The infrastructural city : networked ecologies in Los Angeles

Looks At The Resulting Urban Condition: Networked, Codependent Ecosystems Of Environmental Mitigation, Land-use Organization, And Service Delivery, To Chart A New Atlas For Twenty-first-century Los Angeles And Cities Worldwide--page 4 Of Cover. Introduction : Networked Ecologies / Kazys Varnelis -- Landscape : Owens Lake: Reconstructing The Void / Barry Lehman ; Los Angeles River Watershed: Flood Control Freakology / David Fletcher ; Oil: Crude City / Frank Ruchala ; Gravel: Margins In Our Midst / Matt Coolidge, Center For Land Use Interpretation -- Fabric : Traffic: Blocking All Lanes / Sean Dockray, Fiona Whitton, Steve Rowell ; Telecommunications: Invisible City / Kazys Varnelis ; Landscape: Tree Huggers / Warren Techentin ; Mobile Phones: Cell Structure / Ted Kane & Rick Miller -- Objects : Property: Counting (on) Change / Roger Sherman ; Distribution: Consumers Gone Wild / Deborah Richmond ; Props: Story Of The Eye / Robert Sumrell -- Picturing Los Angeles: The Linear City / Lane Barden : The River: The Los Angeles River ; The Street: Wilshire Boulevard ; The Trench: The Alameda Corridor. Edited By Kazys Varnelis ; Maps By Leah Meisterlin. Includes Bibliographical References. Once the greatest American example of a modern city served by infrastructure, Los Angeles is now in perpetual crisis. Infrastructure has ceased to support architecture's plans for the city and instead subordinates architecture to its own purposes. This out-of-control but networked world is increasingly organized by flows of objects and information. Static structures avoid being superfluous by joining this system as temporary containers for the people, objects, and capital. A provocative collection of research through photography, essays and maps, this is book looks at infrastructure as a way of mapping our place in the city, remaining optimistic about the role of architecture to affect change.