Impact of Urban Sprawl in Los Angeles

The view of Davis in analyzing modern Los Angeles quality of life is this: In the twentieth century, Los Angeles began as a beautiful city, a Garden of Eden. But it became an unlivable city over the decades because of environmental damage. Davis cites work of sociologist William Whyte. He describes Whyte's vision of the city as an example of unplanned growth that "mess[ed] up [the] environment," resulting in "urban sprawl" (Davis 169). This is not, says Ewing, the same as the appearance of suburbs (107-8). Instead, urban sprawl was a matter of development policy by which city planners removed large public spaces and allowed commercial development in their place--mainly in lower-class city areas. This concept helped commercial interests increase wealth, but at the expense of lower-class public parks and other commonly shared spaces. Even supposed wilderness areas of Los Angeles are congested. The Los Angeles National Forest has 30 million visitors a year, the highest rate in the country (H

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tructure-based territorial expansion" (Dear 90). This basically means increased development to accommodate commercial interests. Another part of this was to accommodate "regional transportation demand" (Wachs 143). But here too the main benefits went to commercial and wealthy interests. Railroad priorities were served for shipping purposes--and capital-intensive commercial construction. Public transportation priorities based on rail served uncrowded suburban travel interests but not crowded inner-city interests based on lower-cost bus service (Wachs 142ff). Meanwhile, automobile traffic grows because of monopoly status and schedule unreliability of low-cost public transportation (Wachs 152-3). These various analyses of the Los Angeles quality of life can be connected to urban sprawl in general. They can also be seen as reflected in newspaper coverage of the quality of life in Los Angeles. Some coverage points up the negative aspects of Los Angeles life. Other coverage points up ways in which residents and agencies in the Los Angeles area responding to problems connected to quality of life. In the Silver Lake district (between Hollywood and Pasadena), Newman describes "a city in the act of self-renewal" (D1). The reference is to th
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Los Angeles, Greg Fischer, Olmo M5, Angeles Basin, William Whyte, Angeles Times, los angeles, Silver Lake, Gumpert Drucker, African American, B6 Planning, jul 1998, los angeles times, angeles times, urban sprawl, quality life, 5 jul 1998, 5 jul, times 5, angeles times 5, times 5 jul, jul 1998 b1, 1998 b1, silver lake, public spaces,
Approximate Word count = 2562
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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