Das städtische Kaleidoskop L.A.

Abstract

Using Los Angeles as paradigmatic example for a wide array of issues in contemporary urban development, urban scholars have, since the mid-1980s, discussed L.A.'s post-fordist industrial agglomeration, its sprawling urban landscape and the region's role as nexus in global economic networks and as major region of international immigration. More recently, the focus of urban scholarship on L.A. has come to include topics such as the heterogeneous cultural and spatial politics of identity, political struggles over urban spaces, and the unmer challenges of developing an ecologically sustainable urban theory and practice. In a comparative transatlantic perspective, an L.A. case study can help to identify central dynamics and core challenges in contemporary and future urban development. Based on a systematic analysis of urban development processes in L.A., debates about the “Americanization” of European or German cities can be criticised as tending to be overtly simplified and ideologically totalizing.