City of Quartz: Excavating the Term Paper

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Waldie writes of his family home in Long Beach, "Rooms are small in houses that have less than eleven hundred square feet of living area. The room I slept in was ten feet by ten feet" (Waldie 29). Davis goes one step farther when he discusses the disparities in many Southern California communities where low-income housing is not only unavailable, it is discouraged by affluent homeowners. He notes, "Spanish-speaking Oakies of the 1980s [immigrant workers] are forced to live furtively in hillside dugouts and impromptu brush camps, often within sight of million dollar tract homes whose owners now want the 'immigrant blight' removed" (Davis 209). Yet these same homeowners feel no remorse at hiring these workers at substandard wages to clean their homes, manage their gardens, and clean their swimming pools. It is no wonder there is such disparity in the face of the city. There is disparity among the residents in everything from monetary earning power to cars, homes, clothing, and all the accouterments of city life. Los Angeles is trying to be everything to everyone, and it simply cannot survive that way forever.

Woven through the many different parts of Los Angeles is the prevailing Southern California mystique. It began with Hollywood in the 1920s, where "anyone" could come to town and make it big in moving pictures. There was magic in "Tinseltown," and that mystique still lingers over the city a century later. Blend in the nearly perfect sunny weather, the miles of beaches, the 60s mystique of surfers, cars, and sunny surf music, along with the celebrity culture of today, and it is easy to see why others would see Los Angeles as the Promised Land.

Ultimately, these two different looks at Los Angeles and the Southern California area show two different sides of the diverse city. There is the side of the suburbs, where ex-soldiers settled after World War II, raised families, and lived the American dream.

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This includes the modern city with its ordinances, rules, crime, and shopping centers. Then there is the other side of the city, including redevelopment, wealth, poverty, and excess. Toss in street gangs, extreme real estate prices, long commutes, endless freeways, and bedroom communities as far away as Riverside, and you have a sprawling metropolis that seems ready to self-destruct. Waldie is obsessed with the "grid" of streets in the city, and the orderly layout of the city according to ancient rules and laws. Davis is obsessed with the negatives of the city and how it can possibly survive in the future. The reader gets the idea that despite all the problems, Waldie is at least a bit sentimental about the area, while Davis is not.

In conclusion, Los Angeles is a city in turmoil, as both these books illustrate in different ways. Davis sees Los Angeles degenerating into a self-destructing pit, unable to effectively govern itself or protect its citizens. Waldie sees the suburbs gradually disappearing, along with the things that made the suburbs livable, such as neighbors, shopping centers, and other amenities. In both books, it is quite clear Los Angeles has grown so large; it has lost direction and identity. Southern California is no longer such a "dreamland," and many people are leaving for other communities in Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona and other areas of the west. There is a reason for that. L.A. is not the same as it was, and it does not seem to know how to grow effectively in today's world......

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