Is Los Angeles Doomed? - recent report of seismic team detection of earthquake fault already known

National Review, July 12, 1999 by David Klinghoffer

For Davis, triumph over nature is exactly the problem, in particular man's hubris in constructing an enormous city on this location, which is vulnerable to earthquakes, floods, and tornadoes. In his view, greed and a willingness on the part of developers to let poor people shoulder the brunt of the inevitable cycle of natural disasters have guided the city's growth.

As with the "L.A. Is Doomed!" genre in fiction and film, all the exploitation of people and nature leads to a situation of ultimate urban dread. Readers with a taste for such dread, poetically expressed, will enjoy Mike Davis. Wherever he goes the landscape is "eerie," "ghostly." During "the infernal season" from late August to early October, along skyscraper-lined Wilshire Boulevard "homeless people huddle miserably in every available shadow." Police "helicopter gunships" "patrol" the beaches, which are closed after dark. In the "industrial wastelands" of South-Central L.A., "wild dog packs now threaten the lives of small children." In short, "fear eats the soul of Los Angeles."

Oh, does it really? In actual fact, L.A. is a pleasant, livable city from which the aroma of disaster is totally absent. By a quirk, I arrived in the real Los Angeles even before I left New York. An originally L.A. institution called Super Shuttle has recently been grafted onto New York. It'll never work. By nature, New York constantly harasses and impedes you. It does so by means of traffic, crowds of pushy pedestrians, sullen cash-register attendants, passive-aggressive subway Metrocard vendors, telephone-cable disruptions. On the other hand, Los Angeles is a city that works. At stores, the guy or gal behind the register smiles and sincerely wants to help. Freeways mean more freedom from traffic than you might expect. Public utilities can be relied on. It's also much easier to fly in or out because the blue vans called Super Shuttles transport citizens who wish to share a ride to or from the airport, cheaply, efficiently, and pleasantly.

I shared a Super Shuttle ($15), progressing slowly up Manhattan's West End Avenue, with a smartly dressed woman in her 60s and an effeminate man in his 30s. They couldn't get over the Super Shuttle or its driver, who was pleasant in a Los Angeles sort of way. "He's so amiable!" said the effeminate man. "And polite!" said the woman. The man agreed: "It's a lot cheaper than taxis and they speak English!"

Later that day I was really in L.A., specifically Santa Monica, in the latter's beautifully refurbished seaside downtown. Around 10 at night I walked the few blocks to the beach, as I've done lots of times before here, and found as usual the beaches open. Pace Mike Davis, it's nearly impossible to "close" a beach. I saw no "helicopter gunships" on "patrol," nor have I ever seen one.

Next day I drove to the rural Santa Clara Valley, in northern L.A. County. On the way I stopped at the old Mission San Fernando, founded in 1797, now in the middle of the valley which bears the mission's name. A photo in the museum there showed the San Fernando Valley as it appeared more than a century ago: empty even of trees, with the little complex of half-ruined mission buildings the only point of visual interest. By the 1930s, the valley was covered by orange groves. By the 1950s it was being rather abruptly filled with tract homes. Nature had been transformed with a speed that makes some visitors uneasy. Mike Davis says he fears that the same fate awaits the Santa Clara Valley and its orange groves.