An engaging account of the uniquely creative spirit and bustling cultural ecology of contemporary Los Angeles How did Los Angeles start the 20th century as a dusty frontier town and end up a century later as one of the globe\'s supercities - with unparalleled cultural, economic, and technological reach? In City at the Edge of Forever , Peter Lunenfeld constructs an urban portrait, layer by layer, from serendipitous affinities, historical anomalies, and uncanny correspondences.
He has lived in Southern California for over thirty years..
He has published award-winning essays and several books with the MIT Press about the ways in which art, design, and technology intertwine.
About author(s): Peter Lunenfeld is vice chair of UCLA\'s Design Media Arts department, and a faculty member in the Urban and Digital Humanities programs.
In the process, he reimagines Los Angeles as simultaneously an exemplar and cautionary tale for the 21st century.
Lunenfeld weaves together the city\'s art, architecture, and design, juxtaposes its entertainment and literary histories, and moves from restaurant kitchens to recording studios to ultra-secret research and development labs.
What alchemists identify as the ethereal fifth element, or quintessence, this book positions as the glamour of Hollywood, a spell that sustains the City but also needs to be broken in order to understand Los Angeles now.
Water is now the key element, and Southern California\'s ports are the largest in the western hemisphere.
Air defined the area from WWII to the end of the Cold War, with aeronautics and aerospace dominating the region\'s industries.
Fire fueled the city\'s early explosive growth as the Southland\'s oil fields supplied the inexhaustible demands of drivers and their cars.
Earth became real estate when the Yankees took control in the nineteenth century.
One of the book\'s innovations is to brand Los Angeles as the alchemical city.
In its pages, modernist architecture and lifestyle capitalism come together via a surfer girl named Gidget
Joan Didion\'s yellow Corvette is the brainchild of a car-crazy Japanese-American kid interned at Manzanar; and the music of the Manson Family segues into the birth of sci-fi fandom.
An engaging account of the uniquely creative spirit and bustling cultural ecology of contemporary Los Angeles How did Los Angeles start the 20th century as a dusty frontier town and end up a century later as one of the globe\'s supercities - with unparalleled cultural, economic, and technological reach? In City at the Edge of Forever , Peter Lunenfeld constructs an urban portrait, layer by layer, from serendipitous affinities, historical anomalies, and uncanny correspondences
