ABSTRACT
A major theme of many of these works has been the idea of the fragmentation of urban form and its associated economic and social geographies. Namely, that the city is ceasing to exist as a recognisable single, coherent entity; rather it is physically fragmenting as independent cities emerge on the edge of existing metropolises and economically, socially and culturally fragmenting as divisions between different social groups widen to the extent of their becoming broken. The city fragments, according to this logic, into a series of independent settlements, economies, societies and cultures. This is expressed in the idea of the galactic metropolis proposed by Peirce Lewis in 1983 which describes urban form as resembling a series of stars floating in space, rather than a unitary, coherent entity with a definable centre (Knox 1993). This idea of fragmentation was present in two models proposed of the post-industrial city based on research in Los Angeles and Atlanta. These models are the urban realms model (Hartshorn and Muller 1989) which describes a series of separate cities existing within a larger metropolitan area, and Soja’s (1989) model of the post-industrial ‘global’ metropolis (Figure 1.4). Much of the work of the California School is based on what they argue is a link between changes in the organisation of capitalism (regime of accumulation), and the new industrial sectors and spaces that they throw up, and urban form. These commentators have painted a picture of Los Angeles as a city whose economic and social geographies are based upon new economic growth sectors such as animation (Christopherson and Storper 1986), the motion picture industry (Scott 1988) and hi-tech defence related industry as well as informal, quasi-legal or illegal economic activities of various kinds (Soja 1995). However, such models can be subject to two sets of criticisms. The first concerns their attempts to link changes in the regime of accumulation with the restructuring of urban space and neighbourhood formation, through the medium of industrial restructuring. To use this as an explanatory basis for neighbourhood formation is very tenuous and narrow and ignores a number of very important issues in neighbourhood formation and reproduction. This reduction to economic causality
reflects a number of other weaknesses in this approach. It pays very little attention to the micro-social struggles and conflicts that take place within and between neighbourhoods. This reflects a general neglect of human action and a focus primarily on the abstract and the structural. Even within the economic sphere their focus is very narrow as it fails to pay much attention to the service sector, an important component of any advanced urban economy (Savage and Warde 1993: 59-61). The second set of criticisms are similar to those levelled at models derived from research in Chicago in the early twentieth century. Put simply, how typical is Los Angeles of cities in the late twentieth century? Earlier in this chapter it was pointed out that cities have a diversity of contrasting histories. Immediately it should be apparent that to suggest that Los Angeles can provide anything like a general model of urbanisation is flawed thinking. It would be naive to suggest that California School commentators do not recognise Los Angeles’ exceptional history. However, as much as a result of the prominence attached to their work on Los Angeles, the city has assumed a theoretical primacy within contemporary debates on urban form. Much of what follows in the book examines the question, implicitly at least, of the extent to which ‘industrial’ urban forms have been
Figure 1.4 The post-industrial ‘global’ metropolis Source: Graham and Marvin (1996: 334)
superseded by ‘post-industrial’ forms. The question of whether Los Angeles represents a common urban future is one for the reader to actively address.
