My Los Angeles - by Edward W Soja (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

At once informative and entertaining, inspiring and challenging, My Los Angeles provides a deep understanding of urban development and change over the past forty years in Los Angeles and other city regions of the world. Once the least dense American metropolis, Los Angeles is now the country's densest urbanized area and one of the most culturally heterogeneous cities in the world. Soja takes us through this urban metamorphosis, analyzing urban restructuring, deindustrialization and reindustrialization, the globalization of capital and labor, and the formation of an information-intensive New Economy. By examining his own evolving interpretations of Los Angeles and the debates on the so-called Los Angeles School of urban studies, Soja argues that a radical shift is taking place in the nature of the urbanization process, from the familiar metropolitan model to regional urbanization. By looking at such concepts as new regionalism, the spatial turn, the end of the metropolis era, the urbanization of suburbia, the global spread of industrial urbanism, and the transformative urban-industrialization of China, Soja offers a unique and remarkable perspective on critical urban and regional studies.

From the Back Cover

"Soja is a legendary figure; a lodestar for an entire generation of urbanists and planners. No one else has puzzled out Los Angeles with so much clarity, patience and optimistic passion. Throw away your Thomas Brothers, this is the road atlas you really need." --Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

"Ed Soja has long been one of the most creative, perceptive and prolific analysts of the contemporary urban condition. In his latest book, Soja synthesizes over three decades of research and reflection on Los Angeles, an urban region which he presents as a powerful lens into the large-scale economic, political and cultural forces that are shaping the production of space under early twenty-first century capitalism. In so doing, Soja opens up new horizons for urban theorists, planners, designers and activists concerned to understand and to shape the future geographies of our hyperurbanizing planet." --Neil Brenner, author of New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood

Review Quotes

"An accessible, informative and often entertaining intellectual memoir and tour of the city as seen through the L.A. School, which has contributed some of the most provocative and productive ideas to our understanding of cities in recent history."--Jon Christensen "Los Angeles Times" (3/30/2014 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Edward W. Soja is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions and the co-editor of The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century among other books.