1971 | Burbank
L. A. is so broad that it feigns two dimensions. But from high places, I can still pick out the ancient Native and old padre trails tracing watercourses between the persistently dramatic Santa Monica and San Gabriel ranges.
But the broad valleys have been flattened even more by the extended leveling of modern agriculture (“Orange” County is not just a name), then blooming suburbia. The San Fernando, the San Gabriel, the Pomona, and the distant Antelope Valleys are packed in with residential development, over-scaled and often far from employment; commuting is an odious, time-consuming, and unpaid second job.
Anyone coming to the region – tourist, speculator, or environmentalist (some Angeleno families represented all three) – at any time in the past hundred years probably saw it coming, and likely would say today, “I told you so.”
But even in this picture, made on my little walk close by the temporary first campus of CalArts, the huge flat valley showed me layers, superstructures, and rigged-up connections between community shards cut adrift by marauding freeway schemes.