"Long period motions, which are least attenuated by distance from the epicenter, primarily threaten large rigid structures like high rise, freeway interchanges and bridges (like the Vincent Thomas bridge in San Pedro)" (ftnote, 429)
"... a burning skyline is not even the worst case scenario in official disaster planning literature. That distinction is reserved for... the harbor area, where 'an earthquake cocktail of aging refineries and soft soil is a firestorm waiting to happen.'" (pg. 42)

fetishizing the apocalyptic
a review of "ecology of fear" by Mike Davis
publication date:11/12/98, Random Lengths News.

North American cities, to some degree or another, have a tendency to exhibit economic inequality, poor environmental relations, and racial tension. Los Angeles is perhaps the prototype for these problems. However, our city may be seen as unique in that it is the only one that actively fetishizes its own destruction.

Mike Davis, who delivered a vision of Los Angeles as the consummate "post-modern city" eight years ago, has opted to push his detailed historical/social analysis of the city and its crabgrass sprawl in the direction of a specific sector of the local imaginary: the apocalyptic fascination with social and environmental disaster. "Ecology of Fear", released this past summer, is a departure from his earlier work in that rather than burying the reader under a deluge of ambiguously linked scenarios and historical artifacts (in perfect consonance with the post-modern approach to the text), Davis here offers a coherent thematic thread: the almost too-perfect match between a reckless, abusive climate, and a cultural formation which insists on inadvertently producing the spectacular for its own consumption. The book touches a lot of bases in searching out this theme. Davis carefully crafts his narrative with measures of geology, politics, literary analysis, and sociology. He is more successful in some of these areas than others. The writing style operates at a variety of levels as well; a journalistic teasing of emotions is peppered by excursions into esoteric academic avenues. Ultimately though, the reader will leave the book reassured that Mr. Davis simply knows more about Los Angeles than anyone else. His argument--that we may best approach the Los Angeles experience as a tale of fascinating disaster which parallels a very brutal multileveled reality--is supported by an exhaustive body of research and is highly convincing.

We begin with geography. Southern California is offered as a specifically Mediterranean climate: the polar opposite of the European and northern east coast climates which molded the cultural orientations of those who would create and control Los Angeles as we know it. Here, disaster is of a fundamental order. Things do not slowly fold into one another. We have clashing tectonic plates, violent floods, tornadoes (yes, tornadoes), and regular fires. An aggressive predatory peak of the food chain (mountain lions, coyotes, bear) may not be coincidental. Things in this climate operate much closer to the fractal geometries of chaotic systems than the "Walden Pond" mentality is accustomed to; there are thresholds built into these processes beyond which things explode in sudden dramatic directions. The viral expansion of the Los Angeles enterprise has been inscribed on a matrix which is essentially foreign to those making the decisions about the path of this development. Worse yet, of course, there has been a complete lack of interest on the part of those in charge in informing decisions with any type of long-term ecological considerations. Greed, inequality, and fanaticism have provided a recipe for the ongoing irruption of the tragic into the world of modern Southern California. This formula continues to perpetuate itself as authority on land use decisions remains in the hands of a political order far removed from the immediacy of the lived experience, and easily enticed by the lure of developers with big plans and money.

The Harbor area seems to fall through the cracks of much of this ecological madness. We haven't had the dramatic fires of Malibu or the invasive mountain lions of communities bordering the hills. Certainly we have the persistent threat of a tornado, particularly in Long Beach (anybody remember the one last January? Davis notes that "the Los Angeles Times clung to its tradition of understatement" (p.194) relative to wind-based disasters. The twister ripped the roof off of a Lucky's and damaged several schools. No one was injured). Also earth trembles (which, as geologists are discovering have been extraordinarily, unnervingly mild lately relative to the bigger historical picture) certainly loom over us although the area is distant from major fault lines. As a time bomb of spectacular disaster, though, the Harbor Area more than compensates for a relatively passive environment with a dazzling array of human shortsightedness in planning and resource allocation. A dramatic photo of a port refinery fire in 1951 must send shudders down the spine of anyone familiar with the LAXT's carefree disregard for local health and safety. Finally, in the face of the impending port expansion, one must wonder how plans are to be reconciled with the ominous (but deftly hidden) spectre of the 1861 flood, which featured 45 consecutive days of rain, "transforming most of the coastal plain from present-day Hollywood to Newport Beach to an inland sea" (p.217).

The analysis turns from these considerations to a treatment of the spectre of destruction in fictional LA. Davis cites 50 novels which have destroyed Los Angeles in a stunning array of manners: nuclear bombs and earthquakes are the most popular; but blizzards, the devil, and Bermuda grass have been pressed into service as well. He takes care to tease out the racially tense motives which undergird this movement, skillfully demonstrating the common thread of fear which will relate the seemingly fantastic harmless literary whim to the variety of seedy white classist maneuvers which have been a defining element in this city for generations and continue to subtly dominate issues like the persecution of homeless handout lines and halfway houses. The purging is of necessity a spectacular one, mirroring our violent ecosystem and tempestuous social order.

Davis concludes by returning to familiar turf, expanding his analysis of the political and social structure of LA to include a new emphasis on this dominant "fear". The Rodney King riots, naturally, are an invaluable resource to his description of the emerging order, one grounded in new emphases on strategic pocketing of crime and criminals in certain areas. The mounting deterrence effect of video surveillance is worked in effectively. Davis compounds these elements into a topographical sociological thesis based on the time honored concept of the "concentric zone" outlay of the North American city. This is the one point at which I take objection to his approach. The concentric zone concept is an outmoded one; a recent American Journal of Sociology article by a UCI graduate student, Rick Grannis, has demonstrated that urban topography, particularly that of Los Angeles, is best approached as a network of islands. In fact, Davis is heading this way with his analysis, but remains lodged in the old framework. The whole idea that he might actually be attempting to predict the future state of affairs in Los Angeles is a somewhat strange as well. His previous book eschewed such an approach and was prophetic in its mere concentration on certain issues of the present and past. This one might have done well to follow a similar approach.