At once informative and entertaining, inspiring and challenging, My Los Angeles provides a deep understanding of urban development and change over the past forty years in Los Angeles and other city regions of the world. Once the least dense American metropolis, Los Angeles is now the country's densest urbanized area and one of the most culturally heterogeneous cities in the world. Soja takes us through this urban metamorphosis, analyzing urban restructuring, deindustrialization and reindustrialization, the globalization of capital and labor, and the formation of an information-intensive New Economy. By examining his own evolving interpretations of Los Angeles and the debates on the so-called Los Angeles School of urban studies, Soja argues that a radical shift is taking place in the nature of the urbanization process, from the familiar metropolitan model to regional urbanization. By looking at such concepts as new regionalism, the spatial turn, the end of the metropolis era, the urbanization of suburbia, the global spread of industrial urbanism, and the transformative urban-industrialization of China, Soja offers a unique and remarkable perspective on critical urban and regional studies.

List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1 . When It First Came Together in Los Angeles2 . Taking Los Angeles Apart3 . Inside Exopolis: Views of Orange County4 . Comparing Los Angeles5 . On the Postmetropolitan Transition6 . A Look Beyond Los Angeles7 . Regional Urbanization and the End of the Metropolis Era8 . Seeking Spatial Justice in Los Angeles9 . Occupy Los Angeles: A Very Contemporary ConclusionAppendix 1: Source Texts by the AuthorAppendix 2: Complementary Video SourcesIndex