terrain of his youth and today’s
in Journalism for a series on Southern California’s Latinos. headlines into urban American stories about a community
Bill Moseley is an actor/writer living in Los Angeles with two imploding.
daughters, three cats, three fish, and three birds. A graduate Héctor Tobar, the son of Guatemalan immigrants, is a
of Yale University, his work has appeared in Interview, Rolling reporter for the Los Angeles Times and was part of the writ-
Stone, Vanity Fair
Fair, Omni, Glue, Hollywood Reporter
Reporter, and ing team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1992
National Lampoon.
Lampoon His acting resume includes Pink Cadillac, riots.
White Fang,
Fang Choptop in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, He holds an M.F.A. from UC Irvine.
and Otis in House of 1000 Corpses.
Corpses Moseley’s hobbies include
gardening, girls’ soccer, and hiking in the California hills. Bruce Wagner’s books include I’m Losing You (1996) and
Force Majeure (1991). His third book, I’ll Let You Go, is due
Yxta Maya Murray, author of What It Takes To Get To Vegas,
Vegas in 2002. Wagner has directed several film projects includ-
is a professor of law at Loyola Law School. She has written ing Women in Film (2001), produced by Killer Films and the
fiction and nonfiction for Buzz and Glamour
Glamour, among other Independent Film Channel.
publications.
D. J. (Don) Waldie is an essayist, poet, and author of Holy
Jim Paul, author of Medieval in LA: A Fiction (1996), Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996) and more recently Real
What’s Called Love (1993), and Catapult: Harry and I Build City: Downtown Los Angeles Inside/Out (2001). He serves
a Siege Weapon (1991), has also published material in such as Public Information Officer for the City of Lakewood.
journals as The New Yorker and The Paris Review.
Lawrence Weschler has written for The New Yorker since
James Ricci has been the columnist for Los Angeles Times 1981. He has authored several texts on David Hockney,
Magazine since November 1999. Previously, he was including CAMERAWORKS (1984) and an interview with
a special-assignment feature writer at the Times and the artist in the 1988 Los Angeles County Museum of Art
a member of the newspaper’s literary journalism team. retrospective catalogue. Weschler has published numer-
He came to the newspaper in September 1996 after fifteen ous books, including Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the
years as a writer and editor at the Detroit Free Press. Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin
Richard Rodriguez is an editor at Pacific News Service (1982); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); Calamities
of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998); and A Wanderer
in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces (1998).
Contributing
Sam Durant is an artist living and working in Los Angeles.
He is represented by Blum and Poe in Santa Monica
and Galeria Emi Fontana in Milan. His work has been shown
recently at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in West
Photographers &
Hollywood, Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center in Copenhagen,
Denmark, the Royal College of Art in London, and Dortmund
Kunstverein in Dortmund, Germany.
Anne Fishbein is a documentary photographer living in
Designer/Illustrators
What does Los Angeles look like? We have all seen it in the movies, both as itself and as
Southern California. Her work has appeared in Harper’s
The Atlantic Monthly
Harper’s,
Monthly, and Los Angeles Magazine,
Magazine and is
in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art,
New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and The Art
a substitute for other cities. It is at once unique and generic: a profusion of visual diversity Institute of Chicago.
and an all-too-familiar landscape of indistinguishable built mass. The photographs that Jessica Fleischmann recieved her M.F.A. in graphic design at
illustrate this book describe, subvert, and illuminate L.A. Now’s data.-In addition to the images CalArts in 2001. She currently works at Lorraine Wild Design
by Art Center photography students, we include a substantial body of work by Los Angeles- in Los Angeles. She also designs @n.d. and The Journal
based photographers found through research, gallery visits, and word of mouth. Many of of Aesthetics and Culture. Her work can be seen in Eye
Eye,
the photographers dedicate themselves to issues such as labor, the homeless, and fashion; at Printed Matter in New York, and on the Lida.com website.
others have almost encyclopedic archives that depict myriad aspects of the city—a richness
of resources vital to portraying Los Angeles in all of its complexity. Andreas Freitag studied photography and graphic design
at CalArts in 2000-01, as well as in his native Munich.
The work presented in L.A. Now comprises previously published, unpublished, and commis- He drives a big blue Mercedes.
sioned photographs. The team of Art Center photography students took part in discussions
about the nature of L.A. Now’s data, then either photographed to illustrate specific topics Jenafer Gillingham received her B.F.A. from Art Center.
or offered related images culled from their portfolios. A number of photographers also located After living abroad in London, Montreux, and Munich for
images in their archives and generously granted permission to reproduce them in this volume. five years, she returned to her native Los Angeles to con-
One photographer spent two months photographing sites along a designated line through tinue working on editorial photography. Her clients include
the entire city. Los Angeles Magazine,
Magazine Children’s Hospital, Louey/Rubino
Design, Emmy Magazine,
Magazine and L.A. Weekly
Weekly.
It is our hope that this book becomes a piece of Los Angeles itself, a document of the place,
a culmination of the ideas at work right now. David Grey is currently the art director for Clae Footwear.
After living with a group of Rastas off the coast of Belize,
Gregory Borjorquez is a freelance photographer who he moved to California and received his M.F.A. in graphic
design at CalArts in 2001. David is a Libra who likes tacos,
‘71 cabernet and long sunsets.
has been capturing East L.A. culture for his book project,
Eastsiders. His work has been featured in L.A. Weekly
Weekly, Larry Hammerness is a freelance photographer who works
Los Angeles Magazine,
Magazine and Big Time Magazine.
Magazine in Los Angeles. His subjects range from celebrities and surf-
ing to disasters and weddings. His photographs have been
Kaucyila Brooke is a Los Angeles-based artist. Her visual
published both nationally and internationally and have been
work and writing has appeared in Deborah Bright’s
shown in several exhibitions.
The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire
(1998) and Diane Neumaier’s Reframings: New American Erik Hillard is a 6th-term photography student at Art Center.
Feminist Photographies (1996). Her ongoing video project, Most of the photographs he provided are related to his book
The Boy Mechanic,
Mechanic was recently shown as a multi-channel Inertia Breathes, a study of movement, transition, journey,
video installation in the exhibition “<hers> Video as a Female and change. His freeway images, part of a series titled
Terrain” at the Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria. Junction Silent, reflect his attraction to the graphic nature
She is the director of the program in photography at CalArts. of Los Angeles freeway interchanges and how they stand
in majestic silence while thousands pass through them daily.
Stephen Callis is a photographer and educator living in
Los Angeles. His work on the L.A. River has appeared in Cheryl Himmelstein grew up in Tucson, graduated from
numerous publications and is on permanent display at the Art Center, and now resides in Venice, California. She photo-
L.A. River Center in Highland Park. He has also published graphs a range of subjects including environmental portraits,
a fotonovela in collaboration with Rubén Ortiz Torres and personal projects, and editorial assignments. Her work has
Leslie Ernst about hotel workers at a prominent L.A. hotel appeared in the Los Angeles Times,
Times Los Angeles Magazine,
Magazine
titled Murder in My Suite.
Suite U.S. News and World Report,
Report Industry Standard,
Standard and Time.
Christina Chung is not Chinese like most people think. Instead Karen Hirt studied graphic design at the School of Art and
she is short, right-handed, obsessed with falling-apart old Design in Zurich and at CalArts. where she recieved her M.F.A.
houses, and was born in Santa Ana. Since graduating from in 2001. She has worked at Design Studio Anthon Beeke
CREDITS
250
CREDITS CalArts in 2001, she has focused her attention on getting in Holland and Interbrand in Switzerland. She recently
250 over her fear of snails, practicing horse stance, drawing

pictures of pictures, and taking pictures of drawings.
Zoe Crosher is a recent M.F.A. graduate from the Photography
collaborated on the website for the Graphic Design Program
at CalArts (www.calarts.design.edu).
i-cubed, LLC is a Fort Collins, Colorado-based geo-processing
and Integrated Media Programs at CalArts, concentrating service organization that offers complete business solutions
her efforts on the Out the Window (LAX) series and prepar- based upon information and geodata derived from air
ing for a project to be shot for the Liberace Museum in Las photos, satellite imagery, and other sources of geographic
Vegas. She is also managing editor of the forthcoming <net. information.
net.net> book, published by the California Institute of the Brandon Kalpin, an Art Center photography graduate
Arts Press and featuring interviews with participants of the in Summer 2001, contributed many images to L.A. Now.
MOCA- Among them are works from his Rooftop series, which reveals
and CalArts-sponsored <net.net.net> conference. details that guide viewers to a discovery about their world
Slobodan Dimitrov is a photographer based in the Long and potentially change their point of view. By abstracting
Beach/Los Angeles harbors area. He is a contributing these nuances, he seeks to provoke a new consideration
photographer for The Dispatcher
Dispatcher, L.A. Weekly
Weekly, The Building of the everyday.
Trades News, and Random Lengths.
Lengths His work has appeared
in The Nation, The Carpenter
Carpenter, The Progressive,
Progressive Los Angeles
Magazine, and The Economist, among many labor publications
Magazine
and newspapers.
Dunja Dumanski, a 6th-term photography student at Art
Center, contributed images of “consumption and waste”
related to her interest in the human body. Dunja notes,
“Los Angeles is decaying.”
Edit Kozma has been living in Los Angeles for over ten years Karin Apollonia Müller has worked in both California and
photographing fashion, advertising, nature, and art. She spent Germany for the last 6 years. The German-born artist has
the last few months, among other projects, shooting the 246 received numerous fellowships and awards including
photos that document a line that spans the Los Angeles a DAAD grant, a Villa Aurora fellowship, and a Lannan
agglomeration. The project has afforded her the enjoyment Residency. A recent body of work was published as Angels
of getting to know the city in a unique way. in Fall (2001) by Kruse Verlag, Germany. She is currently
Jane Kung graduated from Art Center’s photography represented by Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Los Angeles,
department in Summer 2001. Her interest in cultural and Julie Saul Gallery, New York. Presently she is working
differences, informed by her Taiwanese background, can be on a Getty/CalArts commission in Los Angeles. All images
seen in many of Kung’s images. She contributed two series— from Angels in Fall appear courtesy of Kruse Verlag,
one on recycling, the other on the ethnicities of L.A. “I didn’t ISBN 3-934923-09-7, www.krusepublishers.com
www.krusepublishers.com.
want to show any more stereotypes about different races,” Gala Narezo, who recently graduated from Art Center in
she says. “Instead I want to show how people really live in photography and is returning to do an honors term, focused
L.A. and what they like to do. No one is better than another, on the people passing through LAX for her L.A. Now project.
and my hope for the future is that someday everyone truly She is interested in exploring the state of community in the
becomes equal.” modern world. Touching upon ideas of belonging and dis-
Stephen Latty is a graduate student of film at Art Center. placement, she pays special attention to transient spaces
The series of video stills that capture the “100 People of where community might not be expected, such as an airport,
Los Angeles” stem from an interest in personal interactions mall, or grocery store.
within crowds and their general reflection of class relations. Marlon Perkins is a prominent researcher for “Merkin and his
Mark Lipson was born in Toronto and attended New York Organization”. He rents in the Locust Mountain neighborhood
University film school. He came to Los Angeles in 1978, of Los Angeles. His work has appeared in books, in periodi-
where he has been a photographer and filmmaker explor- cals such as Newsweek, Space Shower TV and during sleep.
ing the surreal and mundane landscape of the city. He now He recommends frequent exposure to lightning.
resides in Venice, California, with his wife and children. Lorenzo Pesce is an Art Center photography student who
Ken Lubas, now retired, has been a photojournalist on the graduated in August 2001. His L.A. Now project—LAX at
staff of the Los Angeles Times for more than thirty years. night—involved the idea of representing people through
His photographs have appeared on the covers and in the empty public spaces in Los Angeles. “Coming from Italy,
pages of Sports Illustrated,
Illustrated National Geographic,
Geographic Time, I have always seen Los Angeles as an empty city, because
Newsweek, and Life, among other national and international you see a lot more cars than people.”
publications. Among his many recognitions are two Pulitzer Jennifer Rocholl recently finished her 7th term in photography
Prizes as a team member and numerous personal awards at Art Center. Her motivation for the People series was to
from major competitions. capture the faces of Los Angeles in the way she encounters
Ken Marchionno is an artist, writer, and educator currently them—whether it’s a boy with his puppy or a truck driver
residing in Los Angeles. His work has been published and stopping in for breakfast at a diner. About the Homes of L.A.
exhibited throughout the U.S., Korea, and Russia. series, she says, “I think it’s interesting to be able to
compare the diverse personal signatures of the residents
Jennifer McKnight received her B.F.A. in Printmaking at of Los Angeles right on their front lawns.”
Washington University in St Louis, and has recently worked
in advertising as a digital illustrator. She is currently working Allen Scott, a 7th-term photography student at Art Center,
on an M.F.A. in graphic designat CalArts. has always had a curiosity in how quickly the world around
us changes. “We live in a contradictory society in which we
Julie Moon is a graduate of Otis College of Art and Design. crave the familiar, a sense of history, and yet we constantly
She lives and works in Los Angeles. tear down and rebuild our environment to fulfill our craving
Swan Moon is a young L.A.-based artist who works mainly for the ‘new and improved.’” With this in mind, he approached
in photography and film/video. She has exhibited work the topic of “consumption” while seeking timeless images
in Los Angeles and New York and is a recent graduate of urban Los Angeles.
of the Photography Program at CalArts. Issa Sharp lives in Los Angeles with her husband and
Theo Morrison, a 6th-term photography student at Art twelve-year old son.
Center, contributed works from two series, as well as the Stuart Charles Smith is an amateur celebrity sleuth who
100 People of Los Angeles photograph. About his involve- works in the agglomeration, where he lives with his dog, Nikki
ment in the project, he writes: “I realized that the trajectory, Love. He is an M.F.A. candidate in graphic design at CalArts.
the momentum of our massive concrete grids, is faster than
documentation. The image becomes everything and nothing Jon Sueda is a graphic designer currently studying
in relation to a world paced by circuit boards. What I find in the CalArts M.F.A. program in graphic design. Previously,
unique in photographing Los Angeles is the relation these he worked on Speak magazine in San Francisco and was
images have to images propelling the make-believe that visiting lecturer in the graphic design department
dominates the city’s folklore. I am also fascinated with the at the University of Hawaii.
subject’s relation to this make-believe, as well as my own.” Brandon Welling is a photographer and architect living
Dwayne Moser is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles. in Santa Monica. He currently works for Morphosis, and his
His work addresses the phenomenon of celebrity and, photographs have been published in books and magazines
simultaneously, the Angeleno landscape. worldwide, including Metropolis
Metropolis, Interiors, Casabella, C3
Korea, GA Japan,
Japan The New York Times, and the Los Angeles
Brian Moss is a multi-media artist with an M.F.A. in Times.
photography from CalArts, and a B.F.A. in painting from Tyler
School of Art in Philadelphia. This summer, Moss received Robert Yager is an award-winning, L.A.-based photographer
a Durfee Foundation Artists’ Resource for Completion from London. His work regularly appears in such publications
Grant for work made during a three-month residency at the as The New York Times Magazine,
Magazine L.A. Weekly
Weekly, and several
Delaware Center for Contemporary Art. Since 1997, Moss has British magazines. He has also been documenting a Latino
taught photography, digital imaging, drawing, and sculpture gang in L.A. over the last ten years.
in a variety of Los Angeles schools and universities. Scott Zukowski specializes in design for cultural institutions
and has self-published several faculty/student collaborative
projects. His research focuses on design- and culture-related
issues explored through photography, screenprinting, collage,
and installation. His work has been published in Eye
Eye, Emigre
Emigre,
I.D., and Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse.
Discourse He has
worked at M&Co. in New York and has held full-time teaching
positions at CalArts, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee,
the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Herron School of Art.
He received his M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Photos 104-109: S. Zukowski

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MAN-MADE Parks &

There are at least a dozen streets in Los Angeles named

Built Mass &

Built Mass &

MAN-MADE Parks &

Angeles National Forest

Santa Monica Mountains

Acreage of urban parkland in Los Angeles

Acreage of state and national forest land

Rate of water consumption

Sources for consumption

Los Angeles Aqueduct

Second Los Angeles Aqueduct

# filtration plant location Lake Mathews

Colorado River Aqueduct

Groundwater basins and filtration plants

Energy consumption by sector per year

Energy sources consumed per year

Los Angeles consumes

Fruits and vegetables

126 1,514,448,780 pounds of red meat

Tons of waste generated in 2000

128 Hazardous waste

Global transportation through LAX, 1999

average # of people per day

132 non-U.S. citizens 21,761

Who flies to LAX?

Where are they flying from?

Airports in Los Angeles 998 er d

136 19. Flabob Airport

Current inter-city travel via automobile,

Projected high-speed rail travel in 2020

High-speed rail statistics

There is probably no more peculiar feeling in all of Southern California

About Metrolink (as of 14 June 2001)

Metrolink commuter rail lines and stations

metro rail transit lines and stations

41. Thousand Oaks 42. Tulare

I know it’s fashionable to speak of freeways as instruments of cultural isolation.

Road There are…floating bottlenecks—freeway incidents—that haunt engineers’ thoughts.

Freeways and traffic

How many cars are in Los Angeles?

6,731,705,244 gallons of gas consumed per year

How many cars are on the freeway during rush hour?

How many vehicle miles are traveled each day?

148 The travel-rate index during peak-traffic hours is 2.06

Annual delay per person in Los Angeles

Annual fuel waste in Los Angeles

Annual congestion cost in Los Angeles

Most congested areas in the United States

1993 185 124

pollutants tons per day primary source

# of days state carbon-monoxide

Immigration & Death

100 People Homeless

Notice, further, how some people in L.A. talk a great talk

photos 165-167: S. Latty

Russian, West Hollywood

English, Palos Verdes

English, Long Beach

English, Newport Beach

Asian population densities