Awards

• Winner of Association of American Geographers John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize 1999.
• Winner of Association of American Geographers John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize 2000 (United States)

Overview

Three centuries ago, the Los Angeles River meandered through marshes and forests of willow and sycamore. Trout spawned in its waters and grizzly bears roamed its shores. The bountiful environment the river helped create supported one of the largest concentrations of Indians in North America. Today, the river is made almost entirely of concrete. Chain-link fence and barbed wire line its course. Shopping carts and trash litter its channel. Little water flows in the river most of the year, and nearly all that does is treated sewage and oily street runoff. On much of its course, the river looks more like a deserted freeway than a river. The river's contemporary image belies its former character and its importance to the development of Southern California. Los Angeles would not exist were it not for the river, and the river was crucial to its growth. Recognizing its past and future potential, a potent movement has developed to revitalize its course. This volume offers a comprehensive account of a river that helped give birth to one of the world's great cities, significantly shaped its history, and promises to play a key role in its future.

Full Product Details

9780801866425

Table of Contents

Reviews

<p> Gumprecht modestly claims that his interest in the Los Angeles River 'has always been more in its past than in its future.' But we require the past he presents, like water in our desert, to make the choices in our future intelligible. Another of the catastrophes of the river will be that too few Angelenos are likely to find and read this essential book... Over the past 150 years, amnesiac L.A. has looked at the space occupied by the river and misread it as dry land ready for development, a western barricade against immigrant neighborhoods, a water resource to be exploited, a perfectly engineered drain and finally a concrete void. Gumprecht gives a broad historical, geographical and human context to these misreadings, and he understands their seductions, particularly the current image of the river as a pathetic captive to be exhumed from its concrete coffin... In the contradictions of the river, Gumprecht reveals a broader conflict about the uses of space in Los Angeles, and that unresolved argument spills over into harder questions here and in every part of the country about the limits of environmental restoration. Confronting them in detail, as Gumprecht does, takes courage. -- D. J. Waldie, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Author Information

Blake Gumprecht is an assistant professor of geography at the University of New Hampshire.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available