Los Angeles is burning. But really, what is L.A.?
The world capital of screen entertainment offers the continuous spectacle of multi-ethnic diversity which makes it a mini-planet. But L. A. is also a gigacity of suburban housing, a suburb extending to infinity.
French professor Cynthia Ghorra-Gobin, who has spent decades studying the Californian megalopolis, responds by speaking bluntly about the purest model of the American living environment. “This city is founded on a planning principle: the myth of the individual house,” she summarizes in an interview. It took shape in its typical, semi-desert landscape. »
So it’s this dream ofAmerican way of lifein an urban version, which has gone up in smoke a little, a lot, since the start of the year. The tragedy forces us to reflect on this way of developing cities and inhabiting the world – in good and bad parts, ours, here, too.
“American society, like any civilization, has built its relationship with space and nature: it has thus adopted a conception of the living environment different from the European city as it urbanized and welcomed migratory flows, says the incipit of the book Los Angeles. The unfinished American myth (CNRS, 2002), great summary by the professor. “Impregnated with “pastoral ideal”, she established in the 19th centurye century the order of the suburbs as a compromise between the complexity of the city and the simplicity of a way of life close to nature, by promoting the private sphere to the detriment of public space. »
Geographer Cynthia Ghorra-Gobin is research director at CNRS-CREDA, the Center for Research and Documentation on the Americas. She is also editor-in-chief of the magazine Geographic Information. A graduate in urban studies from UCLA, a prestigious Californian university, she lived in LA for years and taught at Berkeley, but also at the Sorbonne.
« The XXe century was American and, to understand its influence on urban life, I was not interested in the cities of the East Coast which, ultimately, are part of European history, she explains. On the west coast, in California, in Los Angeles, we discover something else, another model than that of the city center and the suburbs. For me, L. A. was almost an unreal world, with a multitude of outskirts for a long time without a center. When I arrived there, in the 1970s, there were tall buildings that were decades old, very beautiful buildings still there, but there were no skyscrapers. They appeared in the 1990s.
L’arrogance
The pueblo Mexican settled in an alluvial plain, at the foot of the mountains, was integrated into the territory of the American republic in 1850. With its 18 million inhabitants, the metropolitan area has become the second most populous in the United States, the third of the North American continent, after Mexico and New York. It extends from Santa Barbara to Irvine, from San Bernardino to Santa Monica, or 150 km in each direction from the recently created center.
This site poses serious challenges. It can experience devastating earthquakes, floods and fires, of course. Climate change amplifies the dangers, making them more devastating and more frequent. The increasingly hot and powerful dry winds stimulate fire outbreaks and spread them over vegetation which swarms and dries up with wet or dry periods.
“Successive generations have also transformed plants in this part of the United States,” explains the professor, giving the example of eucalyptus varieties, native to Australia, where they burn just as much. The fast-growing tree full of flammable resin has replaced southern California’s primary forests. “We find ourselves facing an extremely significant catastrophe. There have always been fires in the western United States, but never on this scale. »
Overconsumption of water, rare in the region, adds to the headache. Firefighters lack it to fight fires. Intensive agriculture in the region captures the resource to grow fruits, vegetables or almonds sold as far away as Quebec.
“There are enormous constraints from nature and obvious arrogance in consuming so much of this precious resource. Agriculture in California is extremely important, and farmers pay very little for water, while urban dwellers have to pay much more for access. There is no concept of sobriety. But, again, be careful, this is not the exception, but the rule in the United States. »
-The average Quebecer consumes 260 liters of drinking water per day on average, twice as much as a Dane. So what’s the point of lecturing Angelenos? LA reminds the whole world of the infernal effects of climate change caused by the choices common in rich countries, overly large air-conditioned houses, everything driven by cars, the dream life of overconsumption, etc.
“There is a certain arrogance regarding natural constraints,” continues M.me Ghorra-Gobin. We adopted this lifestyle without any sobriety. »
Peace
Other defects or contradictions of the angelic urban model are obvious. While offering everyone their own house and private land, the low urban density was to ensure the peace of common life, moving away from the bad Dickensian examples of Manchester or London in the 19th century.e century. On the contrary, the violence of the real realization has become so endemic that the police department describes it as ” war zones » certain areas of LA controlled by street gangs.
“It’s a violent city, but it’s not the only violent city,” replies the specialist who, in her book, cites the much more serious cases of Atlanta or Miami. I don’t want to talk about a failure of the model. For me, it is indeed an unfinished model. »
The feeling of incompleteness also applies to the public transport system. Its development was halted a century ago and resumed a few decades ago. The metro now has six lines extended over 170 km. When Mme Ghorra-Gobin returned to L.A., in 2023, she didn’t rent a car. “I used public transportation, and the only difficulty I had was getting to a metro station. You had to take a taxi or an Uber. So there are transformations and progress. »
LA still remains the world empress of highways to reach individual homes by solo cars. Its network extends over more than 1000 km, and daily trips exceed 160 million kilometers. Traffic jams are frequent and almost legendary.
The poor
Not all houses are equal. Mme Ghorra-Gobin asks us to remember that the fires currently concern neighborhoods where hyperrich households live in enormous houses, designed by architects.
“Racialized, marginalized, working-class neighborhoods are not affected by fires, whereas, generally, when disasters occur, floods, extreme temperatures, fires, it is the working classes who are victims. However, I want to emphasize it, disadvantaged populations are also affected by the disaster. Many cooks or gardeners, often Latinos who have lived in LA for three generations, have lost their jobs. Insurers will not compensate these people. »
The tragedy at the start of this year will inevitably transform the city, which is due to host parts of the Soccer World Cup in 2026, the Super Bowl in 2027 and the Olympic Games in 2028. A quarter of the inhabitants are considering leaving it for better protect yourself from climate change, according to a survey from the Public Policy Institute of California. The cost of homes is likely to rise sharply in a buyer’s market.
“The question really arises: are we going to be able to organize the Olympics? summarizes Cynthia Ghorra-Gobin. We must then ask ourselves if we can rebuild identically and, even, if we simply have to rebuild. »
Recent new rules require more fire-resistant buildings since old wooden constructions catch fire easily. In Altadena County, 90% of homes date from before 1990. This is also what’s burning in L.A.
