Climax City

11.The Astounding Sprawling City

50km Context

Los Angeles: A 50km circle is comfortably able to contain even the world’s largest cities. However LA, a city of just under 4 million, spread from its beleaguered downtown (1) to the San Fernando Valley (2) in the north and the coastal resorts of Long Beach (3) to the south and disappears off the edge of the plan to the east in a seemingly endless sprawl, subservient to nothing except topography and the sea.

At a meeting in Los Angeles City Hall in 1926, a decision was taken that would lead to the birth of the suburban city. The story is recounted by Robert Fishman in his book Bourgeois Utopias. ...