10_192.040 Fogelson 1 The Fragmented Metropolis, Los Angeles, 1850-1930

Robert Fishman, foreword

xv no plausible answer to why a town sprang up here and why it grew so big (Morris Markey, 1932)

did all the other great American Cities possess a locational advantage?- crucial?

xvi today metropolitan area second to NY in population with 14 million; close second to NY in Manufacturing; port first in nation.

two major themes:

policy schizophrenia- free enterprise, anti socialist yet 'surprisingly flexible and creative in using big government or even municipal ownership in pursuit of an urban environment that maximized growth and private profit

fragmentation- essential paradox of the city, p. xvii: growth of civic power yet bereft of unifying civic life, split between white and minorities

xviii: published 2 years after Watts riots of 1965

central episode: failure of the electric railways

1930s:

xix: " real explanation was that both the elite and the general population had switched their allegianc from mass transit to the automobile" (Armenia emigre's expectations of a house and red BMW (Michael Arlen, XVI cite)

"Already fragmented solcially and politically, Los Angeles now entered an era of radical spatial fragmentation." Civic center example: "All-too-perfect symbol for a fragmetned metropolis that had no real civic life and no real center."

Fogelson went on to study violence, riots (1971); at MIT since 1968;

xx: depth of archival research; traces Fogelson's influence on subsequent scholarship: Banham, Starr, Bottles, Kahrl, Weiss, Davis

xxi: "a city hooked on growth, deeply divided socially, and perhaps too fragmented to generate the kind of public life that could override the destructive consequences of maximizing private profit.

xxiii: explosive economic growth [utlimate form of boosterism]

social composition: nearly 40% of city residents foreign born; 1930, 88% population was Anglo;

xxiv: "own dispersed version of central-city slums and sheltered peripheral affluent suburbs."

xxiv: April 1992 riots- Rodney King; South Central Los Angeles erupted into "the most serious American urban disturbance since the 1863 New York Draft riots. MOre than 50 lives were lost, 300 buildings burnt, and $750 million worth of property destroyed."

xxv: urban biography of a brilliant failure; suggests that most of what is being proposed for LA in the 90s was discarded by the city by 1930

"For this book alsonds us of the forgotten altgernatives to destructive growth: the "other Los Angeles" of a balanced mass transit system; a vital downtown; a commitment to municipal ownership and progressive planning; a concern for a balanced environment between city and countryside; and a commitment to creating a city without slums or tenements."

xxvi: defining the central political problem of the city: " to build a strong democratic concensus in a fragmented society." does Fogelson's history really "present historic alternatives ... crucial starting points"?

Introduction

1: 1850 1610 people, agricultural village; in 80 years to 1.2 million people with metro district of 2.3

"Indeed by overcoming its natural handicaps, Los Angeles in 1930 stood fourth in population, second in territory, and ninth in manufacturing

2: two themes: rise of metropolis; rejection of metropolis in favor of suburbs; "quintessence of Los Angeles is the ... ambivalent attitude towards urbanization"

I. From Pueblo to Town

6: argues indians psychologically damaged by Christianity/slavery rendering them "unfit for independent life"

8: limited water; wonderful climate "permitted an indolence imossible in colder and more crowded countries."

9: native as indispensible to the economy as cattle; Ranchos sold hides to supercargoes who got hides and Tallow to Massachusetts; great world for Ranchos: arrived at selfsufficiency by 1840s;

10: argues that by 1846, only "basic disruptigion's economy and society" would alter the pattern of labor and life in the LA region.

came with the Mexican war and the cession of California to the U.S.; First

Governor of California: Richard Barnes Mason, August 1848 (b.1797 at Lexington, Va., grandson of George Mason of Gunston Hall)

15: discovery of gold changes everything

16: prosperity of the 50s squandered by the Ranchos who did not understand the market economy

18: capitalists take over, created different kind of ranches: produced for distant markets, e.g. wheat

transformation of Southern California countryside: employers and employees tied together only by money;

21: [commercialization of the countryside] look at occupations of newcomers, population growth;

23: "Indeed, nowhere in southern California was the new order and new destiny promised by the conquerors in the 1840s more evident than in the emergence of Los Angeles as an American town by the 1880's."

[tells you what happened, but does not describe or explain the mechanism by which it happened]

II. Private enterprise, public authority, and urban expansion

24: spanish believed in public authority guiding development; americans brought private enterprise

ayuntamiento (municipal council) [replaced by?]

compares and contrasts the pueblo with the american city, meaning the latter brings loss of community control over use of the land

pollution

spiritual neglect

educationally backward

all aspects of the community Americans thought they found there;

28: appeals for education were countered by a resistence to taxing, understandable but misguided

1861 grand jury report: "We are unimous in our opinion that the City Government is a nuisance, kept alive only for the purpose of raising a revenue to support useless officers; and, therefore, we pray that if it can be got rid of, let it be wiped from existence."

32: water distribution remains a municipal function

until early in 20th century.

transportation more complicated than water; problem of sewers; took until 1892 to get the people to agree that removal of refuse and proper sanitation were municipal responsiblities, p. 34

Education as a public function generated less controversy; but vigilante activities enforcing law and order very important, p. 35: Los Angeles Rangers and the Los Angeles Home Guard

social services left largely to the voluntary, private, religious sector: p. 36

private enterprise the rule: cites LA waterworks, where it only worked if profitable

thus LA relinquished control over water to a private company

and over land to private companies

cites entrepreneurship of Prudent Beaudry, pp. 38-39

40-41: 1870-1885 population grew almost fourfold

street railway system developed by private companies

41: "the franchise was, in essence, the means whereby Los Angeles resolved tghe dilemma posed by the municipality's grand aspirations and its limited capacities: it ensured reasonable service for the public without discouraging private enterprise from undertaking the task." market too small before 1885, however, for much to be done viz. public transport

41: Gas & Electric franchises; telephone; council reserved right to set rates, supervise service, but "did not infringe upon the integral autonomy of these politically influential businesses which consistently pursued their own rfather than the community's interests." [example of baloon catheters (sp) scandle just uncovered for the public by the atty gen, Janet Reno]

41: by the late 1880s:

1) municipal authority directed fire, police, and sanitation

2) voluntary associations operated churcheds, fraternal, commerical, and civic groups (and thus social services)

3) private enterprise controlled domestic water, street railways, public utilities, and real estate

thus after 1885 growth of the metropolis out of the hands of any municipal (public officials) and in the hands of private sector seeking private gain

III. Rivalry between Los Angeles and San Diego

44: San Diego had a better harbor, but was frustrated in getting the rail links it needed to grow;

San Diego loses out in the Railroad expansion wars of the 1870s, pin their hopes on Thomas A. Scott of PA RR who lost out in Panic of 1873, p. 50;

Huntington and San Francisco; supremacy of the Central Pacific; San Diego with its great harbor lost out to SF; p. 52

In LA, RR's raid the public purse ($610,000 to Southern Pacific in 1872) for trunk line, p. 53; inextricable link to SF instead of SD; trunk line worked (see p. 56,table of population growth)

60: California Southern sabatoged by Huntington; only in 1885 did San Diego get a transcontinental train (p.61). misleading because the objective was not SD, but SF

62: by 1885: "San Diego's natural advantages not withstanding, Los Angeles emerged as the regional metropolis, an achievement whose importance cannot be exaggerated. For as a result Los Angeles, not San Diego, was the focus of the extraordinary population movement which subsequently transformed southern California into one of the nation's foremost urban centers."

main point: willingness to be a trunk line stop to SF gave a boost to LA that could not be overcome. Capital centered in SF governs the direction of Urban growth in Southern California, not geographical logic.

IV. The Great Migration

64: importance of the Southern Pacific and its publicists: depicted the Great American Desert as an irrigable southwestern garden

influx of immigration still a vision in 1880; boosters failed because closer boosters more successful [Chicago?]

yet immigrants came [does not tell how or why, except to suggest that the competition among rr's helped] after 1880, esp after 1885: despite the real estate bust of 1889, boom reinforced LA's position as southern California's metropolis;

67: 1880-1890, population grows from 11,183 to 50,395; population doubles again in the next decade;

68: Emory Fiske Skinner example of rich coming to LA to retire, spend mature years

70: mass migration follows concerted promotional campaign, Chamber of Commerce makes it the best publicized part of the U.S. between 1890 and 1920

70: attributes success to "profound change in American values and aspirations" seems to be suggesting that LA became an ideal for America as an eden for retirement or for spending well-earned income in the years of hard work on the land and elsewhere. Purpose of life changes: people begin to beleive that they deserve something after working hard for a portion of their lives? cites Richard Weiss, 1966 Columbia dissertation entitled American Myth of Success.

for all those rural folk who wanted to relax as well as to labor and to find personal fulfillment rather than economic opportunity; sunny california more attractive than eastern metropolises, p. 72.

by 1909 promoters discovered that most immigarton radiates from Chicago, must fight battles of promotion there; not coming for farming, b ut for noneconomic reasons;

73: result of appeal far exceeded expectations "In revolt against a way of life and a means of livelihood, these people saw southern California as a terrestrial paradise. And while their more ambitious friends departed for Chicago and other midwestern cities, they decided to resettle in Los Angeles."

"I boarded a train to find out if this country came up to the brag."

retirees followed by people looking for jobs in pictures, etc. p. 74; character of population changes too: p. 76, esp between 1910 and 1930; see table on p. 76:

Japanese prefer LA to SF; 35,000 by 1930; Mexicans largest minority group by 1930; Blacks: First WW gave employment opportunities if not real advancement;

reviews total populaton growth in comparison to other cities;

79: "From a national persepctive, again, its record resembled not so much that of smaller cities such as St. Louis as that of mammoth metropolises such as Chicago."

81: by 1930 out of every 100 residents, 37 midwesterners, 13 southerners, 13 easterners, 8 westerners, 28 far westerners,

82: non-white component: see table, only Baltimore exceeded LA

seem to have some major changes in-migration patterns that Fogelson does not fully explained

83: argues that nowhere on the Pacific Coast, not even SF, was there "so diverse a mixture of racial groups, so visible contrast and so pronounced a separation among people, as in Los Angeles."

tables do show a better sex ratio, but do they support the argument that people came to LA to retire to the better life as opposed to other cities? If so, they did so a families, so might they have been drawn to the agricultural life contrary to what Fogelson argues? Need to have a better grip on the occupational profile of the citizens of greater LA?

[has he really answered the why and the who of population growth in LA from 1880 to 1930? He shows the trends, but where is the proof of what people did for a living? If he is arguing that the people who came to partially retire there (see p. 73 quote re: coming to retire, either wholly or partially, and enjoy life in 1909), did so with their families, then need more proof of that fact.]

V: Transportation, Water and Real Estate.

role of private enterprise in developing LA, p. 85

86: in the East transit followed growth

In LA Sherman, Clark, and Henry E. Huntington, privately push interurban railways;

Los Angeles Pacific railway, Sherman & Clark, p. 89

Pacific Electric Railway Company, Huntington

1911: Huntington and Harriman split, LA RR Corp, of Huntington, dominates local transit; Harrington and Southern Pacific handled inter-urban;

arrival of the motor car:

92: registration of autos:

1910, less than 20,000

1920, 100,000+

1930, 800,000+

streets, highways become a public responsibility

95: domestic water needs: by 1902 finally public water becomes a public responsibility and not a private money making venture. eventually Baord of Water Commissioners assumed responsibility for supplying all LA water.

1907 went after Owens River water: p. 98, aqueduct finished six years later; Colorado river next;

103: contingent fund helped save the public from speculators;

104: Henry E. Huntington effective, efficient developer

107: subdividing remained a private undertaking, little regulated. The made the decisions about what people wanted and how to meet those needs; Foegelson suggestsm most did not do a very good job. Huntington an exception to the rule.

108: 1915 BANKER H.S. McKee wrote that most people came to LA to reside, not to be part of an industrial community; not to engage in business, but to live as residents

10_192.041 Fogelson 2

108: commercial and industrial progress lagged behind population growth and urban expansion in Los Angeles because of absence of decent harbor

109: [Federal money makes Wilmington into a port; Corps of Engineers; basically Federal Money seems to have forced LA to merge the San Pedro and Santa Monica interests and pull them into the LA orbit. See map facing p. 1]

114: by 1912, Army corps finished; San Pedro is a protected harbor;

115: 1906-1908 State legislature approves shoestring district to give LA authority over a port; by 1909 two towns surrender authority to LA.

117: U.S. Government, LA authorities, southern California railroads, but not Southern Pacific?, helped port developed; Harbor really takes off

119: after oil is discovered after WWI

120: becomes a jobbing center, brings also industrial development;

121: in 1886: "there are more real estate agents to the square yard than can be found, I believe, in any city of the world, ... The growth and development of Los Angeles has been so recent and so rapid that the citizens of Los Angeles have their hands full in attending to the business an other wants of the thousands from the East who flocked to their favored land." --Calif Labor Commissioner

121: "the white majority, which sought a less arduous life and psosed funds and skills, preferred trade and the professions. ..." minorities provided service to the majority

122: distribution of manufacturing in selected U.S. Cities; LA at bottom, 1890

123: argues strongly that mutual services employed most of the working population

124: is the high percentage that is included in the category of Professional service (8.7%) with so few in manufacturing given the size of the city (31.5%)

125: what really makes the economy grow: movies and oil wells, one the weather above ground, the other the wealth underground

128: rail network encouraged decentralization and LA benefited with a ford motor company assembly plant in 1930

130: in part organized labor not as much of a threat in LA, esp after 1915 while

131: SF beset by labor problmes or at least influenced by organized labor more than "any American metropolis down through the 1920s"

132: still LA labor force more in trade and professional service than manufacturing

"In sum, despite predictions taht the lack of a deep-water harbor and mineral resources would nhibit its commerical and industrial progress, Los Angeles developed a port which served as the Southwest's principal emorium and attracted the factories which formed a national manufacturing complex."

basic thesis: Peple came to enjoy; wealth, industry followed and provided employment; Essence of LA: deviant in form and substance from other American Cities

Why here and why so big: immigration of the midwesterners, the convernsion of the countryside, and the industrialization of the economy

135: Part II The Fragmented Metropolis

137: William B. Smythe: cities should spread until they meet the country, and until beautiful forms of urban life blend almost imperceptively into beautiful forms of rural life. 1910

140-41: after 1885 area became increasingly urban; orchards relentlessly destroyed;

142: did not have to emerge as the dispersed metropois par excellence. [? why?]

144: "hence the unique dispersal of Los Angeles reflected not so much its chronology, geography, or technology, as the exceptional character of its population." model of dispersed settlement brought from rural america; basis for dispersal in the people themselves wanting it that way.

146: table of families and dwelling in selected cities shows dispersal patterns graphically

147: touches on discrimination in housing patterns even where restrictive covenants did not exist

151: after 1920 character of population changed

153; in 1920s car supplants train as most important people mover; city becomes even more decentralized; business district decentralizes; industry decentralizes;

154: "Hence business decetnralization, combined with residential dispersal, created an urban form in greater Los Angeles consistent with its growth and yet unique in the United States in 1930."

154: use three subdivisions to document the antiurban ethos of LA: Oneonta Park, Owensmouth, Huntington Palisades of Robert C. Gillis [latter followed Frederick Law Olmsted precedents in Washington D. C. (Cleveland Park) and Baltimore (Roland Park)

157: Olmsted associates in Palos Verdes Estates, 3,000 acres, sw corner of LA county (also Charles H. Cheney)

157: ca 1900 native Aemricans were so distressed by discrepancies between U.S. of myth and reality that they sought reassurances in the past. [the east bought into colonial revival with a passion; LA went Mediterranean]

159: ultimately becomes known as 'Califonia' architecture; Fogelson does not like it and calls it incongruous; indifferent

161: 'consummate achievement: nothing but the mountains and the sea inhibited the sprawl of the metropolis

163: vision: "Not a great homogenous mass with a pyramiding of population and squalor in a single center, but a federation of commuites coordinated into a metropolis of sunlight and air." yet dispersal meant fragmentation, not coordination

164: VIII, failure of the Electric Railways

merger of Huntington and Harriman interests in 1911, future seemed bright for the electric rail companies; Huntington kept equipment new, rails in good shape;

165: well managed; (Los Angeles and Pacific Electric); owners in for the long haul; independent of public authority;

166; by 1915 everything looked promising for the Electric RRs

problems; arrival of jitneys (private buses) which were ultimately defeated by the electorate

167: WWI and spiraling upward of wages increased operating costs without increasing ridership;

169: companies forced to pave along side their right of ways, thus the electric rail companies were forced to provide better roads for their competition!

170: competition from buses, partially municipality funded enterprises

171; downward trends seemed reversed by 1920s because of rebounding economy (oil; movies); earnings up; still automobile registration increased faster than new ridership on the trains;

172: 1923 transit study; called for

174: municipal ownership; alreayd owned water supply, power system, and harbor; but contract with Huntington (mutually beneficial) was not signed; another study by Delos F. Wilcox in 1925 reached same conclusions re: Los Angeles railway;

175: plans for subway, only one built, 1925

178: ca. 1925: "do we want to ... develop an intensive rather than an extensive city?" rhetorical; answer no

179: 1924-26 critical years; motor cars took the best, most profitable business (short hauls)

180: Automobile offered the competition and the setting for the competition

182; rates raised, but RRs declined anyway; by 1930

183: great depression a catastrophe for urban transit; ridership tumbled;

185: blames over-building [but problem is urban planning]; argues overbuilding could have been overcome if the automobile had not arrived on the scene;

185: suggests municipalities partly responsible because they did not make the transit system a public concern [yet the real problem lay with the public itself]

[highways and automobiles keys to personal freedom and the achievement of the American Dream]

10-192.043 Fogelson 3

186: IX Quest for Community

argues that before 1885 there was a sense of community but afterwards not;

188: unassimilated minorities, dispised by the majority "Un assimilated, unwelcome, and unprotected, these people were so thoroughly isolated that the American majority was able to maintain its untained vision of an integrated community."

uses conservative Graves to point out the lost world of community;

189: after 1885, popu multiplies by factor of 50; territory expands more than 100 fold; newcomers are still a remarkably homogeneous group; little social stratification;

189: became unparalleled boosters after repudiating "certain traditional values in choosing soughern California" [which were?]

190: boosterism inhibits dissent

190: yet the population worried: "For, though as boosters they endorsed progress, as Americans they feared its consequences. they perceived in urbanizaton a direct conflict with their second commitment, a devotion, engendered in the country, confirmed in the city, and buttressed by tradition, to a bygone rural community."

192; importance of voluntary associations; homogeneity of type yet failed to produce a sense of community, a sense of 'cohesive community so crucial to their personal aspirations."

194: churches fared poorly; residential suburbs did not integrate the metropolis;

195: residential mobility;

194-195: extreme isolation; people unfriendly; 'loneliness became endemic to LA"

196: state societies are formed yet soon lose their vigor

197: retire to oranges and avaocado pears, but get bored; wish that a plane would crash in Glendale once in a while.

197: strange movements flourish in LA along with vast crowds for Aimee Semple McPherson, yet don't account for the other disenchanted: Briish couple observe that people "seemed to be almost as destitute of permanent friends as they were of personal furniture"

198: instead of turning radical people drifted towards a "personalism that discouraged involvement per se."

198: what about the other 15% of the population (mexican, chinese, japanese, negroes)?

200: relegated to the ghettos: first mention of Watts;

201: while de jure segregation decreased, de facto remained

201: lack of wards prohibited even a modicum of minority participation in city government; all minority groups remained outside the LA community between 1885 and 1930;

202: voluntary associations don't work well; second generation rejects the associations of the first? because educated as Americans in the public schools;

203: minorities adopt the racism, nativism, conservatism of the majority; minorities squabble among themselves;

204: keynote: "disintegration. Hence the fragmented society ofthe white majority complemented the isolated communities of the ethnic minorities and, along with the dispersal and decentralization of the metropolis, emerged as integral features 20th century LA."

205: Politics of Progressivism

205: relulation of water companies, right reserved by municipal authorities

206: municipal actionshapes the ocurse of street railways also

206: 1865-1900, water, gas and electric companies, the street railway lines, and the Southern Pacific Railroad were the most influential participants in Los Angeles politics

206; interesting theory as to why unsavory characters forced into politics: prohibition of gambling, restriction of prostitution, regulation of saloons

political machine remains in power to 1900; regardless of rhetoric

208: power remains in the wards

209: paradox of politics: papers cry thievery and corruption while candidates seem to be honest and upright; problem of accomodation between public authority and private enterprise

210: Municipal Reform Association; league for better city Government

211: "what made progressivism so vigorous [after 1900] there was that Los Angeles was inhabited for the msot part not as other metropolises, by European immigrants dependent on and bound to the machine, but by native Americans who share the reformers sentiments."

[perhaps, but why reform in Toledo Ohio with Golden Rule Jones?]

211: main points of progressivism: more democracy is good [if citizens are well educated]; problems of urbanization require powerful concientious citizens exercising enlarged municipal authority; government was administrative insteadof legislative [?]

212: Dr. John R. Haynes, Direct Legislation League

212: goals: municipalization of water, harbor, electric power, gas, telephone, street railways, civil service

213: 1909 election, Harper forced to retire, progressive George Alexander elected. Problem:

214: the socialists become powerful in LA [the real unexplained paradox]

In 1911, LA TIMES building dynamited; campaign complicated by enfranchisement of women; Socialists actually strengthened Republicans and weakened progressives

215: successes- direct legislation, expanded muncipal ownership, civil service, primary elections, removal of party designations, increased executive power, elminated wards, moved toward Commission government; charter reform defeated;

217: 1912 reformers lose control; loss of leadership;

218: LA first American city to see the political community fragmented, reliant upon city-wide organizations, newspapers; people care little who heads government as long as the sun shines and real estate boom continues.

219; George Cryer epitome of what [is wrong with LA]; looks good on the surface? nothing of substance underneath? "he sutied Los Angeles as well as Jimmy Walker did New York"

221: LA government had to provide services without raising taxes [classic American dilemma]

221; Charter of 1915, defeated;

222: concensus charter o 1923 wins

223: city expands form 29 square miles to 108 in 1913; 1925 had risen to 415 square miles (far more than any other American City] Ultimate paradox City of Los Angeles not a City] 227; ultimately stopped at 442 square miles, 1930

228: government becomes so fragmented that government fell into the hands of people who preferred to avoid "than to confront metoropolitan LA] People confined their political involvement, like their social relationships, to thei suburban retreats. By doing so-- by, in effect denying the metropolis they had created-- these peoople circumscribed their civic consciousness in a way that emphasized the progressive's commitment." [? superficial]

229: XI The Municipal Ownership Movement

general dissatisfaction with private service

230: yet private initiative, management considered better

234: result of push for municipal ownership? private consolidation backed by? ... "Chicago financiers."

236: LA Times reactionary, but not powerful enough to defeat municipal ownership of electric power, or regulation of power

237: 1917 report on municipal ownership in the U.S. [City Club] success so far only with waterworks and harbor

239: 1921-progress could be made if leadership of reformers, chamber of commerce, Examiner work together.

241: When it came to using public money for public electrical power to be available cheaply to industry, suddenly Conservatives agree, Public Service Department becomes an 'exception" (1924) and huge bond issue is authorized to build a transmission line from Boulder Dam

242-43: Power board then taken over by conservatives through Mayoral appointments;

243; Federal Government and Boulder Dam; role of Reconstruction Finance Corporation; Federal money at last made municipal control over power possible?

245: measures of success? failed at most important juncture: public transporation (electric railways)

problem: demanded exceptional perception to realize that public ownership was desireable when the private sector could not find the resources; ownership had to be profitable in the public's mind and in fact it could not be.

246; self-sustenance not possible; community needed to look to its collective destiny, but could not as a community?

247: XII City and Regional Planning

250; "Utilitarian in its profession, city planning was environmental in its approach. It accepted as its fundamental axiom the idea that appropriate physical surroundings would assure personal morality and communal coherence." planners looked to decentralization; suburban ideal; planners turn to the automobile as their savior.

255: zoning reinforces land use segregation in LA, invested the patterns imposed by private enterprise with governmental sanction

258: municipal parks seen as a solution?-

258: interesting throwback to pueblo land of the ayuntamiento; tried to sell it but failed(1) handsomeparks resulted (Elysian, Westlake); when boom brakes and developers, formerly reluctant to set aside parks, now wanted to (mid 20's) municipality feared loss of tax revenue!

259: usually planners failed:

261; Wilshire Boulevard: piecemeal commercialization achieved until "the few roads in LA planned as rustic parkways emerged as commecial highways."

264; Cook and Hall vs. Allied Architects (grander plan) for a municipal center, city hall; latter more landscaped; parsimony of government and primacy of auto prevailed;

272: People of LA lost the opportunity to shape their physical environment "forever"

273: Conclusion

quote from Ernest C. Steele, 1928 re: rustic life v. stream of civilization

276: LA fails as a metropolis

"there was, however a more profound reason why the people of LA were unable to reconcile their amibitions for a great metoropolis with their visions of the good community" such visions were nostalgic and impossible; based upon rustic notions of the contented life in dispersed, rural settlement: " It isn't any easy process this getting away form the stream of civilization to live in a sphere of beauty and contentment as one's imagination attempts to picture it." Steele's diary

"How presumptuous to think it should be easy! And how misguided those who, on finding it otherwise, retreated to suburbs where they revised their visions and reduced their expectations, turned towars themselves and away from society, abdicated responsibility, and accepted fragmentation. The history of Los Angeles revealed above all that this was not the way to resolve satisfactorily the problems of the late ninteteenth- and early twentieth-century American metropolis."