Year Published
2001
Abstract
Over the last decade an increasing number of scholars and pundits
have cast greater Los Angeles as the archetype for large and
growing cities in the U.S. and throughout the world. In these
accounts, regional expansion is portrayed as the product of haphazard
development without planning, in other words, “sprawl.” Studies of
manufacturing and industrial location often share these conventions.
However, a historical investigation reveals that industrial development and
industrial location have been key determinants for urbanization in Los
Angeles and that residential, commercial, and industrial development has
been coordinated, complimentary, and highly planned. Together, these
coincident enterprises recast the region during the first half of the twentieth
century. At that time there were three interrelated but qualitatively distinct
types of industrial zones in Los Angeles: a home-market district of lofts,
warehouses, and residences adjacent to the central business district;
greenfield developments for mass production in Torrance, the Eastside, and
Vernon; and dispersed oil, film, and aircraft satellites on the urban periphery.
This finding challenges the received wisdom regarding industrial geography
(a progressive narrative of technological innovation and successive
production regimes) as well as the standard narratives of suburbanization
or more recently, of “edge cities.”
have cast greater Los Angeles as the archetype for large and
growing cities in the U.S. and throughout the world. In these
accounts, regional expansion is portrayed as the product of haphazard
development without planning, in other words, “sprawl.” Studies of
manufacturing and industrial location often share these conventions.
However, a historical investigation reveals that industrial development and
industrial location have been key determinants for urbanization in Los
Angeles and that residential, commercial, and industrial development has
been coordinated, complimentary, and highly planned. Together, these
coincident enterprises recast the region during the first half of the twentieth
century. At that time there were three interrelated but qualitatively distinct
types of industrial zones in Los Angeles: a home-market district of lofts,
warehouses, and residences adjacent to the central business district;
greenfield developments for mass production in Torrance, the Eastside, and
Vernon; and dispersed oil, film, and aircraft satellites on the urban periphery.
This finding challenges the received wisdom regarding industrial geography
(a progressive narrative of technological innovation and successive
production regimes) as well as the standard narratives of suburbanization
or more recently, of “edge cities.”
Research Category