It was Mike Davis who came up with the concept of Fortress Los Angeles, in his book City of Quartz: a Southern California city-state where, as the population diversifies, exclusion replaces inclusion.Davis’ grim reverie flew in the face of Mayor Tom Bradley’s multicultural dream and pilloried Los Angeles as a city uniquely hostile to newcomers. What now seems provincial about Davis’ L.A. perception, however, was that this exclusionary tendency was getting even worse in other parts of the U.S., as the same old real estate got redivided among the new haves and have-nots. It may be worst in the old South: The only gated community I’ve ever seen that was actually inside another gated community was in coastal South Carolina.Which is probably why Southern California remains perhaps the major destination for Americans fed up with wherever else they happen to be. Yet you still sense that more walls are going up in Los Angeles County than are coming down. In Santa Monica, architectural public space has been caged away: the wages of homelessness, if you will. Along Rosemead Boulevard, all those commodious cheap complexes whose pool courts were once open to this world have become gated and guarded like Granada Hills condos. And even the most ostentatious house windows are barred along Beverly Hills’ residential drives, reminding you of the old saying that there is no such thing as a beautiful prison.
Source: Barrio Logic | L.A. Weekly