Main entry:

Cuff, Dana, 1953- author.

Title & Author:

The provisional city : Los Angeles stories of architecture and urbanism / Dana Cuff.

Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [2000]
©2000

Description:

x, 380 pages : illustrations, maps ; 26 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 357-372) and index.
I. No Little Plans -- II. Siting Land: The Politics of Property -- III. Provisional Places with Fugitive Plans: Aliso Village -- IV. Temporary Abode, Industrial Aesthetic: Rodger Young Village -- V. Whose Dream, America? -- VI. Convulsive Suburbia: Westchester -- VII. Chavez Ravine and the End of Public Housing -- VIII. At the End, Playa Vista.
Dust jacket.

Summary:

"The provisional city is one of constant erasure and eruption. Through what Dana Cuff calls a 'convulsive urban act,' developers both public and private demolish an urban site and disband its inhabitants, replacing it with some vision of a better life that leaves no trace of the former structure. Architects bring their own utopian dreams to the process. In this book Cuff examines those convulsions through two underestimated dimensions of architectural and urban form: scale and the politics of property. Scale is intimately tied to degree of disruption: the larger a project's scale, the greater the upheaval. As both culture and geography, real estate plays an equally significant role in urban formation."
"Focusing on Los Angeles, Cuff looks at urban transformation through the architecture and land development of large-scale residential projects. She explores five cases that span the period from the 1930s, when federal support for slum clearance and public housing caused convulsions near downtown, to a huge 1990s' mixed-use development on one of Los Angeles's last remaining wetlands. The story takes us from the refined modernist architecture of Richard Neutra to the self-conscious populism of the New Urbanism. The cases illuminate the relationship of housing architecture to issues of race, class, urban design, geography, and political ideology."--Jacket.

ISBN:

0262032767
9780262032766
0262532026
9780262532020
(electronic bk.)
9780262271004

Subject:

Architecture, Domestic California Los Angeles.
Architecture California Los Angeles History 20th century.
City planning California Los Angeles History 20th century.
Public housing California Los Angeles History 20th century.
Housing policy California Los Angeles Case studies.
City planning Social aspects California Los Angeles Case studies.
City planning Political aspects California Los Angeles Case studies.
Architecture domestique Californie Los Angeles.
Architecture Californie Los Angeles 20e siècle.
Urbanisme Californie Los Angeles Histoire 20e siècle.
Logement social Californie Los Angeles Histoire 20e siècle.
Architecture Californie Los Angeles Histoire 20e siècle.
Architecture.
Architecture, Domestic.
City planning.
Public housing.
Bouwkunst.
Urbanisatie.
Architecture, Modern 20th century California Los Angeles.
City planning California.
City planning California Los Angeles.
Architecture California Los Angeles 20th century.
California Los Angeles.

Form/genre:

History.

Added entries:

MIT Press, publisher.
United States Massachusetts Cambridge

Holdings:

Location: Library main 215384
Call No.: NA7238.L6 C8 2000
Status: Available