lo s
a n g e l e s
r e v i e w
o f
b o o k s
T H E P E N U LT I M AT E SUBURB Suburban living in the sprawling metropolis GEOFF NICHOLSON
T
here’s a convincing argument to be made that Los Angeles is the most suburban city on earth. As you fly in and make a circling approach to LAX airport, you can look down and see hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of individual homes, each in its own patch of land, arranged geometrically along gridded, orderly streets. I think it looks fantastic. On the ground, this vision still applies, and even in some of the roughest, toughest areas you’ll find detached one-family houses with their own reasonably sized gardens, garages, and driveways. The houses may be frayed at the edges, the cars in the drives won’t be new, the gardens may be neglected, there may well be sagging chain-link fences around the properties, but visually the neighborhood suggests careworn suburbia rather than desperate “mean streets.” 96
