Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Karen Figura Lange
Past urban planners, real estate speculators and myth makers have achieved the fantasy city of the future in Los Angeles. Based on the public dream of individualism and the desire for space, Los Angeles is a city inspired and created not by history but by future endeavors, speculative gestures, unlimited possibilities and fantasy. Rising from an agricultural village it has attained metropolis status through industries that promote and depend on myth; real estate development, tourism, film. Los Angeles has become the city it dreamed of being; a future city without historic connections and foundations. Without a sense of community, reality became image. The simultaneous development of the automobile and airplane fueled the growth and pattern of urban evolution in Los Angeles. Populated by individuals escaping their personal histories in the mid-west and east, Los Angeles became a city of newness with a civic lust for the new and a general acceptance that new is better. This lead to city development without historic precedent, and a reliance on technology, first the automobile and airplane, later the computer. In the end the city resembles suburbia infinitum, a city of nowhere, without a center, egalitarian and without hierarchy. Over this pragmatic patterning lies the concern for architects today; to work from within to create a sense of place without responding to the historical models, but developing an event from fragments, estrangement and loss of connectivity.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Intl.1995.40
Volume Editors
John K. Edwards
