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Who was Mike Davis? Many know him as a prolific American writer, storyteller, and brass tacks commentator on all things history, urbanism, politics, labor, activism, and society. However, for many, his words and work were grounding stones for their own perspectives on architecture, urban planning... View full entry
I’ve seen miracles happen. I’ve seen ordinary people do the most heroic things. When you’ve had the privilege of knowing so many great fighters and resisters, you can’t lay down the sword, even if things seem objectively hopeless. — The Guardian
The terminally-ill City of Quartz author sat down recently with The Guardian to discuss his waning health and look back at prescient early warnings of the state’s slow-motion social and ecological demise that has taken three decades to manifest. True to form, Davis was critical of... View full entry
You can’t overstate the importance of City of Quartz...it remains the best socio-political critique of modern L.A, the first book you’d recommend to someone seeking to understand the dark nativist currents and unyielding avarice that still shape a city so easily stereotyped but rarely understood. It is noir to the core...Even Vince Staples insisted that I read City of Quartz had I not already. — the LAnd
On the 30th anniversary of the dystopian L.A. touchstone, Jeff Weiss talks to the prophetic author and oft-misunderstood activist about political uprisings, the pandemic, and what gives him hope for the future. In related news, back in 2015 Julia Ingalls reported on the third installment of The... View full entry
Eleven years ago, Bill Moyers brought me on his show and presented me as the last socialist in America. Now there are millions of young people who prefer socialism to capitalism.” -Mike Davis — New Yorker
Dana Goodyear of New Yorker had a conversation with Mike Davis on the occasion of his upcoming new book "Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties." The article, particularly summing up Davis' own "being there" through the social and political upheavals of Southern California... View full entry
“The middle class has finally come downtown but only to bring suburbia with them. The hipsters think they’re living in the real thing, but this is purely faux urbanism, a residential mall. Downtown is not the heart of the city, it’s a luxury lifestyle pod for the same people who claim Silverlake is the ‘Eastside’ or that Venice is still bohemian.” — boomcalifornia
Jennifer Wolch and Dana Cuff track down elusive writer Mike Davis for Boom California.+A previous conversation with Mike Davis for Archinect, "Meeting Mike Davis" View full entry
If you conceive of Los Angeles as having three distinct historical periods – as Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the L.A. Times and the driving force behind The Third L.A. series, does – then the first period encapsulated the 1880s to the 1940s, the second the 1940s to the new... View full entry
When the hotel workers released a short film a few months later that vividly made the connection between poverty and the uprising, there was a memorable freak-out in the Convention Bureau and City Hall. Instead of a comprehensive investigation that documented events, took public testimony and probed underlying causes, the Christopher Commission was coaxed to finish its superficial report on reforming the LAPD. No one wanted to hear the voices from our own intifada. — Los Angeles Review of Books
Mike Davis reflects on 1992 Rodney King "uprising" deceivingly known as L.A. Riots. He refers it as "our own intifada." I agree with him since witnessing first hand the black smoke covering the city few hours after the events start to unfold. It was the most socially important event I... View full entry
From the air, where those Iowa cornstalks don’t conceal the pattern of blind convergence, the world economic situation looks distinctly like a crash waiting to happen. From three directions, the United States, the European Union, and China are blindly speeding toward the same intersection. The question is: Will anyone survive to attend the prom? — huffington post
From City of Quartz and teaching architecture students how to write, Mike Davis is now looking beyond Southern California. View full entry
In the heat of ongoing Malibu fires, Mike Davis' now classic essay originally published in LA Weekly, once more comes to mind. radicalurbantheory / update Related; 1 / 2 View full entry
