Mike Davis' "City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles" is a difficult book, as dense, complex and multi-sided as the California megalopolis.
Published in 1990, Davis' examination of Los Angeles' class divisions, racial conflicts and over-development was one of those prophetic works like Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" and Jane Jacobs' "Life and Death of Great American Cities" that bring significant change.
Davis, who kept revealing Los Angeles' urban dynamics in a a series of prescient books, died Monday at age 76 at his home in San Diego after a long battle with esophageal cancer.
While Davis was known as a radical left-wing thinker, "City of Quartz" with its examination of black gangs and neighborhood violence is surprisingly conservative. The book was praised for anticipating the racial riots following the Rodney King verdict, but Davis pointed out that black anger had been simmering for years.
Davis' Los Angeles is the future of American cities now beset by climate change, urban sprawl and racial inequality: Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago and so on.
Before his death, Davis gave a series of interviews in which the dying prophet counseled against despair.
While his critics accused him of hating the big city, he wrote out of love, envisioning a Los Angeles that worked for all.
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