My Los Angeles: From Urban Restructuring to Regional Urbanization

7. Regional Urbanization and the End of the Metropolis Era

194 S E V E N Regional Urbanization and the End of the Metropolis Era Regional urbanization has been referred to many times in earlier chapters. WhatIplantodohere,inadditiontoprovidingfurtherclarificationandelaborationoftheconcept ,istoargueasstronglyasIcanjusthowprofoundachange regionalurbanizationrepresentsinboththenatureoftheurbanizationprocess and how we think about cities and urban change. Defined as a transformative shift from a metropolitan model, regional urbanization requires much more than a simple name change to define and describe this latest morphing of the industrialcapitalistcity.Itsignalsinsteadafundamentalstructural,behavioral, and analytical transformation that deserves to be described in epochal terms, as the beginning of a pronounced paradigm shift, a profound metamorphosis, afar-reachingdeconstructionandreconstitutionofthemodernmetropolisthat iscreatinganewbreedofcities.Assuch,itdemandsanaccompanyingtransformation in nearly every aspect of urban theory and practice. I became aware of this epochal shift from a metropolitan to a regional model of urbanization as the direct result of more than three decades of observing and studying the urban restructuring of Los Angeles. This intensive experience has convinced me that the restructuring of LA is much more than an uninterrupted accumulation of incremental changes and piecemeal reforms. Although the modern metropolis is still around, there has been a profound break with the past in the development of Los Angeles, followed by a redirection of the urbanization process toward an urban future that no longer fits our conventional categories, models, or theories. Represented vividly in this new Los Angeles is the globalized city cum region, a polycentric network of urban agglomerations that contains within its regional grip one of the most heterogeneous collections of cultures and economies the world has ever seen, a new megaregional version of the industrial capitalist city. R E G I O N A L U R B A N I Z A T I O N • 195 The metropolitan to regional shift does not negate the concepts of urban restructuring, postmodern urbanization, and the postmetropolitan transition ; rather it amplifies them to another level of significance. Urban restructuring remains the core concept, but it is a neutral notion with no end state in mind. Each subsequent “revisioning” gets a little more specific, but only with recognition of regional urbanization as the process of change and the city region or regional city as its definitive product does urban restructuring attain its appropriate denouement. I also want to emphasize that this shift does not spell the end of the industrial capitalist city or industrial capitalism itself. As I said earlier, the prefix post- is often apt but should not be used in front of three related terms: urban, industrial, and capitalism. The present is not posturban, postindustrial, or postcapitalist. This does not mean that it is the same old urban industrial capitalism that has existed since the Industrial Revolution. Economic restructuring has brought about radical changes in our modes of production and consumption, creating a New Economy and New Geography that together define the end of the metropolis era and the rise of a new urbanregional age. U R B A N R E S T R U C T U R I N G W R I T L A R G E The rising force and recognition of regional urbanization completes the story told in My Los Angeles and at the same time initiates a new story, one that enlarges the concept of regional urbanization in scale and effect, well beyond the confines of Los Angeles. Before turning to this new narrative, however, the now completed story deserves a brief recapitulation, if only to set the scene. As you remember, I began with the aftermath of the Watts Riots in 1965, by seeing in this explosive event and other urban uprisings around the world in the late 1960s a crucial turning point. Together these worldwide urban crises marked the end of the long postwar economic boom in the advanced industrial countries and the start of a diverse series of attempts to create a new form of industrial capitalism capable of restoring sustainable economic growth while maintaining sufficient social control to prevent renewed social unrest. We called what was happening “crisis-generated urban restructuring,” an open-ended concept that was intended to describe a middle ground between 196 • R E G I O N A L U R B A N I Z A T I O N total transformation and piecemeal reform, for it was certainly less than revolutionary and more than a minor readjustment. By the time of the deep global recession in 1973–74, the term restructuring was being used to describe significant structural change...