This study will compare and contrast the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, including consideration of their regional histories, demographic make-up, civic culture, and economies. The study will also consider in what ways each city reflects the myth and reality of the "California Dream." The study will argue that the histories and development of the two cities has been in large part dependent on very real differences in their material realities. Certainly an important aspect of the different ways the two cities developed is the natural environment of each region. Los Angeles is a desert naturally, with a need for imported water. In addition, Los Angeles is spread out geographically, allowing the kind of sprawling development which marks the city. San Francisco, on the other hand, is geographically penned into a much smaller area, resulting in the concentrated development we see in that city shaped by the bay-dominated environment. Unlike Los Angeles heat and sun, San Francisco's climate is marked by cool weather and fog, as is expected by a city five hundred miles further north and situated directly beside the ocean. The different ways these cities developed have much to do with these fundamental geographical and climatic differences.
As we read in Carey McWilliams' Southern California: An Island on the Land,
In one sense the growth of Southern California has been continuous but it is also true that its growth has been characterized by quantum leaps. . . . Modern day Los Angeles might be said to date from 1920; as late as 1925 it was aptly characterized . . . as an "enormous village." The mere mention of oil and motion pictures is enough to suggest what began to happen after World War I (McWilliams vii).
Again, it is not surprising to find that San Francisco developed earlier and more quickly than Los Angeles, in part because of the contrasting geographies of the two regions, and in part because of the Gold Rush in No...