Changes

====Entitled Fortress LA====Entitled In the chapter entitled Fortress LA, Davis explores the construction of modern Los Angeles as an architectural prison. The destruction of “real” public space through nuanced planning and architectural schemes have established a “neo military” style that foregrounds surveillance efforts. Anti-pedestrian this new “suburban-like city” construction deviates from other metropolises, “In other cities, developers might have attempted to articulate the new skyscape and the old, exploiting the latter’s extraordinary inventory of theaters and historic buildings to create a gentrified history – a gaslight district, Faneuil Market … — as support to middle-class colonization. But Los Angeles’s developers viewed property values in the old Broadway core as irreversibly eroded by the area’s very centrality to public transport, and especially by its heavy use by Black and Mexican poor.” (230). Ultimately, this has created a racialized spatialization of the city. Davis even takes Frank Gehry to task arguing his work “clarifies the underlying relations of repression, surveillance, and exclusion that characterize the fragmented, paranoid spatiality towards which Los Angeles seems to aspire.” (238) The LAPD’s work with the local military aerospace industry has contributed to this siege mentality. The emergence of the Emergency Command Control Communications Systems (ECCCS) along with the LAPD’s own information gathering “has become the central neural system for he vast and separate, public and private, security operations taking place in Los Angeles.” (253) The pervasive effect of such developments has been the collapse of public space.

Chapter 5According Ultimately, this has created a racialized spatialization of the city. Davis even takes Frank Gehry to task arguing his work “clarifies the underlying relations of repression, surveillance, and exclusion that characterize the fragmented, paranoid spatiality towards which Los Angeles seems to aspire.” (238) The LAPD’s work with the local military aerospace industry has contributed to Davisthis siege mentality. The emergence of the Emergency Command Control Communications Systems (ECCCS) along with the LAPD’s own information gathering “has become the central neural system for he vast and separate, public and private, security operations taking place in Los Angeles.” (253) The pervasive effect of such developments has been the collapse of public space. ====The Collapse of Public Space in LA====The collapse of public space has been greatly facilitated by the increasingly draconian efforts of the LAPD. Decrying the Commissioner Daryl Gates as racist, Davis argues that the “the super sweeps called the HAMMER” gained the support of some black leaders since the rise of the crack industry created swaths of violence and crime. However, HAMMER embedded itself as a permanent program that “mercilessly pounded away at Southcentral’s mean streets” but seemed to only capture, “drunks, delinquent motorists, and teenage curfew violators.” (277)  The discourse coming out of LA municipal leaders such as James Hahn (son of legendary LA politician Kenneth Hahn) conflated gangs with terrorists while simultaneously casting suspicion on most non-white youth, associating them unfairly with gang activity. Davis suggests the initial reason for gang formation was for protection from rival white gangs, but with the collapse of more socially aware civil rights and black power movements, later descended into criminality. Furthermore, the police presentation of a large, massive, coherent crack infrastructure failed to reflect reality. Instead, the crack industry consisted of numerous small operators in competition with one another. Finally, Davis wonders aloud whether Chief Gates or Mayor Bradley controls aspects of the municipal government.