ABSTRACT
At least two conceptions of wilderness are identifiable in the literature in geography: the "classical" and the "romantic" views. Again, the classical view sees wilderness as something to be feared, an area of waste and desolation inhabited by wild animals, savages, and perhaps even supernatural evil. Human society is the standard by which the world is measured, and hence conquest over the nonhuman areas, the wild areas, signals a form of human achievement, or, as John Rennie Short has put it, "a victory over the dark forces and a measure of social progress". By contrast, on the romantic view wilderness is that form of nature that has remained close to its "pristine" state, and so it has not been "corrupted" by human intervention. Given the way it is spoken about and represented in a variety of media, Los Angeles is one of the premiere urban wilderness areas in the United States today.
