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Urban forms and suburban dreams
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Cities, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 79-80, 1995 Copyright ~) 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0264-2751/95 $10.00 + 0.00
U T T E R W O R T H I N E M A N N
Book reviews Technopolis: High-Technology Industry and Regional Development in Southern California Allen Scott
University of California Press Berkeley (1993) 322 pp US$35.00 hardback Allen Scott has acquired a formidable reputation as one of the world's foremost analysts of regional and urban economic change. His work over the p a s t d e c a d e has f o c u s e d on his academic home and urban laboratory, the Los Angeles basin. Academics at U C L A like to claim that they are the heirs to the Chicago school of the 1920s, pointing to the fact that in their days both cities have represented some kind of crucible of contemporary u r b a n e v o l u t i o n . T h e i r claim is perhaps exaggerated; but insofar as it contains a measure of truth, it refers especially to Scott's monumental dissection of the Los Angeles economy. Technopolis represents its summing up. Readers should be warned, as Scott warns them at the outset, that they may have read much of it before: it has been published in various academic papers over more than 10 years. But it all needs to be re-read within this common framework of theory and empirical analysis. Scott starts by recapitulating his theory of vertically disintegrated production concentrated in industrial districts, which he has been developing over the last decade. He then analyses in great detail the growth of hightechnology production in the Los Angeles basin since the 1920s, showing that the area barely developed at all in the age of Fordist mass production, but developed on the basis of flexible specialization in the aircraft and then the missile and related electronics industries, above all in the period of intense defence spending from the mid-1950s. He shows that the area has been peculiarly dependent on
the vagaries of defence contracting, and that is it now suffering from its contraction as once it profited from its expansion. Finally, he looks at the medical technology industries as a potential source of market-led expansion, and speculates on the possibility of developing a new electric car industry on the basis of stringent new local air quality regulations. Some of the general theory has now become familiar through the work of Scott and his colleagues, and some of the empirical history has been studied, though in less depth, by Ann Markusen and the present reviewer. Nevertheless, in totality Technopolis represents a major achievement both in theoretical and in empirical terms. Its main contribution in both senses is its discovery that, in Los Angeles, vertical disintegration takes a form different from that analysed by Saxenian and others in its other Californian home, Silicon Valley: here, it consists in a web of relationships between large contractors, the systems houses, and a host of subcontractors. This is important, I believe, because it is a model that appears to exist in other industrial districts, including the largest such district in the world, the T o k y o agglomeration. Finally, Scott makes some extremely provocative and persuasive arguments for a more proactive industrial policy in the area. The collapse of the C o l d W a r e c o n o m y has c l e a r l y brought crisis for the Los Angeles economy and indeed the wider California economy; to revive it, Scott argues, will rest on the ability to build new institutional frameworks that will handle matters like the translation of R & D into production, the creation and upgrading of labour skills, the development of specialized and sophisticated business services to small firms, the encouragement of cooperative relationships between firms and
local government in activities ranging from infrastructure provision to the f o r m a t i o n of p r i v a t e - p u b l i c partnerships. It is interesting that another l e a d i n g A m e r i c a n urban analyst, Susan Fainstein, comes to very similar conclusions in her recent study of property development and the financial services industries in London and New York, which constitute another form of industrial complex currently under threat. The implications of this study thus go far beyond the academic community; they deserve pondering by policy leaders, not only within local communities, but at the national and international levels.
Peter Hall University College London Gower St London WC1E 6BT
Urban Forms and Suburban Dreams Malcolm Quantrill and Bruce Webb (eds)
Texas University Press College Station TX (1993) £50 This is a book about 'neither here nor there' - that place, that may not exist, between urb and suburb. It is a sandwich of a book with a top and bottom slice of philosophical theory and a filling of miscellaneous case studies. It is more appetising and nutritious than that may sound. It derives mainly from papers given at a conference convened by the Center for the Advancement of Studies in Architecture at the University of Texas in 1990. It is a mystery why, in this age of high-speed publication, it has (like most similar productions) taken so long to appear. Suburbia has generated quite an academic industry over the past 40 years or so. It started with studies of
Book reviews
the sociology and politics of suburban life, eg David Riesman (1950), John Keats (1959), Robert C. Wood (1959). The best UK contribution to the genre has been by Alan Jackson (1973). More recently, interest has turned to the aesthetics and morphology of suburbs (see Peter Katz (1994) reviewed in the last volume of this journal). The present collection of essays approaches the subject from both these aspects. It is a worthwhile addition to the literature and it is a pity it does not include a bibliography and more illustrations. The meat is in the text. The first two essays approach the subject from oblique angles. Peter Eisenman argues that places and buildings no longer exist except as 'media events'. They are more real by night than by day, identified by neon lighting, logos and tele-video images. Paul Christiansen looks at the cityedge and finds a 'vast accumulation of detritus', the city decomposing into 'junk, offal, pollution, clutter, house fires'. These disconcerting images of suburbia are hardly borne out by the
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series of case studies that follows. They include utopian villages, garden suburbs, New Deal housing, and the two famous examples from Florida, over 60 years apart, the eclectic Mediterranean imagery of Coral Gables and the inevitable Seaside (an intriguing discovery is that the architects of Seaside, Andreas Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, the high priests of the New Urbanism, have their home in Coral Gables). The editors have a short way with the proponents of Seaside: they attribute their obsession with 'rules' to early toilet training. Drexel Turner does a detailed dissection of Seaside and concludes by quoting John Ruskin (after whom one of Seaside's streets is named): 'It is no sign of deadness in a present art that it borrows or imitates, but only if it borrows without paying interest, or i f it imitates without choice' (The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1848). The four concluding essays do nothing to bring these diverse contributions to a conclusion, but serve to demonstrate what a fertile field for observation suburbia has proved to
be. All the authors are fascinated and to varying degrees repelled by it or by the recent attempts to make it something other than what it is - 'living off memories that don't exist and are only feebly suggested'. However, suburbia is where most people live and will continue to live and most of them seem to like it there. Those who do not like it do not have to live there. Jackson (1973) does more to explain this phenomenon than any of the essays in this collection. John Delafons Visiting Professor Reading University Reading RG6 2BU
Jackson, Alan C (1973) Semi-Detached London Allen & Unwin, London Katz, Peter (1994) The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community McGraw Hill, New York Keats, John (1959) The Crack in the Picture Window Boston Riesman, David (1950) The Lonely Crowd New Haven Wood, Robert C (1959) Suburbia: Its People and their Pofitics Houghton Mifflin, Boston
Cities 1995 Volume 12 Number 1
Cities, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 79-80, 1995 Copyright ~) 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0264-2751/95 $10.00 + 0.00
U T T E R W O R T H I N E M A N N
Book reviews Technopolis: High-Technology Industry and Regional Development in Southern California Allen Scott
University of California Press Berkeley (1993) 322 pp US$35.00 hardback Allen Scott has acquired a formidable reputation as one of the world's foremost analysts of regional and urban economic change. His work over the p a s t d e c a d e has f o c u s e d on his academic home and urban laboratory, the Los Angeles basin. Academics at U C L A like to claim that they are the heirs to the Chicago school of the 1920s, pointing to the fact that in their days both cities have represented some kind of crucible of contemporary u r b a n e v o l u t i o n . T h e i r claim is perhaps exaggerated; but insofar as it contains a measure of truth, it refers especially to Scott's monumental dissection of the Los Angeles economy. Technopolis represents its summing up. Readers should be warned, as Scott warns them at the outset, that they may have read much of it before: it has been published in various academic papers over more than 10 years. But it all needs to be re-read within this common framework of theory and empirical analysis. Scott starts by recapitulating his theory of vertically disintegrated production concentrated in industrial districts, which he has been developing over the last decade. He then analyses in great detail the growth of hightechnology production in the Los Angeles basin since the 1920s, showing that the area barely developed at all in the age of Fordist mass production, but developed on the basis of flexible specialization in the aircraft and then the missile and related electronics industries, above all in the period of intense defence spending from the mid-1950s. He shows that the area has been peculiarly dependent on
the vagaries of defence contracting, and that is it now suffering from its contraction as once it profited from its expansion. Finally, he looks at the medical technology industries as a potential source of market-led expansion, and speculates on the possibility of developing a new electric car industry on the basis of stringent new local air quality regulations. Some of the general theory has now become familiar through the work of Scott and his colleagues, and some of the empirical history has been studied, though in less depth, by Ann Markusen and the present reviewer. Nevertheless, in totality Technopolis represents a major achievement both in theoretical and in empirical terms. Its main contribution in both senses is its discovery that, in Los Angeles, vertical disintegration takes a form different from that analysed by Saxenian and others in its other Californian home, Silicon Valley: here, it consists in a web of relationships between large contractors, the systems houses, and a host of subcontractors. This is important, I believe, because it is a model that appears to exist in other industrial districts, including the largest such district in the world, the T o k y o agglomeration. Finally, Scott makes some extremely provocative and persuasive arguments for a more proactive industrial policy in the area. The collapse of the C o l d W a r e c o n o m y has c l e a r l y brought crisis for the Los Angeles economy and indeed the wider California economy; to revive it, Scott argues, will rest on the ability to build new institutional frameworks that will handle matters like the translation of R & D into production, the creation and upgrading of labour skills, the development of specialized and sophisticated business services to small firms, the encouragement of cooperative relationships between firms and
local government in activities ranging from infrastructure provision to the f o r m a t i o n of p r i v a t e - p u b l i c partnerships. It is interesting that another l e a d i n g A m e r i c a n urban analyst, Susan Fainstein, comes to very similar conclusions in her recent study of property development and the financial services industries in London and New York, which constitute another form of industrial complex currently under threat. The implications of this study thus go far beyond the academic community; they deserve pondering by policy leaders, not only within local communities, but at the national and international levels.
Peter Hall University College London Gower St London WC1E 6BT
Urban Forms and Suburban Dreams Malcolm Quantrill and Bruce Webb (eds)
Texas University Press College Station TX (1993) £50 This is a book about 'neither here nor there' - that place, that may not exist, between urb and suburb. It is a sandwich of a book with a top and bottom slice of philosophical theory and a filling of miscellaneous case studies. It is more appetising and nutritious than that may sound. It derives mainly from papers given at a conference convened by the Center for the Advancement of Studies in Architecture at the University of Texas in 1990. It is a mystery why, in this age of high-speed publication, it has (like most similar productions) taken so long to appear. Suburbia has generated quite an academic industry over the past 40 years or so. It started with studies of
Book reviews
the sociology and politics of suburban life, eg David Riesman (1950), John Keats (1959), Robert C. Wood (1959). The best UK contribution to the genre has been by Alan Jackson (1973). More recently, interest has turned to the aesthetics and morphology of suburbs (see Peter Katz (1994) reviewed in the last volume of this journal). The present collection of essays approaches the subject from both these aspects. It is a worthwhile addition to the literature and it is a pity it does not include a bibliography and more illustrations. The meat is in the text. The first two essays approach the subject from oblique angles. Peter Eisenman argues that places and buildings no longer exist except as 'media events'. They are more real by night than by day, identified by neon lighting, logos and tele-video images. Paul Christiansen looks at the cityedge and finds a 'vast accumulation of detritus', the city decomposing into 'junk, offal, pollution, clutter, house fires'. These disconcerting images of suburbia are hardly borne out by the
~0
series of case studies that follows. They include utopian villages, garden suburbs, New Deal housing, and the two famous examples from Florida, over 60 years apart, the eclectic Mediterranean imagery of Coral Gables and the inevitable Seaside (an intriguing discovery is that the architects of Seaside, Andreas Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, the high priests of the New Urbanism, have their home in Coral Gables). The editors have a short way with the proponents of Seaside: they attribute their obsession with 'rules' to early toilet training. Drexel Turner does a detailed dissection of Seaside and concludes by quoting John Ruskin (after whom one of Seaside's streets is named): 'It is no sign of deadness in a present art that it borrows or imitates, but only if it borrows without paying interest, or i f it imitates without choice' (The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1848). The four concluding essays do nothing to bring these diverse contributions to a conclusion, but serve to demonstrate what a fertile field for observation suburbia has proved to
be. All the authors are fascinated and to varying degrees repelled by it or by the recent attempts to make it something other than what it is - 'living off memories that don't exist and are only feebly suggested'. However, suburbia is where most people live and will continue to live and most of them seem to like it there. Those who do not like it do not have to live there. Jackson (1973) does more to explain this phenomenon than any of the essays in this collection. John Delafons Visiting Professor Reading University Reading RG6 2BU
Jackson, Alan C (1973) Semi-Detached London Allen & Unwin, London Katz, Peter (1994) The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community McGraw Hill, New York Keats, John (1959) The Crack in the Picture Window Boston Riesman, David (1950) The Lonely Crowd New Haven Wood, Robert C (1959) Suburbia: Its People and their Pofitics Houghton Mifflin, Boston
Cities 1995 Volume 12 Number 1