of Houston in all of its mind-bending complexity. Lerup never explicitly develops a normative account of the city, except at its most environmentally dysfunctional. This can sometimes make the experience of reading rather frustrating, until one grasps that energy usage, ecological sustainability and the availability of public space and services are the criteria by which Lerup judges Houston – and often finds it wanting. To paraphrase Richard Rorty, one might claim Lerup believes that once the larger systemic challenges are addressed and resolved, the truth and beauty of Houston will take care of itself. Few Europeans would so willingly dispense with an underlying metaphysics, and in this way Lerup reveals the pragmatic American grain of his approach to the city. So, too, Banham and Lerup differ on their understandings of ecology, which for Banham has more to do with aesthetics, mood and style than the concerns of environmentalism. Of all the ways in which Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies has aged, its refusal to address the politics of energy in suburban car culture is perhaps most conspicuous. As forest fires, floods and mudslides become ever more common in Los Angeles, the ecologies in Banham’s book appear increasingly rigid and ill equipped to address the problems of density and infill that chiefly concern Lerup. Writing at a moment when global warming, climate change and hurricanes impact Houston, Lerup is sensitive to overbuilding, the replacement of vegetation by concrete and the destruction of the local bayous. Dialogue amongst members of architecture schools and real-estate developers is today no longer as rare as it once was. Lerup’s reports of conversations with Bob Schultz, Frank Liu and Richard Everett provide revealing insights into Houston’s ongoing expansion and go a long way toward expunging the ludicrously simplistic view that they are the bad guys on whose
doorsteps all blame for its urban problems can be laid. If Lerup’s commitment to a public realm distinguishes him from most libertarians, his lack of faith in state-implemented solutions just as clearly suggests that improvements in Houston will not come about as the consequence of new government programmes, but rather as a consequence of hard-won collaborations among citizens, architects, politicians and realestate interests. After the financial crisis of 2009–10 which left the Californian model of prosperity in tatters, there is good reason to view Houston and the general strength of the Texas economy as a possible model for the future. Any prospect for the city that is more hopeful than ecological catastrophe, as well as politically feasible, must assume that capitalism will not disappear soon and that it in fact must be an agent of creative transformation. Here again, Lerup demonstrates his willingness to think outside of familiar categories. How the continuing experiment of Houston will unfold is uncertain, yet without a doubt, no book that will teach me more about the city than this one is likely to appear within my lifetime.
26
27