Los Angeles Studies

Writings on Los Angeles highlight the city as a flashpoint for theoretical and empirical research on postmodernism, post-Fordism, globalization, urban spatial development, cultural heterogeneity, and symbolic mediation. This essay reviews a selection of books and articles that take Los Angeles as their topic of study and argues that these writings signal the emergence of a specialty field that I label “Los Angeles studies.” The term “L.A. School” has been used to describe “an emerging current of neo-Marxist researchers (mostly planners and geographers) sharing a common interest in the contradictory ramifications of urban ‘restructuring’ and the possible emergence of a new ‘regime of flexible accumulation’” (Davis 1990: 84); “L.A. School” also designates a group of urban postmodern architects with a penchant for combining heterogeneous stylistic elements with an aesthetic of realism (Jencks 1996: 52). Because neither of these uses adequately captures the diverse range of writings on L.A., I employ the term “Los Angeles studies” as an umbrella category for all writings specifically about this city. This essay is a selective literature review and is not intended to provide comprehensive coverage or precise narrative continuity. My intent, instead, is to offer an overview of recent notable works in the field, with a specific focus on authors who reference each other and create a specialty dialogue across disciplinary lines. As scholars in the field of science and technology studies (STS) have observed, when specialty fields arise, they demonstrate particular patterns of development: “role-hybridization”—where the Los Angeles Studies: the emergence of a specialty field