Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (Vintage): Amazon.de: Mike Davis: Englische Bücher

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The 1990s have not been kind to Los Angeles. As Mike Davis writes, "The destructive February 1992, January 1993, and January 1995 floods ($500 million in damage) were mere brackets around the April 1992 insurrection ($1 billion), the October-November 1993 firestorms ($1 billion) and the January 1994 earthquake ($42 billion)." But, he argues, the increasing fear about nature's reign of terror in Southern California reflected in Hollywood's preoccupation with apocalypse--L.A. has been destroyed on screen by everything from lava (Volcano) to nukes (Miracle Mile) to alien death rays (Independence Day)--is in reality a strong case of denial. Again, Davis himself says it best: "For generations, market-driven urbanization has transgressed environmental common sense. Historic wildfire corridors have been turned into view-lot suburbs, wetland liquefaction zones into marinas, and floodplains into industrial districts and housing tracts. Monolithic public works have been substituted for regional planning and a responsible land ethic. As a result, Southern California has reaped flood, fire, and earthquake tragedies that were as avoidable, as unnatural, as the beating of Rodney King and the ensuing explosion in the streets."

As in City of Quartz, his earlier book about Los Angeles, Davis reveals the deeper ideological narratives behind historical events. Whether he's explaining the motivations behind the persistent refusal of civic leaders to admit that a tornado alley runs down the middle of the region, from Long Beach to Pasadena, or discussing, as one chapter refers to it, "the case for letting Malibu burn," he outlines his arguments with a fascinating amount of detail and a subtle sense of irony. There are wonderful chapters here, such as "Maneaters of the Sierra Madre," a zoology of the wild beasts Angelenos fear, including mountain lions that descend from the hills to eat joggers and small children, swarms of Africanized killer bees making their way across the deserts, and El Chupacabra, the "goat-sucking vampire" that joined L.A.'s roster of faddish icons in 1996.

Although this book is specifically about Los Angeles, its lessons about the relationship between urban developments and natural ecosystems and about the dangerous influence of class politics on environmental safety policy are applicable to any city. Anyone with a serious interest in natural history or urban policy should make a point of reading this book. --Ron Hogan -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

From Kirkus Reviews

A formidable intellectual history of how Los Angeles, the locus of postwar American dreams, became the avatar of national nightmares of physical and social destruction. In this decade, L.A. has witnessed natural phenomena as staggering as those inflicted upon Egypt in the Book of Exodus: the 1994 Northridge earthquake, floods, tornadoes, Malibu fires, even the invasion of ``man-eating'' mountain lions and beach snakes. And like ancient Egypt, L.A. may be reaping the whirlwind for arrogance and social injustice, argues Davis (City of Quartz, not reviewed), an urban theorist who has taught at the Getty Institute and has contributed to the Nation, Sierra magazine, and the Los Angeles Times. In Davis's liberal worldview, the stampede to build edge cities, freeways, and subdivisions paved the way for nature's revenge as surely as mass poverty and racial unrest were the raw materials for the 1992 L.A. riots. In the first three decades of this century, a ``selfish, profit-driven presentism'' ruled southern California, as politicians and developers rejected proposals to preserve parks, beaches, playgrounds and mountain reserves for the community. Davis chillingly details how the vast infrastructure built to service the suburban sprawl was based on a disaster record of only the last 50 years, how ``feedback loops'' in the delicate ecosystem multiply the potential for disaster, and how narrowly L.A. escaped devastation even worse than its well-chronicled catastrophes (e.g., none of the states last 10 major earthquakes has occurred during school hours). His lucid explanations of scientific phenomena are mixed with spiky observations (e.g., on how southern California's Mediterranean climate differs from the tranquil paradise proclaimed by early civic boosters: ``It is Walden Pond on acid,'' he notes). Davis concludes this disturbing history by analyzing racist dystopian fantasies set in L.A. (including The Turner Diaries) and how high-tech trends may cater to affluent Angelenos' mania for security. A dazzling mix of environmental studies, urban history, and cultural criticism. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

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If Fontana's not LA, neither is Malibu. 19. November 1999

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After reading the numerous attacks on this book in our local LA media (mostly in the New Times, a local paper desperate to establish itself as the screaming tabloid alternative to the L.A. Weekly), I was fearful that upon finally buying this book (yes, I had to wait for paperback) I would find it to be just a compendium of outlandish claims and apocalypse hysteria. This is not the case at all.

I read the book, then went back and read the criticism, and I was disturbed to find that few critics actually refute any of the ideas in the book. Most of the comments on this page, for instance, boil down to "I heard he made it up" or "I heard he's a commie" or "LA's not as bad as he says."

Davis never says, "We're all going to be eaten by mountain lions." He never says, "We're all going to be carried off by twisters." These are brought up as part of a larger argument about a metropolis that ignores its own place in the environment of Southern California.

And Bunker Hill may be lovely, but it is indeed a very privatized space. Take a walk around the downtown highrises, and you will see plaques on the sidewalks which read: PRIVATE PROPERTY. The area is not a gated community; you won't see soldiers marching through on patrol; but why are there no homeless panhandling among the sculptures and fountains? After all, there's plenty of that going on down the hill on Spring street. Could it be that the plazas of Bunker Hill are not truly public?

And what's with the bashing of his Westlake chapter? I never thought I'd see so many people come out in defense of slumlords.

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Biased? Yes, but contains simple, devastating truths. 5. November 1999

Point One - if Davis did indeed fudge his research, invent stories or fabricate evidence, then he's broken the ethical and intellectual standards by which historians are constrained. If such accusations are true, then let him drain the poisoned cup he mixed for himself.

To be fair to the author, I spent a few hours in the library checking his footnotes. No, I didn't have time to review the whole book, since I do aspire to something of a life beyond the stacks; however, I didn't find anything unsupported by the sources cited. If anyone is inclined to respond to this post, could you please point out just where he lied? I'd appreciate your insights, since I didn't unearth falsification myself.

Point Two - the moral of the story is simple, and one that no ad hominem attack (Communist! Socialist! Liberal! Leftist! Phony!), however venomous, can weaken. The moral has nothing to do, in fact, with Davis' obvious leftist leanings. Los Angeles today, more than any other single location in the developed world, represents a nearly total disconnection between what people imagine their lives to be and what physical reality is.

If you wracked your brain for weeks, you couldn't come up with a worse place for millions to live. A semi-desert to begin with, the city depends on the vagaries of the Sierra snowpack and the flow of the notoriously capricious Colorado, among other rivers. LA sits in the middle of one of the most seismically active regions on the planet. Toss in a continual, interlocking cycle of horrendous wildfires, torrential rains, flash floods and mudslides for good measure. The result is a violently dynamic land, subject to sudden change.

Yet the detachment of the good burghers of Malibu from their surroundings is such that they demand fire protection for each and every inaccessible house sited in tinderbox terrain while refusing to pay for improved water lines or widened streets. Willful ignorance of the geophysical facts of life prevails in Thousands Oaks as well, and in Orange County, and throughout the region. There's a handy English word for this kind of behavior - stupidity.

What this book does, and does superbly, is reflect the undying human desire to make uncomfortable facts vanish by fervently pretending that they do not exist.

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New York could use a Mike Davis 17. April 2000

As a native New Yorker, I am very familiar with smug views of urban history, written by apologists for the economic elites. As every New Yorker "knows", the city was brought to near-ruin by an excess of genersosity towarda the poor and a general attitude of permissiveness. In this potted-plant view, New York was "saved" by the bankers who slashed city services and, ultimately, the law-and-order policies of Rudy Giuliani. Coveniently ignored is the damage done by policies and urban planning that assisted the city's corporate sector and its wealthiest citizens. New York needs its own Mike Davis, whose "The Ecology of Fear" demonstrates the disastrous impact of reactionary planning on Los Angeles.

Davis deals with a wide range of subjects, from the fires in Malibu to mountain lion attacks. The common thread is the irresponsibility of the people who run the city. In all instances the governinment has chosen mindless privatization of the environment over the creation of a healthy public sphere, shown a lack of concern for the reality of Los Angeles's physical environment and catered to every whim of its wealthiest citizans. As was the case in New York, LA's leaders have circled the wagons and blamed everything on the illegal immigrants and the "underclass".

Davis's adversaries have tried to piant him as some form of radical, pathological doomsayer. He occasionally exagerrates; the tornado problem probably is overblown. The real pathology belongs to those people who would build a home in the fire trap called Malibu, watch their houses burn regularly and then scream for federal assistance for rebuilding, while blaming mysterious left-wing arsonists.

The current Ramparts division police scandal only underscores everything that Davis says. A police department that holds "shooting parties" when an officer kills a civilian and frames subjects can exist only when in a city where government abdicates its responsibility to its citizens. Nike Davis aptly describes such a city. New York may not be as bad, but I would love to see Davis turn his attentions there.