“The Code of the Street” and “Decent and Street Families”

In this chapter acerbic Southern California social critic Mike Davis presents a dark vision of racial, ethnic, and class divisions and social conflict that he argues characterize urban space in the prototypical metropolis of the future. The universal and ineluctable consequence of police crusade for an anti-crime to secure the city is the destruction of accessible public space. The contemporary opprobrium attached to the term street person, is in itself a harrowing index of the devaluation of public spaces. To reduce contact with untouchables, urban redevelopment has converted once vital pedestrian streets into traffic sewers and transformed public parks into temporary receptacles for the homeless and wretched. The first militarist of space in Los Angeles was General Otis of the Times. The spirit of General Otis has returned to subtly pervade Los Angeles' new post-modern Downtown: the emerging pacific rim financial complex. Downtown project is one of the largest postwar urban designs in North America.